dangerous self-seclusion

During the period when America's news outlets still reported on this country's ongoing occupation of the sovereign Republic of Afghanistan, they often spoke about the dangerous seclusion of much of the Afghani population. Living in rugged valleys so inaccessible that neighboring villages are sometimes wholly ignorant of one another, even though they live but a few miles apart, the television's talking-heads spoke long ago of the risks to Liberty, justice, and the rights of women that arise when people live in such seclusion, arguing that it granted their religious and societal leaders absolute power over their minds and bodies.

As things stand in America today, however, religious extremism similar to that practiced by close-minded, militant, and misogynistic Islamic leaders in al-Qaida and Hezbollah has infected the minds of even highly-placed officials in the Republican party, rotting the souls of America's Christian extremists, persons who call themselves dominionists. Just as the threat of religious terrorism that we once thought came from without now comes from within, the American people are secluding ourselves into walled-off little worlds whose borders are defined by the edges of our flat-screen television sets, the rims of our hand-held tablet computers, and the invisibly-reaching tendrils of our Wi-Fi transceivers. This home-grown technological self-seclusion is as great a threat to democracy and freedom as the threat posed by Afghani mullahs instilling hatred-of-all-things-unknown in the minds of children living in distant and dusty valleys. Whereas in Afghanistan many villagers only hear and see and are exposed to a limited and selective view of the world – one they receive from often poorly-educated and ill-informed religious leaders – we in America who choose to spend our lives riveted to self-illuminated talking boxes expose ourselves to a limited and selective view of the world, one we receive from often ill-informed religious and societal leaders who exploit fear-of-the-unknown and the power of oft-repeated lies (as per Goebbels) to corrupt the minds of erstwhile free-thinking and self-respecting citizens.

Many other authors and I have rung the warning-bell previously, altering others to the brainwashing and heart-hardening upon which America's mass-media preys, which it perpetuates at all cost, and which it does with such pervasive effectiveness that its methods were copied by the Nazis themselves – all no no avail; it seems that a majority of us Americans do not care that we have become docile sheep, that our minds are owned by vulture-capitalist billionaires, that our hearts are weighted down by pettiness and greed, or that we allow our views to be shaped by small-minded idiots who squawk at cameras with make-up-caked faces. It is not hard, however, to free our minds from enslavement to television or to allow our opinions to grow out of hubris and humility; the healing begins when we turn off our TVs, toss aside our tablets, switch off our radios, and leave our houses to have a nice walk, driving Fear from our minds with gradual surety and loving effort. President Franklin D. Roosevelt got it right when, in 1933, he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear festers in the minds of people who shut their ears to differing opinions, who close their hearts to the shades of truth found in dissenting voices, who allow themselves to be caught up in religious fervor and nationalistic self-righteousness. Please, friend, remember to doubt everything that you hear, to question all that you are told, and to fight the urge to live in the manner of a secluded villager who believes everything his mullah tells him. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit