Wailing walls of the West : A photo essay
Walls have transformed from monuments to bygone eras into post modern symbols of failure, retreating into the medieval barbarism of ages past.
Together we must uncover the lessons of history and critically examine the ideologies that have shaped our world. Together, we must confront the complexities of geopolitics and society, striving to understand their interconnected impact. By engaging with these challenges thoughtfully and collaboratively, we can work toward a more informed, equitable, and sustainable future.
There are many ways of seeing the world maps and charts telling us so much. But we can also see the globe in terms of the historic ruins and monuments and architecture others civilizations have left behind. The world can be seen as a giant grave yard where new cultures, countries and empires are super imposed on the the global landscape with the age old question of … what foot print do we leave behind from our time? How will our culture be remembered? Were we worthy custodians or just mindless marauders passing through?
We have reached a turning point in world history, where how well we manage our affairs could lead to self-annihilation. In our short tenure on this planet, Homo sapiens have become the greatest threat to its continued existence.
There is no shortage of momentous events in world history influencing later times; but the most traumatic and ominous for humankind was the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, now almost three hundred years old. The benefits have been astounding and will continue to be so as technology races a way ahead of our ability to manage our affairs holistically and effectively.
The now shattered collective West has been obsessed with the material benefits of the industrial age, the power, privilege, obscene wealth, and despotism. Under the agency of endless wars, predatory capitalism there has been a flagrant disregard for social and societal consequences. Voracious acquisitiveness has murdered any regard for consequences, and human values and social structures are erased accordingly.
Where The Great Wall of China exists today as a tourist attraction its purpose was to protect the provinces of China from invading Mongols to the west and north. Its existence is bold testimony to how much the world has changed, how changeable the world is, and how brief is our fifteen minutes of fame on the time line of world history. The wall’s thirteen thousand miles in length is commensurate with China being the world’s oldest continuous civilization.
Like many other world heritage sites, the Great Wall of China captivates millions of modern tourists with the monumental magnificence of former cultures. Yet, are we merely tourist voyeurs from supercilious, propagandist societies—indulging in spectacle as temporary refugees from the frenzied confines of our walled-off world?
Closer to home we have the wailing walls of the West where tourists also snap millions of pictures documenting the moral deprivation. Box car and bridge graffiti from North America has now become a global art form. A celebration of the profane bigotry and racism of the West. Where leaders become cartoon characters with their hideous biographies so adroitly captioned.
The transgressions and atrocities of the world are seen but go unseen as they are propagandized out of existence, leaders that should act are bought and paid for. International law is held in contempt by governments populated with thugs and opportunists indulging in power and privilege, totally unqualified for the offices they hold.
Since when did building wailing walls become a resolution of complex social problems and self-inflicted failures. Building the Great Wall of China had real purpose in its time. The wailing walls of the West are the end result of historic ignorance, political negligence and atrocious barbarity. Everything sacred, becomes profane. They are the scarred grotesque dilapidations of civility and decency.
Wailing walls come in too many shapes and sizes. Vineyards are plowed under. Shaded bowers become bomb craters. Pylons of cold grey concrete are children’s disenchanted playground. They are in the queue for the cold grey tombs created by the next bombing run. The butcher’s block drips with blood as the dead-eyed butcher knows no remorse serving his robotic efficacy.
But what of the children? They are no more than cannon fodder for dead souls walking, the hollow men in their bloody red ties and scorched white shirts suffering their vacancy.
These wailing walls are the lament for sociocide and genocide and their simultaneity.
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961and torn down in1989. It divided Soviet controlled East Germany from US/NATO controlled West Germany. It was part of the Iron Curtain partitioning the USSR from the West and the alleged NATO “defense” alliance. The destruction of the Berlin wall was the symbolic end of the Iron Curtain, but it continued as a virtual wall as the remaindered Russia was retained as the empire’s essential scapegoat and nemesis to justify endless militarism and forever wars. With the downing of the curtain NATO was quick to scoop up Warsaw Pact nations pushing up to Russia’s border creating the tensions that would result in the Ukraine War of 2022, provoked by NATO as a proxy to weaken and destroy Russia— a war since lost by NATO. It is left as a smoldering end as Washington has walked away from its “ 24 hr” quick fix, in part because of too many wars elsewhere and preoccupied by its catastrophic trade war on the world.
Only now is it so openly perverse to admit the war was Washington’s proxy war intended to destroy Russia. Proxy wars are the most contemptible of wars as they are fought at the expense of the Ukraine proxy where over a million souls have died and millions of refugees scattered asunder, never to go home again. This is the same war for which the delirious incumbent of the White House wants “his” money back and freedom to expropriate the country’s resources.
The Wall, though virtual, is more menacing than ever as East/West relations are more ominous than ever and Western leadership is beyond hope in dealing with the crisis. It is fractured, incompetent and refusing to address the urgent issues of a rapidly changing world order. This is what happens when colonial minded politicians are bought and paid for stooges serving the vested interests and ruinous ideologies controlling them.
The Iron Curtain is now a virtual wailing wall that now straddles the globe from pole to pole. It was made and minded by the intransigent and delusional West as it desperately plays the victim and attempts to rewrite history in its favor. It is the revanchist West trying to reclaim a dying empire that eluded its grasp thirty years ago. Now it is the spiteful agent of chaos fighting wars it cannot win to its final exhaustion.
There was a time when Canadians and Americans alike had bragging rights to the world’s longest undefended border. But now no more. It too has been re-rendered as a virtual wailing wall of insane tariffs, political acrimony and bestial insanity. The partnership has been shattered, the divorce is headed for the courts.
Thirty some years ago the expansive Empire was laying the ground work for world domination with the PNAC, the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Full Spectrum Dominance, the Bush Doctrine, Brzezinski’s’ Grand Chessboard. It was enslaved to the ecstasy of triumphalism following the collapse of the USSR.
Then came the Ukraine proxy war, one war too many, where war is also revelation. The rot and decay of the empire was exposed for all the world to see resulting in the chaos of today, where the wailing walls are real, virtual, and very political.
We are witnessing the inevitable collapse of another empire, following the path of the British empire and others before it— outcomes dictated by the course of history. Constructed by fallible humankind, empires are inherently mortal, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. They perish at the hands of the very greed and lust for power that gave them birth. Now, the despots of the West are erecting their own self-incriminating wailing walls, knowing no shame, as the world looks on in astonishment and disbelief.
History’s Parrot is read in 39 US states and 52 countries world wide.
Well said and illustrated! I wrote about walls on my blog some eight years ago. The issues today haven't changed very much. They've just gotten worse.
https://acqualoreto.blogspot.com/2017/05/walls.html
The self-inflicted demise of the Hegemon disrupts entire world currency regimes. The US now faces either soft or hard default, and is relegated to below world-average standard of living for at least a generation.