DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD REDUCED TO BLACK & WHITE?
When the confines of what you can say & who you can support are being regulated by states that say they want to spread freedom & democracy around the world, what does that tell you about them?
You can see how it is going. The biggest liars we are aware of want to tell us what is a right opinion and what is a wrong one. They want to teach us that there is only one way of looking at things, that is their “right way”. If you disagree then you are automatically wrong and, quite likely bad. They wish to stipulate what is good and what is bad and if you don’t agree with what they say then there will be consequences. Who are these people who I am saying are the biggest liars we know of. Why our politicians of course.
The long well-known history of political malpractice is hardly a secret. Arguably, apart from the possible exception of insurance (and, in earlier times, snake oil) salesmen politicians have the worst rep concerning being, shall we say, economical with the truth? But take a look at the UK for a gaze into the shape of things to come. Not content with the already extremely prevalent cancel culture regarding impermissible views, you can now get extradited to your home country from the UK if you happen to have a contrary opinion to the current state narrative.
You will have observed the trend in recent years, even decades where not having the “right” point of view can get you into a helluva lot of trouble. Increasingly you have had to watch what you say. It started around three decades ago with certain movements that demanded you be politically correct, not laugh at certain jokes, not make certain remarks and not be too traditional in your actions, especially where women were concerned. Until men got used to the new rules there was a lot of confusion and awkwardness. After this period a sizeable proportion of men moved ever closely to being less obviously manly.
Never before had amorphous ‘society’ had more impact on the individual. We began watching ourselves more closely after being encouraged to be self-critical. Perhaps you will feel this introversion was healthy and that it was not before time that some men changed their attitude toward women and started to not be as boorish, as chauvinistic or abusive. You would have a point. However, the process of society bearing down on the individual to mold him or her to conform rather than be free to be themselves and speak for themselves continued inexorably down recent decades. Until we finally reached our current, supposedly ‘woke’ age where any number of pitfalls await the unwary.
The ‘You must nots’ have increased exponentially since the Sixties. Few reading this will be old enough to remember that time of great license where ‘letting it all hang out’ was ‘in’ and being a rebel or anti-hero was also very much the in way to be. You dressed as you liked and told it ‘as it was’. You could be whoever you wanted to be and feel free to speak your mind without fear or favor. Following the rules, wearing the ‘right’ kind of accepted and acceptable clothes, doing the ‘right’ thing at all times and obeying authority was for the ‘straights’ the names given to conformists of that time. We relished our freedom to live and think freely, to have opinions totally without fear of them getting us into trouble.
Now, if you think something that’s different to the state-sanctified view and deign to express your views on that subject it could be said you are looking for trouble. On the subjects of Russia and Ukraine for example. There is only one acceptable view to have on Russia according to the politicians of Westminster, Washington or Brussels. It is composed of various shades of black, most of them very black indeed. And on Ukraine there is another that Westminster, Washington and Brussels insist must be white. This holds true even when the evidence before your eyes contradicts these stipulations. Nothing good Russia does can be acknowledged, approved, acknowledged or spoken of. Regarding Ukraine, nothing it does that is bad can be acknowledged, disapproved of, acknowledged or spoken of.
Of course it is not only western politicians who provide the schemata for what is good (Ukraine) and what is bad (Russia). As you will surely have observed, western mass media provides this same schemata of mandatory attitudes, statements and “truths”. This is ‘the way it is’, these are the facts. Anything else is Russian propaganda, even if you have never come across ‘Russian propaganda’ what you are saying is still Russian propaganda or a Russian propaganda talking point. It is not okay to have an opinion on that. There is a ‘truth’ as spoken by those politicians who we know lie so much more often than they are capable of expressing a simple fact. Though geopolitical issues are ALWAYS riven by complications and all kinds of nuanced factors… for the politicians and mass media it can all be reduced to stark black and white, good on this side, evil on the other.