Arthur Silber, "When Destruction is the Cost of Denial"

"It is far from a novel observation to note that most people live in varying degrees of denial. We rarely encounter the person who is rigorously honest about his own virtues and defects, who acknowledges the full truth concerning those individuals most important to him, and who actively questions the validity of his deepest convictions. In part, this is due to social convention; it often is an understandable (if not desirable or healthy) part of a survival strategy.

If we recognize that denial represents valuing delusion more than reality, the seriousness of the danger carried by denial depends on the respective proportions of denial and truth in our lives. Our particular delusions may appear to provide us comfort and safety. As long as our lives continue to be sustained in significant part by what is true and healthy, denial will not seriously threaten our survival. But when what is true in our lives is overwhelmed by the lies we insist upon, our days grow shorter.

What is true for the individual is also true, in much more complex ways, of a nation and a culture. Many of us may know the individual story from our own experiences. We tragically may have encountered the person who destroys himself, his family, and perhaps a business and many other people, because he demands one more drink, or one more affair, or because he has to place one last bet. We hear that he has finally died alone in pitiful circumstances. Maybe he succumbs at last in an especially awful and desolate manner. He dies in a filthy hovel, or on the street. The destruction he causes may be terrible, but it remains limited. We may not be aware he has ceased to exist for months or even years after the fact.

The United States today is determined to act out the final stages of denial and destruction. Our ruling class refuses to pause and take stock, or to ask themselves if the edifice they have erected on a huge body of lies must be painfully reconstructed on a foundation closer to the truth. A pattern that is pitiful in the individual case is terrifying when it occurs on this much vaster scale. In the case of the United States, the terror is greatly increased. The accumulated reservoir of power, including an arsenal of weapons more powerful than the world has ever known, means that a last drink, or a last affair, or a final orgy of financial bets and war may result in the ultimate destruction of not only the United States itself, but of large parts of the rest of the world.

We may now have entered the final phase of this hideous drama. Because of the multiplicity of factors involved, this phase may last for years, or even decades. But it could reach its devastating end much more quickly. This is a time of immense historic peril, when any vestiges of a concern with truth would demand that the ruling class finally begin to loosen its death grip on delusion. Yet the ruling class continues in its absolute refusal to surrender even one of the endless lies it tells itself. Destruction rushes ever closer, and the ruling class persists in its delusions, repeating them with greater frequency and in a louder and louder voice. Nothing will stop them as they hurtle themselves toward devastation. We have no choice but to be concerned with these matters; as the ruling class destroys itself, it may destroy many of us as well."

- Arthur Silber, http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/

For insightful analysis of current events Arthur Silber has few peers. He cuts through clouds of disinformation and lies in a manner few are capable of, and delivers the real truth behind the many fantasies being disseminated by authorities and self-serving third parties. A recommended daily read.