HISTORY RHYMES

A SAGA OF 3rd rate propaganda masquerading as 3rd rate “journalism”. My RESPONSE to THE ABJECT, (AND FRANKLY UNBELIEVABLE) STUPIDITY, OF THE ARTICLES and tweets WRITTEN about me BY CHRISTINA WILKIE, pretend “journalist”, MEDIA STOOGE, and BUFFOON.

SOMEHOW, I DON”T SEE A PULITZER IN HER FUTURE ANY TIME SOON…(hey that rhymes too!)

UPDATE DECEMBER 2020:

While Christina Wilkie BLOCKED ME ON TWITTER not once but twice (what courage!), and NEVER responded to my statements and inquiries calling out her lies, and challenging her on what she had written, and said on Rachel Maddow’s TV show about me, THIS MONTH I HAVE HAD ALL OF MY TWITTER ACCOUNTS SUSPENDED. I had tweeted at her from two of those accounts. Why I should have accounts dedicated to my Art and Music (those are called “talents”, a word Wilkie wouldn’t understand), also suspended, says much MORE about TWITTER than it does about me.

Incidentally, one account @emptycitysquare, had been CONTINUOUSLY active since 2016, a full two years before she stated I “VANISHED”. I suppose Wilkie had conveniently overlooked that particular account during her “deep research” on me. Who is she fooling? Certainly not me. As I said, buffoon.

Here’s my original reponse from June 2020. Please note, the album I speak about now has a name. See here: “The Disappearing Architect”.

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A little over two years ago, a rather uninspired, would-be “journalist” who I’d never heard of named Christina Wilkie, thought she had a “scoop” on me simply because I chose not to respond to her inane, loaded, and frankly amateurish questions.

In June of 2018, she published two articles on me on CNBC’s website and tweeted away – touting her “scoop” for all the world to see and marvel at. You see, around the same time she had tried to contact me (in mid-April of 2018), I took down my Architecture firm’s (JFA’s) social media and website when I was asked to do so by my new employers, with whom I had just come to an agreement for employment. The timing of those two completely separate and unrelated events, may have been unfortunate, but far worse, was exploited by Wilkie in a rather pathetic attempt at self-aggrandizement, so as to create a news story where there was none. Wilkie dogeddly tried to question me, including even texting my mobile phone:

In her tweets Wilkie claimed I “disappeared” and went “MIA” simply because I chose not to respond to her and took my company’s social media down around the same time. In other words Wilkie was trying to falsely claim that somehow her inquiry had forced me to “disappear” or at least “lower my profile”.

Soon after her articles came out in early June of 2018, Wilkie appeared on another somewhat better known would-be “journalist”’s show, “The Rachel Maddow Show”, as the host, Maddow – dripping as usual with her own characteristically unique brand of overbearing, annoying, and frankly, repugnant sanctimony – gleefully joined Wilkie in slandering and defaming me, and positing absurd conspiratorial theories on my “disappearance”, as well as taking it a step further in calling me a “cockroach who scattered when the lights came on”, again, simply because I chose not to speak to either one of these nobodies and go about my business.

Imagine that…

Call me cruel, but I laughed at this segment when I saw it. I’ll admit perhaps I have a character flaw, perhaps a bit of Schadenfreude, as the Germans call it – but I just relished the cringe-worthy exhibition of two clearly insecure people, far out of their depth, attempting to wear the mantle of something much greater than themselves, in this case, “moral superiority”.

In any case, you can google my name and read Wilkie’s high-school caliber articles on CNBC. In fact let me save you the trouble, see here:

POLITICS: Meet the New York architect who was a key figure in Donald Trump’s deals and connections in Eastern Europe

AND here:

The work of a New York architect reveals a lot about real estate in Eastern Europe — where Donald Trump and Paul Manafort built ties to oligarchs.

Read Wilkie’s self-important and virtuous tweets (too many to list here). Although these two in particular are worth looking at. The second one basically contradicts the first (according to Wilkie I am MIA in the first tweet, but in the second which references the first, she says she has no reason to doubt I joined a firm. Sheer stupidity or just good old dishonesty? Maybe both. You decide).:

Watch the video of Wilkie’s awkward and stilted appearance on Maddow’s show and Maddow’s “oh-so-serious, earnest and grave” commentary sprinkled with prime-time sarcasm, HERE and HERE. It’s all rather entertaining, but also quite sad.

Needless to say this “scoop”, much like both of their inconsequential careers, has resulted in NOTHING (for the record, I WAS NEVER CONTACTED BY ANY INVESTIGATION, OR ANY GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR US GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES OF ANY KIND). If I “drew Mueller’s eye” as Wilkie stated in the laughable tweet above, he certainly didn’t tell me. The “scoop”did inspire ME, however, to write an album about my experiences dealing with the fallout of targeted third rate propaganda masquerading as journalism.

You see, I may be an Architect, but I happen to be more. I don’t just design buildings. I also DRAW AND PAINT.

And in fact, I also write and record music. I suppose people like Wilkie and Maddow, who are largely two dimensional media cut outs, and who sadly, haven’t been blessed with multiple talents (or any talent for that matter, as far as I can see), couldn’t possibly reconcile or understand how a person such as myself could be more than one thing – in my case also a musician, and more importantly, a creative force. And the funniest thing is, that unlike them, I don’t seek recognition or fame or notoriety. I’m in this purely for my own personal growth and fulfillment. Another concept that is probably foreign to both of them. No matter. I mean in the end, who cares what they think? Certainly not me… “And I don’t even care, no I don’t agonize…”

In any case, I give you the first fruits of that exercise, “HISTORY RHYMES”

The as of yet unnamed album that this song will come from, will be dedicated, in part, to these two oblivious and smug buffoons. Being manipulated caricatures by forces far greater than themselves, they seem sadly and pathetically unaware, in their bubble of bloated self-importance and corporate sponsorship, of what laughing stocks they really are, as they both (and many others like them in fact), continue to try to hopelessly, nay, desperately, grasp at relevancy in the name of some political cause or other, while drowning in a vast and ever growing sea of mediocrity. While Wilkie’s fictitious “scoop” got her on Maddow’s show not once, but twice, (Wilkie could’ve at least sent me a fruit basket), it seems some of the pseudo-intellectuals in our sacrosanct media haven’t yet realized that feigned moral outrage is SO 2016…

What a sad age we live in, don’t you think? The fact that these idiots have jobs, that they are probably paid well, and that they are even – and unbelievably – taken somewhat seriously (at least in some quarters), is a testament to what is still possible in a country like the United States. “What a country!” as Don King would say. But I digress…

Consider this question – How stupid do these poseurs think, YOU, the public really are? Well, as long as you’re willing to unconditionally believe them and take what they say at face value or worse yet, keep watching their shows, or reading their articles and tweets, or buying their sponsor’s products, QUITE stupid I’d say…and gullible.

But beyond these two particular media stooges, and far more importantly, I hope “History Rhymes” brings awareness to ALL the propaganda masquerading as journalism everywhere – on the left and the right. Does any objectivity remain in our modern media, or is everything thrown at us just an opinion, an editorial, or in the worst case, such as was mine, targeted propaganda deceptively cloaked as factual information for the masses to readily consume? I personally have come to the point where I question it all, and have lost all belief in an objective media.

As I consider myself a well-read student of history, I try and see (to borrow a phrase attributed to Mark Twain), where ‘history rhymes’…and when, in the rare moment, I hear about an event in the news and see resonance and actually care about it (which I might add, is less and less these days, but that’s another conversation altogether), and / or see a similarity with something significant from the past, I ask myself, “cui bono?” and where does history rhyme? And when I can recognize a clear analogy, I consider that maybe, just MAYBE, that observation will get me a little closer to objective truth. I can tell you this – frauds and self proclaimed arbiters of virtue like Wilkie and Maddow certainly won’t. They’ve managed to earn a paycheck by trafficking in slander and lies with the goal of forcing an agenda down your throat and into your minds. And saddest of all – I’ve actually come to think that they themselves may occasionally BELIEVE some of the disingenuous crap they’re slinging at you. “Useful Idiots” indeed (to borrow a term of art from the disinformation bureaus of the intelligence services that coined the term in the first place).

This new album is slated for release at the end of 2020. Hopefully sooner.

In the meantime, please listen, share, and consider what is being said in this song. I’m past the point of trying to “correct the record” regarding myself. It’s an exercise in futility. Much like trying to teach calculus to an imbecile (or worse yet, one of Wilkie or Maddow’s twitter followers)– it would result in nothing but cost – both money and more preciously and importantly, my time. I’d much rather spend some of my creative energy showing that these fools and others like them, who really have nothing but utter loathing and contempt for their audiences (hey, they wouldn’t be chronically lying if they didn’t), actually don’t realize that YOU are all just a bit SMARTER than they and their nefarious “sponsors” (both corporate and otherwise), would believe.

And so my friends, and also to YOU, Maddow and Wilkie, enjoy the catchy musical vitriol. And if you tire of it, no need to worry. Because there is much, MUCH more coming…of that I can assure you.

John “Yanni” Fotiadis
June 2020

UPDATED DECEMBER 2020. By the way, the album now has a name.
See here: “The Disappearing Architect”.