Looking Back from Two Futures

She asked her grandfather if he could remember when he knew that America and much of the world were sliding back into these new Dark Ages of tyranny, fear and chaos. Was it the stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, the illegal and immoral Iraq war, the country's leaders championing torture and authoritarian rule, the assertion of Empire with the rhetoric of freedom, denying real threats and global catastrophes, while America slept? Or was it the rise of the Rabid Right, the new fundamentalist Inquisition, the growing distance between the ultra rich and almost everyone else, while America slept?

He answered that it was certainly all those things that suggested it, but what convinced him finally that the Dark Ages were upon them was the vicious vengefulness of the Internet Rabble of the Rabid Right. From Glenn Greenwald:

This week, Bartholomew's Official Notes on Religion reported on the new "project" implemented by the group StopTheACLU.org. As that group describes it, the project is called "Expose the ACLU Plaintiffs," and promises to publish the home addresses of all individuals who are "using the ACLU" in any First Amendment lawsuit based on the Establishment clause which challenges the constitutionality of governmental promotion of Christianity. The first such enemy targeted for this treatment is a Jewish family in Delaware who sued their local school district over its alleged promotion of Christianity in the public schools. StopTheACLU published their home address and telephone number on its website, and the family -- due to all sorts of recriminations and fear of escalating attacks -- was forced to leave their home and move to another town, which was one of the apparent goals of StopTheACLU in publishing their home address.

Greenwald had said this was not an isolated case, and his grandfather knew that to be true. He'd heard of even a local official in rural Pennsylvania whose family was harrassed and terrorized with threats, over a zoning issue.

Greenwald and others pointed out that those advocating this terrorism were not just fringe players but major figures in the right wing and Republican media. "These self-evidently dangerous tactics are merely a natural outgrowth of the hate-mongering bullying sessions which have become the staple of right-wing television shows such as Bill O'Reilly's and websites such as Michelle Malkin's (who, unsurprisingly, has become one of O'Reilly's favorite guests). One of the most constant features of these hate fests is the singling out of some unprotected, private individual -- a public school teacher here, a university administrator there -- who is dragged before hundreds of thousands of readers (or millions of viewers), accused of committing some grave cultural crime or identified as a subversive and an enemy, and then held out as the daily target of unbridled contempt, a symbol of all that is Evil."

Her grandfather recalled what his own grandfather told him about the rise of Fascism in Germany, and what his mother had told him about McCarthyism and the Blacklist in America, and this was of a piece. Everyone who disagreed with them, who opposed them, who questioned their dogmas of belief or power, were evildoers, terrorists, the Enemy, and should be shot, gassed, put to death.

Combined with so many immense and serious challenges on the horizon, this vicious distracting and destructive idiocy was the nail in the coffin of the future, he felt. Civilization itself was so weakened that when trouble came, it would break in panic. That was when he knew.


Then there is another future, in which a boy asks his grandmother, did she always know this age of wonders would come to pass? No, she said, at times it looked pretty bad. But things had to get very bad, the last gasp of evil and envy, the fear of little minds in high places, and the greed of an aimless society addicted to mediocrity and advertising lies, before it all fell apart, almost overnight. It got so bad that people were going mad with hate and fear, a mob of them inflicting a rein of terror in the name of defending against terrorism. But nothing could hold back their terror until they wore it out.

In the meanwhile, his grandmother said, there were people doing great work to save the future, although they were not yet heard over the din of disaster. Individuals and small communities, some of them virtual, were rehearsing for the leadership of the better future they were dreaming up daily.

Now we know, his grandmother told him, that it was the end of a bad time while the new time was growing in the skin of the old. We know now it was the pitiful last gasp of a dying ideology.
They had fumbled away their power, the people they had counted on weren't listening to them anymore--their media ratings were way down--so they just shouted and pouted in a louder frenzy. Oh, they could still hurt people, and they did. They could still send young Americans and entire families in foreign lands to their deaths, and they did. But their day was ending.

Still, you should remember these awful things, she said, because even now that they seem impossible, they could happen again. But you won't let them, will you, children? You will continue to work for an even better future for all, for the life of the planet and the human adventure, that you are dreaming up daily.