It was funny, "the magic tricks" of propaganda and how the first casualty of war is "truth". Well, this was an "information war" and the intrigue used to be quiet high, actually.

During "The Cold War" in the icy bowels of the late 1940's and 1950's the Soviet codes had been broken and the spies working in the U.S. Government were "quietly removed" but the cases "never saw the light of day" because the authorities did not want to reveal their counter-espionage expertise on the cables with the secret stream of communication. But the Soviets had half-figured out that their codes had been deciphered anyhow, so it was the give-and-take of the spy world "when things are not as they seem" and operatives may be left stranded. But those were just the rules of the game and "the price you paid" to be part of "something important", lured into seductive "honey traps" of a woman's wrapped legs and then shot in the back of the head.

Life can be compromised-- very compromised.

It's not very well known that "The Consumer's Union", publisher of "Consumer Reports" magazine, actually began as a front for the Communist party with Soviet ties here in the United States. As milquetoast the reviews were on lordly capitalist products, it was meant to sow a hard-headed proletarian ethos to "false bourgeois consciousness" that consumed but knew not what for. It is interesting to know that there were untold numbers of weapons and radio caches stashed in secret places around the United States by Soviet sympathizers in anticipation of "World Revolution" and the collectivist take-over.

The CIA is really no better, because back in the annals of the totalist fence-building conflict they had a little project called "Operation Gladio", whose symbol was a fist clenching a double-edged sword like a Roman emperor, in case the forces of democracy should shift too far to the left in "an inappropriate manner" in the minds of NATO command. They had their own weapon caches stashed around the country for an ultra-rightist overthrow to make sure that Italy "didn't fall to the Communists". As a side note, "the mob" had been enlisted to break up the Communist dock workers in Marseilles, mixed in with the heroin trade from Cyprus and "The French Connection". Nazi gold had been funneled through Latin America and blessed by no one other than that national saint, Evita who quietly "understood the stakes". Anything, but the dreaded collectivists!

After "we lost China in '49", the State Department fired anyone sensitive and intelligent enough to grasp the concerns of world affairs, and instead replaced them with the equivalent of "Foghorn Leghorn", the rooster from the Loony Tunes show who thought that he could penetrate "The Asian Mind" with back-slaps and signed presidential pen sets and patronizing advice like "a batting coach" as Chang or Ho Chi Minh or whatever counted down the days to liberation on an abacus and threw a pipe bomb in his jeep as he waved and left, bellowing "are we great allies or what?".

Then there were "The Round Table Groups" that wanted to create a better world with "rationalism" and "common sense" through "international cooperation"-- and though they definitely stood for capitalistic values for the most part, had members who "flirted" communism out of ideological "sophistication". . . . . only stirring up the ire of the grunts howling for blood as they watched an effete, eminently aristocratic "Gorgeous George" make his entrance out to the arena floor on Saturday Night Wrestling with two young men as pages, instead of a beautiful beauty queen with a crown and bouquet of flowers. It played into the whole notion of "silky boys", an Anglo-American elite that "wasn't manly", and led to the rise of the Joseph McCarthy's and Richard Nixon's of this world "who played to the cheap seats" and picked on those who were "already kind of wobble-headed" and defenseless in the first place.

There was a way to face down "The House of UnAmerican Activities", however. Instead of mounting a futile, truculent defense whose sweat of nervousness and eerie nonconformity would only redouble the committee's efforts to destroy you, one would cooperate fully-- so fully in fact, that it gave them "the breathing room" to dodge the clumsy sweeps of their denser inquisitors. And yes, to come out unscathed. . . . .

It was a disaster-- how we chose to believe the truths strained through lies we told ourselves, wrapped around the very real void of our desires. One would find themselves around a charming "kook" and would be too mortified to "dash" the precious illusion and sweep it off the table like a punch bowl detonating on the floor. You would throw the harmless fanatic "softballs" and "keep the charming fiction alive", and wouldn't quite know what to say when someone angry and impertinent would rise to challenge "the swami" in question. However, they would deftly "come up with something", and run the assailant off and you would laugh "out of relief".

One can always doubt their senses, quibble over more information, the confusing of self-replicating complexities-- when the ridiculousness of the naked fact lays out right before you-- like a gray-haired Hindu man dressed up like Mick Jagger leaping around the stage and beating a tambourine. This happened with my Trotykist mentor, Jim who was so far paddling up the river of delusion of Soviet-style reform that I was left speechless. For a couple of years back, I covered an anti-war rally downtown to protest the Iraq invasion. He wanted me to give a list of speakers, the bare-bones facts. There was no way I could keep track of all that, and instead provided a painting of words like a gnarled anthem for change.