Heart of Darkness

The weakened American soul - by Olavo de Carvalho

The dominant discourse in the mainstream media, show business and universities in the USA today is so frankly anti-American that it is only in details of style - if that - that it can be distinguished from the defamation campaigns undertaken by the USSR in the 50s and 60s. The American elite boasts of having won the Cold War, but it seems as if it was dominated psychologically by the vanquished enemy and wound up believing everything the enemy said against it. The posthumous vengeance of the Soviets gleams in the pages of the New York Times, at prime time on CBS, and in the films by Michael Moore and George Clooney with a splendor that not even Willi Muenzenberg, the genius of communist disinformation, would have dared dream of.

Whatever is said against the American government, against the American military, and against American culture, seems to enjoy automatic credibility today, so much so that it can be shouted from the rooftops without the least fear of an exasperated response, to the extent that any pro-American word must be prefaced with politically correct precautions for fear of the inevitable and vociferous retaliation, if not of a lawsuit. To follow the American debate is to confirm daily the prophetic sense of the verse by William Butler Yeats: “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Something has changed radically in the heart of America in the second half of the 20th century, and has changed precisely in the direction in which the country’s bitterest enemies would have wanted it to change.

The signs are there to be read. The writing is on the wall. The trumpets are blowing. It takes a deliberate effort to ignore all the warnings we have been getting. Our enemies declare their intentions and we shrug it off.

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil;

learn to do good; seek judgment, reprove the oppressor. Judge the orphan, plead for the widow.

Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken.

How has the faithful city become a harlot? It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers.

Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water;

your rulers are rebellious, and companions of thieves; everyone loves a bribe, and is pursuing rewards; they do not judge the orphan, nor does the cause of the widow come to them.

Isaiah 1:16-23

For they are a nation without wisdom, neither is there any understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this; they would consider their latter end!

Deuteronomy 32:28, 29

"whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster"

Proverbs 1:33

"Oh, that my people would listen to me"

Psalm 81:13