The reason truth is on the scaffold is that it has not learned how to fight back. Let's unwrap that sentence. You associate propaganda with war and Hitler, sure. You may also associate it with P. T. Barnum and later Americans like Bernays who created the basis of today's venal plutocracy and its GOP servants. Did you like the last sentence? Did you find the last words extreme? Venal plutocracy? GOP servants?
The time has come for those who feel the truth is being eaten alive by Trump and company to recognize that reason alone will not prevail, regardless of how true reason may be.
We need to go back to the drawing board and spend this century revising the Categories by which we live and move and have our being?
Words rule
The antidote to propaganda is found in the Teachings Of Jesus. It is called truth. The first category we need to change is that of religion. The teachings of Jesus are not specific to Christians. They are universal, what philosophers see as general. We need to see religion as an insular phenomenon that cannot be universal because it does not include all people.
There is nothing about being universal that is necessarily good in itself. The reason why universality is needed as a benchmark is because it is the condition of all human beings. We are all one.
That is a fact and a truth. It is also, for those who embrace it, a source of inspiration and purpose. It means that you want all things of importance to come to fruition. Reality tends toward the good.
The quickest way to get to an understanding of what we are talking about is to confront war and violence. These are the elephants in the room of existence.
Their ascendency rules us. They are the reason why the world itself is fundamentally a lurching but still quite unified war machine that jumps at the word security and salutes the icons of power. When Trump tweets about the flag, he is taking a huge symbol and turning it into a force that excludes. The idea of justice and liberty for all is traded for a dog whistle.
Life becomes one side against another side.
What can we do?
We can undertake the work of a century. Two examples. We can begin to flag violence as "not suitable" period. We can see war as taboo. Believe it or not, opposition to war is hobbled by so-called Laws Of War. Laws of war are aimed at regulating conduct during wars. The assumption is that wars will be here forever.
Abby Martin & Chris Hedges: War, Propaganda and the Enemy Within https://t.co/P3UplYjdss via @YouTube
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) November 26, 2017
The sage Christian may think I am a dunce because the Bible says there will be wars and rumors of wars. The Bible says that but it does not say they will be forever. We are the controllers of our future. This article is only part of a mass effort underway to begin changing the terms on which our present plutocratic order is based.
