The Tyranny of Unspoken Truths

"It's barbarism. I see it coming masqueraded under lawless alliances and predetermined enslavements."--Odysseus Elytis

His quote above demonstrates how History is true prophecy for those paying attention.

Dear Readers,

Following is a blog I wrote on January 19, 2022. I am re-posting it here for your consideration. When originally posted I was writing on a different platform as “The Diligent Spectator.” Through some miraculous mutation I arrived on Substack as “History’s Parrot.”— maybe as we become older we develop fuller more colourful plumage.

I always enjoy diving into archives to see what was happening in times past. It was written just over a month before the start of the Ukraine war—A war now lost by NATO but one that lingers on. The reason being the US/NATO cannot be seen to lose a war to its favorite scapegoat and whipping boy, Russia. It abandoned Afghanistan in 2021 to wage war in Ukraine. Now the US wants to ditch Ukraine as it contemplates war against Iran and China, all the while presiding over the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Words are often coyly ambiguous. We might ask ourselves: who is enslaved to war, as opposed to who is enslaved by war? Likewise, we can examine geopolitical ‘containments’ and question which powers are actually dominant. Who is ascendant, and who is descendant?

The atrocities that have occurred since this blog was written are the grim, unremitting escalations of an empire in its final death throes, incapable of facing the reality of its extinction or showing an ounce of contrition.

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When Greek poet Odysseus Elytis speaks to us of “barbarism”. It is not that of ancient warring tribes cutting down their enemies and leaving behind killing fields of blood soaked bodies. It is not something out of the distant past, he sees it coming, “masqueraded under lawless alliances” and “predetermined enslavements.”

He is updating barbarism for us. Now it is the white collar form of barbarism where straw men sit around slabbed tables, carving up countries, lying to themselves and each other, dodging and weaving, stealing sideways glances and swearing at each other under their breath. They are the summiteers mandated to govern but spending too much time catering to defunct ideologies and the corrupted vested interests they serve.

One truth is that people are so easily deceived when they are fed a steady diet of lies and deceit. Suddenly the lie becomes a convenient truth and inconvenient truths are marginalized and criminalized.

Lies told long enough and often enough become the truth. If you are an empire you construct your own truths and dispense them at your convenience, as the occasion demands. The actual truth is relegated to being conspiracy theory.

The lies become so bold and audacious whole populations go silent afraid to look on, retreating into fear and apathy.

It has been said a lie goes around the word before Truth gets out of bed. In our times lies simply go into orbit left unchallenged.

It has been said all the world's great ideas have been expressed-what remains is to act on them. Yet we are increasingly inert and dead-eyed.

It has been said (Hillary Clinton) every politician should have a public and private position on any given issue. This explains why politicians are reduced to being duplicitous hypocrites. What they do and what they say can be so easily be bought for the sake of the party or lobbyists. Lobbyists so easily mutate into the ruling class.

Leadership by its very nature involves some degree of deception (including large doses of propaganda), left unaccountable the end result is a “lawless alliance”or a “predetermined enslavement.” Tyrannies are an accumulation of compulsive lying and corruptions.

When Elytis refers to a “lawless alliance” it can just as well be NATO as it is the ultimate corruption. It was conceived as a defense alliance in a cold war of dubious legitimacy. Decades later it is magically converted into an imperialist tool of a dying empire. The alliance became lawless, as the headless horseman extorting member states of their wealth, plundering like the barbarians of old while maintaining the loathsome lie that it is an agent of peace.

NATO puts whole countries under siege creeping up to their borders, claiming the magnanimity of peace but practicing the coward's declaration of war. Meanwhile, the straw men are sequestered in their honied hives concocting and defending their subversions with absurd truths; better known as outrageous lies.

When the lie becomes the truth, anarchy prevails. It is the nuclear moral vacuum; before the bombs start dropping.

Elytis raises the indelicate issue of “predetermined enslavements,” Slavery is a wonderfully slippery word. It is a full box of banana peels waiting for the unwary. We congratulate ourselves on having eliminated slavery in the conventional sense when there are so many variants waiting in ambush.

We are slaves to war. So are the war mongers who obsessively promote war, slaves to their psychotic addiction. For a century the paradigm of war and conflict has prevailed, and we can rightly claim 7.8 billion souls are enslaved to the enslavers who compulsively promote war for the most depraved reasons.

To suggest that enslavements are “predetermined”is an ominous truth as this leads us to ideologies as they are devices to predetermine outcomes. As we look at history we get a clear view of how different ideologies play out, we see how empires come and go. History has an obstinance to it we like to alter and ignore; but it has an indomitable persistence.

We can only claim to be free peoples where we are not indentured to the predetermined slavery of perpetual wars driven by perpetual greed and profiteering. War is not only enslavement but also paralyzes progress. It is the parasitism of the profiteers and enslavers.

As the summiteers meet in Europe this week History is in the witness box. The plaintiff, Russia, has scored heavily on the enslavers. The victory for the plaintiff comes in the form of the enslavers retreating into even more absurd catcalls, animosity and absurdities.

The plaintiff made a strong case for its right to exist but the enslavers denied their slow motion war of strangulation- they denied the 29 Judas straw men of NATO and the haggard puppet of Ukraine are no more than stalking horses in hot pursuit of Russia's demise.

They are so used to bullying Latin American countries and getting away with it. It was shock and outrage that humble Russia would challenge its predetermined enslavement at the hand of crude enslavers.

It was so gullible of Europe to allow the enslavers bases and missiles in their homeland thus making them both agents and targets for the enslavers wars- so adept at using proxies to fight its wars and pay its bills- where body bags go uncounted.

Seventy five years later Europe needs to be liberated again- but appears more than willing to be the enslaver's dupe.

Earthlings are at the point where we might consider the epitaph for the planet. In all honesty it will have to speak coherently of our “humiliation” and “disgrace”

Now we ask the enduring question: Where do we go from here? The essential first step is to address the tyranny of unspoken truths that leave us paralyzed. Where we run from the truth it becomes a tyranny unto itself. The straw men have taken over, and “They stand barren, blank and baked.”

Will there be war? Yes, as long as the world community allows itself to be “humiliated” and “disgraced” by the enslavers who monger for war.

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This outstanding video provides deep historical context explaining our times:

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

-- W.H. Auden, 1939

History’s Parrot is read in 38 US states and 55 countries worldwide.