They lie to us; we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.
– Elena Gorokhova
For months now, as I watch US government press briefings on YouTube by often smirking spokespersons Matthew Miller, John Kirby, and Vedant Patel, I am reminded of this quote by Elena Gorokhova from her memoir A Mountain of Crumbs because all I hear are deflection and evasion, twisted versions of the truth, and outright lies.
Incidentally, an expanded and more sinister variation of the quote is often attributed to the Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and it’s hard to tell if Gorokhova borrowed her line from him or not:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying.
Either way, we are being consistently lied to by the pre-eminent world superpower – the USA. Meanwhile, they shamelessly claim to be the world leader in the critical areas of morality, humanity and international law and order. Worse, the US claims to revere freedom of speech, which is enshrined in its constitution but is aggressively attacking and inhibiting it in various ways, both physically through brutal police clampdowns on protest action and online censorship on social media.
The alarming thing is that we are powerless to do anything about it, and the impunity with which these actions are repeated and, in some cases, institutionalized is stunning.
I am sure it’s been going on for decades, mildly at first, but since October of last year, it has become more stark and clearly noticeable. It’s now so pervasive that it seems impossible to reverse.
The best we can do is either watch helplessly, continue poking the system, hoping for small breakthroughs, or resort to crude satire and ridicule like calling spooksperson spokesperson Matthew Miller Count Smirkula.
Innocent people, mostly women and children, are being murdered in the tens of thousands. We are allowed to watch it happen live, but we are not allowed to talk or write about it, even protest in any way. We apparently have to accept the official position of the governments of the First World; that it’s a country’s right to defend itself, a right that ONLY that country has.
While there are now almost daily demonstrations around the world over what is described as the most critical humanitarian crisis of our times, authorities in first-world nations like the UK and Germany are actively clamping down, arresting protestors, banning them and in some instances causing them to lose their jobs and means of living.
Recently, I, like many others, have had posts sympathetic to the Palestinian plight on platforms like Facebook taken down. I’m now on Strike 3 and face a temporary or permanent ban. The latter posts were Substack articles I shared that were meant to pass on factual information. At the same time, the first was an opinion which turned out to be right on the mark – President Joe Biden was replaced by Kamal Harris as presidential candidate a short while after I made that observation. While my appeal in the first case was rejected, I have not heard back from the moderators on the other two.
Facebook is both actively censoring and shadowbanning posts by applying filters or algorithms that ensure that any anti-Israeli or pro-Palestine content is effectively blocked. Recently news channel Al Jazeera broadcasted a damning documentary on Facebook’s parent company Meta’s censorship activities and policies.1
It’s no better on platforms like X, which collaborate with foreign governments to ban or block users they oppose or nefariously sell personal information for the purposes of “crime prevention,” we are told. The owner of the platform, Elon Musk, who is hilariously called a free speech absolutist, once claimed to have bought the platform to ensure that speech remains free. It’s now apparent to all but his army of unquestioning followers that Musk intends to make mostly his personal speech free while the rest must follow the “rules” he makes up.
I constantly feel we have crossed into the Twilight Zone and live in a dystopia many fiction authors dream of writing about. It’s like the Upside Down world of Stranger Things, only scarier. Someday, this dark period in our history will be written about, and people will wonder why it’s not fiction.
The USA is a country of absurd contradictions. The citizenry is obsessed with celebrity worship. Confoundingly, the politicians who treat them with utter disdain are also placed on pedestals. Election cycles are eagerly awaited and are indistinguishable from the entertainment industry. The lies, censorship and disdain, are briefly forgotten… while the citizens exercise their right to sustain it for four more years.
Someone once observed that many Americans clamour for free speech when they often demonstrate an incapacity for free thought. It’s why the good ship Censorship sails on doggedly in stormy seas.
- Edit: A new paragraph relevant to censorship was added as the documentary aired a day after posting. ↩︎
lenny unencumbered 