Finding Truth in a Sea of Lies

The closest thing to truth in media is listening to those who have been right

I was too young to really care in 2003 when we invaded Iraq. I didn’t really understand the massive media campaign that had taken place to brainwash millions of people into believing we should fight the war. I was standing outside of the gymnasium in downtown Sunapee, holding a sign that my dad had made that read “Baghdad is someone’s Sunapee.

Almost 20 years later this past March, I was introducing Scott Horton to a group of anti war Libertarians in Utah. I now understood the propaganda that had led many in the United States to think we needed to intervene in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many thought a Hitlerian march across Europe was about to take place, and just like in World War 2, we couldn’t leave the entire continent defenseless!

They knew nothing about NATO expansion, nothing about the coup in 2014, nothing about the shelling of Donbas weeks before the invasion, nothing about shady politician’s dealings with energy companies. It was just a black and white scenario where “a bigger country” was beating up on a “smaller country” as our esteemed Vice President so eloquently pointed out.

I had no idea whom to believe about what was taking place on the battlefield. Tales of gallant fighter pilots, massacres of civilians, heroic last stands by Ukrainian troops, nothing was clearly true or false. There was nothing but pro-Ukraine propaganda filling the mainstream media and nothing but contrarian pushback from the underground media and I had zero faith in either. So I did the only thing that made sense. I talked to people who had been right about stuff in the past.

I learned a lot about what led up to the conversation from Scott Horton. Understanding the coup, how Crimea voted to secede, and why NATO is considered an aggressive force by Russia has been paramount in my understanding.

Ryan has been right about multiple issues surrounding foreign policy, and many of the things he said in this video ended up being true. Ryan has more extensive knowledge surrounding the political corruption in Ukraine than anybody else I know.

Daniel McAdams spent several years living in Eastern Europe and was Ron Paul’s foreign policy advisor. His knowledge on the war subject and his deep-rooted antagonism toward war propaganda have had a huge impact on the way I’ve approached foreign policy.

Dave Decamp is one of the most matter-of-fact, even keeled foreign policy journalists I have ever spoken with. Though he is clear in his principles, there is no doubt that he will always give a straight shot when asked to explain what is taking place overseas with our military and he won’t distort the truth.

So, though I don’t know what the truth is, I simply look to the people who have been right in the past and haven’t intentionally misled me before. We’re hearing a lot about the Ukrainians supposedly winning the war, so I had Ryan back on to discuss.

Please check out all these people and their work. Like I said, the search for truth is hard, so we can only look to those who have led us in the right direction before.