Mum passed away in February this year, her fragile body was broken, twisted and contorted by Parkinson’s; it is a cruel condition, the last 12 months were pretty horrific, but she bore it with grace, acceptance and bravery, just like she had faced life. These last 5 years have been a slow and horrible descent for them both, as health, vitality, and cognition slip away like an ebbing tide but without the hope of renewal and resurgence, well not in this life anyway.
Dad now lives in a well appointed care home, he has a wall sized TV, with all the channels and one of those remote channel changers. It dominates the room, his power assisted reclining chair strategically positioned to claim the view, the flickering TV faces of familiarity rendered in sharp detail by the modern set. It is somewhat of a novelty for me, I threw out my own TV back in 2008 when I reached the point where I could not take the propaganda, the banality and shallowness of it anymore. Not much has changed in the intervening years, I don’t feel like I have missed much, Cash in the Attic is now Bargain hunt, and Songs of Praise now includes travel logs of rural churches and musical accompaniment from guitars and synths, but they are still praising the same gods as before, as far as I can tell.
I usually reach for the channel changer to kill the volume on arrival, I can’t take the TV banter, plus it is so loud it dominates the room and clouds my thoughts. The news is crushing, so disappointing, so awful that we skip away from the announcer as soon as they come on, ready to tell us of the latest bomb blast in Gaza or the next horror in Ukraine. What neither of us can grasp is how the climate is no longer an issue, the desire to forge a path to a better world has been parked carefully at the side of the road whilst we busy ourselves with destroying the older one.
Dad announces that he is not an optimist, the world he worked so hard to be part of has let him down, the politicians are idiots, no, worse than that, we are used to idiots, they are corrupt, self-serving, mendacious charlatans, pretending to care for the people while bowing and scraping for their corporate masters. Tony Blair was terrible he announces, the Iraq war was illegal and a travesty, but he holds a special place of contempt in his heart for Boris Johnson, that buffoon, the source of so many untruths, who was happy to take down the nation if it served his career for a single moment, just how did it get so bad, so quickly?
I try and steer the conversation to the sunnier uplands of safe memories of better times, I try to inject some optimism into the bleak narrative that envelopes us each day. The old must fall away for the new to flood in, I explain, not really believing my own platitudes. I have always been an optimist, yes, it is going to be difficult but we can do this! I studied the climate story, energy, peak oil, international development, the demise of imperialism, the rebirth of imperialism, I studied the regeneration of soils, the empowerment of rural communities through permaculture, I was stupidly still thinking the world wanted to fix its problems.
I went down so many rabbit holes trying to uncover the deeper truths behind these terrible conflicts. These journeys reveal ever darker realities, the ever more horrific intentions of the genocidal Israeli state, the wall of lies and manipulation that surrounds the Ukraine war, NATO’s proxy digging deep into the side of the sleeping bear that is the Russian federation. Wait a moment, how did they ever become our enemies? Russia never did anything other than protect its own interests as far as I can see, and Ukraine has become a tool for the Neo-cons who want to bring war and chaos to ever corner of the world they can reach from the safety of their own homes. This is a madness that must stop.
As I sit sipping hot coffee, instant granules from the local co-op store, watching Dad nod in and out of consciousness, my whole world view is dissolving. I don’t even know who are the goodies anymore, whose side are we on? Or rather who is on our side? The UK government would rather represent the sordid, hateful, vengeful interests of the rabid attack dogs from the US or those genocidal lunatics in Tel Aviv, than protect its own people. They are arresting journalists and suspending the dialogue, anything that threatens the carefully fashioned narrative is to be not just shut down but destroyed. These huge lies, manipulations and secret agendas would crackle and burn in the bright light of day, like a vampire that failed to reach the sanctity of their coffin before dawn. Truth is the first casualty of war, and these wars are based on nothing but lies, manipulations, propaganda and hubris. When one set of lies collapses, we just default to the next set.
Russia is a basket case with an outdated army that will quickly collapse, morphed into Russia is a threat to whole of Europe and if not stopped in Ukraine, will take us all out. The fact that they are already the biggest nation in the world and don’t need millions more of a potentially hostile population within their expanded borders, means the narrative doesn’t make any sense. The war mongers keep flinging mud at the wall to see what ever sticks, then roll with that lie until that in turn comes unstuck.
As I watch the life force slowly drain out of my father, I realise we are watching the life slip away from Western hegemony. The rest of the world overtook us, while we were still fighting illegal wars of imperialism and stabbing each other in the backs over the future of the European Union. China got organised, industrialised and dragged nearly 20% of the global population out of poverty. Russia rebuilt itself from the ashes of the USSR and is beginning to realise the potential it always has had, to be a world leading nation. Iran, despite the sanctions, the assassinations, the constant frictions from Israel and US has also reached a state where it is a global force, India, Brazil, the list goes on, the countries of the South are claiming their rightful place at the helm of global trade and the US and G7 allies simply cannot process what they are seeing. The BRICS alliance is running rings around the tired old elites of the last century, we have ossified, they have triumphed.
Ibrahim Traore, there in Burkina Faso represents a new generation of leaders, determined and fearless to face off their colonial masters and to form alliances, trade blocks and treaties of their own. I read there have so far been 17 unsuccessful coup attempts against the leader, as he cuts off France from the gold and uranium they built their imperial economy on. US bases established there to fend off terrorists, seemed only to become the source of conflict, all of this is rapidly changing, as these assets are seized, and the foreign interlopers invited to leave.
The United Nations, with its security council vetoes held by the Western nations is no longer seen as the great arbitrator of disputes, but the bastion of entrenched privilege. Things are moving fast, you need to pay attention to keep up. The rest of the world is running rings around the West, with our entrenched power, our vanity and certainty of hegemony we can’t even process what it is that is happening to us, there is suddenly a war to be fought on every front, we impose economic sanctions so severe that we are shrinking our own economy and accelerating our own demise, whilst still convincing ourselves we hold the winning hand.
Capitalism has begun to parasitize itself. There are no new markets left for it to dominate, the rest of the world is already either sucked dry on becoming so wary of further interference it is fending off our invitations. As Dad faces his last days he can be grateful of the financial security afforded him by the rising economy he was a part of. Had he not been a homeowner, they he would not be able to afford the care he is now receiving. All his hard work over so many decades is what is paying for the care, the food, the heat, the TV, and essentially the care team who are there at his beck and call, to meet his every need.
I don’t know who will be there for our generation, those who didn’t ride that economic wave, and we now face an uncertain future, thanks in part by our collective inabilities to face the demons of our age, GDP growth and the ecological destruction that comes in its path. A world of division and fear, exacerbated by the widening gulf in wealth and power between the North and South, the rich and poor and the power of the rich to manipulate the poor to do their bidding, all of this must end, for any of us to have a meaningful future.
The old world is busy dying, let us hope there is a new one busy being born at the same time.
I see Dad, I see your vision and I see it all slipping away. Your words are crafted perfectly around your observations and life as we know it; perfect images leap from the screen through your words even as we try to hold on to the vestiges of any hope at all. Thank you.
Excelente visiòn de como Occidente mata y se suicida al mismo tiempo...., no podemos esperar nada de polìticos, gobiernos, poderes judiciales, corporaciones mediàticas y empresariales, y demàs grandes organizaciones convencionales, que no quieren cambiar la Historia....
Hay que recrear colectivamente nuevas Herramientas e Iniciativas Sociales!
Proponemos PRIMMAR!..... primmar.ar