In the middle ages, life wasn’t so good.
Today, personal freedom amounts to what one can personally defend. Although I don’t condone what the ‘militia-types’ do, it is easy for anyone to see their motivations. Patriot act, REAL ID, subversion of the will of the people through electoral manipulation are just some of the incidents which might fuel the movement.
Our city, state, and national governments fight daily to regulate every aspect of our lives. Laws passed in the preceding 6 years are from a ruling party theoretically antithetical to unnecessary infringement. George Orwell saw the future, he only got the date wrong by a couple of decades.
It is made all the stranger by the notion that those in power are making these changes for our ‘benefit.’ This is so close to the notions of ages past when the ruler, usually a king, was deluded that he ruled by divine right, and further, divine guidance. Is it so different than a president, claiming divine guidance, and seizing power far beyond Constitutional rights?
Stranger still is the message being given. We are in a war, that positions this country as the aggressor, pursuing some nebulous concepts of democracy and freedom, for those too downtrodden to make progress on their own. This is being done by a force, far away from their homeland, pursuing a goal as elusive as the religious conversions sought by the Crusades.
In a few days, that Napoleonic figure we call “Mr. President” will meet with other world leaders, and try to convince them that his answers to the ills of this world are the best, as he has been chosen by God. What event, late in the Bible, does this remind us of?
Now, in the midst of so many technological solutions, we find ourselves fighting diseases defeated and forgotten long ago. Between the scientific explanation of mutation, and the religious views of divine judgement, there is that niggling thought that somewhere in studies long since left at school, this is not new.
The world has been to this place before.
[tags]George Orwell, middle ages, Crusades, Napoleon, G8, Constitution, Patriot Act, REAL ID[/tags]