Lying and Killing: The Government's True Element

How the Trump administration started another forever war in the Middle East, and why millions of people can't see the evil of it.

So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde.
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.

So then is everything that you call

Sin, destruction, in short, evil,

My true element.

So introduces Mephistopheles to Dr. Faust in Goethe’s play. What I (and many others) have found especially fascinating about the scene is that Mephistopheles doesn’t try to conceal anything. He clearly states the nature of his game.

In this respect, Goethe adhered to a long tradition of the devil announcing himself, thereby eliminating the possibility of anyone subsequently claiming that they weren’t warned.

I often think about this while contemplating the US government and the legions of deluded fools who believe the lies told by its nominal leaders.

Once it became clear that Trump was going to attack Iran, I knew with certainty that “We the People” were being dragged into another forever war in the Middle East that would result in mass destruction and death and achieve no constructive end.

I knew it would begin with the promise of a swift and decisive victory, and then drag on interminably with no clear strategy—just more destruction and more boasts about all the things destroyed.

As Mephistopheles said, “Sin, destruction, in short, evil, is my true element.”

Long ago, the men that run the US government made the deal with the devil that Jesus—as recounted in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—chose not to make.

In exchange for worshipping the devil, the men who run the US government have received “dominion, glory, and the kingdoms of the world.”

I am not saying that the devil appeared to President Trump in the Oval Office as Mephistopheles appeared in Faust’s study.

The US government’s deal with the devil was apparently made long ago, and it seems that only the devil’s servants are able to remain in the government. Those like Thomas Massie who take a principled stand against the devil are driven out of government in the most absurd way.

The outrageous absurdity of Massie’s ouster— as well as how the Epstein files were swept under the rug, and how the Iran war was started with obvious monkeyshines— are the expression of how the devil plainly introduces himself.

A few days ago I received an email from a reader who sincerely told me that the current war against Iran is a rational response to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s statement “death to America” in his 1979 inauguration speech. Never mind that Khomeini died in 1989. I responded by quoting Kim Jong Un’s 2024 New Year’s Day Address in which he threatened to “deal a deadly blow to the US and thoroughly annihilate them.”

Should we attack North Korea?

Should the US Air Force again bomb every single city in North Korea to rubble and kill 20% of its civilian population, as General Curtis LeMay proclaimed he had done. As he put it in a 1984 interview with the Office of Air Force History:

Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population.

By LeMay’s estimate, every city in North Korea was bombed to rubble.

Only someone who has been seduced by the devil would kill 20 percent of the population of a country of 10 million people and totally annihilate all its cities.

The devil’s work is obvious, out in the open, to be seen by anyone who has eyes to see.

Every heap of total BS we’ve been served since 2001 follows the exact same script—namely, scare the hell out of us, promise to protect us, transfer trillions to whatever interests are the beneficiaries of the “crisis,” and pillory anyone (like me) who questions the veracity of the government’s fraudulent representations.