In many ways, a writer is a prophet, not of the future but of the present. A writer digest reality ahead of the crowd. He or she makes sense of a senseless world and bends the links of random events into a chain that hopefully can stand up to the fabrications of history.
For the truly subversive writer, this is a nearly impossible task. The most important messages are often radical. As a result, history never records them. Old lies are reborn with every new election cycle and every new war.
When the imperial wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and other nations around the world are exposed as monstrous and destructive, the pundits admit, “Yes, that was a bad idea,” or go silent, until the next war. The tech and real estate bubbles have been replaced by yet another bubble in government debt, especially in military spending. When the next war begins — and there will be another war — it will be to another boon to US arms manufacturers. The politicians who promise “change” like Barack Obama, deliver nothing but words. The most he and other politicians can promise is a slightly slower descent into madness.
The subversive writers predicted all of this, but no one listened. They have been exposing lies like these for thousands of years, but new generations, disadvantage by their youth, must learn the lessons of human failure anew. This is more than ironic. It seems to be a rule that history repeats, only changing terminology to suit the zeitgeist.
—
Liberal Americans are more forgetful than most. They can’t even seem to remember what happened eight years ago as they prepare again to sell their souls to another faux candidate of change, Bernie Sanders.
Sanders is a defender of the establishment, just as Obama was. Currently, his website doesn’t even have an issues statement on foreign policy, understandable since he’s been a reliable proponent of the US imperial wars. He supported the bombing of Kosovo in 1999 and repeatedly voted to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sanders also voted for a $1 billion aid package to prevent the pro-Nazi Ukranian coup from defaulting on its loans to the IMF. Just last year, Sanders even voted with Republicans to cut food stamp benefits by $90.
His objective to rally the party base and sell out to a “moderate” Democrat more fully representing the elite establishment is so obvious, it would be dishonest to call his inevitable capitulation a tragedy. Only the Democrats could manage a suicide this overt and yet still secret.
Meanwhile, despite their flirtation with the demagogue Donald Trump, Republicans are likely to back yet another candidate with even more dubious credentials, Jeb Bush. His family represents the most vicious and, yet still ineffectual leadership the American Empire has ever endured.
The Bush family fortune was created in large part by his grandfather, Prescott Bush, who financed the Nazis prior to and during World War II. His son and the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, engaged in covert operations during the 1960s (including a rather suspicious stay in Dallas in November 1963.) In the late 1970s, he was head of CIA and later an active participant in the Iran-Contra scandal. As President, Bush pardoned his co-conspirators. And of course, his son George W. Bush failed to stop 9/11 and led the United States into several wars in the middle east, including the ongoing disaster in Iraq. Couple that with the economic crisis of 2008 and the response to Hurricane Katrina. This is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Despite enormous evidence of poor character and judgment, the American people still see members of the Bush family as viable candidates.
We live in what Gore Vidal called The United States of Amnesia. Like the protagonist of the film Momento, we are utterly incapable of learning from our past mistakes. (In the film, Guy Pearce plays a man suffering from anterograde amnesia. He cannot form long term memories after the event that caused the injury. The man’s objective is to hunt down his wife’s killer, but without the ability to create new memories, he is continually betrayed and mislead.) Likewise, we want revenge against those who have hurt us, but we are continually deceived and used by politicians who claim to be allies.
Without the ability to remember our betrayals, we reinvest in false hopes, again and again. With the nation’s attention span utterly devastated, some prefer to watch ads or bite sized stories that can be consumed without deeper thought. But this hasn’t stopped the subversive writer from documenting the truth.
—
In Greek mythology, the titan Prometheus is punished by Zeus for giving fire to the human race. With fire, humans were able to defend themselves against Zeus, who was planning on exterminating them. According to the playwright Aeschylus, Prometheus also provided the human race with knowledge of the seasons, the ability to build ships, to sail by the stars, to interpret dreams and other prophecies.
Prometheus represents the subversive writer and intellectual who warns about the dangers of a tyrannical government, but is never appreciated. Instead, he is punished and persecuted for his bravery. Similar to the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, the knowledge Prometheus provides comes with a heavy price. The Gods, angered by both Prometheus and man, later conspired to create Pandora, literally meaning “all-gift,” to spread toil and disease throughout mankind.
Prometheus has the ability of foresight. His name literally means “fore-thinker,” and he is able to extrapolate the future. Prometheus had to have known the cost of his betrayal would be high. Still, he repeatedly defied the rulers of Olympus, making him the greatest intellectual hero in Greek myth.
Today’s Zeus is Barack Obama and the gods of Olympus include the members of the national security state. Jealously, they guard their secrets. Prometheus is personified through the heroic expositions of Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Russell Tice, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and the hundreds of whistleblowers and writers still brave enough to oppose this increasingly totalitarian society. They know the cost and yet persist.
Chained to a rock, Prometheus is picked at daily by an eagle. Unlike Jesus Christ who died to provide salvation for the human race, Prometheus is not allowed to die. His lesson represents a “cosmic law” or something that is repeatedly true. The tragedy of Prometheus plays out every day in the United States of Amnesia. The critic is always scorned and persecuted for telling the truth. As George Orwell wrote long ago, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
Reform through the electoral system is a cruel joke. The march of the techno-authoritarian state seems relentless. Future generations will look at “spreading democracy” as a murderous fraud the same way we condemn manifest destiny and white-man’s burden. And yet, we prophets of doom persist because this knowledge has value, even if few realize it. Even though we cannot stop this juggernaut, we believe future generations will benefit from our moral condemnations and perhaps, one day, know freedom again.
If you enjoyed this content, please donate. Even $1 or $5 makes a difference. You can donate via Paypal (see tip jar to the right) or with
