‘Believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear’

That advice in song (‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’) from a great Motown artist of the 1960s (Marvin Gaye) was never more meaningful than at present, especially concerning the alleged crisis in the Ukraine.

While it certainly is a crisis for the people who live there, any notion that the USA is experiencing some menacing threat to our freedom to buy drugs, guns, cosmetics and pet food is to make mountain ranges out of mouse droppings. If you believe what you are told by an administration and media that make the Three Stooges seem superior foreign policy analysts, then prepare for:

Today the Ukraine, tomorrow . . . New Jersey?

Corporate functionaries posing as reporters have never been more subservient to their masters when cross examining a misinformed if not hopelessly ignorant president with harsh questions trying to lead him to answers about declaring war. This in a nation wallowing in unemployment, poverty and near bankruptcy while its government offers loan guarantees and armaments to a U.S./NATO financed anti-democratic opposition in a country on Russia’s borders.

The hatchet job on public consciousness makes Gaye’s quote sound like a benign reaction. Russian president Putin is made to seem a murderous fiend in much that Americans see and hear when in comparison to the witless crew here, he is a great statesman and leader of a country that must again be reckoned with as a global power after years of being treated as just another stall at the mall.

Putin has exercised state control of capitalism that certainly does not change that system’s mindless pursuit of private profit at all costs, but reigns in the morally bankrupt accumulation of most of that profit by a tiny handful of individuals, as is the rule in the USA.

When Russia was turned over to the free market privateers a few grabbed what were once public assets and accumulated billions of dollars in a very short time. After Putin assumed the presidency, he not only put a lid on that class of oligarchs, as they are called in Russia (here they are seen as saints, benefactors and holy people), but also locked up some of the worst thieves of what had been public wealth. Whatever his shortcomings may be, he is a giant by comparison to capital’s bipartisan servants here who bail out financial speculating bankers with public money after they’ve robbed the nation blind, rather than throw them in prison.

And American politicians and media servants to corporate rule depict Putin as a monster. Of course. And George Bush was a genius. And Obama is the prince of peace.

As is too often the case, this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so deadly serious. An idiotic western force of the USA and its NATO lapdogs, is bringing us all close to disaster by possibly bungling into a war more terrible than all those we have recently waged on weak nations. This time, the opponent would be capable of inflicting horrendous damage on the USA, which has not been the case since the fall of the old Soviet Union. Putin is much too smart to want such a military confrontation but he is also much too strong to back down from a real military threat on Russia’s borders, however stupid the political cretins might be to make such a threat.

The NATO profiteers have been closing in on Russia since the fall of the Soviets, all the time making promises of non-interference and harmonious relations while treacherously setting up military bases on its borders. A nation that lost more lives than any other in the Second World War, Russia has very good reason to be extremely sensitive about what kind of regimes it is surrounded by, having been invaded and suffered millions of dead when those borders were open to invaders in the past. One has to only think for a moment of the incredible expenditure of hundreds of billions for an alleged defense of America, with most of that poured into fleets, bases and armaments thousands of miles from the USA, and wonder which nation is “hypocritical,” “paranoid,” and bordering on total “lunacy.” American hustlers for mass murder from Congress to Fox TV to The New York Times have used those words to describe Putin.

Are we a mental health crisis center posing as a nation?

Much of the rest of the world, if not most of the American people, are aware of U.S. involvement in not only backing the destruction of the Ukrainian government but working with and financing many of the people who overthrew a regime that had little support, but was at least democratically elected. You know, like Bush, Obama and other brilliant, peace loving and much beloved by all, American leaders? An American member of the feminist branch of neo-liberal ‘Murder Inc.’ was heard on the phone discussing which Western flunkies “we” should support and dealt with the choice favored by Europeans in an all American manner: she said—heard on the recording everywhere but in most places here, “fuck the E.U.,” indicating our great respect for the lap dog we call the European Union.

There is common knowledge elsewhere of the millions, if not billions, the U.S. has spent to help destroy a regime it liked even less than most Ukrainians, in order to replace it with one they seem to despise even more. A recent visit to the un-elected government by a CIA luminary is just business as usual in our meddling in another nation’s affairs, while Russian concern about its neighbor is treated as a sign of lust for global domination.

If we remain politically comatose under the barrage of propaganda and blatant lies we have had crammed into our heads, these fools may lead us into a bigger and far more dangerous nuclear confrontation than imagined in years past.

Consider Marvin Gaye’s warning even further than he and if it’s what “they” show you, believe none of what you see, either. And demand that the small group in our governing class who haven’t yet succumbed to the mind numbing madness gripping the majority that you will not stand for it. An outpouring of opposition from the public did keep us out of Syria and while we have helped cause a national disaster in that besieged nation, it could have been even worse. A war in the Ukraine would top that blood bath by far and might very well come home to us. Don’t let it happen.

Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the Legalienate. Email: fpscott@gmail.com.