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Is politics the new cancer?

October 3, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

In this century of burgeoning disease, addictions (lots of new ones and more coming all the time), of the steady elimination of our fellow live entities (you know, everything); in this time, I say, of humanity becoming this stew of people, where the rapid exchange of opinion and information, all of which has quite let go of, not only truth and facts, but also relevance, washes over us and diminishes our individuality– whew – is politics, the system used to support many dangerous ideas, is politics the new cancer?

Let’s think about this: cancer is a small, irregular growth which, left unchecked, gobbles up good/regular/balanced cells, corrupts them and proceeds to do in the host body with its own rapidly expanding matrix. The hosts die in the end, of course, but maybe the pressure put on other hosts, trying to assist the afflicted one, will suffer enough stress to start growing their own cancer.

Circle of life and death.

I mean, we have a really bizarre collection of world leaders, really looney, many of them, really destructive, as though they are in some sort of a hurry to end it all; to see how fast it can all be ended. They shout so loudly that these dangerous things they are saying seem to have some merit to them, seem to be holding the laws up in their hands to intimidate the listeners. Laws? Laws are trampled underfoot and brave legislators attempt to clear up the mess. 

It feels as though there is a club of corrupt behaviour, where conventional good manners, any hint of decency must be left at the door: bring in your ego, the bigger, the better; come with your outrageous plans – it’s not that big a world, after all; the mighty human brain, aided by our clever thumb, have just about defeated nature’s arrogance and gained power over it. 

The Anthropocene Epoch is the age of significant human influence on the planet. This began, please note, with the “Trinity test”. That is the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear device, launched in 1945 by the United States military.

We began the Anthropocene epoch by testing the most dangerous and wide-ranging bomb created to that point.

What makes us powerful is our ability to destroy. There’s a lesson for the Sunday schools.

Ever since 1945, even though we began to acknowledge the harm we were doing to the planet in the 1960’s, and not just to the planet, this has been our approach to how we run our politics.

The last two World Wars, the first called the war to end all wars, were, rather, training grounds for continued conflicts. I have heard “experts” claim that this is a time of the greatest world peace. Tell that to the millions of people banging on our doors, wanting to escape the wars in their own countries.

The difference is, there is not currently an official declaration of war, one specific nation against another. Yet, politicians hanker for it, they long for war. They pretend there are causes; they congregate to talk about engagement. They rattle their swords and bang their drums.

There are massive profits in war; in burning forests for inefficient agriculture and development; in ploughing under rich farmland to construct badly made houses: all entail the fine accumulation of money wealth.

The true cost is never considered. Only the common people, only the world of nature, only the heritage of history are ruined. 

Is cancer intelligent? Is it a life form of its own, with consciousness that uses the poison we introduce into everything, for its own existence? As we watch our politicians plot to send their armed forces into more arenas of conflict, do we understand their true motives? 

Only money – and the heady power of having those buttons to push. 

Destruction for its own sake and damn the folk who suffer, and damn those people who debate what to do about the flood of refugees those bombs failed to kill.

Has cancer progressed from a mere physical nightmare, nothing more than an invasion that kills one person at a time, to something else?

Has it become philosophical force called “politics” that gobbles up the brain and decency of the unwary who become involved?

Here in Canada, our politicians have, thankfully, since Prime Minister Chrétien, stayed out of the politics of war. We do send troops as “peacekeepers” but we don’t join the sabre rattling – we don’t send bombs. We don’t sin on a big scale. 

We do get very excited and talk endlessly about extremely petty matters and we waste too much time on non-policy issues.

However, we still pay for the international aggression of war mongers and profit mongers. What affects other parts of the world, certainly affects us.

As voters soon, we have to be wary of the cancerous politics and nip that growth in the bud.


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