Samo, Samo: Civilization vs. the Barbarians

Today we have a post by Peace Tree Contributing author Bill Epler.

Samo, Samo: Civilization vs. the Barbarians

We've been down this road many times before my friends, my "civilized" friends, so we shouldn't be surprised that early 3rd millennia barbarians are raping Mother Nature, babbling about Armageddon, trashing national/international laws, and trying to plunder what's left of the wealth of the planet.

Before they wore two horned helmets and animal furs; later they slapped riding crops against black booted Nazi and Stalinist legs. Now they make fools out of religious extremists (that's called shooting fish in a barrel) and engineer the American military into oil wars for corporate billionaires, e.g., Texas energy companies and Cheney/Halliburton.

The Fall of Rome has many lessons for us, such as the civilization-killing consequences of boundless greed. Rome too had its greed vampires and they bled the Empire into defenselessness. Have you checked our national defenses lately, particularly our ports and atomic facilities? It's beyond laughable. A cross eyed dog could walk through these "defenses". But why? Didn't we legislate commissions to tell us how to protect ourselves? Of course, but that life and death funding has been doled out to corporate friends of the Bush Royal Family (also known as the Saudi Royal family).

In short, 3rd millennia barbarians are that two sided coin of Bush/Republicans and international terrorists.

Said, differently, we're back to the conflict between Good and Evil. It seems like every generation has to deal with this challenge. In the middle 20th Century it was the WW2 "Axis Powers", i.e., Germany, Italy, and Japan. Western Civilization itself nearly died during the Dark Ages, but that sacred flame of worldly/social honor and rationality came back from the coals and from the 12th Century on it has been a conflagration.

Nevertheless, the barbarians, the greed and power lusters, the spiritual refuse of the planet, kept coming back.

And here they are again. Daddy Bush -- just putrid old wine in a new bottle.

It helps somehow to keep this historical perspective. We aren't after all victims of something unusually barbarous. Hey, this is just how it is. This is Civilization fighting for its life as per usual.

Now it's our turn. The Republican Party has morphed into this century's Heart of Darkness and religious fundamentalists of ALL Middle Eastern religions (e.g., a plague on both houses of the Israeli/Palestinian metastasized cancer) are barely spiritually toilet trained.

So once again it all circles back to keeping the faith and fighting the good fight.

Are we really going to let creatures like Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney define who we are as human beings?

We got our second wind, a little bit, during the 2006 midterm elections, but the beast of abyssal ignorance, vampire greed, and the righteous hatreds of religious fanaticism never sleeps.

Nor can we.