Daily Archives: 2013/11/11

KILLING THE GOOSE

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.
Yogi Bera

Something has been bothering me for a long time, and my mind still cannot wrap itself around those who are complicit (can we make a new word “complicitors”?) in the destruction of their own country and think they will escape the fallout, even those at the very pinnacle of power. They knowingly kill the goose, freedom, that lays the golden egg but think THEY can keep the eggs coming. In theory they expect to keep THEIR wealth and things while taking from you and me, presumably because our contributions don’t matter. In practice, however, they, too, will lose all.

The Soviet leaders had a name for such followers, they were called “useful idiots”, and that name was not just for the little guys, but soon included some of those very leaders. I think it was Beria who went to his death weeping, not that he was to die, but afraid Stalin did not love him anymore. His final words were addressed to that effect. Who will weep this time when they are being tossed aside?

The people who close their eyes to lies and sidle up to power will all lose when the leaders finally turn on their own, but there are other sides to this story. What happens when a civilization falls? How long can technology last when there is no innovation or upkeep available?

Without question there will be chaos when a nation falls, but I have another scenario about such a future that I think is true. If you want to know what will happen and how people will live when a population declines, choose a time with a much lower population number and learn how people lived then. Within a very few generations that is the way you and your descendants will live. How do you keep computers going when there is no way to repair and service them? What happens to satellites and other forms of communication? Who keeps automobiles running and airplanes flying? Think about all the things we have simply because we have the population to sustain them.

Cellphones are a great example of technological innovation. The first “mobile” phones were cumbersome, unreliable, and expensive. They were mostly used in commercial operations. When they started being used by individuals, only the so called “rich” had them. Those people were very limited in their calling system. Now the phones are small, reliable and cheap. Everyone has them. A man who worked in Africa told me how shocking it was to be in the African “bush” and find that every native had a cellphone. How long do you think any cellphone system will survive a societal breakdown?

If you had to leave your home in an emergency, with electricity gone and enemies at the door, and you told your children to grab just the necessities so you could run, what would they take? Their IPhones and computers, or warm clothing, food and water? Would they even believe they were in danger?

Back to the “complicitors”, where oh where will they be? It won’t take long for their lights to go out, too. They are fighting against us by design and what they do to themselves is out of sheer stupidity.

HISTORICAL MEMORY

Not to know what happened before you were born, that is to be always a boy, to be always a child. –Cicero

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana

So here we are today, historically illiterate beyond belief, and unaware of the dangers that beset us. How do we wake up those who have been taught no history, nor how to think with any logic or common sense? They are grown-up children with no real thought at all, no feelings for others nor knowledge of the needs and desires of their fellow beings.

Hannah Arendt famously coined the term “the banality of evil” and in our age that thought is true, many are so banal in their evil. But there are others who “think” and believe what they think is true simply because they are the ones who think it. Or, as someone else said, “If what you think about is BS, then what difference does it make?”

Are we to “repeat” history in our day? At a time when we are faced not only with a lack of historical context but have leaders and educators actively lying about that history, what are we, who lived that history, going to do?

I have wondered what some of these people who lie or rewrite our history do in the middle of the night when they awake, review their actions and have a crisis of conscience. I have finally concluded that they sleep the sleep of the just and never awake to question anything, especially not themselves. Thus we have IRS agents and other government bureaucrats who truly believe they have done nothing wrong, and see no inconsistency in hiding behind the Fifth. They continue their lies to advance their own agenda.

One of my grandsons watched “The Great Escape” and concluded that he “knew all about World War II and the Wehrmacht.”  Sorry, but not so. Later I gave the boys the series “Victory at Sea”, to watch. There was an episode about the Americans going onto a Pacific island and encountering a fearsome and very bloody Japanese attack. I was stunned to hear the boys talking about how “stupid” the Americans were to go there when there were that many of the enemy. I made them pause the episode and asked how the Americans could possibly have known the Japanese were there. Well, they could have seen them. How? Well, by satellites. They didn’t have any. Well, they should have flown planes over. What makes you think they didn’t? Have you ever heard of camouflage?  And planes have a limited range and get shot down. Their intelligence capabilities were very limited. The boys finally conceded that they knew very little and returned to their viewing. Then I heard a couple of them laugh about a dead body floating in the water. In black and white it didn’t look so bad to children raised viewing death and destruction on the big screen and seeing violent video games. Again I made them hit pause, and said, “That boy was somebody’s son or husband or father. He could have been my friend’s older brother. I remember the sadness and pain when he was killed in the Pacific.” That brought shock and silence.

The shock and silence of those who are not taught the realities of history.

We have many who are liars about history and everything else, and are too smug and self-satisfied to suffer “the long, dark tea-time of the soul” which leads to adulthood. They will always be children and condemned to learn the hard way.

It’s too bad they blind others and carry them to destruction with them.