“WE ARE
THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND
SURRENDER YOUR VESSEL, AND YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED INTO OUR COLLECTIVE.
YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR
OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO
SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS
FUTILE.”
It
was the dreaded warning given to all victims from one of science fiction’s
most sinister bad guys: the Borg. Airing
originally as ‘the man-borg’ on the
British television show, Dr.
Who, it is
a collective entity, a hive
mind, with no individuality, no privacy, no personal freedoms, no rights.
It grows by assimilation: a process by which the
will of the Collective is forced upon the victim, which is then absorbed
into the group. In the above
warning, victims of the Borg are promised that they retain what is unique about
them, that they are only ‘added’ to the mix, but while there are wires and
hoses plugged in different organs in an individual way, the overall look of the
Borg is identical: pale, dead flesh and black vinyl.
In
Star Trek 8: First Contact, we
learn that there is after all a small elite among the Borg (actually
only one person, played by Alice Krige) who has more prestige, more
value than a standard Borg. It is
she who provides purpose, direction and singularity to the ‘Collective’,
the Borg term for itself. For all
the talk about equality, it becomes clear that some Borg were more equal than
others.
Oddly enough, one
person’s sci-fi villain is another’s Utopian Society, especially if you are
a Socialist. Or a Communist.
Or a Fascist. Yes, that’s right, another instance of art imitating life.
Even the word ‘soviet’ means ‘collective’, the very term used by
the Borg.
Propaganda, historical
revisionism and political correctness have been blurring the truth about these
ideologies, and as a result, what was once repugnant is now viewed as ideal.
All ideologies, they say, are of equal value.
To say one is good and another evil is wrong, (unless
of course, it its capitalism you are demonizing).
But one is not allowed to say negative things about socialism (or
its evil twin, communism); and fascism is so ill defined we don’t
even recognize it when it is right in our faces.
Atrocities of modern communism are ignored if they are committed by
Nelson Mandela, never mind that he is (or his wife is
depending on the source) one of the foremost practitioners of ‘necklacing’
(putting a gasoline filled tire around a person and
setting it ablaze), and Fidel Castro is
now treated like a rock star, all past sins forgotten.
But all that is in other
countries, right? We wouldn’t do
that in the good old USA, would we? Well
it’s here, it's just living under the assumed name of ‘social conflict theory’, and it is preached from Berkeley to Yale as the
salvation of the masses. Of course, most students will vehemently deny that it has
anything to do with communism. These
same students are curiously unable to give an accurate description of communism (or
socialism for that matter, the heir apparent to communism), and it
becomes quite obvious that their denials are rooted in a distaste
for the stigma the system has earned in other parts of the world and not in a knowledge of the system itself.
For those of us that may
be a little unclear on the differences between socialism, communism and fascism,
maybe we should explore them in closer detail.
Socialism is a
totalitarian state in which the group, not the individual is important.
Instead of a human being having intrinsic value, the value of a person is
based upon his or her worth to the group. (Remember
‘Life Boat Ethics’?) There
is no individuality, no privacy, no personal freedoms, no rights (or
the rights that are there are granted by the State, and may be revoked at any
time). Government (a
small elite) provides purpose, direction and singularity to the
masses, controlling everything and accountable to no one.
Can a citizen demand to see a warrant?
Nope. Is there someone to
keep the State from torturing political prisoners?
Not one. There is a word for
that kind of life: slavery.
Communism is a
totalitarian state in which the group, not the individual is important.
Instead of a human being having intrinsic value, the value of a person is
based upon his or her worth to the group. There
is no individuality, no privacy, no personal freedoms, no rights (or
the rights that are there are granted by the State, and may be revoked at any
time). Government
provides purpose, direction and singularity to the masses, controlling
everything and accountable to no one. Can
a citizen demand to see a warrant? Nope.
Is there someone to keep the State from torturing political prisoners?
Not one.
See the difference?
They both want basically the same type of society, but the communist uses
force to convert its members whereas
the socialist uses psychological warfare in the form of the
dialectic process. Early disciples
of Karl Marx objected to the concept that ‘you can’t have a revolution
without bullets’, claiming that the communists had the cart before the horse.
Instead of seizing the seat of power and then infiltrating the social
institutions, processing (brainwashing)
the populace, they suggested that it would be more efficient to infiltrate the
social institutions first, process the
populace, and then quite easily and bloodlessly take over the seat of power.
The Borg called it ‘assimilation’;
socialists call it ‘consensus’ or
‘transformation’, hence the phrase ‘Transformational
Marxist’.
Fascism, now is a
totalitarian state in which the group, not the individual is important.
Instead of—okay, you get the point.
Here, the only difference is, instead of government running everything,
now government and big business are in cahoots.
(Have you ever heard George W. Bush speak of a
‘public private partnership’?)
Whereas socialism and communism eventually collapse under their own
economic weight, fascism is not so encumbered, with all of the benefits of
capitalism without that pesky freedom. Are there any more rights or freedoms under this system than
under socialism or communism? Nope.
Not one.
But we are led to believe that fascism and communism are opposite extremes; Hitler on the right wing and Stalin on the left wing. From the standpoint of the people, the only difference was how the mustaches were trimmed. They are ignoring the fact that the word ‘Nazi’ meant ‘national socialist’. As Gary Lloyd put it;
“When
the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right
boot is of no consequence.”
The real tragedy is that
we have lost our understanding of what our own ideology is.
A ‘free market republic’ is
alien to most American vocabularies. To
define the United States as anything but a democracy is blasphemy, even though
it is decidedly not a democracy.
Democracy means mob rules. A republic is majority rules, but minority rights, which protects its citizens from power abuse by the government. In other words, the government is accountable to the people. If corrupt decisions start coming out of Washington, then it is the people’s right (and duty) to replace those leaders. But a power elite has been adjusting definitions and skewing contexts of our thoughts and values for the purpose of transforming society, which has become very much like a frog in a pot of water that is being heated to a boil so slowly that it just sits there, oblivious. This deliberate strategy was implemented quite some time ago by a specific, identifiable group of Transformational Marxists, collectively known as the Frankfurt School (those very same German disciples of Karl Marx). How do I know that? Very simple: they admitted it. They wrote about how to do it, when to do it and what it would look like when it was completed. Where did those members of the Frankfurt School go when Hitler took power? Right here, in the United States, where they immediately began forming National Training Laboratories, which were foundational in infiltrating our social institutions to cook (process, brainwash) our own populace. And now their influence has been dissolving our property rights, religious freedom, educational jurisdiction, and without exception every area of personal freedom in this country. To apply critical thinking to any of their propaganda is viewed as decidedly un American—worse; now you can be labeled an ‘enemy combatant’ and become ‘indefinitely detained’. (Isn’t that what the Nazi’s did?) My brother once told me;
“It used to be that people burned the flag while waving the Bill of Rights; now they are burning the Bill of Rights while waving the flag.”--Mark Turney
And
still we sit, wondering who is cooking frog legs.
Make no mistake, we are
being cooked, and to make the meat palatable, we have been properly seasoned
with a constantly changing
lexicon. Life Boat
ethics have given way to reality shows where people are ‘voted off the
island’. Lying is now called
‘strategic misrepresentation’. Conservative
used to mean conventional, but now it seems to be synonymous with closed
mindedness, just as fundamentalist went from being foundational to fanatical.
The spinning of this ever-evolving vocabulary has dissolved into a
linguistic shell game, and the end result is a nation that defines up as down,
and no one knows where they stand. Then
we are told that to make it all better, we must make a choice between column D
and column R, but the two are identical, at least
where it matters.
If we can’t define
socialism, communism or fascism, then how do we avoid transforming into them?
The painful truth is we can’t. I’ve
got news for you: the Borg are here. They are telling us to lower our defenses and surrender our
lands, and be assimilated into their collective. Our individual cultural and religious beliefs will remain
intact, only added to the great global mix.
Our culture will adapt to service them.
Oh, and resistance is futile.
Well,
don’t you believe it. Resistance
is about all we’ve got left.
Darren
M. Turney
19 May 05