Acknowledging off the top that some do not like to see this subject broached, or view it as perhaps overdone. I just thought it was a very thoughtful and thought provoking essay, which may be of interest to those both fascinated and somewhat alarmed by the development described. So, posting for anyone interested in this angle. I believe this does represent in large part what I have been seeing in our present moment.
I believe it is likely light years removed from what AI-O-Meter assumes regarding our present moment, and is part of the reason he and I cannot communicate at all. I do believe that if one does not recognize what this essay is describing, one is missing an essential development in our current moment.
At any rate for those interested in historical context, etc., this was one of the more thoughtful essays I’ve come across recently describing America in 2024.
Social movements are creating powerful new languages for confronting tyranny. We must resist the plague of silence.
truthout.org
“A dangerous silence now often accompanies a language at war with democratic ideals and the public imagination. This is an enforced silence among the larger public that purposely mutes matters of critical agency, moral responsibility, reason, justice and the demands of keeping alive a substantive democracy. It is a language where moral outrage disappears, is silenced or both, while concealing the danger that this fascist language portends. This is a depoliticizing silence that clouds lies and untruths in mindless theater, spectacles and a flood of evasions. Under such circumstances, community is emptied of any substance, reduced to notions of the social organized around the merging of lies and violence. The loneliness and social atomization produced under neoliberalism provide fodder for the dictatorial energies that offer forms of the false promise of community rooted in hate, bigotry and lies, often resulting in habitual ignorance to justice. Mainstream institutions such as schools, the media and online platforms that should trade in imaginative ideas and provide a critical culture are under siege. One consequence is the breakdown of civic culture, egalitarian values and politics itself. What many Americans fail to realize is that this reactionary mode of silence is a form of complicity that creates a political climate marked by cruelty, violence and lawlessness. How else to explain the lack of public outrage against an extremist Republican Party that rejects free summer lunch programs for food-insecure youth, weakens child labor laws and restricts voting rights?
