Propaganda and My Prepping – Part 2, by St. Funogas

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(Continued from Part 2.)

Propaganda can also be very damaging to us as individuals, and especially to us as a nation. Advertising = propaganda is ultimately about controlling us. Controlling us so we’ll quit littering, or controlling us so we’ll hand over our money and buy their products instead of the competition’s, or controlling us so we won’t object when they take away more of our freedoms either in the form of raising our taxes again or by passing more laws pushing us towards a more Orwellian future that awaits us.

The term Military Industrial Complex (MIC) was popularized by President Eisenhower in his now-famous Farewell Address in 1961. When a five-star army general is warning us to watch out for the MIC, I have to stand up and take notice. When a politician who knows the deepest, darkest secrets of his country, who is retiring from politics and no longer has to worry about campaign contributions from lobbyists and Big Corporations, is telling me to be wary of the MIC, he has my fullest attention. Today, this is more appropriately referred to as the MICC, the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

The people who make up the MICC include the executive branch, Congress and all the various money people associated with them (mainly lobbyists and large political donors), defense contractors, and private military contractors, among others. People who are not part of the MICC include the 1.4 million currently active military personnel, nor the millions of retired military folks.

Phrases in our culture like “Just the facts, ma’am,” “rock on,” and “he bought the farm,” originated innocently enough in one region with one person (or author) and eventually spread throughout the entire country. Other phrases such as, “If you see something, say something,” start out as advertising campaigns and eventually become part of our culture and national thinking. Before long, nobody can even remember when or why they began, yet they remain part of our national culture, and often we are the worse for it. “If you see something, say something.” Cui bono? IMO, Big Brother. These types of slogans leave me very uncomfortable and are way too Orwellian for my taste.

Thank a Vet

The “Thank a Vet,” program is not the result of somebody wishing to be kind to our millions of active and retired men and women in uniform. It’s a propaganda campaign designed with the sole purpose of getting Americans to fall in line and support the MICC’s goal of eternal warfare. After a bunch of dirty, long-haired, dope smokin’ hippies shut down the Vietnam War, the MICC declared, “Never again!” Bell Helicopter alone sold nearly 12,000 choppers to the U.S. government, almost half of which were shot down. When our boys were dying in those downed helicopters, Bell didn’t send letters of condolence to the destroyed families, they shipped more units to Vietnam and then sent letters to shareholders saying, “Profits are way up!” They didn’t send any money to the college funds of the kids who would now grow up without their daddies, instead, they passed cigars around for all the Big Daddies to smoke in the corporate board room. Times were good for the MICC!

Then those dang hippies started turning out in bigger and bigger numbers. Newspapers and magazines published real news back in those days which helped sway public opinion. The Pentagon Papers were leaked and published in 1971. And who can forget the picture of that little naked girl running towards the camera with her clothes burned off and her village burning in the background? I start crying just thinking about it. When Alzheimer’s has robbed me of all else and I can’t even remember my own name anymore, that picture will still be haunting me until I draw my last breath. And to the left in that same photo, the look of total grief on that little boy’s face as he too is fleeing his burning village, accidentally bombed by his own countrymen with MICC napalm.

What would you do if you were a large corporation dependent on war to keep you in business? They need profits to stay alive just like every other corporation on Wall Street. What would you do? You’d advertise. But you can’t just put up billboards saying “Support the War in Afghanistan!” But, why can’t you?

Because deep down inside, we all know that decent people, especially those claiming to be Judeo-Christians, should be against the idea of war and killing in general. Today as I write this it’s Easter Sunday and the Prince of Peace can’t be too happy with the state of Warfare and the MICC in America today. There are always exceptions to the rule. There are good, valid reasons to go to war in certain situations just as there are for defending our homes and loved ones with deadly force when necessary. But most Americans realize, at least subconsciously, that as a country we crossed a line somewhere. We’ve been in places like Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam. How did the MICC manage to pull this off without a new generation of hippies rising up and storming Washington DC with torches and pitchforks in their VW buses?

As I’ve mentioned earlier, salesmen and army generals had human nature figured out long before anybody had even coined the term “psychology.” To get people to love war, you need to think vicariously: you get them to love the participants of war instead. The Thank a Vet program is an advertising campaign to get us to love veterans, to think about them more, to appreciate them more, and to actually thank them “for keeping us free.” The MICC knows that the human brain cannot separate the soldier from the war. If the soldier is good, and such a wonderful guy that I need to stop him on the street and thank him for keeping me free, than how can what he is doing be a bad thing? Our subconscious asks that question and comes up with the answer: “If the soldier is good, then what he does must be good also.” Thus, without putting up a single billboard, the MICC has Americans supporting the whole concept of eternal warfare. And Bell Helicopter and their cronies don’t have to worry about busloads of hippies screwing up their profits. It’s beyond brilliant, if you ask me.

When we were told that the best steak to be had was corn-fed beef, none of us had a clue that a large corporation like Monsanto was behind the scenes. When farmers are having their baby bovines, lambs and goats born in winter, nobody suspects that Big Agriculture is behind it to sell them the cures that winter birthing necessitates that the farmers buy. And when Americans are thanking a vet, nobody suspects the MICC is behind the whole thing, protecting trillions of dollars in profits for stockholders and fat paychecks for retired congressmen who are now high-paid consultants.

I long ago quit eating corn-fed beef. If I ever get to the point of having large livestock, Brad has educated me on how to do it properly without getting sucked in by all the propaganda put out by the agricultural supply companies for their profit. But government and political propaganda leaves me feeling much more hopeless. I’m fairly certain we’ll never be able to reach any sort of a critical mass to make a difference against government propaganda. Too many of the ideas which have been propagated over the decades are too well established in our culture. And it’s darn near impossible to get people to take a hard, serious look and reevaluate their beliefs. I’m basing that on my own personal experience, and how difficult it was for me to make the transition from lifelong, conservative Republican to a critical-thinking American willing to go wherever the ugly, unbearable truth was going to take me. As part of my journey, I ended up writing an entire book on the subject of why most people choose not to go there, or psychologically can’t go there. You are possibly one of those people, and that’s okay.

(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 3.)

Editor’s Note: Please withhold making comments until you’ve read all three parts of this article.


22 Comments

  2. A few years ago there were six war-fighting functions: Maneuver, Intel, Logistics, Fires, Force Protection, Command and Control. THEN. . . They added Information, Similar to Intelligence, However, Information can be false to present a false narrative. . .
    If Chicken Little is running around saying the sky is falling, it’s NOT because of Bad Intel, it’s because of Information which is Bad, Limited, Ignorant or a Lack of Scope. Maybe the Fox threw a rock and Hit Chicken Little in the head sending Her into a tizzy, she ignores her Eggs, BAM! Foxy got some eggs with no or limited effort because Chicken Little was running around all much ado about nothing. So, far, I’m digging this article, cant wait to read part three.

    1. “A few years ago there were six war-fighting functions: Maneuver, Intel, Logistics, Fires, Force Protection, Command and Control. THEN. . . They added Information,”

      While that may be true from your perspective, information has been a military function for thousands of years and written about at length by military historians.

      A key part of information is the direction in which it flows, who controls that flow and for what purpose.

      Looking forward to part three.

      1. Muddykid, Sage is referring to US doctrine, although his information is a bit dated. Current doctrine recognizes 6 war fighting functions: command and control, movement and maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. These six, combined with leadership and information, make up “combat power”. Combat power are capabilities that military commanders utilize in executing operations. Warfighting functions are physical means, whereas leadership and information are a bit more esoteric.

        So while you’re absolutely correct from a historical perspective that information has been used by militaries for thousands of years, Sage was demonstrating how information has actually been incorporated into official US military doctrine.

        1. Francis,

          We may be drawing fromm different sources and under different contexts. Command and control was used in the Cold War under C3i, in which a primary aspect was the flow of information.

          While you may be correct in that the word “information” has been more recently included, the framework of how information has been used is much older, and is still very much used today with C4i in ways that information is referred to as the currency of victory.

          By my pointing this out, the goal was not to get into a internet argument about who is correct but rather to provide a different view that many of these concepts (which are very interesting) are much older than many of us realize.

          1. You’re probably right that we’re coming from different backgrounds. For example, I’m used to seeing the “I” in both C3I and C4I as referring to intelligence rather than information. Which of course are not entirely the same thing.

            One of the wonderful things about doctrinal terminology is how it evolves over time as doctrine itself evolves…or more often, when some Puzzle Palace weenie decides to change the name of something because they need a bullet for their OER

  3. “…how difficult it was for me to make the transition from lifelong, conservative Republican to a critical-thinking American willing to go wherever the ugly, unbearable truth was going to take me.”

    So true. On that journey myself.

  4. Eisenhower’s comments about the military industrial complex are fascinating. There are those who think those comments were not theoretical but based on hard personal experience in the Gary Powers U2 affair. The U2 affair scuttled what many say was what Eisenhower intended to be the crowning achievement of his Presidency and perhaps his entire life. A significant improvement in relations with the Soviet Union and deescalation of the Cold War.

    Eisenhower took the blame for the failed over flight but there are those who think he was either duped into it or in fact did not authorize it. And it completely changed US/Soviet relations for the worse for 20 years.

    For those interested, I highly recommend a now somewhat old book called “MAYDAY” by Michael Beschloss.

    https://www.amazon.com/Mayday-Eisenhower-Khrushchev-U-2-Affair/dp/0060155655

    Then branch out in your research from there.

    1. 1) The U2 Pilot , Francis Gary Powers, was hit by coercion and psychological pressure when he returned. A false NSA report claimed he had descended from 70,000 to 34,000 allowing it to be shot down.

      2) As a reward for his bravery in flying an experimental high altitude jet on dangerous missions over the Soviet Union, Powers loyalty was questioned and he was cleared only after several months — although still attacked by chair warmers in DC. His Air Force career sidetracked he went to work as a test pilot for Lockheed, maker of the U2 plane., on the program funded by the CIA.

      3) However, 8 years later he published the book Operation Overflight in which he questioned why he was sent on the Soviet Union in the flight just before a peace summit by Eisenhower and Khrushchev. He was fired by Lockheed because that question annoyed the CIA leadership for some reason.

      4) Re Cui Bono, who received the $TRILLIONS subsequently spent on the Cold War after the peace summit was sabotaged? Who gets high paid sinecures at defense contractors after leaving government service?

      Unfortunately, the US Congress is a pack of prostitutes who get some parts of those $Trillions as well —kickbacked as campaign donations. Which is why in 1999 they accepted Bill Clinton’s demand that the First Amendment rights of US citizens with SCI clearances be revoked and that such citizens could report wrongdoing to Congress’s Intel Committees only after FIRST notifying the Executive Branch that they planned to snitch. The same as taking a vow of poverty, entering long term unemployment and putting their family on welfare.

    2. Hi JBH,

      Interesting thoughts on the U-2, I was unaware of that backstory and have ordered the book you recommended. That definitely puts a whole new spin on Ike’s warning about the MIC.

      There’s no question that JFK had much more severe issues with the MIC and Deep State, and Harry Truman’s editorial in the Washington Post exactly one month after the JFK assassination is interesting:

      https://archive.org/stream/LimitCIARoleToIntelligenceByHarrySTruman/Limit%20CIA%20Role%20To%20Intelligence%20by%20Harry%20S%20Truman_djvu.txt

      Next in line was Johnson, he was in pretty tight with the MIC. Nixon after him, probably the best student of history of all the presidents of the 20th century, made the mistake of thinking that, as president, he had a right to look into the “Bay of Pigs thing” and other CIA files including the JFK files. If you’ve never read Russ Baker’s book Family of Secrets, it’s well worth the read. Well researched, thousands of notes, and you can’t believe the pieces of the puzzle this guy locates and pulls together. He comes up with the only theory to explain Watergate that ever made sense to me. Even today we still say, “It made about as much sense as GM breaking into Ford to steal the plans for the Edsel.” Nixon won by the largest landslide in American history, 49 out of 50 states. They had polling back then too. Nixon knew he had it in the bag. It made no sense to break into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate to get their election plans. So why did Nixon do it? Russ Baker’s theory: Nixon had nothing to do with it, it was CIA all the way. He even ties most of the Watergate burglars to the JFK assassination. Ike took responsibility when Gary Power’s U2 was shot down. What was the alternative, say he wasn’t in control of his own military/CIA? And put yourself in Nixon’s shoes for a moment, what could he possibly have said that would have been believable? “I was framed?” Nixon was just plain screwed and he knew it. And remember how they got caught? They taped the door latch with the tape running horizontally so the security guards would see it, as if they were trying to get caught, instead of vertically. That’s Boy Scout 101 stuff. If what you are saying about the U2 is correct, then the powers that be showed Ike who was boss, then they showed JFK who was boss, then they showed Nixon who was boss if Russ Baker’s theory is correct. Third time’s a charm and every president since then has toed the line. Of course, we’ll never get to see all the files so we’ll never know the full story on most things, so all we can do is put them in terms of probability.

      Family of Secrets: https://www.amazon.com/Family-Secrets-Americas-Invisible-Government/dp/1608190064

  5. I also went from a Republican stance to a more critical view of things.There was just something about getting crapped on and lied to by people that I was supporting that eventually opened my eyes. I think there is only one ruling political party made up of both dems and republicans and we are not privy to be members of the political club. It is very advantageous for the rulers to promote the illusion of 2 parties . It keeps the rabble divided and occupied with meaningless drivel.

    2. About the two party system… And first off I vote my conscience. I am too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for the liberals and way too extreme (spelled “informed”) for the moderates. I am registered as independent for registration for voting.

      If you take an objective view on the boom bust cycle you will see (and I do say this as objective as possible based off of the facts I’ve gathered… And reserve the right to change my mind based off of facts presented , however saber rattling and bluster will not do it) that as a general rule the following applies

      Periods of socialist expansion tend to be done during Democrat \ liberal government runs. This also tends to include a reduction if federal debt and recovery from tough economical times with a large reduction of military use and size and costs.

      While (post 50s) Republican runs tend to be periods of high debt high profit war based economies that generally have a recession in them or very shortly after.

      I don’t say this to inflame a R vs. D war. Nor do I say this for assignment of blame etc.

      Simply I say this because since to attempt to explain my assertion on the real reason why there is a two party system and how it is Infact a truly one party system.

      By manipulating these cycles and assigning these roles the public is fooled into thinking they have control. They are blinded to the fact they don’t have control. And the slack on the noise around our freedoms and liberty tightens a little more as our freedoms , liberty, and rights are stripped away.

      During WW1 WW2 Korea and the start of Vietnam the government simply had to tell people to join in on national security \ safety\ war efforts.
      (And while I love the military and truly honor every one who has served, I have done several jobs for injured crippled disabled vets to modify thier homes at or below material and permit cost.) We have not as a nation fought one war that was to protect our own land. WW1 imperial Germany was not attempting to invade us. WW2 was directly caused by WW1 and again Hitler and his socialist party had very little to no ambitions to come this way (we entered into WW2 before we knew of the German massacre of Jews). Same with both Vietnam and Korea (and indeed every following war. (In fact other than the revolutionary war, war of 1812, wars\ battles against mexico\ Spain and civil wars there have been no wars fought on our United States soil)

      In 1968 the gov’ment made law the ability to force industry to bow down (the law made news recently) and do as told even if it’s different than their business is gm making ventilators…

      I believe all evidence is pointing towards the one party of America can be called “the money party” and its member are huge players like Proctor and Gamble, central banks, Johnston and Johnston etc. You know the ones who move literally more money around than can even be accounted for with out using a computer.

      Democrat Republican is the same as American football Conference or national football Conference… It’s all NFL. Same in politics with the money party sitting at the top making the rules and setting all of the conditions.

      And the worst part is there is literally no agenda for the money party just profit. It is literally just one large game of monopoly. If you look at it just using Bill Gates alone (who is only a recent inductee on a small scale) no matter what Mr. Gates does he and several generations of his descendants are set for Robin Leach Champlain wishes and caviar dreams lives.

  6. Empires eventually use their MICC against their own citizens.

    How long before we see drone strikes in CONUS, maybe starting in Cascadia or Appalachia, or some other rural areas?

    Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal & the DNC/Deep State using an AI information warfare tool, funded by the taxpayers, against the sitting president.

    Just the other day, obese sheriff deputies using an MRAP against quarantine protesters…

    I used to think it was really cool to watch this MICC technology used against other peoples, but now I think about how it will be used against peoples who are not politically correct…

  9. 1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant, for our adversary the devil walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Be ready for the return of Jesus in all His glory, to put an end to the wiles of the devil. Jesus will first come for his Church, then He will come to put the enemy away for 1000 years, and then He will run His Kingdom on earth! Make no mistake, as the “Lion of Juda” is risen!!!

  10. And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. (Matthew 24:4-5 ESV)

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