Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. (Daniel Patrick Moynihan)

I’ve seen this quote thrown around frequently, in the recent “fake news” argument, and honestly, I always found it disturbing.

You see, the whole point of a discussion is that both sides have different perception of what the facts are. If you’re having a discussion between an egalitarian and a meritocrat, of course the egalitarian will think that it’s a fact that all men are equal, and the meritocrat will think it’s a fact that there are scientifically proven differences between races and genders, and in a liberal society those differences will significantly influence the outcomes of those statistical groups.

The same thing will happen when you have a discussion about the existence of God between an atheist and a religious person. A religious person will cite his personal relationship with God as evidence of God’s existence, while an atheist will consider this a non-fact and will cite absence of material evidence of God. They do indeed have a difference of opinion, but this is just a surface. Underneath, they also have a profound disagreement about the nature of reality itself, and they will selectively accept and deny certain pieces of evidence that attempts to establish what the facts are.

The difference between the “main stream” and “alternative” media is not about interpretation of facts. It’s a fundamental disagreement about what facts are established, what evidence is credible, and about the moral nature of the forces in the world – who is good, who is evil, and who is irrelevant.

That’s why the “fact checking” services are nonsense. Depending on their political and religious bias, they will cite as fact the things that agree with their worldview, and mark as false the things that put their worldview into question. The only truly unbiased fact-checker is God, because He knows what is actually true and real, and what reality is objective. Everybody else is an interested party, and not an unbiased, nonpartisan fact-checker. So, if there are discussions about what the facts are in science, where the scientists often vehemently argue about this, how can a politician state that facts are something that exists in some realm beyond dispute?

I still have problems with the second world war, because the facts were so obscured by propaganda, it interferes with my ability to pass moral judgment – if I don’t know what the actual facts were, and I don’t know in what situation someone made a certain decision, how can I judge him? That’s a serious problem. You can’t just say, a person X ordered the Y number of people to be killed, so he’s evil. Maybe the choice was such, that he had the option to kill those people, or the complete destruction of all civilization, at least in his mind. What would you do, if your options were to, for instance, either use a time machine to kill an innocent man, or wait for that man to grow into a serial killer who will kill 60 innocent people and do nothing good at all in his life? If your options are to either kill ten million people, or have the entire civilization descend into savagery, what would you do? The concepts like “violence is violence” and “love is love” are the pastime of idiots. You can’t judge someone for killing ten, hundred or ten thousands people until you know the reasons and circumstances. Maybe he’s a serial killer. Maybe he’s a war hero. Maybe he accidentally turned off the coolant circulation pump in a nuclear reactor. Maybe he’s a psychopath who seduced millions of people into evil and made them kill the other half of the country. Maybe he motivated the nation to kill an evil invading horde that would destroy everyone if left unchecked. Until you know the facts, your moral opinions are essentially worthless.

So, my problem here is that the “main stream” media basically tries to eliminate anyone who would dispute the kind of propaganda they are distributing, and which they peddle as “facts”. If I have so many questions about what the facts are, I seriously doubt some politician or a journalist is in a better intellectual position.

Someone remind me, why was the Watergate scandal such a big deal? Oh, a running president wiretapped the opposition during the campaign? And why are those who did the same thing to Trump not in serious trouble, fired or jailed?

President Donald Trump has claimed files about his former campaign adviser Carter Page confirm that the Department of Justice and FBI had misled the courts. Separately, he suggested his campaign was “spied upon illegally.”
Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at the FBI and the Department of Justice, which released over 400 pages of its initial and renewed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests pertaining to Carter Page, Trump’s ex-foreign policy adviser.
Praising Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation that studied the files, the president tweeted: “As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!”
In a subsequent message, Trump suggested his 2016 presidential campaign has been under unlawful surveillance orchestrated by his Democratic contender. “Looking more and more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” the angry tweet said.
(Link: https://www.rt.com/usa/433944-carter-page-fisa-fbi-trump/)

Someone will say, oh, but Trump was suspected of having contacts with the Russians. No he wasn’t – in fact, the entire story started when Hillary’s campaign figured out it would be a good idea to spread this as rumors and even paid for the creation of the “Steele dossier“. So basically the same group of people invented the Russia connection and then had it “investigated”. It’s actually much, much worse than Watergate. It’s outright treason, an attack on the constitution and the way government and judiciary are supposed to work. Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the people of America in electing their own president, and then trying to prevent this president from doing his job, by fabricating reason after reason why he isn’t really the president so they are allowed to oppose him.

America’s state of government at the moment is something one can normally see during the early stages of a civil war, where one part of the country claims the government is illegitimate and breaks off. I’ve seen this in Croatia between 1990 and mid-1991. Yugoslavia formally existed and Belgrade was formally in charge, but that existed only on paper. In reality, Belgrade couldn’t implement anything.

Another thing that’s popular in America today is to suggest that everybody who doesn’t want WW3 with Russia is working for Putin. Beside this being obviously nonsensical (if Putin tries to have people not want a nuclear war, what’s actually wrong with Putin?), what’s the actual claim? That everybody who has an opinion that differs from that of the CIA and its hired scum works for Putin? The actual problem is that the CIA controls most of the politicians and the media in the “western world”, and, unfortunately, everywhere else, except for China and, in part, Russia. The Russians have some media presence in form of RT and Sputnik, and those became popular exactly because they are the only semblance of free press that we actually have – everything else is CIA controlled and spouts utter nonsense that fails to bear even the slightest bit of intellectual scrutiny.
The problem is, I’ve seen this kind of paranoia before, in SFR Yugoslavia, where they had labels for people who asked uncomfortable questions, and being labelled “counter-revolutionary”, “reactionary”, “opposing brotherhood and unity of our nations and nationalities” or something similar could make you disappear. This process of labelling took place for instance when the Croats and Slovenians asked where all the money went – they asked unpleasant questions and those who stole the money responded by calling the accusers “enemies of brotherhood and unity”, which is an idiotic accusation, both non sequitur, ad hominem and ad baculum at once – has nothing to do with the issue at hand, but slanders the opponent and implicitly threatens him. So that’s what I see in America today – a crazy society similar to Yugoslavia in its death throes.

I just found a video that plays with this idea. However, it is my opinion that this is completely wrong, and here’s why.

I was just thinking about something…

One of the biggest problems Russia is facing today is the fact that the Americans have convinced themselves of a very distorted, diminished idea about Russia, and they are going to treat Russia dismissively and push it against the wall of a full nuclear retaliation, and nothing Russians do seems to be breaking through to those American idiots who think America is no1 and nobody else is even close in power and they can do whatever they want with impunity.

So, they just announced new superweapons, and the American reaction was dismissive – nah, that’s not real, we’re Murrica. What next? Sink their aircraft carrier as a demonstration? Maybe. But something else might be in the works.

Some years ago, the Russians announced that they are developing a nuclear-powered upper stage rocket for Mars flight, which could get them there in the order of magnitude of two weeks. The engine itself was supposed to be tested in 2018. However, when they announced the new weapons, what got my attention was the nuclear-powered cruise missile. My reaction was, damn it, this thing is not only done, it’s deployed, and it’s so small, with incredible thrust-to-weight ratio. They have their Mars engine.

So then I thought, what else do they need. They need a large capsule, comparable to American Orion. They need a heavy-lift rocket to get the Mars vehicle and the upper stage into LEO. I would also add a larger module, a space station segment with a full laboratory and other amenities, and hopefully a lander, either manned or a drone.

So, let’s see what they have in very late stages of development:

Federation spacecraft, designed for Moon/Mars missions

Angara V heavy rocket, tested; in need, they can re-create Energia

NEM module for the space station is supposed to be almost ready.

The nuclear propulsion module is so developed they are putting it in the cruise missiles.

So, what I’m saying is, if the Russians want to shatter the American propaganda image about the power positions of America and Russia, and do it in a non-military way, avoiding the slippery slope of escalation, they could launch the NEM with all the supplies, launch Federation with the crew of 3 and a nuclear upper stage, an the window for a Mars launch is around June/July, according to my simulation.

The mission could be something as simple as go there in the end of June, arrive in 2 weeks, stay there for a few days, hang the Russian flag on Mars on the 4^th of July just to fuck with the Murricans, leave the orbital laboratory around Mars, and return home. I don’t think they have the lander tech yet, but I might be wrong, so I don’t think they’ll actually land a man there, but an orbit might be good enough for demonstration purposes. In any case, the Americans need to have a Gagarin experience.

Do I think it’s possible? Yes. Do I think it’s likely? No. What I think is that there will be a shooting war, either in Syria or in Ukraine, and Americans are going to start it, just to show the Russians they can do whatever. And the Russians are eventually going to start killing lots of Americans. Honestly, I’m so tired of this shit I can’t wait.