Typical trait of an extremely arrogant official who floats and swims in pool of insane wealth, power and delusional sense of ability to exercise control over any kind of situation in crushing any challenge to authority, the lessons of the seemingly impossible sudden hard fall of dictators throughout the long and recent history always get lost in the calculations of authoritarian leaders, more and more so in the period of declining popularity when paranoid thinking sets in that leads to imperialistic impulses believing political and military muscle-flexing ensures continued strong grip on power and control of their subjects by rousing nationalistic fervor.
16Mar26 – 355am Manila/Taipei time
Version 1st draft and no editing, as the time and my state of mind at this time suggests.
I avoid, even with pains, using AI except in simple fact-checking and searching for references.
I have lectured to, in a chance as prompted by a nationally award-winning top-calibre multi-discipline professor I have been briefing on many things (hours per session) over many years by now, to graduating PhD students, how and why they should meantime rely less on AI to not stifle their original and innovative thinking, creativity, critical thinking, non-conventional approaches to problem-solving as problems being presented to consultants means conventional appoaches have failed to prevent these problems from causing troubles in the first place. Top consultants taking notes when I speak, even those with double PhDs and decades-long veterans in their fields, forces me toironically use AI if for fact-checking and as to what’s lacking or accessible in the Internet meaning that these are the limits in the education of young people now and in the information sources of top decision-makers and professionals
As I type this article, the many paragraphs below I composed many days ago in a small mobile phone, the IRGC operationally-fractious scattered units that remain somewhat still functional in Iran, most of them have now lost their will to fight, their sense of reason and purpose, and some are now rather simply mechanical in their movements.
But beyond disorientation, desperation has long (in the case of this kind of war, and relentless attacks by the Israeli and American forces, could mean mere hours or few days) set in does, but that does not mean easy capitulation by any large number of them remaining, many are willing to die for their own beliefs and their kind of sense of patriotism and loyalty to their leaders and country. War is as always ugly, messy and deadly, no matter the now 2-weeks long day after day of unbelievable success of the American and Israeli militaries in their campaign of precision strikes of only military and their support infrastructures as targets, in addition to top elements of the regime involved in war planning and operations and those involved in the research and management of defense-industrial and nuclear program complexes inside Iran. We can only wish they don’t get to accomplish any surprise but lucky and successful attacks that result in widespread destruction and deaths not yet seen in any of their hits in the target countries in the Middle east. And that no civil war erupts inside Iran, no strife that bedeviled Syria under Assad for many years.
A post I published 23 April 2018, photo-graphic below created in a cheap small-screen tablet. It was at the period of time former President Duterte declared a Philippine pivot to CCP-China, Philippine communist leaders cheering him on, the closer security arrangement between the Philippines and the United States called VFA, now called EDCA, subsequently suspended. I was fighting the kind of relative parochial thinking in the national leadership at the time, discreetly arguing some drug lords who claimed to be close to him or his aides used this as a leverage to stop the FBI, DEA, State Department and all of the U.S. government, from causing disruptions in their sinister operations by threatening to actually pivot to China, and their near-absolute powers guaranteed in a program of killings that threatened entire government officials and the people not aligned to him with Duterte then and now claiming he did not order these murder of mostly poor mostly to scare all of the people and that vigilantes and rogue officers carried it out. Some anti-drug public figures then, exploited association and alliance with or membership to his party to profit hundreds of millions from illegal drugs and drug lords, if not billions in total over many years, expecting immunity and impunity in the so-called anti-drug war. The always very loud and protesting communists allied with him early in his government, and to later recruit more vulnerable poor folks, be consenting to what they now claim as mass killings in the so-called drugs war that enriched or propelled careers by many operatives
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I wish to convey my deppest sympathies to the families of more than 30-40,000 Iranians who have been murdered by their own security forces, in this time period of Ramadan. It’s an unspeakable unimaginable horror for state “security” personnel to kill the people they’re obliged, and supposed to protect as their fellow citizens. More than any other entities, it’s the responsibility of the state to protect its own citizens, even from simple crimes. Imagine this state atrocity against its very own people, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, breadwinners, students, economically struggling simple folks, the elderly, the believers in the same faith in the name of its leaders the IRGC and the (supposedly moral police) Basij armed men are violently killing their brethren and fellow citizens since many years ago. A site where we made a post-petition to defend then POTUS Trump in his first term when he was being mocked by violent Philippine communists and top government officials alike, below
6 June 2020 article, post in guise of petition I made during during the first term of President Trump and period or rule of former President Rodrigo Duterte. This was in defense of President Trump then, the United States and the American leadership, and the U.S.-Philippine near-century long alliance, and it was still quite dangerous at that time, when CCP-China (as reported) sanctioned organized crimes and business enterprises continued to smuggle vast quantities of instantly-addictive “meth” to the Philippines, billions a year, even as they supported Duterte’s so-called drugs war and not condemned reported widespread killings of alleged street addicts by he called vigilantes and state armed personnel he said did not order to commit murder. Being a nationally, duly elected leader, I was a critique of Duterte’s more controversial policies but not thinking like a opposition blind to all other contexts and I was not averse to constructive engagement. Having met him, and discussed matters of interest to him as Mayor of Davao City, given him tidbits of international reports about crimes and illegal drugs which he had in his hands for hours in a rather private time, I had the impression he and his decent and well-informed aides could be positively influenced then, if to help stop the then on-going widespread killings after his rise to power.
About this: https://chng.it/FfcvgFxy
Urge U.S. Media: Counter Those Who Foment Hatred of Americans by Use of Comparative Data
Below, a quote from a media professor in Germany, tasked by Der Spiegel for review of its kind of reporting and the editorial environment in the highly respected media outfit then reeling from a scandal of fabricated and biased reporting by a supposed credible and respected journalist.
“Journalists like to dish out criticism, but they often react with sanctimonious whining when they are the focus, as studies by Stephen Bates, a media scholar at the University of Nevada, have shown. Typical reactions include ignoring the findings, indifference, counteraccusations, anti-intellectual resentments, and attempts to somehow intimidate the critics or otherwise interfere.” Bernhard Poerksen writing for Der Spiegel of Germany. More about this farthest below in this article, after 3 === rows of lines.
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Not as any less frustrating, disgusting in fact, and I can express my righteous indignation here and now, after witnessing the same horrors that happened in this country where we are now not so long ago, and also the lack of loud and active protests here by the always loud communist movement, is the selective activism of always very loud supposed human rights activists and key public figures across the Western societies (not so many of them, in proportion to mainstream population, for perspective, to correct impressions from TV clips of their protests by mainstream media).
Would Trump haters, or those who envy him and his and admin’s successes, not do intense and widespread protests against killing of protesters by oppressed people even if a million of them would perish from the violent acts of lunatic-terrorist-state-goons just because President Trump might successfully resolve such situation and stop the mayhem? That is the very kind of blind hatred, absence of rationality amidst hate, radical thinking, and obsession with the downfall of political adversary that drove the IRGC to mad missions and ultimate goal of complete annihilation of entire societies and races they perceive as enemies.
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If the Iranian-regime-IRGC leaders did not perceive the Western media and most of Western political establishments (at least in their public statements) as being blindly against President Trump and his administration, could the Iranian top religious leaders and the IRGC softened on their hard-line seemingly non-negotiable stand on their missile development and production, nuclear weapons development program and their sustainment of proxy group — would they have made adjustments and make sufficient concessions to demands by the U.S. and Israel and so avoiding the fate that befell them and this on-going war?
In hindsight, anyone can claim their preferred probabilities prevailing if only so and so, rather than the present and developing realities that seem inconvenient, especially with present situations that’s far less neat than what’s ideal.
But let me indulge in my thoughts here, as this is my / our website.
After the 7Oct brutal massacre of civilians in Israel — if extrapolated in the U.S. would have killed 40,000+ American and other civilians thus roughly 10x that of the deaths in the 11Sep attacks in New York City, the Pentagon and the White House — the world, the mainstream media at least, and most activist groups initiated influence attacks on anything Jew, Israeli, President Trump and his admin, PM Netanyahu, the IDF and Israeli operations in Gaza.
This emboldened the Iranian-regime-IRGC, and gave them much confidence that America and President Trump would unlikely embark on a politically, militarily and economically risky war operations against the regime in Iran, especially with the looming mid-term elections in the United States with historical statistics not favorable to the ruling party (Trump has a long history of defying overwhelming odds). After all, they knew that Iranian-regime-IRGC has, had conventional military and diplomatic power and clout more than a hundred times that of Maduro-led Venezuela, and war and terror operations in many parts of the world with depth and length of experiences spanning many decades, to add the fact that IRGC being once a revolutionary and guerilla force too before 1979 (thus the confidence in suppressing local opposition and regime-change initiatives both from within its borders and catalyzed from outside of its direct spheres of influence abroad).
They failed to take into consideration facts that disfavored, or at least not support their bottomline assumptions. President Trump is not a candidate in the 2028 presidential elections in the U.S., and that election is quite far away, roughly 3 years, eons in relative time period given the rapid pace of the Trump administration’s successful pursuit of both of its Make-America-Great-Again and other domestic and foreign policy goals and agendas across the economic and military realms. So there’s far less threats to the politics and election prospects for the Republican Party and President Trump as it was in 2016-2022.
The Iranian-regime-IRGC expected a friendly treatment from the mainstream Western media, and fear of public uproar in Western societies among politicians including top officials of the Trump administration and the Republican Party. They must have expected aversion — among Israeli and American leaders, including those in the National Security establishments — of the kind of treatment by the international and domestic media, of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the IDF, President Trump and his administration, even of ordinary Israeli citizens when travelling abroad, in the war in Gaza. They expected international pressure, or rather public uproar or rather noise, to discourage President Trump, to cause hesitation to PM Netanyahu, in launching military operations against the oppressive Iranian regime.
The IRGC must have advised the Ayatollahs of the overwhelming superiority (numeric, and in ability to penetrate adversaries with their kinds of missiles and drones) of conventional weapons of Iran as some kind of effective deterrence against broad military operations against Iran thinking U.S. and Israeli military would not find the sufficient rationale, justifications and projected gains to risk igniting a regional war and bringing about widespread destruction across the Middle east so as to ignore (in their estimations) pressure from the Gulf and other Mideastern countries, on top of Hezbollah and Houthis they thought would wreak havoc in Israel firing salvos of missiles and rockets in great numbers.
Widespread reports (relatively speaking, among those who are broadly informed) of ammunition stockpiles, and still slow pace (Ukraine-Russia war) of replenishment and overall production (though President Trump effectively pushed for acceleration) of weapons in the American military-industrial complex, gave them the confidence or false belief that America would not risk low-level stockpiles of ammunition, weapons, weakening its deterrence against China’s plans and intentions against Taiwan, with American and European firms racing against China in the field of AI having overwhelming dependence on TSMC and related industry players in Taiwan. Yes the United States and President Trump would never risk this decisive advantage in the field of AI and related chips production, but the military, economic and diplomatic might of the U.S. is sufficient to effectively address this complex situation and the militaries of Australia, Japan, Taiwan, infrastructures of South Korea, the geography of the Philippines and kinship of its people to the Americans, proximity of Guam to China, combined, is of course more than enough to mitigate any weeks-long reduction in American firepower capabilities in Guam, East Asia and Western Pacific.
Then again, Iranian war planners failed to take into account, or give appropriate weight, to the crisis in the military leadership of the PLA of CPP-China, giving a window for American war planners to shift some resources to the operations in Iran and the Middle east.
The case of Venezuela gave the dictators, foreign policy experts and war planners of Iran-IRGC the wrong impression that President Trump, his top diplomats, his National Security policy makers and war planners would only be interested in conducting large-scale military operations against a regime for clear-cut material gains especially in stemming state-sponsored large-scale illegal immigration to the U.S., flows of large-scale illegal drugs into the U.S., control of much higher percentage of global oil reserves and production and opportunities for Texas oil firms, hemispheric geopolitical positioning and influence.
They probably believed that Iran in terms of relative hard power and influence in the Mideast and other parts of the world including segments of populations in the West; its vastly greater oil production and logistics facilities; its mighty ability to initiate, catalyze and direct acts of terror and mass violence directly and through proxies, ability to choke-off the Gulf of Hormuz thus disrupting global trade from and to very large swaths of the Middle East; Iran’s utilitarian and practical value to Russia and China; its population roughly 3x that of Venezuela; its strategic value in the geopolitics and global trade (in particular China and Russia); lack of organized and structured opposition political movement and its ability to crush dissent at extent CCP-China can; extent the Iranian-regime-Ayatollahs-IRGC controls the narratives and beliefs of its mainstream population; that Israel mainstream population is now war-weary and that the Israeli economy and government resources could hardly risk any more tens of billions in large-scale military operations against Iran with the situation in Gaza not yet permanently settling; that the U.S. and President Trump is still in the complex dilemma of ending the war in Ukraine (not realizing that the elimination of the Iranian regime would contribute to the efforts for the cessation of active hostilities there); that the 12-Day war in June of 2025 gave a boost to perception of victory in the leadership of both the United States and Israel; that the American and West’s, as they perceive, lack of support for the people of Iran being massacred by tens of thousands by their very own security forces, their very government — these among many others distorted their thinking as to the plausibility of any large-scale and decisive military actions by both Israel and the United States.
They could have thought that if the United States and E.U., and of course NATO as a whole, could hardly sufficiently sustain Ukraine with hard power and remedies, in the case of the United States for other reasons than in the NATO countries including priorities and foreign policy of the Trump administration, that they have their plates so full so as to ever think of conducting these on-going large-scale and record-breaking military operations against the Iranian-regime-IRGC.
The United States has its Congress as the world’s greatest deliberative body, always forcing decision-makers to refine and calibrate approaches to policies based on the best of expert ideas balanced with the will of the mainstream population and this ensures that no leader ever goes rogue as it is in an authoritarian regime. America’s war planners, national security professionals, field commanders and soldiers have vast experiences in both the 20th and this 21st centuries. The regeneration of the military-industrial complex in the U.S. under President Trump, the accelerating revolution in AI, these demonstrate America’s exceptional capabilities lasting economic and military terms. American military’s extraordinary ability to craft novel solutions and rapidly incorporate in its arsenal the latest in emerging new technologies and the developing shifts in the exercises of hard power across realms of modern and projected new kinds of near-future warfare — these supposed to have factored in, in IRGC’s calculations, in their calculus, as it is with the CCP-Chinese leadership and even in North Korea, but barely. Need not add, but for readers with scant knowledge of the bigger contexts, President Trump is a transformational leader, certainly decisive and with a long history of defying all kinds of vast array of odds even personal ones, but the annihilated entire top leadership of the Iranian-regime-IRGC thought of him as just “another American President” they thought they could entice to their dance of deception in their fake projection of desire to sit on the tables of negotiations with that as the end in itself and not the world’s desire for the regime to stop its nuclear development (or acquisition, if North Korea offered it ready-to-use warheads and CCP-China or Russia offered it advanced delivery and warhead explosion systems).
The energy, zest, passion, unity in their core beliefs, and doctrines they subscribe to and also now creating both deliberately and inadvertently, of Trump’s core team of National Security professionals and war vplanners, they’re exceptional, relatively young blood but most competitive and highly competent. No one underestimates the American soldiers when push comes to shove under any and all kinds of the most novel and difficult circumstances, and the support they would get in times of war from the American society and leaders across party lines.
(The last sentence demonstrates my poor English construction, and same weakness brought me to the Speech and English writing lab of an elite university in this country in my 1st year in an engineering program. As an excuse, in this case now I say I rarely do outlines and just type according to the flow of my thoughts and in this case in this website I rarely do edits if at all. One thing, I’m not some intelligent and otherwise academically, supposedly formally qualified but compromised corrupt analyst getting or soliciting bribes from all kinds of organized crime operators.)
Iranian negotiators and their IRGC and foreign ministry strategists have thought so unrealistically very high of their ability to deceive and in drawing their American counterparts into a prolonged stalemate-stalling negotiation process as they tried to rush securing, hardening their nuclear weapons research, testing and development programs that they thought of never ever giving up. They were also maybe, by my speculation, of the fate that befell Ukraine now, and that recent history and present realities would have been so much better, completely different, for Ukraine had this nation not voluntarily given up on its nuclear weapons deterrence.
In all, even the most rationale of the most intelligent of the most formally educated of people could slide into the kind of arrogant, pseudo-rational thinking and reasoning, so as to remain consistent on its assumptions, thinking and past decisions, and not take the realistic adjustments and adaptations in their ways of thinking and decision-making. Arrogant leaders, dictators, despots, when they look in the mirror in the morning they only see in their persons, god-like power, glory, absolute authority, wealth so formidable, they think its the world who would get out of their way whatever path they take in pursuit of their agendas. They forget to imagine, that in the world of the dinosaurs, being gigantic in your island or known territory does not mean there’s no bigger giants elsewhere, but even if they’re aware of that they just have this sense of being indispensable, superior and that their version of how the world should be is the inevitable future reality and they mightily, or crazily, pursue this version of their world in their arrogant thinking.
Decades of a compliant population, a suppressed people — rather, of homogenous group-thinking among senior leadership, and long track record of effectively sowing chaos and conflicts in other societies, of controlling even capturing entire governments (Lebanon, Syria in the recent past, Yemen, Gaza and West Bank) emboldened the Iranian-regime-IRGC to try to defy developing realities not fitting their desired kind of an ideal local society and world. This afflicts communist dictators too, and history says that this brought the murder, the deaths of tens of millions of lives, as they try to create a world fitting their extreme interpretations of their doctrines, beliefs, and later on to simply maintain their very stranglehold of power and uncontested control of their own personal fate.
(I’ve been listening to the news, working on file transfers and computer software maintenance as I type this piece now, also minding about planned haircut early this evening.)
These are the benefits of President Trump’s, America’s war on the murderous Iranian-regime-IRGC:
- A political and social environment conducive to the oppressed Iranian people’s, tears here, pursuit of their aspirations — it’s been 47 years of oppression and violent suppression of the people’s will by the regime. The modern version of MidAge renaissance in Iran and the Middle East
- A new, yes that’s right, Middle East, from ridge to reefs (as they say in urban planning) from the mountains to the rivers to the sea, from Iran to Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea (to make a sensible twist to that of “from river to the sea”), where (at least) sane, better yet good governance, and relative (to the present) peaceful co-existence among nations and multilateral even bilateral mechanisms for peaceful conflict-resolution being feasible, the path of dialogue always meaningful and rather fruitful
- If a non-extreme and non-radical leadership takes over in Iran, no longer pursuing nuclear weapons and the kinds of missiles that can viably deliver it these not for deterrence but for blind hatred of other races or religions, or people, imagine the more competitive market for oil and gas supplies bringing about lower global prices for these thus more plausible lower inflation rates too and that benefit the poorest of the poor and even the environment with hundreds of millions of poor families being less reliant on harvested wood, trees, in their immediate and near surroundings for their fuel and heating needs
- Less triggers for a regional, and world war of civilizational and world annihilation triggered from some rogue incident in the Middle East
- China and Russia being compelled to conduct still assertive but less coercive diplomacy especially with vulnerable small and weak countries, without an Iran and its oil, missiles and ability to make nuclear bombs forcing the international community to capitulate to this axis’ of aggressors’ (China, Russia and North Korea) desires and demands
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So what else can we expect, these I have in mind what’s not being widely discussed
- A more stable Iraq, with the Shiite majority expected to improve the kind of power sharing and proportionate representation in the government and strategic decision-making for the Sunni large minority, without an IRGC-Iran leading the way for Iraqi foreign and domestic policies, stand on issues, and influencing of the security establishment in Iraq
- No more sense of urgency for any war hawks in Saudi Arabia, to study a secret but broad approach towards developing nuclear weapons, same with Turkey
- The United States can now more than ever shift even greater focus to CCP-China and in containing its rise to global hegemony, energizing India, Southeast Asia, South and Central Asian nations to more effectively pressure CCP-China to minimize acts of aggression and harassments in its occupied foreign sovereign territories and disputed areas around its borders and the South China and West Philippine Seas with China’s relative military and economic powers versus the U.S. and allied nations no longer as alarming as in the recent past and now (except, let’s see how the world reacts with its accelerated build-up of its nuclear weapons)
- To be continued…
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What remains to be accomplished?
“Seldom in warfare does an enemy provide you a single target like Kharg Island that could dramatically alter the outcome of the conflict … If Iran loses control or the ability to operate its oil infrastructure from Kharg Island, its economy is annihilated. He who controls Kharg Island, controls the destiny of this war.” U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
Indeed, Kharg island is the single most decisive chokepoint in the economic lifelines of the Iranian-regime-IRGC. This where, according to open sources, more than 85% of Iran’s oil flow to the world. We do wish this island is not destroyed, as Trump desires, as this can make Iran’s recovery and transition to viable society within a short period of time — say, 2-3 years after the war and should a sane government takes over Iran soon — extremely difficult.
Then again, the nuclear program issue. Enriched uranium, as per news reports, under control of the IRGC, in its level of enrichment indicative of path to nuclear bomb making, and reports say stockpiles are enough for more than a dozen nuclear warheads, in the light of the now proven medium-range missiles of Iran being more advanced than those of North Korea, is in the works.
American and maybe Israeli boots on the ground? I think it’s inevitable, in limited precise-targets operations. Absent this, it’s like leaving the Iranian people to possibly grapple with a reality as grim as what they wanted to get out of, post this war now on-going. Need not say thousands have been and are in the shadows, these legendary operatives helping lay the groundwork for the successful military operations, because in war, humans, boots on the ground not necessarily open fighters in soldiers, are still decisive.
South Africa rushed to destroy design blueprints and pertinent research documents, operational manuals and all, in the transition from the white government to the new one. The new Iranian government, if one that’s not under the grip of the IRGC takes over soon, should do this too. After all, if it’s really for peaceful power generation purposes, President Trump himself guaranteed to help Iran build up its required infrastructures and supplies, and an Iran integrated into the mainstream international community can count on its many other countries to help it with this, including European ones who have awakened to the need for nuclear power plants for their energy security (ever record-breaking winter season in the northern hemisphere, and the case of Ukraine and Russia war).
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Next article
CCP-China’s windfall of intelligence on performance of U.S. weapon-systems and the conduct of war in Iran: To what extent will the frantic catch up, remedies to its sensor techs, updates, improvements in all of the PLA’s weapon systems in all the domains , and new designs, close the qualitative, perfomance, precision and lethality gaps with that of the United States, Japan, Israel (missile defense systems) and Europe?
Of course, once again my original thinking here, not what AI not yet catching up in (if there’s any, however AGI is being defined and I’m not sure by which or what kind of authority or competence or matrics being in nascent stage) consciousness to itself and its inadequacies especially in the rapidly evolving relevant new technologies and capabilities
CIA Director John Lee Ratcliffe
TidBits from CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate, Jan 2025
“The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies continue to export mayhem across the Middle East and Iran is closer to nuclear breakout than ever before.”
“And one in particular that I will discuss now, understand that the nation who wins the race of emerging technologies of today will dominate the world of tomorrow. Which brings me to the need for the CIA to continue and increase in intensity the focus on the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party.”
“As DNI, I dramatically increased the intelligence community’s resources devoted to China. I openly warned the American people that from my unique vantage point as an official who saw more intelligence than anyone else, I assessed that China was far and away our top national security threat. President Trump has been an incredible leader on this issue, and it is encouraging that a bipartisan consensus has emerged in recent years.”
“The recent creation of the CIA’s China Mission Center is an example of the good work that must continue.”
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About this: https://chng.it/FfcvgFxy
Urge U.S. Media: Counter Those Who Foment Hatred of Americans by Use of Comparative Data
Below, a quote from a media professor in Germany, tasked by Der Spiegel for review of its kind of reporting and the editorial environment in the highly respected media outfit then reeling from a scandal of fabricated and biased reporting by a supposed credible and respected journalist.
“Journalists like to dish out criticism, but they often react with sanctimonious whining when they are the focus, as studies by Stephen Bates, a media scholar at the University of Nevada, have shown. Typical reactions include ignoring the findings, indifference, counteraccusations, anti-intellectual resentments, and attempts to somehow intimidate the critics or otherwise interfere.” Bernhard Poerksen writing for Der Spiegel of Germany.
More from this article at Der Spiegel
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-public-uprising-bernhard-poerksens-critique-of-der-spiegels-debate-culture-a-fb086101-400e-4326-9ee3-b8b6f6356b80
Excerpt from the article, all between the big “…” signs
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Narratives of the Apocalypse
In political journalism, as reader comments made clear to me, there is a strange equation, a curious thought-formula that celebrates the invocation of catastrophe and decline as evidence of acute professionalism. This formula holds that the more negative a story is, the more independent and credible it becomes. And the better for society. Why is this a problem? Three reasons. First, through the tone of disdain and the general tendency toward rhetorical escalation, there arises – in a strange though unintended alliance with populists of different stripes – a discourse climate of lurking resentment in which the tiniest of mistakes (then-chancellor candidate Armin Laschet’s laughter after the massive flooding in 2021; Olaf Scholz’s insult of “court jester” directed at a Black politician; the preachy tone in a video by former Economy Minister Robert Habeck; et cetera) appear as dramatically unforgivable blunders. Second, such an equation is based on a logical error because it confuses critique (in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, actually another word for illuminating the a priori conditions that make knowledge possible) with opposition. And third, the whole idea rests on a false assumption, an erroneous theory of social transformation. The idea that we are showing you, dear society, what is going catastrophically wrong in the political operation. Followed by the assumption that everything will improve because the depressing truth will first get society and politics to reflect and then to take action.
Many readers are put off by the lack of empathy anchored in the routines and rituals of the journalistic profession and the tendency toward negativism, sometimes as pertains to DER SPIEGEL, sometimes as pertains to the media industry as a whole. It’s always “the end of the world,” one horrified reader wrote. “Are we not allowed to be happy? The government is always to blame.” Another complained about the tendency toward constant apocalypse. Still others criticized the tendency toward immediate condemnation, thereby fueling support for populist parties, or expressed a longing for positive journalism and success stories (successful environmental projects, functioning digital citizen service, cleverly chosen measures for pandemic control and so on). Why are politicians always “so intensely criticized,” some asked in the forum, why is “the negative so continuously emphasized to the detriment of any achievements that may have been realized” by individual politicians or parties.
These are good, weighty questions. And just for the record: Such questions do not convey a desire to ignore real negative developments in the service of general mood elevation; not a single reader suggested such a thing. But it is still necessary – despite all the efforts DER SPIEGEL has undertaken over the course of several years in the direction of positivity and encouragement – to take the psychological and political collateral damage of journalistic negativism even more seriously; if for no other reason than because no one wants to live in the darkness of dystopia in the long run, and people see themselves as being robbed of their dignity when they are no longer able to recognize themselves as individuals with agency but only as mute spectators inevitably doomed to failure in a world of permanent mega-catastrophes. This also means that serious journalism should – even in these pressure-filled times of ongoing media revolution, information explosion and trust erosion – once again strive for a new openness and approachability. But how?
“
Sadly, this kind of objective thinking, as per human nature, lacks manifestation in practice. I am not to engage in endless fruitless debate about media reporting and news sensationalism and highly-partisan biased reporting, like how it was in college campuses. But I strongly assert that the very kind of attitudes and behavior the radical left or right want the rest of their viewers, readers to adapt, can backfire and instead push them to the other side due to perception of bias and overall ersosion of credibility of the media and tone of its reporting and commentaries.
Worse, rogue state actors like the CCP-China and others with leaders-dictators having near-absolute control of state resources and finances, with nary any credible oversight, can undermine susceptible, vulnerable, idelogically-aligned public media figures even a U.S.-born American Olympic champion if for CCP’s sheer financial might and China’s enormous market and the sense of tolerance for America-and-self-hating attitude among Americans themselves. Imagine, LGBTQ, women’s rights advocates, rights advocates who would be the first to be executed by the now-deceased Iranian-IRGC leaders and the CCP-China state security forces, rallying for the causes espoused by these very rogue entities in their prolific massive propaganda tentacles across the Western world.
It’s crazy. In this context, it’s like no one is a lunatic whatever he or she does, anything is acceptable for as long as you hate your own country and blindly hate your own duly, democratically elected leaders (who unlike in some 3rd World countries, officials having bought, bidded for their public posts using stolen public money whitewashing it all in the process called elections, supposedly a basic exercise in democracy, using stolen public funds to win elections and then steal ever more and more of these funds and when something gets in the way then genocide or mass killings follow if to deter opposition to these practices). Crazy.
That’s why, and it’s never hopeless for anyone anywhere under any circumstances and political environement, I learn to just focus on high-impact activities and social engagements, including partially sponsoring scholars even when we barely have anything ourselves. You change one mind, you help save one soul, or educate one otherwise out-of-school youth, you help save the world, one life at a time.
Soon
https:iDisrupt.org/Save1Lyf
website about our privately-funded social work for youths and poor communities. Above is not yet a working link.
