A Silence that is Defining Our Age and Which is Deafening


Note: Another long opinion piece in the local rag, Lincoln County Leader, June 18, 2025.


First, though, let me explain. The idea is to not just rattle my fellow citizens’ cages, those self-imposed prisons of the mind. It’s my own journalistic and controlled demolition of the grand narratives this country has foisted on a public that has not only become unsuspecting, but absolutely habituated into brands, and consumer dialogue, talks about trips to Costco or Costa Rica, it’s all the same fucking 24 pack of paper towels to throw at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.

This is the spawn of Nazis, the good Germans, the guy who is now a Jew, who was trained by Jew York Jews like Roy Cohen, and alas, his grandkiddos are Jewish, and that daughter is Jewish, and the mafia in his Minyan is composed of Jews and even freak Zionists like RFK, Jr.

It is a sickness that isn’t just one chapter in the DSM-V: Victoria Nuland and cookies, man.

What is the DSM-5?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, often known as the “DSM,” is a reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions and disorders. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is responsible for the writing, editing, reviewing and publishing of this book.

The number “5” attached to the name of the DSM refers to the fifth — and most recent — edition of this book. The DSM-5®’s original release date was in May 2013. The APA released a revised version of the fifth edition in March 2022. That version is known as the DSM-5-TR™, with TR meaning “text revision.”

IMPORTANT: The DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR are medical reference books intended for experts and professionals. The content in these books is very technical, though people who aren’t medical professionals may still find it interesting or educational. However, you shouldn’t use either of these books as a substitute for seeing a trained, qualified mental health or medical provider.

Additionally, the APA also publishes books that supplement the content in the DSM-5-TR. Examples of these supplement publications include the DSM-5 Handbook of Differential Diagnosis and DSM-5 Clinical Cases.

What is the purpose of the DSM-5?

The first step in treating any health condition — physical or mental — is accurately diagnosing the condition. That’s where the DSM-5 comes in. It provides clear, highly detailed definitions of mental health and brain-related conditions. It also provides details and examples of the signs and symptoms of those conditions.

In addition to defining and explaining conditions, the DSM-5 organizes those conditions into groups. That makes it easier for healthcare providers to accurately diagnose conditions and tell them apart from conditions with similar signs and symptoms.]

[Photo: While Ronald Reagan demonized the welfare system as a whole in familiar terms, his ire was largely directed toward single mothers, and his racially coded language was sufficient to make clear his overarching intentions.]

All these things, these economic things, they are on people’s minds. The chaos of Trump and Company, as he plays out his dictator role, all of that is on everyone’s minds.

The cost of being poor is rising. And it’s worse for poor families of color. Great headline.

But the point of my short op-ed was to discuss how the silence of this genocide is deafening, in fact, defeating. This has a deep deep psychological effect on those who might have cared to speak up and who are distressed by the murder incorporated on a mass murder scale that the Jews in Israel are undertaking.

But the empire of chaos is about that chaos, and the chaotic nature of our news cycle with the demented POTUS and his even more demented cabinet members and his MAGA mutt followers, that this imploding diesel belching engine has thrown so many people into discombobulation syndrome.

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.

— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

The poor and forgotten nations of the world can blame their downward spiral on an emerging world order that Samir Amin in this brilliant essay calls the “empire of chaos.” Comprised of the United States, Japan, and Germany, and backed by a weakened USSR and the comprador classes of the third world, this is an empire that will stop at nothing in its campaign to protect and expand its capitalist markets.

The interview with Professor Samir Amin was conducted on 6 May 2018 in Beijing, by Professor Lau Kin Chi and Professor Sit Tsui Jade. Professor Amin criticized monopoly capitalism and the collective imperialism of the Triad (USA, Europe, and Japan). He analyzed the current major challenges to China. He strongly suggested that China should not join financial globalization, but on the contrary, keep capital account and exchange rate under control, as well as maintain collective ownership of land and the small peasantry. These were great weapons against financial globalization. He also discussed the possibilities of building people’s internationalism.

*****
Israel’s culture of genocide is spreading globally. We must build an alternative” by Abed Abou Shhadeh

Even as Israeli violence becomes more visible, politicians like Ben Gvir are welcomed as honoured guests in the US

‘The crimes [in Gaza] are so egregious that are being carried out… The attempt to cover them up and whitewash them is failing’ Since 7 October, western media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza has come under intense scrutiny, particularly for the language and terminology used by many outlets. As a result, the coverage has been accused of bias against Palestinians effectively providing cover for Israel’s war on Gaza. To delve into this, we’re speaking to Assal Rad, an Iranian-American scholar of the modern Middle East and fellow at DAWN, who’s also made it her mission to call out and ‘fix’ misleading headlines. Her widely shared posts earned her the title of ‘headline fixer’, turning this into a trend of its own online.

This is just a watered-down version of what I really would love to write every day, and in a sense have the public square to discuss this silence, this mute echo of silence has pushed a collective insanity and amnesia into the populous.

The Silence is Deafening

The silence is deafening, here on the coast, and throughout most of the land. Forget about large universities and valiant young people and some faculty protesting the genocide which by many expert accounts — not cited in so-called legacy media – are 100,000 murdered civilians.

Targeted assassinations of journalists and of medical workers? And the AMA is silent. The American Medical Association represents hundreds of thousands of doctors.

“We’re seeing hospitals being bombed, ambulances being bombed, doctors and other medical workers being targeted and shot. The AMA is the sixth-largest lobbying organization in the United States, it’s bigger than Boeing. It’s bigger than Lockheed Martin, it’s bigger than the National Rifle Association. They have a tremendous amount of domestic and international influence, and because they carry such weight within the realm of health care, we felt it would be appropriate for them to use their voice in this way.”

Emily Hacker, a member of Healthcare Workers for Palestine, outlined that an important reason healthcare workers want the “AMA and all other healthcare institutions to be involved in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine”  is that “the US can spend billions and billions of dollars on bombs and bullets, but there are 26 million Americans with no health insurance and 150 million Americans rely on Medicare or Medicaid.”

“People can’t afford their insulin, but there’s always money for bombs,” Hackerarticulated.

Cognitive dissonance is more than just interesting as a theory to study. In our daily lives we for the most part are silent. Hands down. No discussion of Israel’s genocide and the United States’ and Britain’s complicity because most Americans are dangerously poorly educated.

Miseducated. Brainwashed.

This is what many call “deep” or “master narratives” – that somehow the settler colonial apartheid state of Israel is the most democratic state in the Middle East. I witnessed genocide silence at the Yachats Commons June 1, where we listened to Oregon Black Pioneers presenter Zachary Stocks discuss the origin of black exclusion laws in our state as well as the pro-slavery mentality that dominated many of the state’s politicians and newspaper editors.

Good stuff he presented to a largely greying and older population. We did get some land acknowledgment from Joanne Kittel, known for her work around the Amanda Trail.

“For those of you who travel through Yachats, I ask you to pay respect to and honor the Alsea, Siuslaw, Lower Umpqua and Coos people who lost their lives as a result of their forced incarceration and mistreatment in Yachats, Waldport and Florence areas. The Amanda Trail that connects Yachats to Cape Perpetua is a spiritual and solemn path that remembers in perpetuity.” Joanne Kittel wrote this as a blurb for a book, Seeking Recognition: The Termination and Restoration of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, 1855-1984 by David R.M. Beck.

No moment of silence for Gaza? It would have been appropriate.

Deep, grand, meta or master narratives are dominant or commonly-shared stories within a society or culture. They are tools for shaping a collective idea or consciousness about who we are as a society, culture or people. Master narratives also limit our understanding of context and historical causes and effects, and they’re deployed to perpetuate stereotypes or dominant ideologies.

Erasing knowledge and context is the coin of the realm now especially with a shallow and sallow-minded president. This POTUS isn’t the be-all and end-all, but for the past five months people have been scrambling to anticipate his administration’s brand of proto- or neo-fascism. Erasing Black Medal of Honor winners or Jackie Robinson’s portrait from various locations and websites is just the tip of the iceberg of flipping around of history.

“A good Indian is a Dead Indian.” Or, from the other POTUS, Teddy Roosevelt: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

And now why is it the genocide of our times is never discussed in public or around dinner tables? Imagine that during World War Two not a word about Nazism or fascism in Italy and Spain. Silence? The price of bacon?

A Jewish Canadian journalist, many reading this might not know, Aaron Mate, says it bluntly about that Grand Narrative of Israel and Judaism: “Everything I Was Taught… Was a Lie” He says the indoctrination of how Israel is this grand democracy and mothership for all Jews starts early.

“This Jewish state commits genocide in our name. It’s a moral obligation to resist this,” Mate states.

It is more than bizarre and Orwellian, this current rampant ideology of “silence is transparency and lies are truth.”

Doctors, nurses, and medics are murdered and hospitals bombed. And no one in mixed company discusses Gaza, the genocide, the dehumanization of Palestinians, which is a dehumanization for us all.

Doctors? I have MDs in my family and I was a pre-med student for a while. Here is an anonymous statement I agree with, from a doctor condemning the American Medical Association’s complicity:

“As a doctor, I am saying loud and clear I am against all war and especially GENOCIDE. AMA and all our medical institutions that have remained silent and practiced unethical silencing, doxxing, firing of peace supporters or those speaking up for Palestine cast a long shadow of shame on our great profession.”

Silence, and the grand narrative just crumbles.

The post A Silence that is Defining Our Age and Which is Deafening first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.