New Dark Age

Center for World Indigenous Studies

September 3, 2019

By Jay Taber

“New Dark Age”

As we watch UN member states flail around dealing with climate change impacts and The Globalization of Poverty, it is perhaps worth revisiting a paper by my colleague Phil Williams from 2008. In From The New Middle Ages To A New Dark Age: The Decline Of The State And U.S. Strategy, Dr. Williams examines the spread of disorder and discusses the need for a more holistic approach and a more coherent organizational structure. Rather than continue to focus on defeating enemies, notes Professor Williams, the US and other states will soon need to learn to manage chaos.

In his 2011 post Climate Change Ghost Dance: Duck and Cover, Rudolph C. Ryser likened the climate change talks in Durban to a ghost dance. As a glaring example of the failure of modern states to meet the needs of humanity, the death of the Kyoto protocols signals the beginning of a new dark age. As we come to terms with the ravaging of Earth and every living being in order to satisfy the insatiable appetite of Wall Street, we will need new tools and ancient wisdom to see us through. Abandoning faith in institutions and markets is a good first step.

Descending into a New Dark Age—an era ruled by transnational criminal networks —total chaos is becoming our new social reality. Due to the corroding influence of Agents of Chaos , we are already in a permanent state of war worldwide. The embedded nihilism in the U.S. State Department–after 50 years of intentional fraud–is astounding.

Escalating instability—caused by state-imposed austerity, internally displaced persons, war refugees, climate change, and a skyrocketing membership in religious fundamentalism —means our ability to mentally cope is diminishing. And the agents of chaos are in the driver’s seat. Indeed, the United States—with a Christian fundamentalist Vice President– is one heartbeat away from a theocracy.

As spiritual warriors like Sarah Palin battle to create a theocracy in the United States, American Indians are caught between tribal sovereignty and white rage. With the Tea Party on a rampage to reassert Christian white supremacy in American public institutions, it behooves us to understand the Puritan roots of this holy war.

Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria –-a documentary about antibiotics misuse that has promulgated untreatable lethal disease—suggests consumerism, and its attendant climate change impacts, might not be a future problem. As the age of antibiotics comes to an end, uncontrollable outbreaks of deadly bacteria threaten global public health. Likewise, the untreatable lethal disease of Puritanical conservatism–now attacking socialism and the Indigenous Peoples Movement–threatens democracy.

In Bron Taylor’s 2011 Religion Dispatches essay Debate Over Mother Earth’s Rights Stirs Fears of Pagan Socialism, he notes that, “Religious and political conservatives have long feared the global march of paganism and socialism. In their view,” says Taylor, “it was bad enough when Earth Day emerged in 1972, promoting a socialist agenda. But now, under the auspices of the United Nations, the notion has evolved into the overtly pagan, and thus doubly dangerous, International Mother Earth Day.”

With all 192 member states of the UN General Assembly supporting a 2009 resolution proclaiming International Mother Earth Day as proposed by the socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales, American conservatives hostile to environmentalism responded with their usual religious hysteria.

In Paul de Armond’s 1996 essay A Not So Distant Mirror, he observes that, “I never expected to find parallels between the militant heretics of the Middle Ages and the current convulsions on the far right. The realization thrust itself upon me while I was trying to understand what I was witnessing as I attended meetings of the ‘property rights’ groups which began promoting militia organizing in early 1994.

Everyone seemed instinctively to know what part they played; the endless rants by a variety of characters full of not only themselves, but also full of a sense of a divine mission in struggling against unholy forces. The typical far right meeting is very similar to a service in a lay Christian fellowship of the more militant fundamentalist evangelicals.”

Palin’s followers, who believe she has been anointed for this task by God, in 2008 were already discussing the necessity of assassinating her GOP running mate McCain if he interfered with Palin’s plan. According to religious scholars, the October 2008 anti-Muslim hate campaign in the US Midwest was a warm-up exercise for adherents of Palin’s religion and her domestic terrorism support base in the Militia Movement.

[Jay Thomas Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and journalists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations.]

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