Letter To Editor / High Delusions on Ukra-Nam

Letter To Editor / High Delusions on Ukra-Nam

By Rick Boettger

I wanted to wait until the peace deal was signed for Ukraine, but a discussion so outrageous happened on Morning Joe, the official Pravda of the Blues, that I have to vent or blow up.

Discussing the anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the lesson they got from the war was that we Americans lost trust in our government and media because they had ied to us: the deaths, the hopelessness, the war crimes, the imaginary Domino Theory.  But their lessons were for the always-evil Reds, saying that Trump is lying to us about everything, and the Reds will pay a price for that.

Vent now, Rick.  Big breaths.

As I’ve written here at length, the history lesson of the Ukraine war is Vietnam, not Hitler.*    Joe and his panel are oblivious to: hundreds of thousands dead in a war around the world that gains no one anything; staying in too long just so Presidents don’t look bad; refusal to negotiate; enlisting our allies in a futile struggle; alienating half the world; feeding the war machine; killing or giving PTSD to a generation of trusting young men.

The majority of Blues and minority of Reds and Independents who support this Lost Cause do not so much lie about any of the above, they just ignore it, or call absolutely any factual discussion of the merits of this war as “Putin’s talking points!  Grrr!”

But there is plenty they HAVE lied about; and even when caught, keep lying.  Today, for a change, is not a critique of just the Blues.  The same lies have been propagated by the Red and Purple Ukraine hawks as well.  The sin, for a change, goes beyond party affiliation.  The timeline of red-handed lies is the following, in short.  Full descriptions are in the footnotes for each.

1]  the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic Ukrainian MiG pilot who did not kill any of the six Russian planes originally reported.

2]  the heroes of Snake Island, 13 Ukrainian troops who did NOT defend the islet to the death, but had surrendered.

3]]  the “Russian massacre” in Bucha early on was NOT supported by the  U.N. report:  Prisoners were killed by both sides, but not as reported by Ukraine in Bucha and magnified in the West;

4]  The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was of course NOT shelled by the Russians, who held, guarded and occupied. The plant

5]  The three Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic were NOT, nonsensically, bombed by Russia–they made great money selling their gas to Germany.  Biden promised he would do so, right to German Chancellor Schulz’s face, proudly, in a public press conference.  Seymour Hersch reported at length about the planning by Biden’s top advisers, which include trying then to blame it on some hapless Ukrainians in a small sailboat who cannot, surprise, be found.

The continuing big lie is a highly successful expansion of the disinformation campaign done poorly in Vietnam, where the truth was dribbled out at the time and eventually given in full in the unicorn-like Pentagon Papers.  In succeeding wars, starting with not showing the caskets arrive back home, then a near-shutdown of embeds, and now perfected in Ukraine.

A key to recognizing propaganda is when it slaps you in the face with hammered-on slogans.  The two pro-war biggies are “war of Russian aggression” and “Putin’s talking points.”  The next two are “fighting for Democracy” and “defending Europe from Putin.”

One must give credit to Biden’s neocons and the Blue media for out-Trumping Trump with zippy putdowns.  They have not only been unanimous in their use, but relentless in their repetition, creating the “illusion of truth effect.” *6.

That is why the neocon war machine never has to discuss the real cause of the war, the facts behind anything Putin says, Zelinsky’s autocracy, or the false Domino theory.  

Sigh.  But enough people are escaping the bubble to still give me hope.

Long footnotes:

*0] Re: Hitler.  Germany’ situation was the opposite of Ukraine’s. Examples: Germany had a mission of “Lebensraum,” needing to expand /  Russia is already huge; Czech wanted to fight, but France and Britain forced them to negotiate / Ukraine wanted to negotiate, but Biden forced them to fight; Germany was the aggressor, fearing no one / Russia feared an ever-expanding  NATO right on their longest border.

*1] There was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic MiG–29 pilot credited with downing six, count ’em, six Russian fighters in a single night, Feb. 24, 2022, two days after the Russian intervention began. The Ghost turned out to be a fantasy confected out of a popular video game.

*2] The posthumous medals of honor President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded them with great flourish were neither posthumous nor deserved. 

*3] The “Russian massacre” in Bucha over the last couple of days of that first March was not at the hands of Russians — persuasive evidence of this — but the never-happened brutality of retreating Russian soldiers is now fixed in the official record and the collective memory of those who still allow mainstream media to mesmerize them.  [A U.N. report was ambiguous about who was responsible for the Bucha killings but blamed Russia for executing civilians in the Kiev region.]

*4] the Armed Forces of Ukraine,, the ‘good guys,’ could not possibly be reported as indulging in so reckless an act, it had to be — straight across Western media, this— that the Russians were risking a nuclear meltdown by bombarding the plant they guarded and occupied and within which there were Russian detachments and a lot of Russian matériel.

NOTE: The above footnotes 1-5 are taken from Consortium.org, the best investigative journalism in the U.S. that has managed to survive the many efforts to censor it.

*5]  A long article in the New Yorker gives the rogue Ukrainian version, but saying it was probably not rogue, leaving open the possibility that the meeting Hersch reported provided the planning and resources for the Ukrainian patsy.

*6] “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this is known as the “illusion of truth” effect. From the BBC.

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