Bette’s Weekly Roundup - Something Wicked
My very emo Best of Bette from the week xo
There was a moment last night at the Hollywood Bowl as the Cure concluded their performance where the only one left on the stage was Robert Smith. Clutching his hands to his chest, he gave thanks to the crowd - for their loving devotion. With tears in his eyes, he gave that love back to them - like a silent film star theatrically taking a bow - he just kept reflecting their love back - a post-modern Garbo, emoting.
I have never heard louder applause in my life, and that is a fact. The Cure is the only band I have ever seen where the singer announces a new song, and twenty thousand people lean in. Here is one of those newer songs:
I knew when I was listening to the song live that it was a moment, but upon reflecting on the words today, it took on a new meaning. The lyrics are about something wicked that steals away a man’s life.
I couldn’t help but reflect back on my podcast partner’s words yesterday, when he was in a simmering rage at how men who are already hurting are being targeted with military grade radicalization techniques.
“They’re picking off broken men,” HiFi said.
One at a time and at scale. And we are doing nothing to prevent the losses - every minute in America, another broken man turns to the internet and is lured down rabbit holes designed to his personal predilections, and we lose another neighbor, friend, brother, uncle… father… son. As infosec expert Jackie Singh wrote, even men of color are becoming white supremacists due to cult indoctrination. Recall, no one brainwashes themselves.
How many more crying mothers do we need to hear in courtrooms saying they lost their son to Trump, Telegram, or Rumble? How many more children do we need to lose to massacres by radicalized men?
Women are not immune to radicalization as embodied by Ashlii Babbitt, who was tricked by women-baiting ARGs, which we know because my other podcast partner Jim Stewartson pioneered techniques used in ARGs and saw how these techniques were weaponized to harm people - to transform them into the front-line soldiers we saw at the Insurrection.
When will it be enough America? HiFi calls Twitter Spaces ‘digital Wacos’ for their radicalization capabilities.
I will keep writing these words until the dam breaks. The radicalized people are victims, too.
We know who is doing the radicalization - the traitors suing my colleagues.
At least we are now getting bulletins from the Department of Homeland Security issuing stark and dire warnings about the broken men.
But where is the courage to turn off the spigots to the radicalization networks, the courage to derail the gaslighting fascist brofests.
This needs to be addressed with the urgency of war. Just ask Ukraine what comes next.
Okay, that was a very serious preamble to this week’s Best of Bette but these are sobering days. I breathe and remind myself, it’s all how you walk through the fire.
Speaking of fire, I am very happy that I was asked to put some mojo behind Equality Florida’s Executive Director Nadine Smith’s Twitter thread on suggestions to Target CEO, and a half a million views later…
Please read the entire thread - it’s important.
Okay, let’s get into the Bette Dangerous round-up for the week.
‘Into the Mists of Time’ - Words to Untrap Our Minds
Whenever I have writing deadlines on subjects I care deeply about, I will distract myself by doing a thorough closet cleaning or watching a documentary that has nothing to do with the subject I’m supposed to be writing about. So last week, I distracted myself with an interview Timothy Snyder did for Frontline PBS titled Putin and the Presidents. The Yale professor who wrote ‘On Tyranny’ - the book I keep by side at all times, of which I wrote ‘break glass in case of emergency’ - was being interviewed by Michael Wiser on September 26, 2022. The full-length interview was released right before the first anniversary of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Every word was so important I transcribed entire passages for you. Among them:
On Ukraine War
What was at stake is countries shouldn’t destroy other countries for no reason in a war.
If you let a country invade another country with the goal of exterminating its population, that’s not just a horror in and of itself, it’s a remaking of the world which is going to continue in directions that you don’t want, indefinitely.
I think in 100 years, historians will be writing about the war in Ukraine… A lot of the things that seem very important to us right now… are going to disappear into the mists of time. Whether Ukraine wins or loses, which is very much up to the United States, very much up to the Biden administration, is something that historians are going to be writing about in 100 years.
The Russians think about America all the time. Americans only think about Russia when they have to.
Putin needs Russians to believe that elections are always a circus, a farce and a fake, because if Russians believed that British elections and German elections and American elections are also fake, they’re not going to mind that their own elections are fake.
War of Words - What Russia was able to prove was that, no, as a matter of fact, we can invade a country, and we can make you think that it didn’t actually happen.
Russia invaded Ukraine and basically persuaded us that it didn’t actually happen.
While Russia was invading Ukraine, the most important thing that was happening in the minds of the West, not just Americans, were discussions about whether there’d been a coup in Ukraine or whether the Ukrainians are all Nazis, or maybe they’re all gay, or maybe they’re all Jews, depending on what social media you were following, right?
The Russians totally had our minds in a trap, and we were totally unprepared… they were paying attention to us, at least in the negative sense of knowing what our vulnerabilities were on social media.
What Trump does for Putin is he normalizes the Russian way of doing politics. So Putin’s view that democracy is a joke, you can lie all the time, politics is fundamentally about some rich guy becoming richer, corruption is normal, right, that—Trump normalizes that for the whole world. So it’s a huge gift for Putin.
Trump gave them the basic thing that they wanted, which was an American administration which was an embarrassment for everyone who cared about democracy.
And one thing which they wanted, which they got and which they celebrated was a coup attempt. Nobody loved Jan. 6 more than the Russians did… They talk about it all the time. Trump gave them four years, which was one big gift, but Jan. 6 was like the wrapping.. if he’s elected again—if he becomes president again, I should say, I’m sure he’ll come up with new things, but Jan. 6 was an extraordinary gift to Russia.
There’s so much more so please take the time to read the complete report, and share Snyder’s knowledge widely.
RadPod Breaker with Monique Camarra
We open this breaker with an interview geopolitical analyst Monique Camarra did with an Italian war correspondent serving in Ukraine. As always, disinformation is the root of all modern evils and the gift of our guests being global is we learn from their international perspectives. We learned from Monique that disinformation is always an operation, and how to fight smarter. We also learn about the complexities of Italy’s new female ‘strongman’ - who Camarra says is an ethnonationalist domestically, while ensuring her foreign policy is EU compliant.
Disinformation Is An Operation
Thanks to Monique, I am able to offer us a better framework as we combat disinformation. Here is an excerpt:
We have not been treating disinformation in any smart way on a societal level. It’s not about defending one’s honor from malinformation campaigns, or expressing outrage over toxics lies, or how easily it distracts us from the work - that’s what disinformation is designed to provoke - but disinformation needs to be viewed as an operation designed by a top-down structure to create outcomes - distrust, hate, violence, money, votes, war, and criminal cover.
The so-called ‘gatekeepers’ are trying to control a narrative of lies, which people like me and my allies constantly interrupt with truth, which is often the first victim of war (Pekka, vatniksoup.com, RadPod breaker).
As a member of the Bette community wrote in response to my report on Timothy Synder’s Frontline transcripts: “I was so asleep in 2014, that I did not realize that Russia’s invasion of Crimea was an invasion ... I was so asleep in 2016 that I did not realize Trump’s election was an invasion of the US ... but I am now not so asleep ... so I may tell those sleeping, and support those telling those sleeping, that we are being invaded now.”
ICYMI - RadPod’s ‘Vatnik Soup’, ‘A Requiem for a Frenemy’, Rudy’s Yucks, and Ducks On a Pond
This compilation features RadPod’s interview with Pekka from VatnikSoup.com; a summary of my second elegy for Twitter, and Martin Sheil’s take on Rudy’s gnarly reveal.
In addition to the above items, there are a couple other noteworthy posts that dropped in the past week and a half:
REBOOT Dissident Power - Beating Back Bullies
I often reboot key reports from the Bette archives to bring them to the attention of new members. I wrote this post before Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and it contains his beautiful words of defiance. Here is an excerpt:
In my mind I keep hearing the words of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’:
“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.”
This is our moment. We mustn’t miss it. This report originally published April 11, 2023.
REBOOT ‘The Silence of the Grave’ - Remembering Boris Nemtsov
I originally wrote this report in February, In advance of the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, whose “goal was to liberate Russia from the crook and thieves - from Putin.”
‘A Wretch Like Me’ and Other Stories of Women Who Persevere
On Mother’s Day, I paid tribute to a woman who survived tremendous hardship in life. I wrote her book, and it became an Amazon bestseller.
Through every daunting challenge are stories of perseverance - the human spirit is truly a remarkable gift.
Anyone who watched any media today, caught a glimpse of what we can expect heading into 2024. Massive amounts of gaslighting and brutality - in words and images. None of this is normal, but we have each other like liferafts in a sea of treachery.
As Robert Smith wrote:
Something wicked this way comes
From out the cruel and treacherous night
Something wicked this way comes
To steal away my brother's life
Something wicked this way comes
As we raise our collective awareness, hopefully we will be able to elevate the consciousness of ‘the broken men’ along the way.
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(Robert Smith of the Cure, Hollywood Bowl, opening night)
(Ben’s words, painted in my neighborhood)
🤍🤍
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“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member
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