| OVER 30 YEARS OF RISING DESPOTISM IN AMERICA |
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| Robert Morpheal, Bob Ezergailis, Morphealism (morpheal@yahoo.com) |
2008/11/23 09:03 |
OVER 30 YEARS OF RISING DESPOTISM IN AMERICA
A good leader always strives to make it possible for others to exceed
true in politics as it is in education. A good teacher always strives
knowledge.
This is the opposite of despotism. Despotism strives instead to
prevent anyone rising up and exceeding its leadership. Despotism is
often clever in its using isolated instances, examples, that appear to
excel, to evade criticism of what it is itself guilty of. That is the
obstructing of excellence. A very few are chosen and made into
examples, as if anyone can achieve the same, when in fact despotism
stops all others dead in their every effort. That tokenism obscures
the fact of despotism, and that despotism often remains undetected and
unchallenged.
The dangers of despotism in leadership, particularly prevalent in
insecure leadership uncertain of itself, in any enterprise, in
politics, wherever leadership is necessary, are a continual threat to
real progress. It favors mediocrity, resignation to despair, and
defeatism. It uses the modern psychological tricks represented by
as if that is the healthy choice. The very definition of health,
under despotism, changes from favoring exceptional accomplishment to
one favoring acceptance of defeat. The very meaning of realistic, and
in touch with reality, changes. Wisdom becomes the wisdom of not
trying to excel, and not trying to accomplish the exceptional,
nurturing only the idea that it cannot be done, and that it is foolish
to make the attempt. This becomes a socially engineered pattern,
prevailing in society, under despotism. Psychology, social
engineering, and medicine become the handmaidens of despotism.
The human potential movement of the 1960s has largely perished, and
what remains of it has been radically, albeit negatively, transformed.
It has been constrained by despotism because it was a movement among
the scientists applying the new psychological and sociological
knowledge in a way that does not favor despotism. Despotism
annihilated that movement as readily as it annihilated most of
political activism and drove it completely underground. Even
demonstrations under a despotic regime differ in character and purpose
to those not constrained and manipulated by despotism, but again token
protests and demonstrations are certainly part of the smoke and
mirrors act that despotism so cleverly conceals itself behind. If you
know the history, and are old enough to remember it, or have studied
its largely discredited and banned writings, you know how it has
changed. Those remaining radicals and activists, who knew the 1960s
and early 1970s in America, know how it has changed and we must
resurrect their voices, wisdom, and experience. Those who knew the
human potential movement then, need to give voice to what happened to
that incredibly insightful and powerful force for positive change.
Those who knew the world of science and invention then, need to come
forward as to how that too has changed, because the changes were not
for the better. Despotism has prevailed in every area, and the truth
has fallen victim to that despotism. Cultural workers, artists,
playwrights, poets in particular, need to be heard as to what
despotism has done to them.
There is nothing right, moral or true about having the power to make
others fail, to prove yourself right. That too is despotism. That is
as true in the cultural sphere, as it is in the political sphere, and
certainly in the economic sphere. Disguised as normal competition,
despotism remains more often undiscerned and unchallenged. Despotism
purpose. When negative changes come across a longer span of time
people fail to notice, fail to respond, and tend to accept, often
failing to remember how it was. That failure is a tool of despotism.
That is why despotism also favors ageism. The memories, wisdom,
experiences, of elders are discredited in favor of youth. Despotism
triumphs when its handmaidens of psychology and social engineering
enforce ageist principles and destroy respect and consideration among
youth for those who have been in this world long enough to know the
difference between despotism and true human freedoms. Despotism
triumphs among naive ignorance, not among experienced wisdom, but it
knows how to silence and discredit that experience and wisdom. That is
part of its weaponry of attack.
Creativity , innovation, invention, social, economic, cultural,
political, individual and particularly collective progress cannot
truly and genuinely thrive under despotism. Despotism divides and
conquers against collectivism enforcing a solipsist, narcisist, self
socio-political existence. This is also promoted as a new standard of
health, and reflects in the cultural products and their means of
production, most strongly. Often the problem of money is interposed as
the rational for this phenomenon, but despotism knows how to decrease
the means, increase the cost and put a price tag on everything, to
prevent itself from being challenged by those who are trying to rise
up, and to achieve. Alone they have little, or at best much less,
chance. Collectivism is made too expensive. Cooperation is nearly
unheard of. Only those chosen as examples, as tokens, and having more
fiscal means, can buy that cooperation, and that too is part of the
illusion that despotism hides behind. In the 1960s and early 1970s
that was not how it was. There were far greater chances for
cooperation and collectivism as an alternative without a high price
imposed by despotism. Times have changed and despotism is counting its
triumphs against humanity.
Despotism also does something else worthy of note. It is often first
to place an irrational idea, an unreasonable principle, that must be
unquestioningly upheld, above all else. It often attempts to vindicate
by a twisted, anxiety producing, highly conflicted, variant of
religion. Its illegitimacy in that regard is scarce questioned because
it requires immense expertise in order to discern the difference and
to challenge what is happening. Despotism uses the powerful concepts
have been considered the devil, but now it is a pretender to being god
and that blasphemy, if you are religiously minded gradually tends to
hold sway. Those concepts become the irrational justifications for all
manner of despotic oppression, and are increasingly accepted by many,
who lack the discernment. Again the expertise is coopted to being
handmaidens of despotism. Psychology, sociology, social engineering,
medicine, become coopted in support of the redefining of what we might
other purposes, goals, achievements, attempts at succeeding, in any
sphere of life become subordinated to a false spirituality, a false
despotism. The ability to question effectively and to act outside of
that constraint of unquestioning irrational belief as a necessary,
sometimes made into a sufficient, condition for imposed mediocrity to
triumph, becomes completely destroyed under despotism. Even the
experts are silenced on that subject. They are neither promoted, nor
discussed openly. They are pushed down and ignored as being ignorant
themselves, as a result of despotism.
and western, more than 25 years ago, and I know how it has changed. I
read the radicals, coming a little late, and having been a little too
young in the latter half of the 1960s, but I remember the atmosphere,
and what went on. I remember how things were done. I read the accounts
of others. I know the difference.
Later I witnessed the effects of the worsening Cold War, and the
parallel rise of despotism in America, spilling over its borders, and
changing my own country of Canada, and its socio-political
environment, affecting its differing ideals, manipulating its culture,
simply as the wake, the spillover wash, of an overwhelming flood of
American despotism. We can scarce recognize ourselves, across the
border from America, being so affected by its despotism. We watch the
changes in America across a span of more than 30 years in largely
silenced horror, and most have fallen victim to resigned despair and
socio-political, even cultural, impotency in consequence of the tidal
wave crossing the borders from America and spilling across the whole
world. How much worse the effects of its own despotism, on America
itself. We are the witnesses of that too. We, who have lived through
that time, experienced it, and who remember the difference.
Despotism has also persisted in using its failed economics, more often
deliberately failed, also becoming a form of social engineering and
manipulation, in shock waves of brutal ups and down cyclical economic
apocalypses, timed to destroy progress, and beak it down, before
anything rises up and establishes against despotism. Tangling people
up in ceaseless and increasing economic struggle for existence
destroys their ability to achieve and destroys their ability to fight
despotism. Another weapon of despotism. I have seen the city destroyed
by repeated attacks from a despotic system, pursuing despotic economic
policies, that are measurable only by their despotic results.
There is much more to be said about despotism and how it has
increasingly triumphed in America over the past 30 years. Fewer and
fewer remember the difference and despotism is winning due to that
fact. When you cannot remember the difference, and are made to
disbelieve those who remember it, you cannot ever hope to overcome
it.
the 1960s, and known for his association with other great poets of
in his day, claiming the effects of despotism upon the youth, the
intellectuals, the artists, the poets, free thinkers, the poor, the
disenfranchised of America. Allen too was a victim, as we can glean
from later works and comments, of an increasing despotism. That
despotism is much worse today, years after his passing away. We can
find how bad it really was by reading the literature that brave
writers, poets, produced in America. We can see something in some of
the art, and documentary, that was created by artists in America. Then
we must remember that it was possible to create and express those
things then, and if we are lucky enough we can find access to those
expressions, somewhere, somehow, because despotism has not completely
done away with that part of its own history. Despotism has not
improved since then. It has become more despotic.
Despotism has taken over America, taken it over in over the span of
and driven underground those who would express dissent and opposition
to despotism in America. That despotism is what America has attempted
to export out into the world, and to flood across its borders,
Read the writings and try to find the words recorded of Philip
Berrigan, and his brother Daniel Berrigan. Read Jack Kerouac. Read
Gregory Corso, another beat poet. Read them for a taste of what they
knew, and experienced in America, so many decades ago. Then wonder,
and most of all wonder where it has all gone. How and why has
over 30 years of despotism against its own. It is time that those who
remember the tough times, the troubled times, the times of protest,
the times of putting into question Remember the times when it was far
more possible to organize, to express, to create, in disagreement with
despotism. Remember when oppression, suppression, and strictly
enforced repression of self into self, where not as much the rules
that they are now. Remember when disinformation, and misinformation
were not so overwhelming as they are under the increase in despotism
economy nears to collapse, remains largely a matter of prescribed
faith, dictated from despots. Remember when art did not have to reside
at the extreme poles of more and more abstract, or strictly realist
depiction, severely constrained as to styles and subjects, but could
protest, put into question, reveal, and challenge, despotism.
When will America put into question its own descent into the hell of
social, political, religious and economic despotism ?
Robert Morpheal
Permission is given to copy, reproduce, and distribute this article,
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