The cover story for that issue, "Aleppo After the Fall," accompanied by the words "Life And Loss Amid The Ruins of Syria's Fractious And Devastating Civil War" and a photo of a demolished Aleppo district, sets the tone, especially the lie in the words "civil war." The war was started under President Obama in March 2011 by the United States/NATO/Israel with the arming of Islamist "freedom fighters" in an effort to overthrow President Bashar al Assad. But the Sunday morning Times reader is immediately told otherwise, as they have been for the past six years of carnage. Most probably don't notice the deception as they flip to the table of contents where they see a photo of cream puffs and coffee.
As they sip their morning coffee and think about cream puffs, let's imagine our readers turning to the first major story preceding the Aleppo piece by Robert F. Worth, a contributing writer for the magazine. It is an article titled "Empire of Dust" by Molly Young, also a contributing writer. It is a title that suggests further disintegration of a most serious nature (no, not the American Empire), yet it is an article about Amanda Chantal Bacon and the rise of the wellness industry. A photo of this "beatific" 34 year old entrepreneurial guru in a flowing white gown in a half-lotus position, seated on a marble kitchen countertop surrounded by some "magical" rocks, takes up an entire page. The photo, a Barthian signifier if ever there were one, is clearly meant to be deciphered by the Times' clientele for secrets to the beautiful, luxurious, and peaceful life due to one of means and exquisite taste, one who will spend five dollars on a newspaper and live a balanced, Epicurean life of self-care and sophistication. Bacon's massive light-filled kitchen with its marble countertops -- a sine qua non of today's "good life" -- serves the usual elitist function of drawing in readers with a discerning, moneyed eye.
Alternately fawning and critical, Young begins by telling the reader, "The amount of time I waste finding and consuming alternative-medicine supplements for 'brain function' has made me at least 10 percent dumber, and that paradox is not lost on me. It was that impulse that made me pause last year at a fancy store in Brooklyn when I spotted a glass jar labeled 'Brain Dust'." From there Young takes us to Los Angeles, where she interviews the lifestyle guru Bacon, and we hear about Spirit Dust, Beauty Dust, Sex Dust, vaginal steaming, spirit truffles, and sunbathing the vagina, and to the Hamptons where she again spots Brain Dust in an expensive store that also sells "boeuf-bourguignon-flavored dog biscuits." Young, having traversed the golden triangle -- Brooklyn, L.A., and the Hamptons -- tells us how Bacon captures her imagination even as she "was ashamed of its capture." She drinks Power Dusted coffee with the Moon Juice founder who tells her, "I was told growing up in NYC that I had learning disabilities and mental illness. That was all the rage in the '90s." (Presumably they are raging no longer.) After offering mild criticisms' and writing that after visiting Bacon's house she "wanted to move to California and eat bee pollen," Young covertly orders bee pollen from her phone and ends by telling us that the Moon Juice bee pollen she has ordered "would arrive in two to four business days." The reader is left to wonder who is dumber or smarter despite or because of the Brain Dust.
But if one is feeling brain dead, one can move or jump-cut to the next article, a piece of cosmopolitan gravitas meant to clarify who are the good guys and who the bad in the Middle East, specifically Syria.
Turning to this article on Aleppo, a juxtaposing of pornographic proportions, one is greeted with a two page photo of totally destroyed buildings in front of which walk a woman pushing a toddler in a stroller and a man pushing another toddler in a makeshift wooden cart covered in plastic sheeting. One flips from "Sex Dust" to disgust and heartbreak in a page turn. The reader is walked step-by-step into a piece of political propaganda, as Robert Worth tells us that "The Syrian tragedy started in a moment of deceptive simplicity, when the peaceful protesters of the 2011 Arab Spring seemed destined to inherit the future." This deception is then quickly followed with the claim that Assad used "chemical weapons in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in early April," an assertion backed by no evidence and clearly refuted by Seymour Hersh, among others. Worth tells us that "the Syrian regime (note the sly use of the word regime, a staple of linguistic mind-control) and its Russian allies repeatedly bombed hospitals and civilian areas," and that in the United States such actions were "widely deplored as a war crime comparable to the worst massacres of the Bosnian war during the 1990s." One has to give credit to Worth for a masterful double-deception here, first by accusing the Syrians and Russians but not the United States of repeatedly bombing hospitals and civilian areas, and then segueing to the "Bosnian" war with nary a mention of the U.S./NATO conspiracy to dismantle Yugoslavia through proxies and the subsequent massive bombing of Serbia and Serbian civilians that were clearly war crimes committed by the liberal saint, Bill Clinton. Throughout this piece Worth repeatedly accuses the Assad government of war crimes and atrocities while whitewashing the United States. Immediately following his assertion of Syrian war crimes, he tells the Sunday Times' readers that " the State Department released satellite photographs suggesting that the regime is burning the bodies of executed prisoners in a crematory at the Sednaya prison complex, north of Damascus, in an alleged effort to hide evidence." This claim is based on a totally discredited claim made in February 2017 by Amnesty International, and Worth, knowing that there is no evidence for this, cagily uses the words "suggesting" and "alleged." But juxtaposed with the war crimes assertions, only a careful reader searching for truth would notice the trick, surely not a Time Magazine reader already predisposed by the daily Times's constant flow of government lies. Quoting a speech by Assad in which he claimed there was a "huge conspiracy" to dismantle and destroy Syria, Worth dismissively rejects this obvious truth by quoting an anonymous former regime official (a common tactic) who says he was shocked by the speech. If Assad had given a different speech, Worth notes, "the past six years would have unrolled very differently, and oceans of blood might have been spared." This is the imperial mindset at its finest, all rolled into an extensive New York Times Magazine article meant to enlighten and inform its alleged sophisticated readers.
What I am suggesting with these magazine examples is that the old trick perfected by the Congress for Cultural Freedom to juxtapose cultural pieces with political ones is alive and well today, even if the CCF or its equivalent doesn't exist, since it isn't needed. Illiteracy has become the norm and stupidity the rule as the electronic revolution has destroyed people's ability to concentrate or stay focused long enough to realize they are being taken for a ride by propagandists and that they are being purposely overloaded with information meant to create a felt need for "Brain Dust." This has been going on for so long that to admit one is still being taken for a ride is equivalent to admitting to gullibility so profound that it must be denied. It is one thing criticize the politicians you hate -- George W. Bush and Donald Trump for liberal Democrats and Bill Clinton and Obama for conservative Republicans -- and to call them liars; but to contemplate the fact that the CIA has been lying to you through all these mouthpieces and your vaunted news sources are stenographers for the intelligence agencies is too much reality to bear. "I might have looked funny in that old photograph, but today I am with it and stylish."
Sure.
Everything has become style today, and no doubt the CIA has learned that the trick is to hide truthful substance behind the style. Evidence is beside the point. Just assert things in a slick style. Assert them repeatedly, even when they have been proven false or fraudulent. Sex Dust and Power Dust may be absurd con jobs, but they sell. They meet a "need," a need created by the society that has slyly equated power with sex for a population that has been convinced they have neither and need drugs to endow them with both. A piece about Brain Dust may not have the drawing power of a Paris Review interview with Ernest Hemingway or Boris Pasternak, but then there were no "lifestyle gurus" in those days when people read real literature, not today's New York Times best sellers. Propaganda was more literary in those days; it had to have substance. In a "wellness culture," it has to have style. Today the only time you hear the word substance, is in "substance abuse," which is fitting.
The CIA is in the styling business; they've gone shallow. Everyone looks great that way, or so they think.
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