Censorship on the quiet by Marc Batko, 1/16/2025


by Marc Batko (marc1seed@yahoo.com; freetranslations.foundation), 1/16/2025

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It takes a worried man

   to sing a worried song.

I’m worried now

   but I won’t be worried long.

The Kingston Trio in the 1960s

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We carry in our hearts the true country

   and that cannot be stolen.

We follow in the steps of our ancestry

   and that cannot be broken.

Midnight Oil, The Dead Heart, 1981

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In the streets, the people are many

   but their hands are all empty.

I heard one person starve

   and many people laughing.

Bob Dylan, The Hard Rains Are Going to Fall. 1962

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In “The Present Age,” (1846) Soren Kierkegaard lamented “our age is not an age of courage, but of advertising and publicity.”  In the 20th century, Neil Postman declared that we are being entertained to death.  President Eisenhower in his Farewell Address saw the arising danger of “the military-industrial complex.”  George Orwell and Aldous Huxley described dystopias where Big Brother decided what was truth, no one could contest the Party, and people sedated with the drug soma imagined themselves happy while society was ruled for the benefit of the powerful.

Now in the 21st century, President Biden warned of an American oligarchy, “a techno-industrial complex,” in his final address.  Social, political and economic critics see the rapid decline of the American empire very concretely.  The state that made itself poor by giving Wall Street banks and corporations trillions seemed oblivious to justice and fairness.  The war-addicted society destroyed Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.  Militarism sold to us as life-insurance devoured the US in unwinnable wars of scapegoating and power-projection.  According to one estimate, $10.4 trillion was spent on illegal and immoral wars since 2001 and the war on terror!  As George Orwell prophesied, war would become a domestic necessity to distract the populace from economic, social, and political contradictions.

The times are certainly changing!  No banners were unfurled; no parades with marching bands were staged.  First, tech companies, then newspapers and corporations, and finally the populace submitted and acclaimed the convicted felon-president, the business-failure who declared bankruptcy six times.  In his first term (2016-2020), he amassed more debt than all previous US presidents combined (cf. MSNBC).  Eight trillion dollars was given to corporations and households with over one million dollars in his two 2017 tax heists.  No hearings were conducted unlike all other tax bills.  The doors were locked and lobbyists took over.  Renewing the Trump tax cuts will cost US taxpayers $5 trillion according to the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) as reported by Americans for Tax Fairness!

In 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany.  “International Jewry was exterminating Germany,” he repeated in propaganda speeches.  Incinerating six million Jews was God’s will, he said again and again in Mein Kampf, since all Jews were Marxists and communists.  “Total war” had to be waged against these “poisoners of the pure Aryan blood,” these vermin, killers and invaders.  Hitler used malicious lies and fear-inducing propaganda along with the myth of ethnic purity, to murder Jews, leftists, handicapped, gypsies and gays and ravage Poland, Czechoslovakia and all of Europe as Germany’s “Lebensraum” (living space).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the underground Confessing Church sought to reconnect with the humanity of his manipulated and immobilized compatriots.  “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  Costly grace means engagement, sacrifice, and seeing the suffering Messiah in the suffering humanity.  Cheap grace as a form of blindness means reducing Christianity to self-righteousness justifying indifference and passivity with acts of personal virtue.  The horrors of concentration camps were ignored and made invisible.  “You cannot worship two masters, God and mammon.”  “Be not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds.”  The knowledge of God and fellowship with the infinite, transcendent, and selfless God is the true goal and reward of life.  Being humble and contemporaneous with Christ is the true human strength, not mud-throwing, name-calling or seeking only power and wealth.

Donald Trump who calls himself “the Chosen One” and said “he doesn’t mind being the Nelson Mandela of our time” is a clear and present danger to language and democracy .  He is a scare-mongerer and digital demagogue who like Hitler will say anything to gain followers.  He is a dangerous liar, narcissist, and authoritarian who repeatedly demonizes immigrants, calls Mexicans rapists, murderers, and invaders and trashes leftists as “vermin.”  He is an entertainer full of tricks and distractions who is in love with himself and his voice.  Claiming to be the only one who understands the economy, taxation, foreign policy, and immigration, he is preacher of hate and arrogance.  He convinced enough people that he would turn the economy around and that immigrants were carrying out a massive crime wave!

Jesus united past, present, and future and fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies in the Psalms, Micah, and Isaiah.  He warned against false teachers and false Christs, against scribes and Pharisees who wore long robes, sat in the front seats of synagogues, cleaned the outside of the cup and left the inside filthy.  Beware of the hypocrites who see the speck in their brother’s eye but not the log in their own eye.

Bereft of feeling, empathy, skill, consistency, and experience, Trump in the weeks before his inauguration declared Greenland is “vital for our economic security.”  In truth, affordable apartments, transitional housing, and strengthening social security are vital for our economic security.  He reacted to the devastating and historic Los Angeles fires in January 2025 with insults, threats and misinformation.  He threatens the existence of Panama, Canada, and Mexico with 25% tariffs.

In his appointments, he seemingly wants to blow up our economy and our democracy.  He wants to appoint a billionaire profiteer from wrestling as Secretary of Education.  His nominee to lead HUD (Housing and Urban Development with 8,000 employees) is a Texas representative who says welfare is the worst thing to ever happen to families.  A China-hater is to become Secretary of State.  The new FBI chief wants to politicize the bureau to target and imprison political and media critics of Trump.  His appointee for Attorney General refused to prove her independence and willingness to say No to Trump.

In the first gilded age of the 1890s, the Republicans were described as the Know-Nothing Party.  Today, the Republican Party has become the Trump party that substitutes name-calling and scapegoating for principle and the rule of law.  Instead of an election campaign, we were subjected to a defamation campaign where “criminal Joe,” “criminal Kamala,” “criminal Obama judges”, and fake news were denounced again and again.

Checks and balances, separation of powers and an independent judiciary are all threatened to the core.  Capitalism must radically change to survive.  Neoliberalism, corruption, and privilege must be transformed into a public-good economy.  Housing must become in part cooperative and non-profit so state investment can build millions of affordable apartments. The US must become a partner among partners and abandon its claims of being the exceptional and indispensable nation.  The state must no longer steal away from feeding and housing its people as corporations can no longer steal away from paying their fair taxes.

Oligopoly means that large firms dominate prices and distort markets, as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith explained.  In book publishing and broadcasting, five or six firms gain 90% of the revenues.  As Professor Robert McChesney suggested, a Marshall Plan for Journalism run by progressive non-profit foundations and philanthropists would bring a surge in public spirit and positivity.  This Marshall Plan would be an example of qualitative growth (different from quantitative growth and the extractive economy) enabling all people to be creative and imaginative reporters, writers, poets, translators and editors.

The future must be anticipated and protected in the present, not extrapolated from the present, said the prolific Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann who recently died at 98.  Hope distinguishes us from all other creatures.  In the power of hope, promise and anticipation, we can go beyond everything past and present, he proclaimed in “Theology of Hope.”   We are divine and earthly children of God, Kierkegaard exclaimed, not cogs or machines fated to identify or perish with the self-destructive profit-maximizing system!


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