Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Libyan Aftermath


the power of the west to destroy militarily and do mental destruction though information  control and disinformation  must be understood ,acknowledged and opposed, but we cannot do this by indulging in what we might consider a more benign form of distortion or over-simplification...

for all the positive things accomplished by libya during the period of ghaddafi's revolution, something cannot have been so perfect, ideal, democratic and humanitarian as expressed by so many well meaning supporters, or the country could not possibly have been a place where so many libyans were screaming about lack of democracy, lack of equality, lack of freedom, etc...many of them may have been propagandists, but a nation cannot fall, even with outside intervention , if it has or had so much wonderfulness, democracy,prosperity and equality...why was anybody in libya complaining about anything at all if all this greatness existed, let alone be willing  to join with outside forces to destroy the government?

of course there are always elements who want more than others, but they have to be numerous , or the supporters of a government have to be relatively helpless in order to lose that governmental force, no matter how much outside wealth or military power is employed...

the west taking over a country where there is no central rule, no well fed, well educated population, no sense of democratic rights, is one thing...but if libya had all these attributes, as so many go to great lengths to praise, why did it all come apart without an invading army coming in but instead with a native population doing so, however aided with outside help? we must be far more critical of ourselves in our desire to create a new world and not simply blame the old world for all that is wrong...we need to face reality and correct our mistakes - and there must have been many made in libya - not simply praise what we believe or have as almost religious faith that disregards the material reality...

russia had a revolution that lasted seventy years in which a power - not simply a royal figurehead of a tsar - was stripped and a totally different society was built, one that transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in a nation larger than any on earth, and that revolution collapsed in a relatively bloodless operation, partly because of a generation of western assaults both physical and mental, but also because of its shortcomings in establishing real democratic power among the people, all the while it extolled itself as a truly democratic nation because - and here what is said about libya can be repeated endlessly - all were employed, all were educated, none were homeless, all were fed, and so on...yet, they failed, and they were a world power, not just militarily but economically  and even imperially, having many nations subject to their leadership and rule...how can anyone truly believe that libya was a flawless place in which all were equal and democratic when so many libyans were not only of a different mind, but actually hated the same leader beloved as almost a god by others?

these are serious problems to deal with and cannot be put aside simply because the west and some libyans may be corrupt, greedy or egotistical...if there is to be a new world, not just in libya, old ways of deifying and/or demonizing leaders must be dumped, and definitions of things like democracy - which never existed in ancient greece where it was supposed to have originated nor does it exist in the usa and certainly did not exist in libya - must change and become definable in material reality and not just in the minds of those who think it means "my side rules and not yours and since we are better than you, that is democracy" or some similar gross over simplification...

i look forward to soon hearing and reading  some serious discussion of the imperfections, the mistakes, the negative things about libya that played a role in the fall of a forty year experiment to create a better reality in a relatively tiny nation...we cannot change the world by having a nice little commune somewhere and we certainly cannot change the world if we can't even create a tiny commune of equality and democracy...we have much to learn about the world we actually live in, in order to change it...

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