The Devolutionary Spin Cycle Killing the West

Governments suffer spin cycle paralysis when vested interests prevail and democratic systems are broken.

Peoples of the West are hostage to a devolutionary spin cycle of too many wars, too many ruinous ideologies. and incompetent governance.

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In the year of our unholy lordliness—1939—W. H. Auden penned one of the world’s most enduring elegies, In Memory of W. B. Yeats, in tribute to his friend and fellow poet. The poem is celebrated not only for its lyrical beauty but also for the dramatic shift in tone and content in Part III, where Auden confronts the “nightmare of the dark.” Europe stood on the precipice of yet another world war, and the poem’s final six stanzas resonate with a haunting urgency mirroring our historical moment. The stanzas read:

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

The six stanzas are haunting, as they succinctly capture the gravity of the situation at that time.They read as a petition—Let the healing fountain start. The final line, Teach the free man how to praise, carries an urgent appeal, especially in light of the looming threat of another world war. Auden calls on his readers to praise and uphold the values and ideals by which we must live: to honestly seek and live by the truths defining our existence.

Eighty-six years later, Auden’s words bite even deeper. We find ourselves in the midst of a third world war, where the costs and consequences are more momentous than ever. Now, his lines are tinged with shame and failure—for we have still not learned to praise the virtues and great legacies essential to our survival. Instead, we have cycled back to that earlier existence: unhearing, unheard, and unchanged.

We so arrogantly think we can defile with impunity the immutable cycles of history. We indulge the flawed notions that we can walk on water and endlessly toy with the fires and fortunes once reserved for the gods. We destroy the processes and integrities of government and democracy and expect them to be there when they are most urgently needed—the here and now.

Sound decision making can only come about through processes where dialogues are open, democratic and true freedom of speech prevails. We are not allowed to criminalize civility or diplomacy.

These last ten days I have been following the pundits and analysts– the dissident truth tellers who are our “interim government” for the time being— as the polity runs from their obligations, their responsibilities, counting their cash and calculating their next spin and treachery. The air waves abound with the speculation, the pros and cons, of peace in Ukraine yet there is no agreement forthcoming.

Of course, the greatest impediment is that the empire cannot agree to Russia’s rightful conditions for a peace agreement as they cannot be seen to lose a war to their lowly scapegoat and whipping boy of too many decades. Just as they have lost so many other wars and squandered trillions in their other imperialist wars. They dare not speak of the lives lost and the wreck and ruin.

Russia in this instance, just happens to be right. It is the wronged party at great cost to itself, and the Ukraine peoples. Their must be an historic and conclusive agreement that all parties honor. NATO cannot be allowed to shirk its role as the belligerent that provoked this war as just one more chapter in its naked imperialist agenda.

Peace is at hand for those willing to “praise” the truth. The pundits, the analysts, the dissidents speak truth to power yet they go unheard.

Washington has become a chatter-clatter washing machine stuck on spin cycle. The spin is endless and essential decisions are not being made. POTUS claims to be emperor of planet earth when he is hostage to the vested interests controlling him, where the system is so fractured, factionalized and beggared so-called deliberation is political paralysis.

How did this come about? We are right back to where we were eighty-six years ago— an 86 year spin cycle.

We are in the corporatist capitalist spin cycle where too many out of control ideologies have been adopted with no regard for social impacts thoroughly denigrating any semblance of effective and harmonious governance.

To “praise the truth” is to live by the history and truths of our times. Truths we cannot afford to see corrupted or forgotten. We must resist the spin, the silence, and the seduction of false prophets.

We can ill-afford to be static regressive societies in a world that is always in dynamic change, where there are urgent challenges to be addressed— and where the devil will take the hindmost.

Forever wars and devolutionary spin cycles are no longer affordable pathologies.

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"My dear soul, flee from the worthless, stay close only to those with a pure heart. Like attracts like. A crow will lead you to the graveyard, a parrot to a lump of sugar." ~ Rumi