The 2021 Ideological and narrative attack against Nicaragua is beyond the pale
by Brian Wilson
The origins of the Grand Lie of Viet Nam, and the horrific cruelties committed there, are discoverable in the very ORIGINS of US America. The psychological and cultural conditioning growing up in US America, especially for a Eurocentric White male like myself, is emotionally and intellectually comfortable. But the noble “exceptional” history we have been taught about ourselves proves to be fantastic FAKERY which continues to serve as a comfortable escape from experiencing and feeling the horrible truth of the collective shame of our unspeakable criminal genocidal origins. Capitalism itself would not have existed without centuries of egregious colonial plunder of millions of Indigenous Americans, or millions of enslaved Africans.
So, not only does the lie of “exceptionalism” enable us to avoid extremely unpleasant thoughts and feelings, but it also discourages asking enlightening, delving questions, about who we really are as a people. This makes us dangerously stupid. Why mess with the apparent successful myth of being exceptional? But thoughtlessness – a suspension of critical thinking – today leads to a dangerous, nuclear, arrogant war-making society. Not unintelligent, but stupid. And the power brokers, and many in the population, have a vested interest in remaining stupid to protect the comfortable original lie, that requires countless subsequent lies, in turn, to preserve that original lie. We have told ourselves a nice story. But it is a lie and as long as we continue to believe in our superiority we deepen our stupidity, and dangerousness.
Thus, throughout our history we have lived by a slick Grand “American” lie, granting us comfort and security in our “superior” cultural identity. Spellbound and flattered we live by our favorite mythological maxims: “Founding Fathers”, “democracy”, “Constitution”, “Rule of Law”, and “greatest country ever”. Our political-religion of US American predatory corporate capitalism (privatization) blocks experiencing the most critical of all social emotions – empathy – that ties all humanity together, something I so painfully, but thankfully learned in Viet Nam. The Grand lie is so huge and pervasive we do not generally recognize it.
Cultural analysts such as Lewis Mumford have described how unchecked “power punctuates the entire history of mankind with outbursts of collective paranoia and tribal delusions of grandeur mingled with malevolent suspicions, murderous hatreds, and atrociously inhumane acts”. So, in effect, much of human civilization history is based on institutionalized dehumanization, a form of Fascism. Mumford again: “A personal over-concentration of power as an end in itself is suspect to the psychologist as an attempt to conceal inferiority, impotence, and anxiety. When this inferiority is combined with defensive inordinate ambitions, uncontrolled hostility and suspicion, and a loss of any sense of the subject’s own limitation, ‘delusions of grandeur’ result, which is the typical syndrome of paranoia, one of the most difficult psychological states to exorcise.”
The US nation is a perfect example of what Mumford described is a criminal enterprise maintained by “collective paranoia” without sense of “limitation”, the result being “delusions of grandeur”, the typical syndrome of paranoia, one of the most difficult psychological states to exorcise.”
Nicaragua November 2021
The current description by US politicians such as Biden and Blinken, and their abominable lapdog corporate media, of Nicaragua’s recent democratic, transparent election, as being a pantomime, neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic, describes the United States, but clearly not Nicaragua. Claiming that President Ortega is unpopular without a democratic mandate, imposing repression, and locking up dissenters, and electoral manipulation widely decried by Nicaraguans, again may describe the US under Biden, but clearly not Nicaraguan under Ortega. Every major US TV, radio, newspaper, social media, follow the same script – CIA, USAID, NED, Compliant NGOs, along with great many leftists activists, scholars, and authors, as if being in a state of HYPNOSIS. It is unbelievable. And the censorship now so overt on Facebook, Twitter, and digital platforms bolstered by countless US–funded bot farms outside of Nicaragua blocking criticism of the US and support for the Nicaraguan government is just over the top outrageous. Many of my own posts have been blocked for telling the truth.
I innocently learned about this kind rigid adherence to a preconceived ideologically comfortable conclusion while in Viet Nam. When I discovered numerous inhabited, undefended villages being wiped out by bombing, including napalm, leaving hundreds of village peasants dead, emaciated, burned, and asphyxiated, I noted that most were young children. I made a special trip to USAF Headquarters in Saigon requesting to examine bombing reports. I had not been an activist, and I was very modest in my search for facts. But the reports unequivocally disclosed great successes by proving the large numbers “VC” enemy the US had killed – in my observation area somewhere between 700 and 900 in one five-day period. But, I explained the vast majority were young children bombed in daylight hours. It was not important to our military leaders. It was normalized. The US desperately needed the body counts to please domestic politics back in the USA. That was the “fact”, but it is then that I learned that facts don’t really matter in politics.
Ralph McGehee, a CIA analyst inside Viet Nam expressed the same outrage when he discovered that “the US [is] supporting Thieu’s tiny oligarchy against a population largely organized, committed, and dedicated to a Communist victory.” In contrast to the optimistic reports of MACV, CORDS and Phoenix, McGehee experienced a stubborn refusal on the US side to grasp the total corruption of the South Vietnamese government and the fact that the vast majority of the Vietnamese people are fighting AGAINST the US forces and FOR the NLF/VC. Further, he stated that in the history of US–South Vietnamese efforts, there had not been one clear-cut case of a high-ranking Viet Cong agent being identified and apprehended. (In his memoir, McGehee later cited a November 1969 report placing the number of Viet Cong agents in the South Vietnamese army and government in the neighborhood of 30,000.) His reports were never accurately quoted or used by Washington politicians. Exasperation and the sense of betrayal he felt from top intelligence officials brought him to the point of contemplating suicide, and to the conclusion that US intelligence has little to do with reality.
I have lived in Nicaragua now for nearly 5 years. I have been meeting with hundreds of people in numerous communities around the country. The popularity of the Sandinista government is very palpable, stronger in some areas than others, but considering the advances over the past 14 years under Sandinista leadership in health care, education, gender quality, community (not repressive) policing, safe streets, potable water, sanitation, uninterrupted electricity in 99 % percent of the country, renewable energy, distribution of seeds and consultations towards food sufficiency, roads and bridges, there is plenty of infrastructure that has helped virtually all Nicaraguan citizenry.
I am finding that so many of my friends in the US believe the constant almost daily demonizing, disgusting news accounts by journalists who simply repeat the popular CIA-supported script. Don’t they understand the many ways US destructive imperialism works? Too bad, because living in Nicaragua is a paradise compared to living and voting in the US. Knowing the farcical lies taken so seriously by the majority of people in Europe and the US tend to depress me, since I am living here 24 hours a day keenly observing the amazing advances of a society committed to justice, and this is thanks to the FSLN.
