CoVID-19 day 48

My ignorance is breathtaking. I suspect I’m below average in that department as I did know that Russia took the lion’s share of civilian deaths in WWII. Maybe its reasonable to have not known that 95% of military casualties (fighting the Nazis) were Russian. But why did I imagine that Brits and Yankies were at Berlin when Germany finally surrendered? The truth is that it was the Russians alone who took Berlin and a fair appraisal of WWII would be that it was chiefly a stand off between the Nazis and the Red Army with Britain and the US taking care of ther Western front.

we should look to our community in its diverseness and contradictions

An honest celebration of VE Day would have seen the hammer and sickle amongst the bunting. We have an enormous debt of gratitude to our own but the freedom and peace we’ve enjoyed since 1945 is largely down to the people of Moscow and the Red Army. This might sound offensive and disrespectful but only because we’ve mostly been fed a lie that is largely a sin of ommision. Its the stuff of Pixar and Dreamworks movies and the story of Shrek. The ogre turns out to be the good guy and the traditionally beautiful princess turns out to be an ogre whose true beauty lies behind the facade (who’d have thought it).

I’ve known for some time that what we know of the cold war is largely fictional (and this is not a conspiracy theory) and if you look at the overreach of the US empire its not that hard to figure out that the badder guys were the CIA and other American agencies. Stalin was a monster with the blood of millions on his hands but everyone knows that and aren’t we forever reminded of it. In reality the evil we know about is less dangerous than what is hidden from us. Pol Pot gave Hitler a run for his money but if you read The Killing Fields the first thing you learn is that the rise of the Khmer Rouge was largely down to US policy. One million people marched against the war in Iraq (a massive turnout by any standard) but the mainstream media took the government line and gave a free pass on its lies.

All this has come from me looking more closely at the VE Day celebration. I have to admit that bursting bubbles is fun but being in agreement with others, seeing the best in them and enjoying peoples’ company is the best thing in the world. And though I can’t claim honesty to be my greatest asset (I’ve told my fair share of porkies to get out of trouble and avoid difficult situations) economy of truth has never sat easily with me. Flattery is foreign to me and telling someone they look or sound good when they don’t, grates. I find that believing a lie rarely, if ever, turns out for the best. Truth is costly, painful and often difficult to deliver. It often doesn’t reward the truth teller and can take your life. But we all know that integrity is the making of us and living a lie is a denial of everything we aspire to be.

For me, the theme of the last few days has been that of action against hope and follows a similar line to that of truth being paramount. These last few months have been miserable for many of us who hoped for change. We thought a new direction for the UK and the US was possible only for our hopes to be trashed and then for insult to be piled on top. One disappointment has been compounded by another and just when you think it couldn’t get worse it does. Those we put our hope in have either been sidelined or proved to be false and we are left with the choice of abandoning all hope or buying into something we have no enthusiasm for. Its not Groundhog Day its worse than that. But the same theme has come up a number of times (though phrased and situated differently) and that is when hope expires our duty is to take action.

The cesspool that looks like democracy but smells like sewage, the government that thinks it is managing a war but is killing its soldiers, the crisis that has seen nature flourish but is already being exploited by the rich and heartless — all add to a sense of hopelessness. 2008 was a great opportunity to ditch a failed economic model but proved to be an opportunity for the crooks who set it in motion, to get richer while avoiding any of the consequences of their recklessness. Its what Naomi Klein calls Disaster Capitalism. Its hard to take but we have to conceded that the cavalry are not coming and maybe it was arrogant of us to believe they were. And that’s the rub. Like someone said, when the going gets tough the tough get going so what are we made of?

In all this I find myself speaking with passion and if I have passion there must yet be fight in me. We must have room to grieve (I’m writing about that). We must have the space to kick, scream and punch the walls. We need licence to give up and let all things go. To declare like the great teacher, “all is vanity and chasing after wind”. Its not until we lose everything we can truly grasp the value of anything. I’ve found myself in the most fortunate of positions albeit accidental, uncomfortable and unprofitable. CoVID-19 has given me focus and my losses in the grand scheme have turned my gaze inwards to small scale but otherwise significant opportunities.

It seems to me we’d be better spending something like VE day in thoughtful meditation rather than vacuous and largely meaningless celebration ( we can easily make up an excuse to have a celebration). Rather than lauding British values (which Gordon Brown found unsurprisingly elusive) we should look to our community in its diverseness and contradictions, be inspired by the as yet untapped talents and resourcefulness and help build a worldwide movement from the ground up.