Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
The Atlantic has published the full contents of a Signal chat from earlier this month featuring top Trump administration officials discussing the bombing campaign the president was about to begin in Yemen.
There’s a whole scandal in mainstream US politics right now about the Trump team’s carelessness in letting the conversation become public. The story goes that Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz accidentally included in the chat Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who then swiftly exited instead of staying and doing some actual journalism by observing what these warmongering swamp monsters were up to. Goldberg did this because he is not actually a journalist, he is one of the most virulent war propagandists working in US media today, having famously worked to manufacture consent for the invasion of Iraq by publishing false narratives linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. He is also a former IDF prison guard.
What’s getting a lot less discussion in mainstream political discourse is the depraved nature of the bombing itself, and the Trump team’s exuberance about murdering civilians seen in the brief exchange of messages. Waltz describes to the group how US forces waited until a target entered an apartment building and then flattened it with an airstrike, eliciting digital applause from the rest of the administration.
“The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building, and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz said.
“Excellent,” Vice President JD Vance responded.
“Great job all,” said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Kudos to all — most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really Great. God bless,” said White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
“Great work and effects!” replied intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard.
Waltz and Trump’s middle east envoy Steve Witkoff are seen posting numerous celebratory emojis.
Imagine how fucked up you have to be inside to react this way to the bombing of an apartment building full of civilians. How far gone you have to be as a human being. These are the kinds of freaks who rule our world.
Another thing that strikes me about the Signal chat is how Trump’s supporters are so much more confident that Yemen needs to be bombed than Trump’s own cabinet was. Any time I criticize Trump’s ongoing war on Yemen I get his cultists in my replies going “Well obviously the Houthis need to be bombed to protect global shipping routes, what choice did Trump have?” But if you scroll through the chat you’ll find mixed opinions about it, admissions that there’s no urgent need to launch any strikes right away, and nonsense about how the bombings can be used “to send a message.”
Trumpers have their tongues so far up Trump’s asshole that they’re more supportive of Trump’s warmongering than Trump’s own appointed officials.
In reality this entire conflict could have been avoided by simply using the leverage the US has over Israel to make it honor its ceasefire agreement with Hamas. The only reason Yemeni forces began attacking ships in the first place was to blockade Israel because of its genocidal atrocities in Gaza; as soon as a ceasefire was in place those attacks stopped, and the Houthis only announced that their blockade would resume again when Israel announced a genocidal starvation siege on the entire Gaza Strip. The Trump administration told Israel to let the US handle the Houthis for them, and that’s exactly what happened.
But the main thing that stands out for me right now is a section of the conversation where Pete Hegseth talks about what the administration’s “messaging” should be about the airstrikes.
Hegseth wrote the following in the lead-up to the strikes:
“I think messaging is going to be a problem no matter what — nobody knows who the Houthis are — which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”
It’s always fascinated me how much empire managers focus on messaging. Their focus is never on whether or not they should do evil things, it’s on what narrative they’re going to sell to the public about the evil things they’re going to do.
Here we see Hegseth talking about the challenges in the administration’s “messaging” regarding its upcoming bombing campaign on Yemen, and the need to establish a public narrative about how (1) Biden is to blame for it and (2) the Houthis are “Iran funded”.
At no time does anyone ever raise the issue of whether or not it’s ethical to rain military explosives on an already war-ravaged and deeply impoverished nation in order to protect Israel’s right to commit genocide. Hegseth’s interest is solely in what stories will be told to the public to justify those actions.
These are the kinds of people who rule our world. This is how they think.
The powerful understand that narrative control is everything. Power is the ability to control what happens, but ultimate power is the ability to control what people think about what happens. Human consciousness is dominated by mental narratives, so if you can control what narratives the humans believe about their reality, you can control the humans.
The need to control the narrative is why the US empire has invested so heavily in soft power, and why it has the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever constructed. It’s why Palestinian journalists are being killed in Gaza while western journalists aren’t being allowed in. It’s why pro-Palestine activists are being silenced and deported. It’s why the internet is being censored with increasing aggression. It’s why Julian Assange spent years in prison.
The empire invests extensively in narrative control, as do manipulative people in general. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing a malignant narcissist or sociopath, you’ll know they tend to pour immense amounts of energy into manipulating the social narrative about themselves and the people in their circle. Manipulators understand the power of narrative control, while ordinary people do not.
And that’s why the world looks the way it looks: powerful manipulators understand this dynamic, while the rest of humanity typically doesn’t. Normal people tend to assume they’re looking at a more or less accurate picture of what’s happening and how the world works from the information that’s laid out in front of them, not understanding that the information they consume is being constantly distorted, funneled and manipulated by the powerful to the benefit of our rulers.
That’s how consent is manufactured. That’s how wars are justified. That’s how revolution is suppressed. That’s how the political status quo is maintained. That’s how the public is duped year after year into signing on to more of the same while being robbed, cheated, exploited, impoverished, censored, oppressed, brainwashed, and driven to environmental disaster.
The real currency of our world is not gold, nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even war machinery. The real currency of our world is narrative and the ability to control it. We will keep being manipulated into disaster and dystopia until enough of us wake up to this reality.
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