Stories and News No. 1271
I would like to believe you.
I do like I used to.
I think that this naive as well as childish desire is paradoxically still in me, albeit with a feeble and now completely devoid of backbone voice.
I think I'm not the only one, but as a child everything seemed easier about it: the good guys on one side and the bad ones on the other. And for those of my generation it wasn't hard to choose which side to take. Because the brave and peaceful cowboys only wanted to graze cattle and raise children, while the treacherous “Indians” shaved heads and kidnapped young women; because American and British soldiers, like future superheroes, faced evil, personified by the sinister Nazis in the last century, and saved Europe; because James Bond was fighting for his Majesty, but also world peace, while Russian spies were literally bred to destroy everything that was not communist.
Communism, yes. By those on the left, especially radicals or extremists, who are often nothing more than cunning semantic jokes within a very interested narrative, where over the decades remaining consistent with principles and ideals, without having moved an inch, can see you overflowing further and further away from the cardinal point of holy moderation, suitably updated. Which means, further to the left.
Nonetheless, these are thoughts that you have growing up and above all thanks to knowledge and mind openness, among other things the consequence of varied readings and studies, a curious and attentive traveling, and an incessant listening free from prejudice and obtuse immodesty.
When you are a child, that is, you persist in behaving so, you want the fairy tale being simple. And on the other hand, regardless of age, all of us at the end of the day want to turn off the light of the lamp reassured and more than ever aware of being on the right side of the fence. With no doubts. Without gray areas. Without ifs or buts, and with an apotheosis of Yes! Come on! Hurrah!
How could you, looking at the blockbuster movie through the eyes that have assiduously fed you, not identify with “John” when the enemies are the Chinese who eat cats and dogs, or the Arabs who cut hands and enslave women?
Whether they are populations described seamlessly in the form of inhuman versions of the chosen species, or hideous aliens and monsters, present in the plot solely to endanger the lives of the righteous, you can not have doubts. You can't hesitate. You can't choose haphazardly, or even the wrong way. Otherwise in the last century, when I was nine years old, if I had come home from the cinema and told my parents that I much preferred the dark side of the force and my hero was Dart Vader, I do not exclude that if the thing had prolonged they would end up consulting a psychologist, that's it.
Because the fairy tale is simple and successful, indeed as invincible as its main protagonist, just as the cruel Vietnamese and Korean soldiers, Cuban guerrillas and a generic rebels, Iraqis and Afghans, “terrorists” only when they are not you and “invaders” if they do not export democracy.
By the way, the intrinsic strength of this manipulating ambiguity most often resides in the undoubted nefarious or at least dangerous nature of the current initiative identified as evil.
This is why once again, in the umpteenth clash between USA and Russia, when on the high resolution screen the director narrows the shot on the evil armies of the grim dictator who besiege innocent and courageous people, the simplest of fairy tales is always the same.
Week after week, day after day, you do not see or read about anything else, and in the end you would like to believe it, because doubt wears out and time writes against you, since one day not so far away as it seems you will tell yourself that it would not be bad at all to return considering things in an elementary way like when you were young.
So you are about to give way again to the pleasant naivety of the past, when you find articles like this one, which finally make public and proven atrocities and stains under the carpet for decades, about what the British Information Research Department did with the Black Propaganda from the 50s to the 70s - and they were certainly not the only ones - but also later with other acronyms or departments; to create chaos, violence and tensions in the Middle East, Asia and even Africa; to incite entire nations to take sides against the Russians and Chinese, as well as the notorious communism, inciting and making Muslim communities increasingly fundamentalist, increasing or even giving birth to hatred for Israel, inventing phantom Islamic terrorist organizations and disseminating leaflets and hostile declarations completely fabricated.
Well, I'm sorry, I tried, but as long as my brain will work properly, I think you will still find me here doubting the tale of black and white, and telling the story of gray.