Political lies for a proxy guise

4 min read

Just now

“Our proverbs want a rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is summer now: Spring-time for me. I think a very dance of blossoms in blue skies.” – Sibyl Vane, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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This quote from the fifth chapter of Oscar Wilde’s novel can be both hopeful and a tentative reminder of the power of people to reinvent the perception of their environment. It seems the world is being forced to reevaluate its beliefs in preparation for a coming fall and harsh winter season for economies and societies across the globe-with the USA leading the pack. The atrocities that occurred during the two world wars and a depression in between allowed allied,stable, western governments to assert-through hard and soft power- democratic governments that allowed previously perceived backward and threatening nations like Germany, Italy, the Russian led USSR and to an extent Japan to experience a series of so called economic miracles. Despite the miracle label, these turn-arounds happened through occupying the nations and investing in and guiding the building of the infrastructure of these economies for decades after the war. This also occurred at the expense of fair compensation to the allied populations of non white, often black people and colonies. Racial divides in America and other western nations with significant non-white and often black populations were microcosms to this larger phenomenon.

The adoption of people centred policies during a time of crushing poverty and unspeakable suffering allowed for a glossing over or complete rewriting of history in terms of what made the good old days so good, and who it was and wasn’t good for. When German prisoners of war are treated with more dignity than allied African descended infantry and such allies return to their respective homes as second class citizens or to homelands in which they are not allowed to vote or govern themselves, it’s no wonder white supremacist and their sympathizers in 2024 think they can be openly hateful, vote against their own interests and come out unscathed. Such attitudes lead to the reinterpretation of the saying to ‘pull one’s self up by their boot straps’. It was originally coined to express the futility in trying to better one’s self in dire situations. The unprecedented prosperity of the second half of the 20th century allowed it to evolve into a term used to ascribe laziness to people in similarly desperate or impossible situations.

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Another such reinvention is with the terms democrat and republican. The patriotism, discipline and God fearing reputation modern day American republicans have been able to coast on was built up by Northerners and black Southerners in the early days of America. Patriotism meant being a unionist who was for abolition and fought against the confederate south who wanted to continue building dishonest wealth from slavery. It meant being missionaries who taught enslaved Africans how to read and about what was truly in the Bible, along with lambasting their captors for editing the Bible to their advantage.

During the days of the depression Franklin Roosevelt, a privileged Northerner from a Republican leaning family, saw the suffering of his fellow Americans and used the common man association of the democratic party to push for government funded programs like social security, national park conservation, polio vaccination, banning child labour and entitling Americans to a minimum wage. The major event that led to the republican, white South and democratic North switch was the signing of the civil rights act of 1964. Since then, it’s largely been (more so on the part of southern republicans) a matter of forcing old associations into new labels.

The incredibly forward thinking and transformative changes that occurred may have created a false sense of security that is just beginning to show its cracks to the biggest beneficiaries of this time period. Most of the oldest members of government are people who were born during this time of prosperity. Couple that with governments around the world who didn’t adequately address or at least teach the uncomfortable parts of history like extreme classism , sexism or racism, and you have multiple generations of people ripe to repeat mistakes of the past.