The “West”, meaning the USA and their coterie of client states are currently engaged in two wars, in Ukraine and in the Middle EAst.
Most of us who live in US client states in Europe were knocked out of our political lethargy when we learnt that Europe was at war again “for the first time since WWII” (forgetting that we – NATO – bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999, effectively destroying Yugoslavia).
We have also recently witnessed unimaginable horrors in the Middle East, starting on October 7, 2023. We were at first told that Israeli babies had been beheaded, after which we witnessed Israeli retaliation to a degree that nobody could deny was disproportionate. I know for a fact that many of us have often wept over the news on Aljazeera.
Now, we have gotten used to the idea that we might well be on our way into a new world war, in which “tactical” nuclear weapons will most likely be used. We have gotten used to the idea that a ferocious attempt is being made to exterminate the Palestinian people, and we see that those who rule the countries we live in are “aiding and abetting” Israel’s viscious crimes in a number of ways.
We recognise that there is absolutely nothing “we”, citizens of the client states, can do about either of these situations within the framework of “Democracy” as it has been defined for us. Voting for the “left” or the “right” makes no difference, demonstrations and protests lead nowhere but to a few arrests and business as usual. So we are for the most part silent.
Cynics may tell you that the reason we are silent is that the entertainment value of the two wars has flagged.
My view is different: Lethargy is not a sign of boredom but of impotence. I believe that “democracy” is no more than a buzzword used for propaganda purposes in “the West”, to emphasise the distance between “us” and “them”. It is not a reality. At least not in Europe or the USA.
For the umpteenth time, I urge you to read 1984 by George Orwell.
***
For me, the Eureka moment came in the wake of a very slow process. Anyone who has followed what I have written here since 2008 will see that I have come a long and disheartening way.
I have been a slow learner, alas. I was lazy in school, and had mediocre marks. I was sincerely polite to my teachers, some of whom I liked very much, and I never ever considered rebellion of any kind. As I grew older I became somewhat more academically competitive, though never to the point of wanting to break the sound barrier.
In 1986, when US bullies took it into their heads to bomb Libya – just like that – I was, however, outraged, shocked beyond words. I had somehow missed the part in our curriculum according to which the USA may bomb whoever / whatever / whenever it wants to. I was milking the cows, I remember, and I heard the news on the radio in the cow shed. There was no interrupting the routine with the cows and I had to go on milking them in spite of my rage, so I actually composed almost the only poem I ever made, and a melody too, which I hissed again and again until my chores were done.
At the time, I was a Newsweek subscriber, and I considered myself a well-informed person. But as I now know, the US press is the least recommended bulwark against ignorance. At any rate, studies, work, kids, etc. caught up with me, and then Clinton took over, “at last”.
Everybody knew, at the time, that the Republicans were the ones who wanted to ban trade unions, bomb communists to kingdom come, and kill blacks. So I knew that the Republicans were “bad”. Bear in mind that designating somebody as “bad” tends to mean there must be a “good guy”.
None of us were taught in school to fiercely distrust “bad guy / good guy” narratives. (They still don’t teach that, not in school and certainly not in the media.) Above all, we were none of us taught to be wary of media framing.
Only much, much later, not least thanks to a wonderful US documentary – Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job – did I realise that Clinton was much to blame for the terrible 2007-2008 financial crisis that rocked the world. Yes, the entire world suffered heavily. And Clinton was behind the bombing of Yugoslavia, too, in Europe, in 1999.
But Clinton played a decent trumpet! And he had a disarming smile. I am guilty as charged: I found him charming. I found Obama charming, too. Charm has been the Democratic party’s ticket to the White House. We blamed the Republican Party for all that was wrong in the USA. We? I! I was blind. I believed in good guys versus bad guys.
Mind you, already in 2014, I read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, all of It! A very polite, quietly precise firebomb of a book. I even read the sequel Capital and Ideology (2020). I should have seen the full picture then. Still, the pieces to the puzzle didn’t quite fall into place until the conjunction of the Ukraine war and the Gaza war. What then became more than obvious was:
Rule of Law is b-s.!
Meanwhile, the 12-year political imprisonment of Assange (without a trial!) while the press tirelessly peddled US propaganda and suppressed dissident views, has demonstrated that
Freedom of the press in the West is b-s.
Democracy, however, is not b-s, but truly something worth fighting for. What we have here and now, though is not Democracy; it’s a fraud. Counting pieces of paper in a ballot box every four years is a fairly expensive way of masking that citizens of Western countries have no say whatsoever about what happens to their society.
We, the defrauded citizens want to believe we are being governed for our own good, with wisdom. Had I been a psychodynamic therapist, I would have posited that we – all human adults – long for the continued guidance of a loving parent. Alas, our “parents” do not have our interests at heart but their own. The continued guidance – be it Republican or “Dem”, be it Labour or Tory – serves the single purpose of perpetuating, one way or another, status quo, the rule and continued enrichment of the oligarchy.