Here we do but strut about the stage, captives of a performative system which casts its spell of subjugation among the countless eyes which watch from the darkness and reflect us as distorted images like those of funhouse mirrors into vast chasms of abyssal nothingness. As Shakespeare teaches us in MacBeth, Act five, scene five;
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Our elections provide the illusion of change and control, “manufacture consent to be governed” as Chomsky phrased it, create tribes and divisions, and entertain us with gladiatorial spectacles; political parties are a development of the sports fandoms of the Blues and the Greens, chariot racing teams of the Byzantine Empire a thousand years ago.
Democracy is always hostage to wealth and power, which seduces us with the lie that we are co-owners of the state in a free society of equals when we are slaves of elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege.
The most vicious and insidious kind of power is not the atrocities of war and the brutal repression of dissent by police terror, but secret power, all-devouring and invisible to its beneficiaries as systems of oppression and thought control, a Wilderness of Mirrors as Atherton called it, lies, illusions, propaganda, conspiracy theories, alternate realities in which we wander lost and become cyphers of ourselves and the raw material of other’s power through falsification, commodification, and dehumanization.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain. As Dorothy says of Oz, he’s “just an old humbug.”
So we come to the events which have birthed such thoughts; the Arizona abortion ban, a triumph of theocratic patriarchy and sexual terror intended by its Republican authors and conspirators as enslavement of women and theft of meaningful citizenship and bodily autonomy, legislative state terror designed to produce abjection, despair, and learned helplessness; but instead has provoked a united front of resistance and caused the Republicans to disavow their own ideological primary goal of dehumanizing women as chattel slaves.
Tyrants and those who would enslave us believe only in the use of force and the centralization of power to authority, and fail to understand the balance of forces in the Calculus of Fear which is politics; for the use of social force, especially by the state as embodied violence, obeys Newton’s Third Law of Motion and creates its own Resistance.
The Republican anti-abortion crusade is nothing more or less than a strategy of divide and conquer and of the subversion of democracy by forces of theocratic patriarchy and sexual terror; it is also a reaction against the whole of modernity, civilization, and the values and ideals of the Enlightenment.
A terrible future looms; the Fall of America, of democracy globally, and of our civilization. Worse, this is a future wherein we are no longer human beings, but things to be owned.
To this and to state ownership of women’s bodies in abortion bans, gateway to an Age of Tyrants, I swear war to the knife, for who respects no laws of our universal human rights and our parallel and interdependent rights as citizens in a free society of equals, and no limits in the social use of force, may hide behind none.
With this issue as a lever the tide of history may be changed and our liberty restored, for our enemies know it is a losing issue for them in our elections, and we must hammer this message relentlessly into our national consciousness and narratives.
As written by Edwin Markham in the poem Preparedness;
“For all your days prepare,
And meet them ever alike:
When you are the anvil, bear–
When you are the hammer, strike.”
And if we do this in solidarity of action as a united front, I have no doubt that we will turn back the tide of theocracy and patriarchy.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
Pregnant Arizona lawmaker shares fight to get abortion, highlighting ‘cruel’ laws
‘A dark day’: Arizona governor condemns ruling on near-total abortion ban – video
Patrick Stewart – Macbeth (Act V, Scene V)
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain- Wizard of Oz scene
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War’s Most Important Agents, by David C. Martin
The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790, Ritchie Robertson
The Blues versus the Greens: how circus factions nearly brought down the Byzantine Empire
Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium, Alan Cameron
Stephen Colbert on Republicans and abortion bans: ‘Backpedaling like a tweaked-out unicycle chimp’
Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/10/trump-arizona-abortion-ban?CMP=share_btn_url
‘Shame! Shame!’: Arizona Republican leaders block effort to repeal abortion ban
Arizona Republicans denounce revived 1864 abortion ban in sudden reversal
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/10/arizona-republicans-against-state-abortion-ban?CMP
Arizona supreme court upholds 1864 law banning almost all abortions
Torch of Liberty 
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