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Mortality

Travesty or Tragedy?

I have often wondered what the world would have been like if the USA had lost 20% of its population (like the Soviet Union in WWII or Salvador and Guatemala at US hands) in any one of its endless wars?

I do not wonder that if one now searches for web entries on deaths in Africa, figures caused by starvation, political-economic terror and the lack of basic infrastructure (despite 70 years of “Western aid”) and other diseases, nothing appears before COVID-19.

There is profuse interest in wherever Americans are (although one could understand were the rest of the world indifferent). The idea that the most wasteful population on the planet might be brought to a standstill — perhaps even releasing resources for the rest of the world — has some attraction. Is it merely impolite to ignore the “suffering” of the self-important imperialists?

Or perhaps this suffering is really feigned, like that when a few superfluous office buildings were spectacularly demolished for fun and profit?

The recent stories retroactively “reclassifying” influenza certificates are no less disingenuous. Should revised “corona” statistics be trusted any more than the unemployment statistics, the regularly altered “basket” used for the Cost of Living Index, the numbers of deaths reported in US theaters of war, or the tax returns of  Fortune 500 conglomerates?

There is a potential for unprecedented change if the humane imagination can grasp a world entirely devoid of the Anglo-American Empire. Yet the image that comes to my mind is Géricault’s “The Wreck of the Medusa.”

However, I fear that the supposed gravity of illness in the USA is as contrived as the allegations made against China. This does not mean there are no deaths, just that they amount to no more than the count of bloody ears after a pacification job.

Were this a true pandemic, the USA would be the least important concern for rest of world — except to send all their green and tan clad vermin back to their nest.

The US regime is not only the leading producer and user of weapons of mass destruction, they lead with other WMDs: mass distraction and mass deception.

The apparently overwhelming volume and variety of data and contradictory or partial information in circulation masks the political and economic issues with the beloved, seductive but ultimately deceptive gauze of pluralism.

While the whole world’s attention is focused on the fevers of white folks, the piracy, brigandry and murder continues unabated.

Water, water every where,
and all the boards did shrink,
water, water every where
nor any drop to drink.1

  1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, First published in Lyrical Ballads, First Edition, 1798. []
Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. Read other articles by T.P..
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