Julian Assange once said that if wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth. Assange suffered immeasurably, with Britain and America taking him away for revealing facts about US war crimes in Iraq, while notorious Iraq War liar Tony Blair was knighted.
“Sir” Tony Blair may now be paraded around as a model citizen of the United Kingdom and the West, an appropriate display of the “values” our civilization now represents. Be a spreader of lies and violence like this goblin, and you will be honored. Happen upon evidence of a war crime by the state, or even by a foreign regime the UK has allied itself to, and you will be punished.
Of course, the greatest victims of Tony Blair’s knighting are the British state’s eroded and discredited reputation for veracity and each individual who was made a knight by the state and now has to bear the dishonor of sharing that with Blair. By sending the message that they support and stand by a liar, British MPs are telling their constituents that they are also liars and that all the UK’s government departments are staffed by liars. Although it is hardly true, sending this message complicates their ability to elicit trust from many in their attempts to inform the public.
If we find ourselves asking why a new generation of paranoid people and conspiracy theorists is emerging in the UK in the next decade, we need look no further than the resolute commitment of the state and the media to honor a known liar. For many, that will be the final nail in the coffin of the state as a source of information.
At the same time that they celebrate and idolize a liar, British politicians wonder why so many people don’t believe them. They can only conclude that certain mischief-makers must be spreading disinformation, rather than that normal people tend to notice liars and eventually stop believing them.
The terror of British MPs under the gaze of the people is greater than ever before, yet they are unable to accept that they created this situation. MPs may, in fact, be more violently hated by paranoid random citizens than ever before in history.
The murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess by random citizens as they tried to do their jobs were undeserved and tragic, and even Tony Blair deserves no such thing. However, these acts, like the crazy burning of 5G towers by paranoid citizens, are the result of disbelief in all authority. It is the result of British MPs often regarding citizens as mere fools they are allowed to deceive.
The Assange saga shows that such politicians are much more frustrated at the inconvenient truth than they are at deception on any scale. As far as they are concerned, the ends are all that matter, and the means are not to be looked at. It doesn’t matter how many people are lied to or killed if the personal wishes of British MPs and officials are served – what they would call the “national interest” but is, in fact, their interest at the expense of the nation. If the truth hurts them, the truth is to be abhorred for being against the national interest, as Assange’s truth is. If lies help the politicians, the lies are good and ought to be rewarded and the deceiver praised for being an “outstanding statesman and performer“, to use the words Michael Gove recently used in Blair’s defense. No sense of morality is permitted, only a sense of what most favors those individuals who manage the country.
In rewarding liars and punishing the innocent, Britain as a state has shown itself to be blind and deaf to the warning signs before it. It sets itself on course to being believed by no-one and securing the loyalty of no-one. The terror in the heart of the state at what its own citizens might do next will increase, as MPs will know they deserve contempt.
The sirs of Britain could give up their titles to avoid being associated with predators and psychopaths. From Prince Andrew to Jimmy Savile, the most honored figures in Britain have a history of often being, or at least coddling, the vilest people imaginable. No honorable person will be found among them, if they are willing to be associated with monsters.
British politicians seem to live in polite, isolated bubbles from which they take a tone of moral superiority and lecture the population, taking no mandate from them. They do not comprehend the gravity of what could happen to them if there was a complete collapse of all trust in authority, and seem to have no belief in such a scenario at all.
British political authority oozes festering snobbery, privilege and immunity because British rulers miraculously never succumbed to revolution, never paid the price for abusing the sovereign nation, and never learned to serve the country faithfully. The result is self-serving “sirs” who believe their purpose is to lord over others once they get past the inconvenient trifle of pandering for votes. Democracy exists, but what we get is not democratic.
Boris Johnson’s resistance to resigning over his lockdown-defying parties, against the demands of MPs, shows that the priority of rulers even under the present democracy is hardly ever the wellbeing of the public but their own positions. It also shows how politicians draw a distinction between how they conduct themselves and how they expect members of the public to behave. The opposition Labour Party offers little better, though, being guilty of the same thing, despite their efforts to capitalize on the scandal.
Although radical change cannot take place in the UK, owing to the deeply reactionary nature of the overall society and wise caution exercised by many, the state can be expected to eventually change its ways, bending under the wind of change. It is doubtful that Tony Blair’s knighthood will be reversed in his lifetime, but society will eventually recognize him for what he was. As with Jimmy Savile, the divorce of the society from him will politely take place after he is gone.
The UK does not undergo radical change, but it does become kinder with time, and that should be expected in the way it handles political prisoners like Assange and the way it chooses to engage in future conflicts. It is only unfortunate that we, as a society, seem to still be too dragged down by the self-serving governing elite to save Assange in time.