It strikes me as odd that countries who sell "democracy" as a thing to be cherished, immediately refer to countries who convert to this model as adversaries to be demonised from a distance rather than neighbours with whom to trade, harmonise, + better understand by listening and interacting.
Millions of us have now noticed that when a country becomes prosperous + self-reliant, having no need of outside help, the circling "democracies" seem to experience an intense outrage, + develop an insatiable thirst for interference, which usually begins by rendering the country's leader voiceless on the world stage.
If we liken it to a court case, the witness has been silenced. If we liken it to a boxing event, team A's boxing champ has an HBO 24/7 show dedicated to their every movement since birth to now... interviews with relatives, school teachers, friends, the audience warms to this fighter, feels a connection, supports them willingly against the outsider they never heard of. Team B's boxing contender is not allowed to speak, or to make connections with the audience... no TV coverage, no bio, nobody has a clue who they are. In the run up to the fight, which fighter would be easier to bad-mouth and demonise? Obviously, team B's fighter and whole camp could very easily be made into the pantomime villains, just by filling that information vacuum with garbage and rhumours.
Now this scenario probably won't happen in sport, because the world would be outraged at the lack of fairness, the lack of sportsmanship. In a court room, deliberately silencing a witness is generally frowned upon as being dirty practice, reprehensible criminal behaviour. So why do we tolerate this exact behaviour from our so called "leaders" in the far more seriously impactive life and death landscape of geo-politics?
Countries our democracy see as a threat, or which have something we want: strategic territory or waterways, mineral wealth, oil, water, effectively receive the team B treatment, which is usually channeled via a very obvious and particularly odious collusion between media and state.
If we're not hearing someone's everyday chatter, if we're not familiar with warts and all ideas, for better or worse, if we're strangers to their motivation as their voices become dimmed to a whisper and finally strangled into an un-knowable silence, how easy it is then to pierce this silence with the arrows of spite, suspicion and all the other venoms of a society in retrograde.
The team B treatment seems a routine first step toward interventional conflict of one kind or another, I think most people understand this process well enough. What I find baffling is that people don't allow the penny to drop that if we didn't allow the un-sporting non-platforming routine to take place, potentail conflict would usually be diffused at source, there'd seldom if ever be support for it from ordinary voters.
In return for our votes, if we demanded that our ambassadors and our MPs improve their diplomacy skills and change their mission statements, and reach out to all cultures in a more sporting manner, rather than pulling up the draw-bridge and shouting primordial, semi-literate abuse from the gun tower, perhaps we could make our world instantly safer. The reaching out needs to be genuine though. It's come to my attention that past delegations and past governments have defined "reaching out" as swarming into a country to turn as many vulnerable people as possible against their sitting government, so that when we (or our terrorist proxies) invade, they roll over to be tickled by their new masters rather than fighting for their country's honour. The quangos, NGOs, "charities" engaging in this kind of endeavour have deaths on their conscience - deaths of individuals and deaths of countries - they need to be identified and challenged at some point. Meanwhile, quite obviously, defining terms is imperative, before any more "reaching out" is attempted, by anyone from our "democracy" pertaining to "help" any other country on earth.
If we're not hearing someone's everyday chatter, if we're not familiar with warts and all ideas, for better or worse; if we're strangers to their motivation as their voices become dimmed to a whisper and finally strangled into an un-knowable silence, how easy it is then to pierce this silence with the arrows of spite, suspicion and all the other venoms of a society in retrograde.
If Mr Putin's, Mr Assad's, Mr Kim Jong Un's and everyone else's everyday speeches were as readily available as those of our ever-bleating members of parliament, people would see their flaws, their good and bad points, their silly and good ideas, just as we see those of all the other flawed human beings who stand up to speak, anywhere. This tedious familiarity would render the playing field of democracy more fair, and in this fairer environment it would be considerably more difficult to rig the game, which would render us a hundred percent more safe. In the event that a leader transitioned from politician to monster, we'd see that coming, too, through their own words, their demeanour and their behaviour, rather than through the grape vine. Heaven knows we've spawned enough home-grown monsters, we ought to be rather well-equipped by now to recognise one more.
Rigging games, silencing witnesses, these are not ways to make our future world safer - it's exactly how real monsters are forged, out of real and perceived injustices that our regressive politicians created by distorting the picture and rigging the game. For me, these propagandist manipulations are a complete and final deal-breaker when it comes to placing my vote. Achieving a lasting peace across the world is the thing we need to do most urgently now. Everything else can be dealt with after that, underpinned by the reassuring knowledge that we actually have a future.
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