We live in a time of Illumination, perhaps greater in scope than what the generation of Jefferson and Paine experienced. In order to filter out the smokescreens of history, along with the other poisonous gases that are being sucked into the stratosphere by financial weather-men, we need to make the facts of history tangible once again, to make them real, that way history comes alive for every human being. Mythologist Joseph Campbell emphasized that Man today needs to develop an I-Thou relationship with the city he lives in, and beyond that, the planet he inhabits. I believe Man must regain an I-Thou relationship with history, both the recent past and the ancient world.
The cultural and political processes that gained traction in the early phase of the last century are still with us, for example, the fascist streak in Big Business and Big Government is a danger to human beings today more than ever. But when Fascism is brought up in history class it is exclusively affiliated with Mussolini and Hitler, and the textbooks conclude that chapter in history with the dropping of the atom bomb. Such nonsense and fabrications of history Is what I will fight against. Did it ever occur to teachers of history that Fascism gained an even larger footing in America? Or that Fascism is a historical trend that is a reaction against the improvements of lives of the working and middle classes?
I don't use the word 'Fascism' to describe the world political-economic system in a loose manner. What many label 'Corporate' News is in actuality 'Fascist' News, and they are traitors against the US constitution, Democracy, and the Liberties of the People of the World. American journalist, George Seldes, who I am greatly indebted to, foresaw Fascism rearing its ugly head in America in the 1930's. What Hitler and Mussolini accomplished before the War, with the backing of powerful industrial and financial titans, American Fascist Rulers accomplished after the War, although at a slower rate. Seldes saw the Special Interests for what they are; Robbers of Public Wealth. Speaking about the Fascist agenda that has swept the world, he remarked: "Their main object was to end the civil liberties of the nation, destroy the labor unions, end the free press, and make more money at the expense of a slave nation." In his great book, Facts and Fascism, Seldes lays out the profits made in Nazi Germany after Fritz Thyssen funded Hitler's early operations, an industrial giant who later withdrew his support because of the excesses of the Fascist system. Seldes writes:
There were, of course exposes of Hitler as a tool of Germany's Big Money, written before he became dictator, but inasmuch as publication occurred in small non-commercial weeklies which few people read, or in the radical press, which is always accused of misrepresentation (by the commercial press which is always lying) the fact remains that few people knew what really was going on. This conspiracy of silence became even more intense when the big American and other banking houses floated their great loans for Hitler-and other fascist dictators in many lands. (P. 17. Facts and Fascism)This phenomenon wasn't unique to Germany. The peoples of Italy, Japan, Spain, and of course, America, have witnessed the "march of the men of wealth and power," in their countries. Usually dazed and confused, the people do occasionally catch a glimpse of the machinery operating behind the democratic facade, the most glaring example being the Bank Bailout of 2008. Although it likes to hide behind 'free enterprise,' Fascism is a force of reaction, as Seldes points out, and the aggressors are the same Lords and Bankers that appear throughout history. Today they are the Financial Lords, the War Lords, and the Press Lords. "There is no program," Seldes forcefully says, "no policy, no ideology and certainly no philosophy back of Fascism, as there is back of almost every other form of government. It is nothing but a spoils system."
How does Democracy regain ascendancy in the world, and this time for good? It all comes down to knowledge and will. Workers' rights needs to be emphasized, and the muscle of the law needs to be flexed, which means truth commissions and trials. I'm not suggesting we should establish a McCarthy commission to reign in the Reigners of Public Opinion, but there are traitors in the Press, who are working against the interests of the public good, and they need to be exposed.
Seldes said it more boldly than I: "When we destroy international Fascism we must at the same time destroy national Fascism, we must replace the reactionary forces at home with truly democratic forces which will represent all of us." Corporate Titans are working behind the scenes to fund the Christian-Republican movement into an even more powerful force, and it could very well become a Fascist force that comes from below. All this anti-government rhetoricians miss the fact that The Corporation is the real power holder in America. The government is a hostage, but a very useful hostage because of its resources and connections.
Americans are not a vigilant people, but they are courageous. Americans completed the first task when they crushed the Nazis, but they forgot that there is another war to be fought on the home front. Seldes, again: "We, however, will also inherit the job left unfinished on the battlefield: it is we, the civilians, and the soldiers who will again become civilians, who will have to continue to fight native Fascism for many years. We will do this in the elections, in Congress, in the labor unions, in the press, in the churches, in the schools-everywhere."
Unfortunately, Americans have not re-declared war on the enemy, instead, they have stalled for sixty four years. And that is not totally their fault, because all the economic and political forces are set up against them, in Congress, in the press, in the churches, and most tragically, in the schools. Fascism was not discussed as a economic system that is operating the world in any of my classes, and this lack of knowledge has left us without shields when we go out into the world. Luckily, the Internet, our saving grace, has given us the knowledge to fight against these enemies of mankind.
Democracy should never be a foregone conclusion, it is a story that constantly needs retelling, like the myths of old. It is the job of tribe leaders to gather the young children around the campfire and show them that fire can be rediscovered in every generation, and it is only way in this way that knowledge will be passed on. The teacher must share the fire with the student, which is not possible if the teacher does not keep it burning in himself, because how can you pass on fire without first taking hold of it? The essayist John Jay Chapman wrote that it "is due in part to the hiatus in our own thought which makes us divide the process of learning from the process of teaching, as if a teacher could have anything more valuable to impart than his own passion to learn the truth."
I sometimes write with an acid pen, which inflicts some damage, but the sword is not as sharp as it needs to be. I am still touching the enemy's face half-blindly, making out the features very slowly. My task is like that of the old medieval monks and scribes, who diligently translated the Classics and other historical documents from other cultures. The last phase of the 20th century saw a flood of propaganda, making all truths hard to get at, and they will not come up to the surface of the present even by the hands of God. What is required is a plunge, to recover lost knowledge and facts, and truth seekers may drown. But if we choose to stay afloat, then the ghosts at the bottom, like those in the Titanic, will haunt humanity forever. If historical memory is not regained for the mass of humanity then the future is bleak. Our survival is only possible with a reconnection with the truths of the past. And we can not just sit on these findings, as if they are a treasure chest of knowledge, no, that is what men of secrecy and wealth seek to do, we must reverse this trend, and instead, act on our knowledge.
Ortega Y Gasset, in his essay called The Self and the Other, writes:
Man's destiny, then, is primarily action. We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.Ortega then builds some ground on these two sentences, saying that life is itself dangerous, and doesn't need to be lived dangerously, contradicting Nietzche's borrowed motto. Man, by coming under pressure, is drawn to thought, which is not a gift but a daunting task, that requires constant strength. For Ortega, thought is an ongoing conquest, which means there is no relief from the Tree of Thought. In this conquest, fallen soldiers, like fallen leaves, are remembered not for how slow they fell, but for how deep their roots penetrated into the Tree of Thought, and how committed they were to the conquest. Ortega referred to it as a conquest because for him thought and action are inseparable:
Action is to act upon the material environment or upon other men in accordance with a plan conceived in a previous period of contemplation or thought. There is then, no authentic action if there is no thought, and there is no authentic thought if it is not duly referred to action and made virile by its relation to action.To think is the mandate of today, as it was of yesterday, and will be of tomorrow. Sustaining the democratic spirit means we must do a balancing act between being a spectator and a speculator. And by spectator I mean being a watchman who reflects and becomes his own soul-guard, and watches like a bodyguard; not a watchman who merely watches without first turning into himself to see firsthand what and who he is protecting. If not, danger and crisis ensues. Once the democratic senses are dulled, and the righteous path of action is blocked, then political violence supersedes all other types of action. As Ortega says; "Without a strategic retreat into the self, without vigilant thought, human life is impossible." The vigilant must have a direct target to observe, and protect it from what it is commanded to defend - an idea, a God, a truth, a past, or a spirit.
Nietzsche declared God is Dead at the end of the 19th century, and I believe we can resurrect Him if we dedicate ourselves to making the Truth known in the public domain. In Ortega's world Truth was dying, and for me that means spiritual truths, but more importantly, political truths, which were pronounced dead not on 9/11/01, but long before, because the cover-up began ahead of the great deed. Truth was pronounced dead by the poets, who else? "Born into this, walking and living through this, dying because of this, castrated, debauched, disinherited, because of this," wrote the poet Charles Bukowski. Bukowski was born into the age of death, of the assassinated, as was Hunter S. Thompson, but they still took the ride, swirling it in their direction, to make it serve their own, inner lives. They dictated, and being a dictator is not a bad thing, if it is only your life, and not others, that you are dictating.
At it is now, the public is unresponsive to damning political truths, so I suggest we do not approach that monster, as Kierkegaard called it. Instead, we must all meet the Truth, as well as each other, individually, without the baggage of public misconceptions and prejudices. And without a shouting match, as that will only inflame different political factions and move them to violence. I realize we do not come across the Truth with our eyes wide open, we are told about it, and the first Word was cast out by prophets like William Cooper. A prophet is not a person who foretells, but forewarns, because he comes to the Truth the same way as the rest of us, only much earlier, so he shouts it much louder to reach those stuttering up ahead. The prophet's voice is loud because we are farther down, and when we are apart from each other our ears shrink, making every new sound deafening, and so we put our hands over them, which makes our situation worse. The courageous ones fall back and try to hear out what's being said, and then rejoin the tribe to repeat, word for word, while others return only to distort and inject lies. When the feedback is broken, Truth can't stand on its own, forcing every individual member of the tribe to make a comeback by himself, listen on his own terms, and then regroup later to act based on what she learned.
The Story of Our Lives is about telling the truth of both State Terrorism and Fascism, which are nothing new and have their origins in history, but are being known for the first time in history by a large number of people, who's Free Will dictates that they actually do something about the injustices. I must emphasize, again, that I do not use the word 'Fascism' for rhetorical purposes, it is a diagnosis of the current economic-politico system of the world. We can see the effects on the ground, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, and now we are seeing it in America in a bigger way. Fascism is the world economic-politico system of, buy, and for the global ruling class. Any other definition is academic jargon.
Writer Arundhati Roy sees the consequences such a economic system is having in India and everywhere else in the world. In an interview with David Barsamian, from the book The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile, Roy says:
The distance between power and powerlessness, between those who take decisions and those who have to suffer those decisions, has increased enormously. It's a perilous journey for the poor -it's a pitfall filled to overflowing with lies, brutality, and injustice. Sitting in Washington or Geneva in the offices of the World Bank or the WTO, bureaucrats have the power to decide the fate of millions. It's not only their decisions that we are contesting. It's the fact that they have the power to make those decisions. No one elected them. No one said they could control our lives. Even if they made great decisions, it's politically unacceptable.Fascism's ascendancy, which came as a reaction against Democracy and the gains won by the lower levels of society, is the most important and exciting story of our lives. I have yet to make this story totally transparent. I have only come upon the legends, and some of the characters. The task ahead is great, but the story must be told to the current generation, and retold to our descendants.
