Trojan Horse:
The Athenians laid siege to Troy for many years and then abruptly departed leaving the Trojan Horse.
The Prophet Laocoon warned the city that the Trojan horse held their doom. He hurled his javelin into the side of the Trojan horse and was attacked by a giant multi-headed serpent that emerged from the sea and pulled he and his son's into the sea to their deaths. The inhabitants took this as an omen to mean that the Trojan horse was a gift from the God's, and thus sacred. They brought the offering inside the city gates and at night the Athenians emerged, opened the gates to their awaiting army and the city was sacked and destroyed, the men killed, and the women and children enslaved.
George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Marshall McLuhan were three prophetic voices of the 20th century who
warned of the technological subjugation of Mankind. Orwell wrote the novel 1984 about a world controlled by three empires in a state of perpetual war and shifting alliances. Big Brother and the Thought Police were monitoring all human activity, and the population was kept in a constant state of war hysteria and fear of the enemy. One percent of the population composed the inner party, 15 percent the outer party, the remaining 84 percent of the population were proles. The Technology of control possessed by the totalitarian state made rebellion impossible, slavery was eternal. Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World about a future technological state controlled by the drug Soma. Human reproduction was an industrial process, cloning different models of genetically designed humans for specific tasks within the social hierarchy. Huxley despaired that humanity would destroy itself, but decided finally that a spiritual evolution could avoid such a catastrophe.
Marshall McLuhan wrote about the effects of technology on society. In the 1950's and 60's he was the prophet of the Internet. He spoke of the concept of the Maelstrom and described it as the movement from a literate society based on the written word back to a symbolic post-literate society based on electronic imagery. He said that this vortex of technology would disrupt human civilization and obliterate everything that came before.
In Greek mythology king Minos received a gift from the God's, a perfect white bull. Instead of sacrificing the animal to the God's as agreed, he substituted an inferior one, and usurped for himself that which came from the Gods. Poseidon placed a curse upon the land and Minos' wife gave birth to a monster, the body of a man and the head of a bull. Minos forced Daudelaus to create an inescapable maze to imprison the nightmare creation. Minos forced human sacrifices into the maze to wander lost until they were killed and eaten by the Minotaur. Theseus was forced into the maze, but the King's daughter had given him a magic ball of string to trace his path in the maze and a whistle to disarm the Minotaur. He slew the monster and freed himself from the maze. This story has persisted for three thousand years and many different cultures because the themes are eternal. King Minos creates the monster by usurping power from himself and placing himself above the law. Minos has created fascism, the Minotaur nightmare that survives on human sacrifice, the beast that feasts on human flesh.. a dictatorship. The hero, Theseus slays the beast, destroys fascism and the tyrant and frees the land from it's curse.
What face has the Minotaur assumed in the 20th century that we would recognize? Nazi Germany personifies
the technological Totalitarian state and serves as a model. The subjugation of the Weimar Republic began with the creation of private militias that were used as a spingboard to infiltrate the German military, and finally the police forces. The Reigstag fire was an excuse to seize power and kill those that might stom them. The Night of the Long Knives refers to the creation of hit lists of enemies, and the hunting down and execution of hundreds of internal political rivals, opponents, and potential threats. Once Hitler had crossed the Rubicon of mass assassination he publically declared his actions above the law. This was the moment of the birth of the Minotaur in the 20th century. The pseudoscience of Eugenics and the dogma of German racial superiority and the theoretical subhuman level of other races was the rationale for wars of annihilation. Hitler's plan was to depopulate vast regions of the east and replace them with Germanic stock.Lebensraum of living space was the key phrase. Ten million Jews came under their geographical control of which six million were systematically murdered in an effort to wipe out the Jewish race. Three million others perished in the camps, gypsies, Slavs, other supposed subhuman races, homosexuals, dissident Catholic priests, POW's, union leaders, political opponents, Germans caught aiding Jews, Jehova's Witnesses, and other religious sects, and the intellectuals of conquered nations. The concentration camp of Auschwitz alone processed 4,756 human beings a day. The political propaganda machine was in many ways a work or art. School textbooks were altered and controversial books were burned ceremonially. State of the art movies were made to reinforce the
racial dogma. The propaganda was so irresistible that many Jews and other targeted groups were caught up in the excitement and joined the Nazi movement. In the aftermath of the war 50 million people had died and Europa lay in ashes. The question that the victors wanted to answer were how had the most civilized and technologically advanced nation on earth descended into the pit of hell. Who were these men, were they madmen? Worst of all, if it could happen there could it happen here? The psychiatrist who virtually lived with them during the Nuremberg trials wrote their collective portrait. Their problem solving strategies, of which there are three, was the least effective. They were born followers; they needed someone to tell them what to think. Their collective IQ was 140, a rigid view of the world, black and white without grey. Though they had some very unusual characteristics and some unusual personalities among them, they were not madmen. The psychiatrist noted that there were plenty of similar individuals in the United States who would gladly step over half the bodies of their fellow countrymen to control the remainder. The answers they received were not the answers they were prepared to hear. No they were not madmen, and yes, it could happen here.
Once in power Joseph Stalin immediately had half the Russian parliament shot or exiled to Siberia. And to solidify his hold on power he delibirately starved millions of his own people to death and personally signed a million death warrants. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler to attack Poland and divide the nation between them. And when Hitler double crossed
him and attacked USSR, 20 million Russians perished. Stalin was totally devoid of human feeling for his own countrymen or anyone else and the world was right to fear him.
Mao led a communist peasant revolution that overthrew Chiang Kai Shek in 1949. The degree of individual conformity demanded by the state to Communist dogma in the world's most populous nation was terrifying. The Great Leap Forward was a failed attempt at crash industrialization that resulted in famine and the deaths of millions of people. Mao's favorite tactic was to set opposing groups of people against each other to instill fear, eliminate potential rivals, and retain power despite popular discontent. One example was the Cultural Revolution that established the Red Guards as a vigilante force used to attack bourgeois elements in society, meaning anyone. The suffering of his own people left him unmoved. Mao's cult of personality exceeded even that of Stalin. His image and writings were inescapable.
Stalin, Mao, and Hitler personified the Totalitarian dictatorship as an external threat to the Republic we were right to fear them, their cult of personality and their vice like control on their own societies. However ancient wisdom and the mythology of the Minotaur points towards a tyranny that emerges from within not one imposed from without. The three prophets of the 20th century have warned of a technological dictatorship that is imposed from within. Not a foreign threat but one that emerges internally as it did in Nazi Germany.
Alexis D'Tocquieville was perhaps the greatest historian of the age. He visited the US in 1831 and wrote a description of our country that exceeds all others. He identified the US and Russia as the two emerging world powers and in effect predicted the cold war 120 years before it began. D'Tocqueville wrote about how the Minotaur would manifest itself in this country, his description of a kinder, gentler
fascism feels very much like the words of the three prophets. A manner of control that makes people love their servtitude. Fascism wearing a silk tie. If the technological dictatorship spoken of by the three 20th century prophets should arise now it would have to happen here in te technologically most advanced country. The racial dogma would be replaced by the super patriotism and religion. If such a dictatorship, a new Minotaur should arise here, how would we recognize its form?
If the US intelligence services are using state of the art microwave weapons to commit war crimes and actively subverting the Constitutional authority of the Republic and foreign governments it is logical that a previous pattern of behavior or similar crimes would be exhibited by these personalities and orgganizations and their forbearers.
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