Caitlin Johnstone: The US is the leader because they say so.

By Caitlin Johnstone, CaitlinJohnstone.comautomatic translation of News Consortium

In response to questions during a press conference last week about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin cementing a "new era" In the strategic partnership between China and Russia, John Kirby of the White House National Security Council made no fewer than seven statements asserting that the U.S. is the "leader" of the world.

Here are excerpts from your comments :

• "The two countries have grown closer. But both are countries that are irritated by the..." US leadership around the world ".
• And in the case of China in particular, they would certainly like to challenge US leadership worldwide. "
• “But these aren’t two countries that have, you know, decades of experience working together and total trust. It’s recent growth based on…” lead The growing influence of America [USA] throughout the world and trying to verify this.
• "Peter, these are two countries that have long been irritated by each other, as I told Jeff – they've long been irritated by the..." lead "From the U.S. around the world and with the network of alliances and partnerships that we have."
• "And we work on these relationships one at a time, because each country on the continent is different, has different needs and different expectations." American leadership. "
• That is the power of American persuasive leadershipAnd you don't see that power coming from Russia or China.
• “But one of the reasons you’re seeing this close relationship is because they recognize that they don’t have a solid base of international support for what they’re trying to do, which is basically to challenge the lead  American worldwide . "

O effect of illusory truth It's a cognitive bias that leads people to confuse something they've heard many times with an established fact, because the way the human brain receives and interprets information tends to make little or no distinction between repetition and truth. Propagandists and empire managers often take advantage of this flaw in our wetware, which is what's happening when you see them repeating key phrases over and over again that they want people to believe.

We saw another repetition of this line recently at an online conference organized by the US Chamber of Commerce, in which the US ambassador to China stated that Beijing must accept the US as the “leader”." of the region that China occupies.

It is clear that the managers of the US empire are becoming very assertive about the narrative that they are the “leaders” of the world because this self-proclaimed “leadership” is being challenged by China and the nations that support it with increasing openness, such as Russia. Most of the major international news these days is directly or indirectly related to this dynamic, in which the US is fighting to secure unipolar planetary dominance, thwarting China’s rise and undermining its partners.

The message they are conveying is: “This is our world. We are in charge. Anyone who claims otherwise is weird and abnormal and must be fought.”

Why do they say the US is the “leader” of the world instead of its “ruler”? I’m not clear on the difference as applied in practice. Is it meant to give us the impression that the US rules the world through democratic vote? That this is something the rest of the world has consented to? Because I certainly don’t remember voting in favor of it, and we’ve all seen what happens to governments that don’t heed US “leadership.”

I am not one of those who believe that a multipolar world will be a wonderful thing; I merely recognize that it is better than the alternative, which is an increasingly reckless nuclear maneuver to maintain global control. The US has been in charge long enough to make it clear that the world order it dominates can only be maintained through relentless violence and aggression, with ever more violence and aggression directed at the major nuclear-armed powers. The facts are clear and the case is closed: the unipolar hegemony of the United States is unsustainable.

The problem is that the US empire itself doesn't know this. This horrific trajectory we're on toward an Atomic Age world war is the result of... The doctrine of empire that one must maintain unipolar control. at all costs colliding with the rise of a multipolar world order.

It doesn't have to be this way. There's no valid reason why the U.S. needs to remain in charge of the world and can't simply let different people in different regions handle their own affairs. There's no valid reason why governments need to brandish weapons of Armageddon against each other instead of peacefully collaborating in the interest of all humanity. We are being pushed toward disaster to preserve "American leadership around the world," and I, for one, don't agree with that.

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