by Stefan Schindler
During America’s conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Mark Twain declared: “America’s flag should be a skull and crossbones.”
More recently, Martin Luther King reminded us: “Wealth, poverty, racism, and war – these four always go together.” To these four we should also add the pervasive presence of political sophistry, now culminating in the tragic triumph of the Reagan counter-revolution against The Spirit of The Sixties.
Masters of mind control, the puppeteers at the apex of world power continue to steer the planet toward economic collapse, ecological apocalypse, and nuclear holocaust. Decades ago, Noam Chomsky published an essay on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” to address these questions, thus echoing Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley. In Orwell’s words: “History is more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
The reason we are now collectively sliding back toward medieval barbarism – supported by evangelical voters of whom Jesus is ashamed – is simple. In Michael Parenti’s words: “The rich are never satisfied. They want it all. If you know that, and nothing else, you still know more than all those people who know everything else, but not that.”
Recalling Plato’s cave parable, Howard Zinn observed: “The truth is so often the opposite of what we are told that we can no longer turn our heads around far enough to see it.” Chomsky adds the Socratic twist: “The problem is not that people don’t know; it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.” And the problem is exacerbated by the moral and intellectual cowardice of most teachers in American public, private, and higher education, dazed and confused by their own historical illiteracy, and unable to comprehend George Santayana’s prescient warning that “those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
When perpetual kindness is met with constant and increasing cruelty, it’s time for some righteous ferocity. Even Jesus chased the money-changers out of the temple; and he likely did it with a bull-whip, since he knew that merely saying “please” was utterly futile. Yes, peace begins with us; and peace and justice sometimes require a ferocious roar, like the late-life speeches of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
To paraphrase Michael Parenti: It is better to swim against the current than to be swept over the cliff.
America desperately needs a news media no longer subservient to the dominant corporate elite; just as it desperately needs a civic discourse informed by informed citizens. Meanwhile, it is well to remember that individual innocence is no protection from collective responsibility.