Forsooth Diderot, Viva Chromatica

In 50 more years, will those born after look back at where we are now, and think of the horrors we are witnessing today - war in Ukraine, fascism on the rise globally, the collapse of the USA and the slippage of its mask of pretend holiness - the raging, unchecked genocide in Gaza - like we look back now at the genocides committed by previous colonizing and cultures?

In South America? North America? Africa? Australia? New Zealand? Asia? In a hundred different lands, in a hundred different times, places and cultures - in a hundred different faces in black and white and grey staring back at me from pages and screens, from the other side of Time, in documentaries... their testimonies - evidence of lives that were shattered, minimized, dehumanized, ruined, forever changed and even extinguished in the hallowed names of God, Christianity and the almighty, pristine, blameless Western Civilization and its perverse denial of universal Humanity? 

What will this moment in time look like from 50 more years hence? Will it be, on a day when I'm no longer here on this Earth, in Gaza then as it is in Auschwitz now? In Treblinka? In a hundred new blood-soaked ash-strewn fields of horror and tragedy yet to come? Will they be preserved as horrors and outrage against decency and what it means to be human - as indecent and imperfect beings? Or memorials of shocked humanity, as splinters, burning, lodged in ravaged Conscience? Salves and tokens to be observed, respected in ways never shown the victims? Or mocked and dismissed as "fake news" or "woke liberal fantasy" by "influencers", apologists and revisionists? Or will they be long paved over in streets of greed, hotels, pleasure palaces and gilded with obscenity and vile, vapid towers of "Progress" and amnesia, whereon nasty wealthy scabs and carbunkles frolic and play?

I look back over my years, my half century, and hold in one hand all I was taught - by teachers, histories, the general narrative, popular beliefs, and in the other - all that I have learned. The incongruities between them - the disparities - are immense and horrifying. The world I thought I lived in is revealed as a bold-faced lie, a pleasant fascade to cover up for the lies, deceit, brutality, conquest and greed that twisted the world into what it is... to protect and invent the reputations and positions of powerful white "Christian" men subject to insatiable greed - and always has been.

Beware the tools, my children, the tools of the System: "civilization", "morality", "law and order", "education", "freedom" - all these are illusions easily distorted and subverted to serve it, but most dangerously of all these, is "religion" - and those who hold the power to wield these. 

Truth - in truth - is not subjective, nor objective. How we perceive it, or accept it - or not - is. But it remains true, regardless.

Diderot was right.

What would happen if fascists took over the world?

What would happen if fascists took over the world? Not just one or two states, but all of them? How would people react to having their lives upturned? Without any alternative authorities to turn to, without any rescuers or saviors to call upon, how would they handle seeing 'undesirables' and 'enemies of the state' - their neighbors, family, friends or colleagues being dragged away to concentration camps by uniformed thugs with the full backing of the law?

How would they tell fact from fiction while those who have seized power and their news services twist the truth to cast themselves as righteous heroes and to portray their victims as unpatriotic, dangerous, threatening, impure, monsters deserving of extermination?

'It's Okay To Say 'Gay = Stupid' - BCCSA

In yet another case in point of human rights and equality laws not being adhered to and misinterpreted according to personal bias - and made to fail those whom they were intended to protect, "The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa refused to uphold the complaint, saying that "the word gay was not used to refer to homosexuality, but according to widespread current usage of the word amongst young people, to a carefree attitude and unjustifiable statements."

Of Colors And Creeds

What is not to like about equal rights? Equal rights are what give a citizen of a country dignity and the freedom to live life on a par with all other citizens. If you discriminate against the equal rights of GLBTIQ people then how can you claim to support human rights? There is a new discrimination and a new "apartheid" rearing its ugly head in the world today – and it's not based on racism anymore – it is based on sexual orientation – and heterosexism! “Gay is the new Black!” The bigots claim in their articles and blogs ridiculing and condemning gay rights and equality. It may be one of the few instances where they are actually being truthful. It’s not acceptable to sling mud at darker skinned folk anymore – but it is still perfectly acceptable to go to the zoo and throw rocks at the pink flamingoes. How do they somehow not equate racism as being as vile and unacceptable as homophobia?