“The Decay of the Angel” is the title of a novel by Mishima Yukio in which he alludes to the unraveling of civilization itself—that invisible plague that makes all other crimes possible.
We in the United States will not make much progress until we are able to detect the invisible shifts taking place in the fabric of our society. Such changes are precisely what allows so many highly educated Americans to play stupid as the governance of the entire country is taken over by private intelligence firms that control all media content, tell universities what research to conduct, and otherwise define the debate on the future of the nation in a manner that excludes all discussion of who owns what, what the function of government is, what is true security, and where does money really come from.
The angels of democracy, liberty, and due process have decayed into a filthy slime that clings to our boots.
It is only when we are honest with ourselves about the totalitarian system we live in that we can make progress. If we delude ourselves, the nightmare will only continue to repeat itself.
This illustration of the evolution of the CIA might be better with a few more frames. I personally think that Harry Truman was not a bad president, but was totally over his head. The issue was rather how the desire of certain political figures to take up the mantle of the British Empire overwhelmed those who adhered to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and thus the nation was set on the path to full-blown imperialism. One can make a constitutionalist argument, or a socialist argument. The conclusion is the same.
What we know for sure is that we must use our imaginations to fill in all the secret directives used to govern our country (and Great Britain and Israel) today because no one is allowed to say how things really work.
Once we are ready to see things as they are, then hope and a new direction will be manifest for us. As long as we claim ignorance, or make up our own fantasies, things will only get worse.
