US War on Venezuela by Other Means Based on Big Lies and Mass Deception
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Waging war involves selling it to enlist popular support at home – or at least avoid strong opposition.
Hegemonic US strategy includes fear-mongering, misinformation, disinformation, Big Lies, fake news, and other forms of mass deception – television the main propaganda platform.
Establishment media march in lockstep with all US wars in their run-up and while ongoing – reporting the official narrative exclusively, suppressing hard truths about what’s going on.
Karl Marx once called religion “the opium of the people.” Today it’s television, sports, other forms of entertainment, and what passes for TV “news.”
According to various surveys, watching television is America’s favorite pastime – on any given day, by around 80% of the US population.
Americans aged-15 or older spend nearly three hours daily watching television, over half their leisure time, including by streaming programs on their TV sets, computers, and portable devices – excluding movies viewed in theaters.
Americans aged-55 and older, as well as the unemployed, spend up to four hours daily watching TV, retired Americans around 4.5 hours daily.
Television is the main source of so-called “news and information” for most people in the US. A steady diet of rubbish assures a largely brainwashed public on issues mattering most, their minds manipulated by managed news misinformation and disinformation.
Former Kennedy administration’s FCC chairman Newton Minow’s remarks about commercial television are as relevant now as in 1961 when he made them, saying:
“Keep our eyes glued to that set until the station signs off” as it once did before 24-hour broadcasting, and “I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland, (a) procession of game shows, (nonsensical) formula comedies…blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.”
“And endless commercials – many screaming, cajoling, and offending…And if you think I exaggerate…try it.”
Communication theorist/media critic George Gerbner once said television has nothing to tell and everything to sell. Comedian Ernie Kovacs once said television is called “a medium because it’s neither rare or well done.”
Because most people rely on it for so-called “news and information,” they’re easy marks to deceive time and again – no matter how many times they were duped before.
Most Americans are ill-informed, disinformed, and uninformed, brainwashed by falsified official narrative rubbish.
The late author/historian Gore Vidal and oral historian/author Studs Terkel both called the US “the United States of Amnesia” – because information is easily erased from the public memory. Terkel also called the US “the big A – Alzheimer’s because what happened yesterday is forgotten today.”
Polls show an uninformed, ill-informed, misinformed US public on Venezuela (and most everything else of importance).
A recent Ipsos poll is similar to others, showing most Americans believe Venezuela is important to US national and economic security – only about 25% saying they’re familiar with what’s going on internally.
Around half the public supports humanitarian aid if Guaido replaces Maduro, ignorant of his illegitimacy. About 20% support removing Maduro by military intervention.
Polls on most issues show Americans are largely ignorant about policies their government pursues – why Republicans and undemocratic Dems get away with mass murder and much more with scant opposition by ordinary people, including the ongoing Trump regime’s coup attempt to destroy Venezuelan social democracy.
Weeks after initiated in late January by anointing usurper in waiting Guaido its designated puppet, Maduro successfully thwarted Trump regime efforts to reverse his democratic election and reelection, wanting him illegally removed from office.
According to DLT’s point man for regime change in Venezuela, convicted felon Elliott Abrams, (political nobody elected by no one as president) Guaido was anointed “interim president” by the opposition-controlled National Assembly (AN).
Abrams failed to explain that the AN breached Venezuelan constitutional law by illegally swearing into office three legislators accused of electoral fraud.
In 2016, the Supreme Court held the opposition-controlled body in contempt, its decisions null and void – the judiciary to act in its place because of its “contempt” and “incapacitation” to carry out its constitutional duties.
The whole world knows Guaido has no legitimacy. He belongs in prison longterm for the highest of high political crimes – a traitor to his country and people.
Separately on Friday, Maduro said “(s)oon (he’ll) announce new powerful changes in ways of the national government’s work.” He called on government ministers to “rule together with the people” on the streets against the Trump regime’s coup plot.
He intends establishing a new initiative in Venezuela’s military, charged with protecting strategic infrastructure and other key parts of the country.
He called the largely corrected blackout a “cyberattack against the Venezuelan electric energy system…a terror act by the (Trump regime) against the Venezuelan people,” adding:
“Venezuelans have defeated this terror attack, and we are now preparing to move forward.” It lasted about a week from March 7 through mid-month.
What further dirty tricks do Trump regime hardliners intend unleashing next? More illegal sanctions are surely coming.
Of greatest concern is likely escalated violence, bloodshed, and chaos, wrongfully blamed on Maduro.
The Venezuelan story has a long way to go, likely as long as Trump remains president. Majority Venezuelans, the nation’s military, and around 75% of world community nations against the coup comprise the most effective antidote to what’s going on.
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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
