OVER 30 YEARS OF RISING DESPOTISM IN AMERICA

[Morpheal]

OVER 30 YEARS OF RISING DESPOTISM IN AMERICA

A good leader always strives to make it possible for others to exceed the leader’s own self, to the maximum of their abilities. This is as true in politics as it is in education. A good teacher always strives to have the students excel beyond the teacher’s own abilities and 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 catch phrases such as “let it go”, “finish” with it, and “give it up” 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 uses “competition”, redefining it across a span of time, for its own 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 involvement as the primary focus of the individual’s cultural, and 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 of “spirituality”, “faith”, “belief”, “trust”, “grace”, “salvation”, and “god” in new ways, for its own political purpose. Despotism would 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 term the “spiritual” dimension of life. The despotic destruction of other purposes, goals, achievements, attempts at succeeding, in any sphere of life become subordinated to a false spirituality, a false religion, which is made increasingly convincing of its “rightness”. The very word “right” and “religion” become concatenated under 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.

I myself studied the world’s religions,.and its philosophies, eastern 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.

Allen Ginsberg, one of America’s venerated Beat Poets, best known from the 1960s, and known for his association with other great poets of that era, such as Bob Dylan, wrote: “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” describing the condition of America 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 more than 30 years. It has crushed America’s spirit. It has flattened 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, drowning out humanity with despotism disguised as “human freedoms”.

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 despotism crushed America’s spirit so completely and so totally, in 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 where even a phrase such as “free market” economics, as the world 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, by any means, anywhere, in any form, by anyone, and in fact anyone is encouraged to do so.

[Dora]

1. Now that's a good Sunday sermon.

Thank you.

You've given me a lot to think about. I am a poet, and I haven't written in a good six years. I am curious - why do you say it is "poets in particular" who "need to be heard as to what despotism has done to them."

Do you have a blog outside of DU?

[Mnemosyne]

2. This needs more R&

:kick:

Thanks Robert!