In case anyone is counting the milestones as this country and the world descend into chaos, darkness, and death, the increasing criminalizing of dissent is a very ominous development.  There have always been marauding monsters rampaging over the earth ~ that’s certainly nothing new.  Nor is it especially surprising that the great majority of people are able to cross to the other side of the street, declaring that, “It’s not my problem,” as injustice ratchets up to the level of genocide.  And there have always been opportunists eager to take advantage of wartime conditions by running guns to the combatants on either side.  (Tim Hardin sings of the “old time smugglin’ man” who “sells guns to the Arabs, and dynamite to the Jews.”)  The United States arms manufacturers who profit the most handsomely the greater the levels of hostility, wars, and rumors of war persist throughout the world are the prime example.  Everything useful is made in China these days ~ all the Americans can produce are weapons, bombs, more lethal weapons, and more lethal bombs, so any threats of Peace must be diligently opposed.  

     All of this is business as usual, and most residents of the planet have gotten used to this ongoing state of affairs long ago.  But what is becoming an increasingly troubling development is that, left and right, we see universities, state governments, and even our depraved federal government outlawing dissent on every hand.  The Freedom of Speech has been the defining character of this country since its inception, but those days are over, in case you haven’t noticed.  These days, to voice any support for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s campaign of genocide (going on since 1948 at a slow burn, recently heating up to “get the job done,” the Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem), or even to express any criticism of Israel in any way is to invite criminal prosecution or university suspension.  

     A related development is the burning of books, or at least their removal and destruction from libraries and schools.  I remember how astonished I was to learn from my older brother (in 1960, when I was 12) that all of Wilhelm Reich’s equipment was destroyed, and all of his books collected and burned by agents of the United States federal government in 1957, while Reich himself was thrown into prison, where he died (Reich must have been into something pretty heavy).  What?  I thought book burning was some horrible chapter in the history of the human race that dated from Medieval times, akin to the Inquisition and burning witches for heresy, not something that could still occur in the enlightened days of the Twentieth Century, and certainly not in the Land of the Free !

     But this is the Twenty-First (and probably last) century, and book burning and the criminalizing of dissent are the new reality, and we had better get used to it, or rise up in revolt, demanding that the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights continue to be maintained.  

Bill of Rights