Chicanery

Chicanery: clever, dishonest talk or behaviour that is used to deceive people. It is derived from the French 'chicanerie', meaning trickery, (not that the French were/are inordinately deceptive).It's also my word of the week as another war wages.

George Orwell (not his real name) first anticipated life in a 'post-truth' world in his mid-20th century dystopian political satires 'Animal Farm ' and 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four '. The latter, in particular, examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which by cynical chicanery both can be manipulated. He has bequeathed us such deeply disturbing terms as Big Brother, Doublethink, the Ministry of Truth, Newspeak, Thoughtcrime and Thought Police.

A journalist by trade and a democratic socialist by nature, Orwell had the terrifying models of totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union and the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany close to hand to inform his frightening visions. His inspiration for writing 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four' in particular came in 1943 with the Tehran Conference between the three allied superpowers of Russia, the USA and Great Britain.

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, Tehran 1943

Fast-forward eighty-odd years and the key personnel have changed. We have Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping, their countries no longer allied, with Starmer ("no Winston Churchill") trying to manage Airstrip One's decline with a modicum of dignity.

And surely anyone who has read Orwell's  dystopian parable of a world in which three superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia all fight each other in a perpetual war in a disputed area mostly located around the Middle-East might surely concur that "living in Orwellian times" has become apposite shorthand for the world today..   

Right now we have the 'leader of the free world', the man who considers himself most worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, being coerced by the Israelis into embarking on an illegal war of choice against Iran. Chicanery is manifest. Netanyahu's clever, dishonest talk has duped the most powerful nation into turning its back on diplomacy and joining forces to do Israel's will in the region against all conscience and common sense. Two weeks into the conflict, the war which Trump has already claimed "is already won" and is "very complete" now sees him demanding on his propaganda channel Truth Social that NATO members should send warships to the region "or it could be very bad for them". Fake news is swirling round from all quarters in an attempt to obfuscate what is really going on. Ironically, Putin seems to be the biggest beneficiary of this global turmoil right now. Nice one, Donald.

Just to add...In the wake of his cheap jibe about Starmer being "no Winston Churchill" for not sending warships and planes to help in the latest assault on Iran, I don't know if  Trump knows (and if he does, even cares) that in 1939 Churchill asked for American support in the fight against Nazi Germany and was politely refused, only to meet with the same uncooperative response in 1940 and 1941. And that even after the USA entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, they charged Britain (under the lend-lease deal) for the assistance they provided in the eventual defeat of the Axis powers, a war debt (with interest) that this country only finally finished paying off in 2006! 

Who knows how it will end. In the meantime, here's a new poem of sorts. I was going to call it Fuck Knows, but I've rowed back on that. 

Rudolph Knows

They used to laugh and call him names,

they wouldn't let him join their games.

He vowed one day he'd have revenge,

he'd make them pay. He'd know he'd won
when truth was all undone.

More rabid than eagles his coursers came

as raving and drooling he called out their names:

Now Lancer! Now Dancer! Now Prancer and Cancer!

Epic Fury unleashed to the woe of the world,

dash away, dash away, do it for fun.

And grinning madly at the after party,

a celebration of mendacity, he has them

wheel in the AI deepfake cake

sugar-coated to disguise the taste of death.

Eat your slice and keep your mouth shut.

Rudolph knows that his race is run.

         

I leave you with these words from a silent witness:

"Truth is a fundamental virtue. Without truth, there is no knowledge, no understanding. A society built on lies and deception cannot function. Without truth, there can be no harmony, no peace."

Thanks for reading. Stay wise, S ;-)