196 - The New Dark Ages: What Putin and Trump Together Have Created

            The original “dark ages” epitomized a period of about five centuries before C.E 1000 when “civilization” vanished:  the learning accumulated in Greece and Rome was largely lost to Europe. Few persons received schooling. The skills and craftmanship of the ancient world were forgotten. Ignorance spread in Europe and was cherished. Indeed, most inhabitants of at least the Western world rejected the humane and progressive ways of behaving and thinking that had come down from earlier times. Conspiracy theories abounded and substituted for empirically based knowledge. People accepted rumors and fanciful explanations of earthly phenomena. Prejudices prevailed. The democratic political institutions and procedures and the accustomed tolerance for difference that had been advanced in Grecian times and improved by Roman theorists and ruling classes were widely rejected and attacked.  Vandals were everywhere, having marauded along with the Goths, both Germanic tribes. The Visigoths defeated a Roman army in C.E. 378 and looted Rome in C.E. 410. The Vandals sacked Rome in C.E. 455; The Vandals occupied much of Spain and North Africa, as well. Overall, the “dark ages” experienced a massive decline in human experience, human sensibility, and basic rights and freedom. War and pestilence immiserated the human condition.

            This century’s modern Vandals pose a serious threat to our democratic practices, to our founding inheritance, to the integrity of our Constitution, to our attempt to outgrow bigotry, and to eighty years of the institutional evolution that made these United States more responsive to the real needs of its underclass. We have entered a new dark age. And the Renaissance that eventually gave enlightenment to the old darkened world may be, for us, some time in coming.

            Instead of a sack of Rome, we have supreme vandal operating from the Kremlin who seeks the sack of Kyiv and the shutting down of long nurtured freedoms and the learning not only of his benighted land, but that of a hard-won sovereign entity on his western border. As a modern Visigoth, he nightly bombards Ukrainian cities, civilians, grain storage silos, apartment blocks, and electricity transmission installations – none of which have much military importance. Putin wants to plunge Ukraine, and Moldova if he devastates Ukraine, into literal as well as figurative darkness.

            This is the same self-important tyrant who poisons his enemies (a Roman method, too), and has the utter venality to make sure that his friend, acolyte, acclaimed “Hero of Russia,” and bold challenger plummets 30,000 feet to his death, along with nine other compatriots and pilots. The unspeakable act of a mafia don.

Who has condemned such an unspeakable inhuman act? Yes, the nations of the West have labelled such unspeakableness what it was. But have Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans broken with Putin?  Has he been condemned personally by other supposedly ethical heads of state?  By China or India? Or, in this era of darkness, by that grouping of countries that considers itself non-aligned? Has much of the world lost its moral compass, thanks to Putin and his wannabe copycats?

It is dark that Putin acts out his narcissistic fantasies by attempting to humble and falsely accuse Ukraine. It is equally dark that Putin lies openly to the BRICS assemblage in Johannesburg that Ukraine and the West caused his deadly war, because of their supposed Nazi war aims, and that no one listening calls his lies what they are. 

Another indication of the new dark age is a widespread refusal by many leaders of Africa and Asia -- especially China -- to condemn his invasion. These are days darkened by deceit, prevarication, and kleptocracy. From whence will enlightenment come?

            In our own country, we have our own copycat Putin --a television impresario who lost an election and refuses publicly to admit it, who professes a constant stream of untruths, who vows to take this nation backward, and wants to instill the darkest darkness that these United States has ever known. A man with no ideological preferences other than cash and his own welfare, he utters the most untrue and outrageously distorted claims that a sizable proportion of voters refuse to question.  As in the earlier dark ages, denial of truth spreads, empiricism dies, and conspiracy theories and anti-vax notions proliferate. Indeed, even after four different sets of indictments, including several indicating that Trump tried to subvert the Constitution, he remains a lodestar for a reasonable plurality of likely voters. The fact that Trump retains such hard-core support, much of it among white-supremacists, reinforces our massive step backwards into the cauldron of darkness. Even an election defeat for him and his fake “populism” cannot erase darkness in the hearts and minds of his followers.

            It is a darkness punctuated by rumor and innuendo, by scapegoating schoolbooks and young people of diverse lifestyles, and by renewing culture wars that are distantly reminiscent of the attitudes of the Vandals and Goths. It is a darkness that refuses to allow open inquiry and the quest for new knowledge to be developed in schools, for diverse books to remain in libraries, and for young people to think for themselves. Instead, this modern Inquisition fans bigotry and celebrates ignorance. 

            The new darkness permeates. Emanating from the darkness, a young white man hunts out and randomly shoots three black men. Schoolchildren shoot other schoolchildren, acting out troubled minds that are somehow infected by the new descent into darkness. Adults meanwhile think it is somehow honorable to attempt to kidnap a governor and to invade the Capitol and utter deathly imprecations against the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Vice-President. Elected Republican leaders condemn little of this threatening behavior, fearful of alienating followers of Trump.  Where are today’s leaders of integrity?

            The new dark age is an era where too many supposed tribunes of the people deny and deflect, standing not for principle but for prevarication and pusillanimity.  Was it like that near the end of Rome, when Vandals and Goths extinguished what denizens of the day considered their more “civilized” approach to daily life?

            In our own increasingly crepuscular age, where are those persons of integrity who would stand with Chris Sununu, Liz Cheney, or even (!) Chris Christie and pillory a serial cheat, serial liar, and consummate con artist before the primary races and what will be a prolonged attempt cleverly to escape conviction in court after court turns our age even darker than that of the last Roman stand against the Goths and Vandals.  Trump and Putin are throwbacks to that era of dishonesty and pillage; they both want to dim the lights and to extinguish decency, evenhandedness, and obedience to the rule of law. They (and their less important but dangerous emulators like Viktor Orban, Kais Saied, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan) severally and together are attempting to destroy what has become modern civilization.  Let us not let them, and their acolytes and accomplices, pull the shrouds of darkness around our already imperfect but improving humanity.

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