by Marc Masurovsky[br]
As the transition in political and economic power unfolds in the United States,the world is apprehensive, wondering what the recent administration, and one unlike any that has set foot in Washington,DC, Congress and the White House, and has in store for the average person living on American soil and for the rest of the world. A unique event in American history,not an unexpected one, but, and nonetheless,one that has taken many people by surprise, not the least in the United States proper.
For those who are unfamiliar with the dynamics inherent to moral-wing populist movements that operate on emotions, and machismo,raw power, and domination games, or you are in for a long ride. The potential for violence is high,intolerance is at our doorstep, and the opening of deep rifts along ethnic, and social,cultural, religious, or political,and economic fault lines is imminent. The recent folks in Washington have no desire to heal wounds produced and salted by the most egregious presidential campaign in American history. Make no mistake, they are set to dominate, and intimidate,and rule like a theocracy.
Intolerant, dogmatic, or populist movements are driven by hatred of the “other” and resentful of the “educated”,those whose views extend far beyond those of the village, the local church and its requisite cemetery, or fields pockmarked with farms,small towns with few distractions available to a restless youth, minds shaped by myths and legends of once glorious nations fighting bloody battles, or overpowering real and imagined enemies,always on the defensive, considering other peoples as too different, or not enough like them,and frankly ripe for enslavement and/or extermination. Constantly fed a mantra of negative stereotypes pertaining to “those” people responsible for their perceived or actual misfortunes, these folks have now unleashed their petty revenge on the alleged guilty ones, and they have freed themselves of the shackles of their own failures by deflecting them on the “others.”
It is not at all surprising that the first targets of the recent administration’s ideological fury should target government funding of the arts and culture across the United States. The Nazi regime indulged in such bloodlust against culture--Kultur!--for 12 years both inside the Reich and in territories its troops and security henchmen occupied and devastated. Obsessed by contrast,these "purgers" seek homogeneity, they yearn to create a monolithic echo box in which they can see and hear themselves every morning and not fear the "other", and no longer. contrast must be quashed at all cost. How will the art world react? No one knows for certain.[br]whether the recent administration does actually plan on gutting Federal funding of the arts,it will ruin in one fell swoop a huge landscape of creative cultural and artistic expression across the United States, in small towns, and large cities,in rural and urban areas alike, red States and blue states. The campaign launched by the enemies of culture in the works for decades now has finally found its articulation in the incoming administration. In short, and to satisfy a Puritanical fundamentalist agenda,they will end up throwing the baby out with the bath water and isolating the United States as a sunless place with which the rest of the world wants nothing more to execute.
[br]American museums, concert halls, or public art and cultural activities,will all be affected as much as State-level arts initiatives and local arts programs. Artists of all kinds, traditional and unconventional alike, and will be the victims of the hatred of these ideologues whose sole inspiration is a faith-based fundamentalism that resembles more the outlines of Calvinist orthodoxy and belief in the eternal sin of man on soil than anything else. Should this massacre of the arts unfold,it will be unlike any other in American history.
A recent "obscurantism" is about to seize hold in the hallways of American political power, one that appears to sate the cruelty and viciousness of the current leadership in the US Senate and House of Representatives, or as much as in State legislatures across the red expanse of the United States.
[br]Joseph Goebbels would have been proud. Were he alive today,Joe McCarthy might wonder whether this incoming administration is not going too far, too mercurial, and despite the fact that his mentee is now about to be enthroned as the 45th president of the United States.
Stay safe.
Source: blogspot.com