[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]W[/dropcap]hen a war-sustained empire’s elite decide on war, they will have their war.
The powerless will die,will be displaced, and will be traumatised for life by the war. They will pay the human cost while the war profiteers’ already obscenely bloated fortunes grow ever larger. Empires are sustained by the blood of the innocent. War reveals, for those willing to look, a glimpse into the vampiric nature of empire’s elite. They dine, luxuriate, and fornicate upon mountains of bloody corpses.
Let’s call the oligarchy of the elite what they are. Murderers. Cold blooded, remorseless murderers. Of course, their operatives glorify war, term the mindless carnage noble, promulgate the noxious narrative th
at soldiering is a sacred duty, and lie that state-sanctioned murder translates into patriotic heroism. The worst lies always call for the most extravagant cover stories.
When the lies are doubted, the war profiteers’ media mouthpieces will drown out all questions with feigned and blustering indignation; the more damning the truth the louder the volume. The uglier the facts on the ground the greater the degree of vitriol and opprobrium used in the shaming of the doubters, the greater the brutality inflicted on resisters, and the more shameless the hagiography extolled on the war’s generals. Fallen cannon fodder will be canonised, and just as quickly forgotten, and their memory will only be retrieved on war memorial holidays for the purpose of bamboozling a new generation of cannon fodder.
Their greatest fear, held as close and tight as they do their ill-gotten war plunder, is that the powerless will grow wise to their ruse.
If that came to pass, they could beat their hands bloody banging the war drum but no one would heed the call.
Image by Dan Booth. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission from the artist.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.
Yet a bio amounts to dharma for dimwits: It defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered … commodified things that were once living beings.
