At war with ourselves
Living on the razor’s edge as we have been now for several years takes its toll on our ability to discern right from wrong, truth from lies.
Much like the fear-driven pandemic we were all subject to without room for nuance or debate, public support for war isn’t possible without the drumbeat of highly controlled and orchestrated propaganda fed through the corporate media that profits from it.
And where there is propaganda, there is necessarily a restriction of free speech, lest some child point out the Emperor has no clothes.
I arrived in Brussels nearly 32 years ago in the heyday of the European project. As a graduate of International Relations it was a fascinating time and place in which to find myself.
Sure, the Americans were busy flexing in their dubious war in the Gulf ( the first one, which was just one of the dozens that have fed the voracious appetite of the Military Industry beast we were warned about after the Second World War – the last one for which the US Congress was bothered to be asked for a formal declaration of war, despite a Constitution requiring it in that democracy-loving land).
But still there was a fresh hope of a new world in those days. When I worked at the 16-member NATO Parliamentary Assembly in the early 90s, we were welcoming in Eastern European and former Soviet countries to a Partnership for Peace Talk of a peace dividend in an era without the spectre of war – and nuclear war in particular – conjured up what we now know were fantasies of living in harmony with people around the world with money freed up for education and healthcare and food for the hungry.
But it quickly turned out that was never the true desire of the Americans, without whom NATO wouldn’t function, despite repeating lofty-sounding words like “freedom” and “democracy” and “self-determination” everywhere they go (and they do go EVERYWHERE, but we must never use words like “Imperialist” – that would be churlish).
So, despite early pledges to Russia – which I heard with my own ears at conferences in Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo (that’s where I am in the photo, checking out the military vehicles of the UN Peacekeeping Forces in May, 1993), and Brussels – that NATO would never expand to its borders, the hawks that run things in the US regardless of who sits in the Oval Office couldn’t imagine a world without conflict. How would they ever profit from a peaceful world?!
Quickly, the US and it’s allies moved into Russia and the CIS to scavenge the remains (and rich resources) of the Soviet Empire under the guise of “assistance”. USAID (which we used to ironically but not incorrectly call USCIAID when I was working with those same countries in the European Commission) was everywhere. Soft power is the glove of the Iron Fist beneath it.
Oligarchs were created almost overnight under the compliant US puppet Boris Yeltsin, bolstered by the deft guidance of American and European consultants from McKinsey et al. who (also) enriched themselves by showing the lowly ex-Soviets how to really run a country and make it appear as a capitalist-loving democracy to boot, to keep the (US-dominated) World Bank happy.
By the time Yeltsin-anointed (and Clinton-approved) Putin arrived on the scene, it was clear that the neo-colonial West was not the honest broker it so skilfully pretended to be.
When the deeply patriotic Putin began to want to take back control of his country’s resources and destiny, the once-lauded dynamic new leader began to be maligned by the propaganda machine. He wasn’t playing by the rules! Outrageous behaviour in a unipolar world.
Is Putin a Saint? Certainly not. And Western leaders aren’t either. They just have better PR and tend to export their violence and criminality so it’s buried deeper in the news cycle. Plus, the veneer of democracy easily hides many sins.
So we have been living for the past two decades with the overriding message of Putin: Bad – Western Powers: Good. Some of you have been raised in this messaging and have never known anything else. And for the past decade, we’ve been primed for war with China in the same way.
Notice how we have been trained by the slick and subtle propaganda machine to equate Russia with a despised Putin, just as we were told to do with Saddam, or Gaddafi, or Assad, or whatever catchy mononym the media is told to use. It’s so much easier when we can put a face to our hatred. Hating 143 million people makes no sense. How could it? Never mind. There’s no time to think, because we have to go to war. Again.
Our current situation is far too complex for a soundbite, so most people find it easier to believe what they’re told: Russia invaded an innocent country entirely unprovoked. Russia: Bad. Ukraine: Good.
I can’t bear to watch corporate news knowing the back story of the past three decades – which also includes, inter alia, US/NATO military training of troops in non-NATO Ukraine for over 15 years, US interference since at least 2013 in a democratically-elected but Russian-leaning Ukrainian government (God forbid countries should want to make ties with their next door neighbours!), contributing to the civil war in which Western-trained and equipped Ukrainian government forces killed thousands of civilians, and a blithe disregard for the corruption and rightwing tendencies of their protégés.
Yet I know mainstream media has done their job well because there are people, Americans, especially – who are actually clamouring for nuclear war with Russia, and most disturbingly amongst the political classes directly involved in this situation. I never imagined I would see such day, but now I wonder what else is left to be turned on its head after the experience of recent years.
With Ukrainian flags in windows and on worthy social media images, one wonders where the Syrian, or Somali, or Yemeni, or Ethiopian, or Palestinian flags are. (The list is not exhaustive, and the casualties are far worse than in Ukraine.) Ah, but the media has also trained us not to care about people who don’t look like us. Never mind. Slava Ukraini! Or whatever we’re supposed to say now.
In a world where only Bhutan and Lichtenstein have been untouched by American “help”, propaganda, disinformation, obfuscation and plain old lies dominate the globe. (Actually, Bhutan borders China, so it probably just leaves Lichtenstein.)
Amidst the current destruction, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s experience echoes in my mind every day. After each of the three times US bombs destroyed his village, Hué, during what Vietnamese call the War of American Aggression, Thây and other survivors rebuilt it. There is no other way for those living in the awareness of impermanence and what Thây called “Interbeing”.
This destruction prompted his most poignant poem, written after hearing a US General famously say of nearby Ben Tré, “We had to destroy the town in order to save it” (a truly masterful use of Doublespeak).
It’s called For Warmth
I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm: two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my soul from leaving me in anger.
What would I do without my beloved teacher?! I would most likely have been driven mad by now. I breathe with him as I hold my face in my own two hands every day, keeping my loneliness warm.
Our humanity can only be touched when we realise our interdependence. All else – just like the blue & yellow flags – is just hypocrisy. For sanity’s sake we must remember that notions of good and bad, right and wrong, are slippery and unreliable.
Wanting one person to suffer directly causes our own suffering. There are no exceptions to this Truth. This perpetual cycle of hatred and retribution is a reflection of the depths of human ignorance. We are capable of destroying ourselves and our planet with this thinking, this total reliance on our unreliable mind.
Beyond the mind and its thoughts is pure realisation, awareness. In this spaciousness we can find ourselves and each other once again. This is “heaven”, available to us here and now. We’ve had enough of hell.
This is what Rumi tries to tell us in this over-shared and under-comprehended poem:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.
With much love and light as always,
Susan