Barbarians Within Our Gates
(Editorial Comment from host RJ Evans on his American Heathen® radio show – Air Date 08/25/12)
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” – Rep. Todd Akins
The words that “slipped” from Rep. Todd Akins mouth were utterly stupid, but also a reveal. They were a reveal that was scheduled to happen at a later date, at a later time. It was just poor timing. It’s not like Akins’ views on abortion or woman’s reproductive rights were ever a secret. His ignorant, uninformed opinion on those subjects has always been crystal clear. A woman’s body belongs to the State and Jesus. But Akins’ words, on this particular day, became a tell in an election year game of idiocy that began with the GOP primary circus. The GOP field of batshit crazy candidates vying for skydaddy favor, back then, had positioned the voting base far too close to the front doors of the sanitarium. In the end, Mitt Romney was the least qualified dingbat, and the most likely candidate to avoid being strapped to the psychoanalyst’s couch. But with Romney’s recent VP pick, Paul Ryan, and Akins’ slip of the lip, the insanity of GOP politics is about to be continued.
Barbarism. It’s an uncivilized state or condition. The GOP is about to unveil barbaric plans for America. There is nothing civil about them, and there are plenty of conditions. Reduce the middle class to slave wages by destroying labor unions, totally deregulate corporations, their products and services, removing all potential threats and limitations to unlimited corporate profit. Bolster defense spending while playing on the electorate’s fear of a faceless enemy. Keep as many people as possible distracted, afraid of their own shadows and looking to a non-existent deity for help and guidance, and give religious zealots governmental power to control those distracted fearful masses.
But, how will they do it? How will they execute their barbaric plans? A big part of the GOP platform this election year is a Constitutional Amendment that will outlaw abortion. Even in cases of rape or incest. The GOP claims they are trying to protect the rights of the unborn. But, the cold, hard, factual reality of their agenda is that they want total and absolute control over the people. Control women, control their reproductive rights, and they control everyone. The tyranny they seek, under the flag of christian theocracy, can be had by simply controlling sex… the single most important biological drive humans experience. If they can control sex, they control you. But, in order to control sex, they must first declare a war on democracy by manipulating it and taking advantage of our ignorance. So far, they’ve done it. They’ve used obstruction, deception, distraction, and outright lies. They have turned the word “truth” upside-down. Facts, evidence… they no longer matter. Anything that bares any truth is held in secret, buried as deeply as possible in the muck of human distraction, and fear for survival, that they’ve created.
Aristotle said of tyrants and war “. . . and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny] to strive to see that all the affairs of the tyrant are secret, but that nothing is kept hidden of what any subject says or does, rather everywhere he will be spied upon . . . . Also it is part of these tyrannical measures to impoverish the nation so as to bolster the funds available for military defense, and so that the common citizens will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts . . . . Thus, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars in order to preserve his own monopoly of power.” –Aristotle, Politics bk v, xi (350 BCE)
There are barbarians within our gates. They are here now. The only defense we have is to dispose of our fear. Dispose of our distraction. Dispose of our myths. We must, as Thomas Jefferson said, “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear… Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue on the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you.”- Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787. It is up to us to suffocate the barbarians of the poisoned air they breath, choke out their lies and distortions in the steel grasp of logic and reason, and demand the compensation of absolute truth. To do anything less is to surrender. To do anything less is to perish in tyranny. To do anything less is to allow the murder of freedom.
