With thanks to Batiuska, our writer
Tragedy
It is a truism to say that life is a tragi-comedy.
Surely the greatest tragedy in the world at the moment is the death and destruction in parts of the Ukraine. That sad country has already lost 400,000 dead soldiers, not counting the maimed and those psychologically scarred for life. Worse still, its leaders want hundreds of thousands more to die after total mobilisation. Worse still, the dead have died not for the Ukraine, but merely for their faraway godfathers and godmothers in Washington and London. And it is all in vain. The tragedy of the Ukraine is that it is being used by the USA to do the impossible – to destroy Russia. Many Ukrainians still do not understand this.
Fortunately, in order to counter such depression-creating facts, there is also comedy.
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…
I have been asked over the years why I do not watch television and soap operas. Apart from the fact that I have no time to waste, I think that life is the world’s greatest soap opera. What happens in life is far more absurd and extraordinary than any imaginary soap opera. Why watch made-up stories, when there is far better in real life?
For example, imagine a soap opera based in a parallel universe, which is being controlled by an Empire called America. (Obviously, this is in a parallel universe; nothing so absurd could happen on our planet, could it?) And that Empire is controlled by two cliques which are promoting two very rich, very old men as the next Emperor. (However absurd their system may seem to us rational human-beings, new emperors there are chosen every four years and neither candidate for the Empire is ever chosen from the hundreds of millions of rational, competent and honest human-beings).
One of them, who was Emperor before the present one and who will probably become the next Emperor again, well known for believing that there are only two genders and for being oversexed, has been arrested on very many charges of corruption, put forward by his adversary. He could face decades in prison (if he lives that long). His past campaign slogan was: Make America Great Again. His present campaign slogan is: Make America Great Again Again. Presumably, if he gets chosen as Emperor for a third time, his campaign slogan will be: Make America Great Again Again Again.
His adversary, the present Emperor, is perhaps even more corrupt, but he also happens to have dementia, which makes him behave very irrationally, for example, thinking that there are more than two genders, falling asleep in the middle of conversations, forgetting how to speak in sentences, often confusing left and right, hating his grand-daughter, and falling over, to the amusement of billions of his subjects. In other words, he is a kind of one-man Laurel and Hardy. In any case, he is also responsible for an unwinnable and murderous war in a foreign country/colony, where his even more corrupt son, who also faces criminal charges, just happens to have made millions.
The following is the scenario for the next episode. The first candidate, who has been arrested, will be tried and sent to prison. However, next year he will also become the next Emperor. However, he will govern from his prison cell. The solution? As Emperor, he will award himself an Emperor’s pardon. As for his adversary and his son, the new Emperor will have the former Emperor imprisoned, together with his son.
Tragically, however, the country where there is a bloody war instigated by the old Emperor will be told by the new Emperor that the war there is no longer supported. It means that that country will have been ruined and 500,000 + people will have died, all for nothing.
Even the Emperor Caligula of the pagan Roman Empire had not thought of this scenario.
Virtuality and Reality
Where does such absurdity come from?
We can only think that it comes from living in a virtual world, where Hollywood rules, where Superheroes can run and fly faster than light, stretch elastically for miles, change forms, climb up skyscrapers like spiders, lift up thousands of tons, travel into space, become invisible and avoid death hundreds of times per hour. And there are many zombified people who actually believe that this is possible.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Russia is winning against the West and is supported by the Rest of the world. The first of several expansions of the BRICS Alliance proves it. The BRICS Alliance has a GDP of nearly $60 trillion (by PPP) and a total debt of nearly $9 trillion. As for the 12.5% of the world controlled by the American Empire, it has a GDP of nearly $50 trillion (by PPP) and a total debt of nearly $56 trillion.
Any more questions?
Dicing with Death
Yes, there is comedy. But there is also tragedy. On the night of 30 August 2023, the Russian airbase near Pskov was targeted by Ukrainian drones and, according to Ukrainian propagandists, at least four Russian aircraft were destroyed. If this is the case, Russians appear to deny it, the problem is that the attack may possibly have come from the dying NATO countries of Estonia or Latvia. If so, the three pro-Ukrainian and notoriously Russia-hating Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with their persecuted Russian minorities, are finished.
However, since the Ukrainian policy has all along been to involve NATO countries and provoke Russia to attack them – which is their only desperate and dying hope. So probably the attack was launched from one of those countries by Ukrainian terrorists without the knowledge of the local authorities, or possibly it was launched by terrorists from the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. In any case, it is a further escalation and the NATO Alliance is dicing with death – its own death.
Whatever the absurdities of the Comedy Show in Washington and MARA, Make America Ridiculous Again, we are living on a knife-edge. If anyone in the Western world has a brain – and there are still a few – the Premier of Hungary, Viktor Orban, among them, there is still time to change.
Our suggestion, if you do want to stop making America (and all your vassals) ridiculous again: Just drop the Hollywood superhero fantasy that you are at the centre of the world, ‘exceptional’, different from and better than everyone else, and start cultivating good-neighbourly relations with everyone else, instead of murdering them, starving them, exploiting them and mocking them as inferior races. After all, you Westerners are not indispensable. As they say, the cemeteries are full of indispensable people. Though we can still make room for you.
Source : Global South
Featured Image Cartoon:
Two Emperors. Showing Charles I of Austria (Karl Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Marie, left), who succeeded Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916, with the German Kaiser Wilhelm II (right). Charles says he doesn’t know who is going to be crowned, ‘him or me’ — probably a reference to the fact that he was Charles I of Austria and also Charles IV of Hungary.
