OpEds: Reason for hope (of the real kind)

Vox Populi, Vox Dei

By Peter Pavimentov

Scott Pelley, like his counterparts on other networks, not only a subtle but effective undertaker of truth, but a modern Candide disseminating optimistic views about a rotten status quo.

I feel a bit more optimistic. That people like Assange, Manning and Snowden have a general appeal is already a sign that not all of the population is passively absorbing the conservative propaganda poisons. Thought totalitarianism has been in effect for a very long time causing a bourgeois recidivist society to flourish with many materialist advantages and a full suppression of alternative ideas. But there are/were far too many dissidents who keep disturbing the majority’s peace of mind while they try to keep looking through a glass darkly.

It is that undercurrent of hope through what always has been condemned as madness, i.e. a sane approach to what is/was presented to us that makes it possible to breathe in a poisonous political climate. Self criticism is not built into the education system so it is very hard for the average burgher to understand the lopsidedness of their reasoning and so one cannot really blame the population too much for meekly accepting whatever is being said to them.

And societies that follow a path of destruction of natural and human resources tend to decay through their own success. One can mendaciously boast in sanctimonious tones like our president did when speaking to the ’troops’ on July 4 about greatness and duty and other slop, but this gets to be more and more threadbare and the people know it. In fact this boastfulness is what makes this country so hard on foreigners who bear the brunt of its Real Politik in war and destruction but have to listen to the self congratulating propaganda which was never even equaled in imperialist Britain.

The decay is palpable and is accelerating despite all the Candide-like nonsense spouted over the air waves and sooner or later the empire will go too far and its blatant lies too evident to ignore. Small things have sometimes large results and imperialist actions like the diverting of the president of Bolivia’s plane in Europe because it was thought that he smuggled Snowden out of Moscow is already seen as such a disturbing fact. More to follow without doubt causing a slow attrition of the public assent even tough one cannot foresee at present when that may topple the whole imposed belief system.

Peter Pavimentov is the nom de guerre of a globetrotting sage currently residing in Manhattan island.