War is a Drug for the Media, and We Will Suffer the Side Effects

This will not make you feel good

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When President Trump was lobbing missiles at Syria, I wrote about the possibility of two new wars the American people are going to be forced to endure. I urged all of us to ignore the media's love of war. I asked us all to remember all the times that the media worked with the White House and sold false information to the American people. I hoped that the media would not be so craven again and be the mouthpiece for another quagmire.

I hoped.

Goddamnit.

Fareed Zakaria on CNN when asked what changed for Trump after the Syrian missile strikes. Trump "became President of the United States"

Brian Williams on MSNBC, quoting Leonard Cohen, "I am guided by the beauty of our weapons". Williams also described the missile strikes as "beautiful" a few more times.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC, "I thought if there was a way for him to kill the narrative that he’s in bed with Putin, it would be this"

Retired Major General James Marks on CNN, "My point is, this not like Kentucky basketball, one and done. This is the start of a series of operations."

The lapdogs at Fox News "Trump is the best. It is Obama's fault. We have no brains." (not an actual quote, but pretty close).

It goes on and on.

What the fuck is wrong with the media? Do these morons have no conscience? While the missiles were exploding in Syrian soil, the news media was having an orgasm about the awesomeness that President Donald Trump suddenly ascended to. It was predictable, comical, and infuriating. The media went out of their way to claim the greatness of Trump because he told Russia about his incoming missile strike, then launched his missiles, talked tough on national tv, and then did nothing else. The media got their high with "beautiful" explosions, and forgot about being defenders of truth. It was a fucking joke.

It adds even more to this shit sundae that disgraced journalists like Zakaria and Williams are out there falling all over themselves to praise Trump for his pointless military strike. Both journalists. No, not journalists. Liars. Why are these liars still considered credible newsmen?

 Why?

Fareed Zakaria has been caught plagiarizing other people's work numerous times. Brian WIlliams lost his NBC News head anchor job because he could not stop lying about his helicopter in Iraq being brought down by enemy fire (it never happened). These self centered hacks still get to keep their jobs as opinion leaders in our news, and they have gone out of their way to drag America into another military quagmire. It is a fucking disgrace.

The retired generals explaining war to the American Plebeians equally piss me off to no end. When Retired Major General Marks tried to be funny by comparing our military strikes to Kentucky Wildcat basketball, I did not laugh, I was fucking terrified. These asshat former military people on tv were the same ones claiming with certainty that the Iraq war would be easy. Using their long distinguished military career as their expertise, these retired generals sold Americans on a destructive lie. And they are fucking doing it again. Being in the military does not make you an expert on every war. Being a retired military person, and being excited about sending more troops to their death for a lie, that makes you fucking war criminal in my book. Your goddamn jokes about "one and done" is not funny. Shut the fuck up.

Then we have Fox fucking News. The imbeciles at the Republican state media do not know how to actually report news. They never have. That craptastic network exists only to bring America down. Shitbags like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity would be crying their eyes out for the lost British tea if it were 1773. These fuckers exist to only make old, out of touch, white people feel good about their misogyny and racism. There is no value whatsoever in what ever comes out of Bill O'Reilly's or Sean Hannity's mouth. The rest of Fox News follows the lead of O'Reilly and Hannity until we reach the bottom of human conversation with the dipshits on Fox and Friends, President Trump's favorite show. With the absolute lack of integrity, and the pure hatred for what America is, it is no surprise that Fox News would be all in with anything President Trump does. Especially the un-Constitutional warmongering of the Syrian strikes. That is the type of shit that gets Fox News all kinds of excited.

It is a wildly excepted fact that Fox News does not give a shit about American lives. They count on scared white people, and shocked liberal gawkers, for their ratings. And you know what, scared white people, and always ready to be outraged liberal gawkers, watch cable news. For years we have heard that Fox News has the best ratings, for cable news that it is. In response to this pointless bit of information, the CNN's and MSNBC's decided to chase Fox News for ratings, and in the process the entire news industry gave up their souls. The reason CNN keeps a plagiarizer like Fareed Zakaria employed is because of ratings. Liar Brian Williams gets to keep being a "newsman" because scared white people liked him when he did the nightly news. Truth and professionalism have no seat at the modern American news table. Self serving gluttons like Fareed Zakaria and Brian Williams need to hog the table with greedy retired military personal and the slime at Fox News. The truth, and the American people, do not rate in a world where ratings are the only thing that matter. It is why we have some real shitty news coverage here in the US. It is why the smart people look to Al Jazeera and the BBC.

The fucking union of the press and the President is going to cause a lot of problems. People are going to die, especially a lot of "beautiful children". Regions of the world will be destabilized. American troops are going to come home with a long list of medical and psychological problems. But none of that matters to the for profit American news industry. They will have their ratings, and their "beautiful" weapons. That is the only thing those inhuman fuckers care about. 

So from here on out we have the narcissists in the media feeding the uber-narcissist Commander in Chief. President Trump now knows that when he starts a war, the media will call him a strong President. The only way the press, and the President, can get what they want is through war, and now we have war. Trump is happy because he is getting the positive coverage he has craved for decades. The media is happy because they have explosions and death to talk about on an hourly basis. It is like a goddamn Michael Bay movie, flashy with no fucking substance. It is a drug, and the drug of war is working its way once again through our government and our media.

Fuck.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He did not even get into hos thoughts on North Korea. Come back soon and he lose his fucking mind on that issue.

Sorry for the language mom.

Do you have non-profanity view of the issues facing us today?  Come tell us. 

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Beware the Drumbeat of War

Do not listen

The United States is at war again, and this new war will once again be fought in two different nations. Word is coming out of Washington DC right now that says the US is conducting bombing strikes in Syria. At the same time, President Trump, with a lot of help from the media, is getting Americans excited about military action against North Korea. Regardless of what we hear, US military involvement is still continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq. With these new conflicts, the American people will now have to sacrifice more blood to fight a battle on four fronts. We can accept this.

The case for war in Syria intensified this week after the world learned of the horrible chemical attacks that killed 70 people. The images were horrifying. Many people on the left and right sides of the political spectrum condemned the attack and said the US should respond in some way. President Trump promised that he would do something, and bombing the civil war torn nation seems to be his first shot. 

The situation in Syria has been terrible for over six years. The pictures the world saw this week are part of a mosaic that goes back to the beginning of the crisis. President Trump, and the Republican War Hawks, did not care when dead children were washing up on Mediterranean beaches. They did not care when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was using chemical weapons on his own people for years. Now they care. Why?

The reason the United States had not earlier engaged in any major military action in Syria is because of Russia. President Vladimir Putin is allied with al-Assad, and any aggression towards the Syrian government could intensify problems with the Russians. Leave Syria alone, make Russia happy. This is the way politics has worked for all of civilized history. It is not kind, but it has kept the world out of many bloody global conflicts. Thinking people understand this trade off. 

Now things seem different. President Trump appears to be very eager to get involved in war with Syria. The propaganda says that relations with Russia do not seem to matter, because the United States cannot sit by as innocent Syrians are being gassed, even if we have sat by for the last six years. The media is playing up all the worst actions of the al-Assad government to get Americans fired up for war. Liberals on social media are crying out to save the children. War in Syria is going to happen. Again, why?

Donald Trump has not had the best start to his Presidency. The only time the media has been complimentary to Trump was when at an address to Congress, the President honored the widow of a recently killed Navy Seal. The DC pundits rushed to their twitter accounts, and cable news panel shows, to gush about Donald Trump being Presidential. With that event, Donald Trump learned that the media will support him if he goes to war. Trump desperately wants the media to like him. Since that moment in the US Capitol, President Trump has been looking to get involved in any military action, and the media has been banging the drum for the President.

The bombs being dropped in Syria were not the beginning of the drum beat. Terrible, fear mongering, stories about North Korea have been featured on all of the media for months now. Right wing thought leaders like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh have been talking about the terrible things North Korea could do to Hawaii. Their stories of potential terror line up exactly with what the White House has been pushing. Even left leaning news organizations like The Huffington Post and Vox have been writing articles about the foreignness, and evil, of North Korea. The case for war in North Korea has been presented to the American people long before any action in Syria. Because the drum beat for war in North Korea has been going on longer, and getting louder, many Americans will not be surprised when the fighting starts.

The media has a long, and dark, history of getting Americans on board with pointless wars the White House wants to engage in. The Spanish American War is most known for the term Yellow Journalism. The reporting of lies concerning the Gulf of Tonkin assured US involvement in Vietnam. More recently, the cheerleading by all of the media to get the United States in a second war with Saddam Hussein and Iraq has had horrible consequences to our military and national budget. Now the press, all of the press, is feeding the American people information so we can get on board with two new wars in Syria and North Korea.

The geopolitical consequences of unilateral, plus Great Britain, action in Syria and North Korea is dire. Russia may not do anything directly to the US, but they will continue to act in a way detrimental for NATO and the United States. China will probably not go to war with the United States, but they will continue to develop their markets and strategic partnerships in a way that harms the US economy. The weakening of US global influence that started with our ill conceived wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is only going to continue with our ill conceived aggression in Syria and North Korea. You will not read about that in any of the professional media, left or right wing. We will say it, war is not good for the United States.

We need to ignore the banging drums. These wars only exist as a way for the media and President Trump to get along, and start making money together. The DC pundits desperately want to legitimize Trump, that is dangerous. The President desperately wants favorable coverage from the press, that is narcissistic. Glenn Beck and Vox only want more internet traffic, that is unAmerican. These entities may not think they are causing harm, but they are. The lives that will be lost in these pointless conflicts will not affect the President, members of Congress, or anyone in the media. The people who beat the drums for war have no consequences. The call for war is about ego and money for the President and the media. We can not let them get away with this, again.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. We desperately want to know why you think war is needed right now.  Come tell us. 

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.

Terrorism Turns us into Monsters

The only way to defeat the terrorists

The tragedy in Paris is still raw. Many people have expressed their unfiltered opinions of the attacks. Some have been more careful in their reactions. The common chorus coming out of the political class, and the media, is that ISIS needs to be bombed into oblivion. Another horrible terrorist attack on an industrialized country, another call to level another nation. We see those like us being killed and maimed, we demand double retribution. The only way to end terrorism is to counter with our superior firepower. This is a trap. The terrorists need our aggression The way terrorism thrives is when we become the monsters.

The way we used to respond to terrorism was through strategic police action. The criminals would be identified, their locations would be found, and the terrorist activity would end via death or capture of the bad guys. Some of the time we would change policy to make terror activity more difficult, such as London removing trash bins from the tube and central downtown. That all changed after September 11th. President Bush days after the horrible attacks promised to do to the attackers what they did to us. Bush promised to level a nation for America's wounds. Bush was good to his word, he did level a nation, two nations. The American people cheered on our campaign of "shock and awe". We incorporated words into our culture like "collateral damage" in order to justify the death of Afghan and Iraqi innocents. The new way to respond to terrorism was to retaliate with our superior might and technology. We became angry when terrorism hit our shores, and the world did not like us when we are angry.

Terrorism caused America to turn into the Incredible Hulk. Extremely powerful, unable to control, and a danger to everyone around us. We were big, green, and willing to destroy anything that got in our path. The United States was so focused on the enemy, that any unfortunate thing between us and our prey was going to be caught in the crossfire. It did not matter how many weddings were bombed, we had to get the Al Qaeda number two. A few hospitals get destroyed, we must depose of Saddam. The US was angry, the US must smash.

In the safety of our shores we cheered on this destruction. The destroyed hospitals, weddings, and innocents was never shown on the news. The bodies of kids sent to die in war were not covered on the network news. When Saddam was executed via hanging, we celebrated the end of Iraqi unrest. We were wrong. When Osama Bin Laden was gunned down in a bedroom we celebrated the end of Al Qaeda. We were wrong. When Jihadi John was bombed off of earth, we celebrated the death of ISIS. We were wrong. 

Every time the United States used over the top crushing force to destroy the latest identified terror group, we create a new and more dangerous group. The Bush administration was built for starting wars. These hawks had no idea, and no intent, to end these wars. Bush's folly of endless wars created the unstable and overtly dangerous ISIS. The terrorists who use a warped incorrect version of Islam as their ideology need to have a clear cut enemy. These monsters need the western world to be overtly aggressive to Islam. Charlatans like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly are some of ISIS's greatest weapons. The need to define Islam as a central problem helps ISIS to recruit. Young, unemployed, and ostracized Muslims are more receptive to the idea of hating the west when the popular media of the west preaches hate towards Islam. When innocent Muslim families are destroyed in a drone strike intended for a few terrorists the idea of the west as the enemy starts to take hold. When the U.S. can justify the killing of innocents in the name of global security, ISIS will use the killing of innocents as an equal method of war. If ISIS was able to wipe an entire US city off the map because a military base was close by, the world would scream in horror. When we kill innocents because they unfortunately live close to terrorist bases, the monsters gain sympathy. Our fear and anger is delivering new, desperate, recruits to the terrorists. 

The monsters of ISIS caused over 400 casualties in Paris. So far 129 innocent people have died. The French government over the weekend bombed known ISIS strongholds in Syria. Innocent families were undoubtedly killed in these bombing runs. Here in the United States we continue to bang the drums of war. Hillary Clinton regrettably used the specter of terrorism to justify donations to her presidential campaign from Wall Street billionaires. Egoist Donald Trump ramped up his hate filled campaign for President of the United States by telling the nation he would consider shutting down mosques he deems dangerous. Failing republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is using the attacks to try and jump start his fading campaign. The rest of the republican field is falling all over each other to blame President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and anyone else their followers hate. Hours after the attacks, the US political class was screaming for more war. The media was demanding the current crop of presidential candidates to come up with a plan to destroy these terrorists. We were angry, we need to smash.

Smashing everything in our path is not a solution. Terrorism needs to end. Peace is the natural evolution of humanity, and terrorism is causing us to not evolve. To honor the innocents of terror, we should not create more terrorism. Killing Saddam, Bin Laden, Jihadi John, and a number of other monsters did not end terrorism. Killing children and families has increased the perception of the West wanting to destroy Islam. The media feeds the terrorists when they cheer on war. The political class emboldens the terrorists when they argue over what words we should use to describe the monsters. The need for the right wing to alienate all Muslims is making fighting terrorism much more difficult. Our past and current course of action feeds terrorism. We need a new plan. We need a global community to end terrorism. Paris should be the wake up call. Terrorism has turned us into a rampaging monster. Peace will bring us calm.

Stand with Paris, and with Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, anywhere else terrorism and war has touched. Stand proud and demand peace. Terrorism will end when we refuse to be the monster. Peace will prevail when we learn to not be the Hulk.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. His opinions are strong, but really needs your strength. Write for SeedSing.