Being Slaves to our History Drove us into a cul-de-sac
We are history’s slaves. Our destinies are woven into time’s tapestry by the blind seamstress of chance because we do not choose the family we are born to or the era we exist in. How we interpret both; our familial and national history determines much of our personal character. It is the navigation chart that compels us to sail with the tides of tradition or for the few against its winds.
Although it disgusts me, patriotism doesn’t surprise me because it is a safe factory default setting for citizens of any country. Since 911, our western world has feasted on an all-you-can-eat buffet of patriotism and nationalism that would offend both the Duke of Wellington and Patton himself.
Patriotism and nationalism are the done things- in times of war and economic uncertainty. It harnesses ordinary people’s anger, and disappointment over the puny share of happiness or wealth the entitled allot to them during our brief dance to the music of time and transfers it to an outward aggressor or inward to problematic minorities within our borders.
In Russia, Putin employs this tactic as well as nostalgia for his nation’s past greatness to conduct his “special operation,” in Ukraine. According to my contacts in Russia, and I have a twenty-five-year intimate connection with that country, most people are either resigned to the war or wholeheartedly behind it. Conservative Russians invoke the sacrifices their people endured during the Great Patriotic War, the way conservatives here invoke either the Great Depression or World War Two to dismiss the hardships of today’s cost-of-living crisis. “Keeping a stiff upper lip” is a trope shared by all nations where the entitled exploit the majority. It is why Russians are slaves to their history just as much as we are slaves to our own.
But Russians also understand when a tyrant rules, you keep your head down and wait for the political equivalent of a spring thaw, if you want a long life. Although it is going to be some time before any of us; feel the warmth of the summer sun. This war has many more offensives and counter-offensives to go through until enough young people have been butchered on either side to satisfy old people that it is time to talk plough shares.
In the meantime, life will become bleaker, harsher, more costly, and more polarised against reasonableness for everyone involved. And, we are very much involved. Don’t fool yourself, we are fighting this war with Ukraine against Russia. Even if, for the moment, our boots on the ground are limited to “advisors.” The Hawks are calling for tanks now to Ukraine meaning it won’t be long before the call is for troops.
Ukraine is not the Iraq War, the war in Libya, the Panama Operation, Grenada, or the Dirty Wars fought in Central America in the 1980s. This war will end in nuclear annihilation. Or it will end like World War One, where Europe is irrevocably altered and collapses into anarchy and, then into the hellscape of fascism. North America will not be unscathed by this war because Washington which is directing the war is not being run by Woodrow Wilson or FDR.
There is not going to be a peace dividend of good-paying jobs and affordable housing for America, for us or for Ukraine. Few understand this because we are slaves to history just as much as the Russians. Our news media and leaders frame this war as if it were the “Big One.” The war that your grandfathers or my dad fought to “preserve democracy,” despite most of them only knowing democracy as a bread line in the dirty thirties because the entitled who pulled their democracy’s strings didn’t like sharing their wealth. But we are slaves to our history because we don’t want to view World War two as a bunch of kids on the allied side fighting and dying because that is what the young do when the adults fuck up times of peace through not so much appeasing evil as surrendering to the greed of their entitled class.
Groupthink in the West is to believe our society is good, progressive, striving for both right and reason. I blame the lofty words of America’s slave-owning founders for creating that myth. Our education system goes out of its way to impress upon its students that evil in our “liberal democracies,” is a lone-wolf activity that will be punished by our justice system. Spoiler Alert, Donald Trump wasn’t a lone wolf and won’t see his just desserts.
I am not immune to falling into the comfort zone of groupthink. For a brief time, I believed the second Iraq War was necessary despite not buying into any of the reasons Bush, Blair and company sold the need for Shock and Awe to us. Sometimes, I wonder if my groupthink back then came from the fact that in the early 2000s, much of my business was done in the USA with people who, although pleasant to me- were batshit Republican crazy.
My dad, a school leaver in 1937 at fourteen, didn’t believe Tony Blair's reasons for war from the get-go. My dad had learned too much on the mean streets of Great Depression Britain to be tricked by New Labour. His memories of hunger as a child and total war as a teen conditioned my father to distrust glib politicians.
My dad knew Iraq wasn’t about eradicating evil but hegemony- as well as profit for the oligarchs. This Ukraine War is both Putin’s cul-de-sac and ours because we are slaves to the myths of our history rather than its reality. The question is, can a future be born out of these perilous times, and if so, will it tell our history truthfully.
Thank you for reading my substack. Your support and subscriptions helps me maintain my dad Harry Leslie Smith’s legacy alive. On February 25, 2023 Harry Leslie Smith would have been a hundred. I think he would have been sickened that his warning to not make his past our future became true. Take care, John
