music to go while you are reading: A hard rain's a-gonna fall by Bob Dylan
Gloom is hanging over the city. People seem to have lost faith in a happy ending, with bad things turning worse, as in the latter days of Zapatero. TV and the mostly illegitimate government tell us we're doing fine considering the circumstances, but we know better. There's no reason to feel comfortable with various horrors threatening us, from planetary meltdown or perhaps anticipating new clear war to a second term for Rajoy. Whether true or not, they are hard to deny all at once. There's always some danger lingering in the mind. The stress it brings is showing on many faces. There's a distinct lack of energy going round. And in the midst of the no future mood suddenly the great unmasking appears on our screens. 2016 has turned into the year of the truth bomb. After decades of being lied to, living in the comfort that somewhere, somehow the power wielders know what's best for us, the public are rudely awakened by a series of revelations about what has really been going on all those years.
In Spain, after some initial scandals guiding at least a part of the public towards eye opening awareness of the machinations of power, the Gürtel court case is exploding in our faces, its fall-out quickly spreading all over post transition democracy. With Francisco Correa spilling the beans, it is becoming ever more difficult to deny how partido popular has grown into a mafia like organisation at the heart of a vast money siphoning scheme contaminating all levels of authority. It's not just mayors and governors who have fallen for the lure of easy money, also cabinet ministers and even the former king are supposedly involved. Meanwhile it's getting clear the ministry of the interior has been using every trick in the book to brandish its political adversaries with totally false accusations, yet the prime responsible is continuing in his job without showing the least remorse.
The timing of course is not coincidental. With the advance of the internet the alternative media, a funny mix up of disaster prophets who compensate for their lack of insider knowledge with fear based predictions and serious journalists who either have been expelled by mainstream media or simply refused to belong to the great lying machine all together, commonly referred to as being conspiracy theorists, a growing number of people choose to trust in those conspiracies rather than in the official truth radiating from our tv screens and newspapers. Where does this leave the law abiding conservative voters? How can they continue putting their faith in a bunch of egotistical hypocrites laughing in their faces? Even the old mantra that every new corruption case is mere prove of how all parties are equally guilty no longer rings true. The worst psoe can currently be accused of is wanting to keep the lying thieves in power for another horrible four years. That's bad enough, but it doesn't come close to being the actual perpetrators. A lot of people must be feeling pretty confused, if they are not willingly closing their eyes to the undeniable.
Another truth bomb has exploded in the faces of the American nation, telling the believers in exceptionalism that the woman who they hope will become their first female president has been lying about everything she could possibly lie about to manoeuvre herself in her current position of most likely candidate for the next presidency. The batches of emails stolen from her poorly protected server which are conveniently leaked by Julian Assange et al reveal how she stole the democratic candidacy from the far more popular Bernie Sanders, meanwhile keeping the records of her apparently poor health a secret and using her Clinton Foundation as a money laundering scheme to make her husband and herself appallingly wealthy. How can her idolising followers continue telling themselves she should be voted in, if only to prevent the girl groping nitwit Donald Trump from ascending to the highest office? With the economy in ruins, despite what cable news and print media claim the situation to be, the USA seems to be edging ever closer to mass rebellion with a state of emergency the likely answer in a country where police forces are awash in military grade equipment and showing an eagerness to use their vast fire power in the face of even the slightest of misdemeanours.
All over the western world governments are severely losing credibility, with possibilities of civil unrest gaining traction in a number of nations. Those who still show faith in the system they have grown up in, clinging to a past sense of fairness and justice, are equally confronted with a new reality telling them nothing is what it has always seemed to be. This is what a truth bomb is all about. It's an explosion of reality meant to destabilise the existing order with no other goal in mind than to find an excuse for the advancement of the police state, the fascist rule which laws have been written in place for ever since the twin towers inexplicably imploded, merely awaiting an executive order to be effectuated. After denying their guilt for as long as they deemed necessary, the powers that be must have decided the time was ripe to serve the public an overdose of reality. They apparently feel strong enough to openly rejoice in their malignant practices, leaving us wondering how dangerous an outburst of rightful anger has actually become. Wouldn't it be better to swallow our pride and cling to whatever little we have left, showing gratitude for what hasn't so far been taken away from us?
Let us not kid ourselves into believing the truth is there to save us and let us certainly not expect the judicial system to deliver us from our sinful gullibility. Whenever in the course of human history the peasants aspired to power, the elites would always close ranks. Just look at how the Arab spring unfolded. Apart from the odd president being replaced for getting too old anyway, it merely brought tyranny and endless war. Is this what we want? While there is every reason to strive for a more just and positive society, these sudden revelations are as dangerous as any poorly coordinated popular uprising can be. In a world where no authority can be trusted, the truth has become the greatest lie.
Spanish history suggests people here will likely complain but do little apart from riding it out. Perhaps more citizens will be looking to give podemos the Pyrrhic solace of triple digit polls, running away from a now mostly defunct psoe. It's the public against a generally abhorred political caste. Does that ring a bell? If we accept, as seems my adopted compatriots' inclination, we had better reach out and grow some personal resistance. A hard rain’s a-gonna fall. Beware and be good, is all I say.
