Worlds Apart: Unliving the great fallacies of our times.

"A fallacy is a mistaken belief or error in reasoning"

“Young America's dilemma: Shall I be wise and great, or rich and powerful?”

The truths we refuse to speak are the very ones that destroy us, just as we are captive to the fallacies we live by left unchallenged.

Why do we create fallacious dilemma’s there where is no need for them? We can be wise, great, rich and powerful all at the same time. It is all a matter of how we go about it. Approach is everything and how we go about pursuing these lofty goals will determine outcomes. If the pursuit is undertaken with wisdom, moderation, respect for due process and inalienable rights for all, outcomes can be beneficial for all. Where rude, crude, barbarism is the modus operandi the world grows very dark, very dingy.

There are also the essential ingredients of consensus building, good will, showing integrity, acknowledging reciprocity. There are those so delusional they do not see limits to their power and create fallacious beliefs to justify their tyranny. The tyranny is imposed on populations and perpetuated by them. Where fallacies are left unchallenged they become deeply embedded and definitive of our societies.

We are in a time of great tyranny now because we have allowed too many fallacies, too much fallacious thinking and ruinous ideologies subvert our societies.

Rationality is our protection against fallacious thinking and in turn vigorous democratic and ethical value systems are our best and only protections. The failure of the West is the failure of democracy and due process. We are compounding the failure by retreating into the defeatism of totalitarianism and insane demagoguery.

John Fowles, British, novelist.

It is said that racism was birthed at the inception of imperialism 500 years ago. The assumption was made that the white race was superior and all others subordinate to it, as prescribed by Kipling’s, White Man’s Burden. This became the fallacious rationale for the rape, plunder, murder and enslavement of indigenous cultures the world over up to and including today. Today, the white race only speaks for 15% of the world’s population yet it still clings to the dated notion it must reign supreme. It clings to fallacious notions of “exceptionalism”, 19th century Manifest Destiny, and RBIO(Rules Based International Order). From a minority position we desperately resort to war, militarism and propaganda, genocide and chaos to forestall the inevitable realities of the 21st century.

The world now is going through the greatest power shift/existential crisis ever and it will take the full measure of Humankind for many years to come.

Fallacies come in many shapes and sizes. There is the “threat fallacy” where the US claims that various actions of other countries are threats to its national security. This is of course a transparent paranoid ploy to justify the existence of the empire and its endless wars and foreign interventions.

Another is that the world can only exist in endless conflict between the great powers and the endless warfare that ensues. Seeing the world as a giant chessboard where the great powers make strategic moves to out maneuver the other is an obsolete notion when there are 8 billion people living on a planet and global cooperation and collaboration are essential.

As Chinese president Xi jinping has said repeatedly there is room in the world for both China and the USA.

For the sake of empire, those of us living in Fortress North America are programmed to be xenophobic, Russophobic, Sinophobic and other such gibberish according to the expediencies and the forever wars the empire chooses to fight. We are slaves to “defense budgets” that are really the costs of maintaining empire while filling the pockets of arms dealers and predatory corporate capitalists.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1989 there was a huge peace dividend for the harvesting. Instead Washington took full advantage of being the sole superpower by declaring war on the world. Where their great nemesis was retired new ones would be created.

One of the most impertinent fallacies the West perpetuates is that Russia and China have imperial ambitions. History tells us they are older more mature nations. They have suffered their share of wars, famines, and revolutions and are determined to bring stable equilibriums to their societies. They want nothing to do with war and their present levels of militarism are maintained largely in response to Western belligerence. Even so, their combined military spending is a fraction of what NATO spends and where the US is the world’s leading arms dealer. NATO counts for 65% of global annual military spending.

Trump has announced he wants to push US defense spending up over a trillion dollars per annum. Where he is going to find the money is another story?

European politicians make odious claims that Russia intends to attack Europe. This only shows their tenuous grasp of reality where Russia has no intention, or the resources, to attack the West. Especially so, when Europe is dotted with US military bases, and NATO, as a former defense alliance, is now the collapsed agent of American imperialism.

Empires have a habit of projecting their own crimes onto their rivals—condemning others for the very same offenses they themselves commit, much like the pot calling the kettle black.

Full of rage and envy at the Chinese economic miracle the blinkered West refuses to acknowledge basic truths. China has 4 times the population of the US and its wealth must be proportionate to its population. India’s population is almost the same but may never reach the same proportionality of wealth to population. China has achieved its success through carefully planned economies and pursuing and achieving preset goals. The US hates and envies China because it has built the world’s largest economy on its own merits, where as it has struggled and exhausted itself through endless warfare and being the agent of chaos for the last eighty years.

China and Russia insist on their individual autonomies which is key to their success. Empires are addicted to destroying other countries autonomies. Leading us to the very reason empires inevitably collapse— they over indulge in warfare, triumphalism and cannot accept limits to their power. Their arrogant triumphalism is so virulent and psychopathic they cannot stand to see others succeed where they have failed.

For too long we have been indoctrinated by the imperialist empire builders that we are the “masters of the universe”, when in fact we are but one faction in a much larger multitude of diversity where we must all live in greater harmony and inclusivity.

We speak of freedom and democracy, but in fact we are slaves to fallacious belief systems and ruinous ideologies.

Too much of what we are seeing now are the death throes of a dying empire and we must see our way through these times to build better tomorrows.

Historically Trump’s military parade, was a parody of those decades gone by, when Hitler’s storm troopers goose stepped to death and defeat, as did Roman legions centuries ago. The emperor has no clothes and so surrounds himself with the trappings of empires of olden times.

We are truly in the “Age of Anger”. The anger and revanchism of warmongers as victims of their failed criminal machinations. The anger of societies so recklessly exploited and abandoned, where people should come first, they place last.

How we approach the world determines how it will respond, belligerence generates negative outcomes every time.

How many fallacies are required to maintain an empire? As many as necessary, for as long as they remain unchallenged.

We become the fallacies we live by.

History’s Parrot is read in 38 US states and 53 countries worldwide