Parrhesiacide in the Last Dying Days of The Dark Ages

Since the ruling class gets the privilege of writing history books, The Dark Ages officially began with the decline of the Roman Empire, and ended with European discovery and exploitation of the Western Hemisphere, or the commencement of The Great American Holocaust, Native American Genocide, or 500 Year War.  Call it what you will.  There is no official designation, for according to history books, it never happened.  It can be argued, however, that The Dark Ages have continued through the more than five hundred year period since Columbus’ first voyage, and have reached a higher pinnacle (or darker depth) with each passing year since then.

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The death toll inflicted by Europeans upon the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere is unknown.  Two hundred million perhaps.  The conquering hoards were just about as toxic to the Americas as the Bubonic Plague had been in Europe.  But nobody counts the dead bodies of inferior races.  The slaughter has been non-stop, continuing to this day unabated.  The methods of abuse have inspired similar patterns, or been duplicated, across Australia, Africa, many islands in the Pacific Ocean, and Nazi Germany.  Adolph was a big fan of Andrew Jackson’s brutality.  Jews or Sioux…it really doesn’t matter to the folks in charge.  If it’s in the way of your agenda, subdue it, imprison it, or kill it.  Lucky for the superior races, technology has made the digging of mass-graves much easier over the passing of centuries.

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[dropcap]G[/dropcap]iving credit where credit is due, we must acknowledge advances in certain areas during the most recent five hundred years of The Dark Ages.  Mankind has soared technologically.  The internal combustion engine, electricity, manned flight, space travel, indoor plumbing, plastic, the automobile, radio, television, computer, cell phone, Facebook.  The list does go on.  Unfortunately, there’s a toxic side to this coin, which may negate any improvements in the quality of life for us common folks.  The internal combustion engine has now upset the balance of gasses which envelop our planet to the point that all life forms are in danger.  Likewise, the production of the amount of electricity now required to sustain life as we now know it, has resulted in the destruction, and damming (damning) of all major river canyons, and the construction of nuclear power plants which, without exception, will eventually fail in one way or another, causing unimaginable grief.  Not to mention the little problem of dealing with nuclear waste, which will haunt us into oblivion like a zombie assassin with a toxic, glowing saber.  But not to worry…we’ll likely choke to death on our plastic waste first.

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The Dark Ages: The plague wasn’t the only dark facet of that era.  Europe had become a cultural wasteland for its lack of social, literary, artistic, and technological advancement.  The feudal system fostered widespread poverty, illiteracy, disease, and starvation.  Institutionalized religious superstition ruled the day, as the Roman Catholic Church condemned scientific and cultural advancement as the work of the Devil.

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Other than dubious advances in technology, little has changed since the year 1500 CE.  The now grossly overpopulated world is still a cultural wasteland.  The neo-feudal system of wage-slavery fosters widespread poverty, illiteracy, disease, and starvation.  Modern capitalism in the Western Hemisphere, largely fueled for the first four hundred years by the atrocities of the African slave trade, changed the complexion of society to the extent that world population multiplied by a factor of twenty.  The Catholic Church and its many lesser look-alikes are still at work condemning scientific and cultural advancement as the work of the Devil.  And their Holy Crusade against the Muslim blasphemers continues, with enthusiastic aid from Empire’s Military-Industrial Complex.

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Man’s technological advancement now includes possession of enough nuclear weapons to vaporize this vibrant blue planet.  His propensity toward greed and avarice makes it a likely scenario.  Either those of us who understand the urgency of the situation allow Mother Earth to be reduced to ash, or we revolt, turn it around, and walk toward the Light.  Either way, it’s likely that these are the last dying days of The Dark Ages.

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The struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness may need some definition.  We humans are held captive within imaginary national boundaries.  We are instructed to define ourselves by those boundaries, to pledge allegiance to pieces of cloth representing those odd-shaped earthen jigsaw pieces, and to fight the wars waged by those who hold the power.  Take a look at satellite pictures.  There are no countries or boundaries.  But the final great battle appears to be heating up between those imaginary countries.  There are the forces of Light, which seek peace on earth, good will to all people, and an existence in harmony with Pachamama.  Among these may be included Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and most of South America.  The forces of Darkness seek only to continue their policy of enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, Pachamama be damned.  Among these may be included The U.S.A., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The European Union, and Japan.  Of course these designations are not etched in stone, since internal, national tug-of-wars are always in play, and the Lights of nations are being snuffed out with disturbing regularity by the forces of Darkness.

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The forces of Darkness have a long history (not their official version of history) of silencing, imprisoning, or eliminating persons in high profile positions, who criticize and disagree with the official agenda.  Our gone but not forgotten friend, George Carlin, said it best:

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“Here’s an interesting form of murder we’ve come up with:  Assassination.  You know what’s interesting about assassination?  Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry but it’s also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate.  Did you ever notice who it is?  Stop to think who it is we kill?  It’s always people who’ve told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another.  Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcom X, John Lennon.  They all said:  Try to live together peacefully.  BAM!  Right in the fucking head.  Apparently we’re not ready for that.”

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There’s a word for people who speak the truth boldly and publicly, even at risk to their own personal safety.  “Parrhesia” was, in part, the subject of the Ph. D. thesis of a person whom I’ve admired greatly for the last decade.  Cynthia McKinney was the first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia in the U.S. Congress.  She is also one of the great American parrhesiastae of all time.  According to her own definition:  “Parrhesia is a type of leadership that involves a special type of speech.  It is a leadership that has the authority to speak, and that uses that authority to speak what we would call ‘truth to power’ and does so despite the imminent and immanet risk posed to the speaker.”

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Lucky for Cynthia, the Dark forces which control the political battlefield managed to squelch her bid for a seventh term in congress.  Hers had been a bold but lonely public voice, calling for an investigation of the official version of the events of 9-11-01, insinuating that President Bush and his cohorts had previous knowledge of the attacks, criticizing loudly and clearly The Iraq War, and warfare in general.  She had also introduced articles of impeachment against Bush, Cheney, and Condoleeza Rice.  Completely disillusioned with the Democratic Party, she became the Green Party candidate in the 2008 Presidential Election, placing 6th with 0.12% of the votes.  That’s an extremely condensed version of one of the great parrhesiastae of our time, but like I said, lucky for Cynthia they took away her power and her voice.  She was too dangerous to be allowed a public forum.  A few people were starting to take her seriously.

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The forces of Darkness will do whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo.  They’ve been hard at work silencing, imprisoning, and assassinating parrhesiastae wherever they may be, for a very long time.  Parrhesiastes extraordinaire, John F. Kennedy must not have been paying attention when the C.I.A. took him aside after his inauguration, and showed him the little film titled “What You Need To Do and Say To Avoid Assassination”.  Really!  They didn’t have much choice, now did they?  His crimes were great.  Trying to end the Vietnam War in its infancy.  The surreptitious communication with both Castro and Khrushchev, through which he hoped to end the Cold War, avoid another World War, and normalize diplomatic relations.  Announcing that he wanted to splinter the C.I.A. into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.  And his Commencement Address at American University, just months before his brain was separated from his skull, was the last straw.  BAM!

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It’s unclear whether or not George Orwell actually said:  “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”.  There are several versions of this quote, and none can be substantiated.  What is clear is that those who profit greatly as a result of The Dark Ages will do whatever is necessary to hide the Light and to muzzle the truth.  Those of us who see the Light and recognize the lies, know that the lives of parrhesiastae are all too often cut short by those whom they dare to criticize or disobey.  The last thing the forces of Darkness want is a revolution.  Not in The United States, and certainly not worldwide.

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Within the U.S.A. many parrhesiastae have paid the price of being overly-loquacious and truthful.  Of course, in such a violence-prone country, random shootings do occur, but it’s highly likely that most of the high-profile murders have been hits by the forces of Darkness.  The evidence is plentiful, convincing, and damning.  John & Bobby Kennedy, John Junior (who was on his way to becoming a New York Senator), Martin, Malcom, Medgar, John Lennon, Paul Wellstone.  These victims all had one thing in common.  They were guilty of walking toward the Light.  Revolutionaries, every one.  Is anyone surprised that the war mongers never get snuffed?

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Then there’s the international front.  In 2009 William Blum put together a list of foreign leaders who’ve been in the crosshairs of the forces of Darkness, just during my short lifetime.   He refers to these forces as the C.I.A. for some reason.  Hmmm.  The list covers the period between 1949 and 2003, and includes those who were killed and those who escaped the wrath of the assassins’ bullets.  Kim Koo, Chou En-lai, Sukarno, Kim Il Sung, Mossadegh, Recto, Nehru, Nasser, Sihanouk, Kassem, Figueres, Duvalier, Lumumba, Trujillo, Diem, The Castro brothers (over 600 attempts on Fidel alone), Caamano, de Gaulle, Che Guevara, Allende, Schneider, Torrijos, Noriega, Seko, Manley, Quaddafi, Khomeini, Dlimi, d’Escoto, Fadlallah, Hussein, Aideed, bin Laden, Milosevic, and Hekmatyar.  Granted, this list includes a few non-parrhesiastae, but also some with notable credentials.  More recently, it is highly likely that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez met an untimely death in a more creative manner than just the bullet or unexplainable airplane crash.  I wonder whether he smelled sulfur from his deathbed?

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In spite of all the dead bodies, the ongoing parrhesiacide being carried out by the forces of Darkness has been a failure.  When parrhesiastes, Che Guevara faced his assassin in Bolivia, he said: “Shoot coward  You are only going to kill a man.”  You can hide the truth in the Darkness, but you can’t kill it.  The final days of The Dark Ages are upon us.  The choice is ours.  The profits of warfare or the prophets of peace and justice.