When Will They Ever Learn?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

I’ve listened to Marlene Dietrich sing this song more often than I can remember, but it never fails to send chills down my spine. The first three verses were written by Peter Seeger in 1955, but it was Joe Hickerson who added the final two in 1960, making it a circular song; the flowers are picked for the soldiers resting in the graveyards, then they grow again on those same graveyards, only to be picked again for yet new soldiers, ad infinitum:

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

A couple of weeks ago an Icelandic survey showed how 93% of the population still believe all the restrictions, lockdowns, border closures and travel bans of the last three years were fully justified; that they were inevitable. No matter if our next-neighbouring country, the Faroe Islands, didn’t do it and did better than us. No matter if our Swedish neighbours didn’t do it, also doing much better than us. Still, they believe it.

When will they ever learn?

I thought of this when I saw Alex Berenson’s account of a new New York Times interview with Bill Gates. Gates has learned all the wrong lessons from Covid, Berenson says, and he has the power to drive public health policy in dangerous directions.

Apparently, Gates is terrified of what the next pandemic might bring. If it will spread through surface droplets, be sexually transmitted, if it will be the result of bioterrorism. To prepare, Gates wants a Global Emergency Corps:

The Emergency Corps plans to run drills to practice for outbreaks. The exercises will make sure that everyone — governments, health care providers, emergency health workers — knows what to do when a potential outbreak emerges.

In other words, it looks as if Gates has fallen into the trap of panicking about a very scary, but highly improbable, almost impossible event, and lost sight of everything else.

When will he ever learn?

Marlene Dietrich’s interpretation of ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ has unique depth to it. Perhaps because during World War II she travelled through Europe and sang to the soldiers, to those very soldiers for whose graves the flowers were picked, and on whose graves they grew again.

“When will they ever learn?”

Who are “they”? It isn’t the generals, the dictators. “They” are the soldiers who head to the battlefield instead of refusing to, their sweethearts who pick the flowers for their graves instead of forbidding them to leave. For war doesn’t happen without soldiers, and, as Lysistrata teaches us it doesn’t happen without their sweethearts either; war can only happen with the support of people, or with their indifference.

It happens, again and again, and it happens because of all of us.

When will we ever learn?

At the outset, the coronavirus pandemic was likened to a war. A war against an invisible enemy. Soon enough it turned into a civil war; a war between the masked and the unmasked, between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Almost from the start, it was a war against truth. A war against reason. A war against decency. Against humanity.

In his classic They Thought They Were Free Milton Mayer describes the views of his German Nazi friends after the war. Their country in ruins, they were still unable to face the true reason for the devastation; the pure madness that had gripped not only the leaders but a large part of the population. “Yes, perhaps a few mistakes were made” they might mumble, but that was it. No reckoning, no realisation of what had been done, not only to the victims, but to themselves also, to their humanity, their integrity, their self-worth.

They never learned.

Perhaps the truth in ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ is the final truth. Perhaps we are simply doomed to repeat the same mistakes, the same catastrophes, over and over again. Perhaps the boulder of Sisyphus is the only philosopher’s stone there is.

But this I refuse to believe. This you refuse to believe. (When will we ever learn?)

Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the state of mind of Bill Gates. He may go mad for all I care. He is but one man. He has money and power, but in the end he’s just one man.

What I care about is why 93% of my nation still believe an obvious lie. Among them are highly intelligent, well-meaning people. I have good friends among them. But they still believe this.

We’ve never given up exposing the facts, appealing to reason, explaining. Just like Sisyphus, I sometimes think. For they still believe it.

Why?

Answering this question is the single most important task at hand.

This is no easy task. For to answer this question we need meticulous step-by-step analysis, based on cold and hard rationality, never jumping to conclusions, never letting our feelings or predjudices get in the way. Only that way may be able to find the answer. And only armed with that answer can we really break the deadly cycle now pushed for more strongly than ever by Bill Gates and his cronies.

That’s the only way they will ever learn.