Maskerne falder: Vi må have en
»Kreativitetskultur« til erstatning
for »Dødskulturen«
LaRouche PAC Internationale
Webcast, 2. marts., 2018

Vært Matthew Ogden: I sin afhandling, »Teatret som en moralsk institution«(original titel: Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet), beskrev den tyske digter fra det 18. århundrede, Friedrich Schiller, noget ironisk klassisk teater og klassisk drama som det område, »hvor alle masker falder. Sminken fjernes. Sandheden er dommer«.

I klassisk drama, såsom i tragedierne i oldtidens Grækenland, eller Shakespeares tragedier, eller Schillers egne tragedier, f.eks.; eller i de største operaer af Giuseppe Verdi for at tage et andet eksempel, blev scenen, den klassiske scene, brugt som instrument for samfundets moralske og æstetiske opdragelse. Tragedie har evnen til at fremkalde i os erkendelsen af vore egne tåbeligheder, de fejl, der findes i os. Og vi ser reflekteret på scenen foran os, de ærefrygtindgydende konsekvenser af disse fejl, disse tåbeligheder, som, ifald de fik lov at bestå, udspilles på vores egen forestillingsevnes scener og tilbagekastes til os i det frygtelige spejl i form af en rædselsvækkende og frygtindgydende forudsigelse. I disse øjeblikke transformeres vi fra at være passive tilskuere til at blive levende medlemmer af dramaet, og vi forlader teatret med ny visdom og forhåbentlig en ny vilje til at handle for, for enhver pris, at forhindre de rædsler, vi så udspilles på denne scene, i at blive til virkelighed.

Men hvis denne moralske og æstetiske opdragelse af et samfund imidlertid slår fejl, eller mislykkes, og et samfunds tåbeligheder finder sted uden at blive rettet, så ophører tragedien med at være begrænset til scenen og flyder over i det virkelige liv, hvilket undertiden fører til ødelæggende, virkelige konsekvenser.

Vi ser nu de faktiske og ligeledes de potentielle, virkelige konsekvenser af et sygt samfunds systemiske tåbeligheder, og af en forfejlet ideologi, som nu udspilles for vore øjne. I kølvandet på de forfærdelige begivenheder i Parkland, Florida, den 14. feb., ser vi nu en generel opvågnen i vores befolkning, en erkendelse af, at der er noget i vores kultur, som er meget, meget sygt; at noget i vores samfund er råddent, og at noget har fået lov til at gå forfærdelig galt, og som har bragt os til dette punkt.

Og det er ikke slut med de forfærdelige begivenheder i Parkland. Vi har netop hørt, i dag, at der er en situation med en aktiv skytte, der fortsat er under udfoldelse på et college i Michigan. Og Parkland var på ingen måde det første skoleskyderi.

Dette er blevet identificeret af guvernør Matt Bevin fra Kentucky, som selv har måttet håndtere et af disse skoleskyderier, på Marshall County High School i januar. Han har identificeret dette som en »dødskultur«, hvor han sagde, at selve værdien af menneskelivet er blevet degraderet.

Her følger engelsk udskrift af resten af webcastet:

I want to just play for you a short excerpt from some
remarks that Gov. Matt Bevin had after this school shooting that
occurred in his own state, at Marshall County High School in
Kentucky, and this was weeks before the Parkland shooting even
occurred.  Here’s what Gov. Matt Bevin had to say.

KENTUCKY GOV. MATTHEW BEVIN: Hi this is Kentucky Gov. Matt
Bevin.  I want to start a dialogue with you, I want to start a
conversation about something that is imperative, not only for
Kentucky, but frankly for America.  We have a cultural problem.
The mores of America — there will be many that will confuse that
with morality, although morality is certainly part of it — but
the mores that define who we are and what is or is not
acceptable, what we do or don’t tolerate, where we draw lines and
where we put boundaries, these things have been changing, and not
for the better.
You look at what’s happening in popular culture; this is not
a religious issue.  There’ll be the nay-sayers and the
pooh-pooh’ers who immediately think, “oh, you’re going to talk
about religion.”  I will tell you this, I’m going to talk about
morality.  Because if people don’t believe they have
responsibility to anyone other than themselves, that there is no
pecking order of authority, that there is no absolute right and
wrong, that everything is morally relative, when we live in that
time of morally gelatinous state, we have a problem.  Because
individuals, young and old alike, done assume that their actions
matter in any kind of consequential way beyond that immediate
moment, and that is a problem, and this is what’s happening to
our culture:  We are crumbling from within.  And we are seeing
this throughout our society.  We’re seeing in our classrooms,
we’re seeing it in our communities, and  — let’s be honest — it
starts in our homes.
I am challenging everybody who has anything to do with what
I’m about to say, to take this to heart and let’s start a
conversation.  Look at our popular culture.  Look at our movies,
— the violence, the disregard for the value of human life; we
are becoming increasingly desensitized, our young people are
desensitized to it.  We have a culture of death in America.  We
can pretend we don’t.  We can think that people can separate that
from fiction, from their lives, from that which they see, but if
they’re immersed in it at every turn — in television, in movies,
in music, all of it!  Listen to the lyrics of music today, it
celebrates a culture of death!  Not all of it — fair enough —
but an amazing amount of it.  And parents, I’m asking you to wake
up and be aware of what it is that your children are listening
to.
Do you young people, be mindful of what you put in, because
it becomes a part of your entire physiology, your entire mental
makeup.  It becomes a part of who you are.  You are a creation of
what you surround yourself by.
Parents and others, I’m asking you to look at what kind of
movies you go to see.  For those that produce movies, I’m asking
you, think about what you’re feeding in — I know that we live in
a day and age, where we need to shock people, more than the last
time, or they won’t pay attention, in sensationalism, in the
shock value, maybe gets people to pay attention to something,
puts eyes on something, and you can make a buck.  But at what
price?  It’s robbing us of the very fabric of our nation, and
it’s killing our young people.
Watch the television shows:  We glorify murder, we glorify
killing.  It is becoming increasingly explicit, and we are
desensitizing young people to the actual tragic reality in
permanency of death.  It’s important for us to recognize this.
Look at the video games that are played.  Yes, they may be
marked for “Mature audiences,” but I’m telling you, those of you
who make a dollar producing these movies, and those of you who
buy them and bring them into your homes, you know full well, that
many young people — and old people — are playing these games
and becoming desensitized.  When you get extra points and are
encouraged to brutally kill people, and when the blood and the
mayhem and the carnage is increasingly real, it desensitizes
people.
And if it’s a shock to us now, that suddenly we are seeing a
prevalence of, and increasing amount of this happening, not in a
video game, not on a television show, not in a movie, not in the
lyrics of a song, but in real life as young people act out that
which they are surrounded by, that which they’re immersed in,
this is a cultural problem in America!  And I’m asking the people
who produce this media, the people who produce this
entertainment; I’m asking the people who profit from it; I’m
asking for those of you who are executives in the social media
ranks — and I am a big believer in the Constitution of the
United States, and in our freedom of speech — but we have got to
start to think about the {filth}, let’s be honest, that is
feeding through so many of the mediums, covered and protected by
things that perhaps are not good for us; protected by a
Constitution that is good for us, but creating an end-result that
is not.
What are those boundaries?  I don’t know.  Should there be
any?  Should there be some content that is not given to us, and
to children, without any kind of filter or screen?  These are
conversations we need to have:  It is a cultural problem.
Our culture is crumbling from within, and the cost of it is
high.  The societal and emotional and psychological and moral
cost is becoming more than our nation can bear.
I’ve spent time with mothers and fathers who have lost
children in tragic instances.  And there is no ability, there are
no words to describe the grief of a parent, the grief of a
sibling, the grief of a friend, the grief of classmate, of a
teacher, of a community, who have lost someone that is an
immediate part of their family or their community.
Something has to be done.  Let’s start a dialogue.  How
exactly it forms, I don’t know.  But I’m calling on other
governors, I’m calling on the President of the United States, I’m
calling on our U.S. Congress; I’m calling on anyone who’s in a
position of influence, every superintendent, every CEO of every
media company that produces a video game, that is violent in its
nature, the movie producers that make the movies, the record
producers who produce the music that we listen to — all of you
— we’ve got to step up.  We’re the adults, let’s act like it!
Let’s step forward, let’s start a conversation, and let’s figure
out how to try to repair this fabric of America, that’s getting
shredded beyond recognition.
Thank you. [end video]

OGDEN:  Now, Gov. Matt Bevin did something very unique
there.  Instead of what we’ve become accustomed to, in the
aftermath of one of these horrific events, to point at one or
another scapegoat, or one or another mechanism that failed, or
one or another thing that maybe went wrong, we fail to perhaps
consider that the fault lies within ourselves, that the fault
lies within our own culture.
Now, it’s obviously unspeakable beyond words, for an event
like one of these mass shootings or school shootings to occur
even once, as we were horrified to witness.  But it is absolutely
inconceivable that we’ve allowed these shootings to occur, again,
and again, for now almost 20 years, since the first high-profile
event happened at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado
in 1999,  — almost 20 years ago.  But the tragedy lies in the
fact that it didn’t just happen once, it happened over and over,
and that the society which witnesses each one of these events
might be appalled and outraged, but the underlying cause remains
unaddressed.
As the father of one of the victims in the Parkland shooting
said, in tears, during a listening session that President Trump
hosted at the White House, with family members of the victims, he
said, “My child is dead!  I will never, ever see her again.  But
why — why do we keep letting this occur?  Why does this keep
happening to so many people?”  And he vowed that he will not
sleep until something substantive has been done to prevent this
from ever happening again.
Now President Trump has responded to this, to Parkland in a
way that no previous President has, frankly.  In addition to this
listening session, which he hosted at the White House, he’s held
multiple meetings with members of Congress, with governors, with
state and local elected officials to discuss actual solutions,
emphasizing that something needs to be done.  Action is needed,
and not just posturing and not just political talk which will
make us feel as if we are doing something, he said, but we must
actually do something.  So, while many of the so-called solutions
which have been put on the table are practical, and specific,
such as hardening sites, and increasing police presence, and
improving the early warning system to prevent persons, like this
shooter, for example, from slipping through the cracks when there
were many, many warning signs stretching over years — for the
first time, in addition to these practical solutions, which are
necessary — for the first time, in addition to this, the more
systemic and underlying problems of the culture have now been put
on the table, along the lines of what Gov. Matt Bevin has raised.
I’d like to share with you, first, a short clip from a
roundtable that President Trump held state and local officials on
Feb. 22nd; this occurred at the White House, where President
Trump himself, goes right to the core of this pervasive culture
of violence, which is promulgated through popular entertainment.
Listen to what President Trump had to say:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have to look at the internet,
because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young
minds, and their minds are being formed.  And we have to do
something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing
it.  And also video games:  I’m hearing more and more people say,
the level of violence in video games is really shaping young
people’s thoughts.
And then you go the further step, and that’s the movies, you
see these movies, they’re so violent, and yet, a kid is able to
see the movie if sex isn’t involved.  But killing is involved.
And maybe they have to put a rating system for that.  And you get
into a whole, very complicated, very big deal, but the fact is
that you are having movies come out that are so violent, with the
killing and everything else, that maybe that’s another thing
we’re going to have to discuss.  And a lot of people are saying,
you have these movies today where you can go and have a child see
the movie, and yet it’s so violent and so disgusting, so we may
have to talk about that also…. [end video]

OGDEN:  Now, this came up again at a Feb. 26th roundtable
meeting which President Trump hosted with the governors from
around the country.  And first what you’ll see in this clip is a
brief mention, by President Trump in his opening remarks, of this
topic, and then you’ll see Gov. Matt Bevin himself, who was
present, and used that forum to repeat his point about the
prevailing culture of death which undermines the morality of our
population and degrades the image of man and the value of human
life.  And he challenges {every} person in a position of
authority in this country, to use that position of authority, to
address this cultural problem.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We must strive to create a culture
in our country that cherishes life and condemns violence and
embraces dignity…. Matt?

KENTUCKY GOV. MATTHEW BEVIN:  I do think it’s important for
us to start at every level, with your office, with our respective
offices as well, to seize the bully pulpits that we have to talk
about the culture in this society.  And I would challenge those
in the media who would want to mock and ridicule this, and would
want to say that anybody who advocates for this, to find some
fault in that person as a reason why that person should not be
the one advocating for a higher level of moral authority or
higher mores, to think twice, because these are your children and
grandchildren as well.  And when we mock and ridicule the very
foundational principles that this nation was built upon, where
you treat people the way you’d want to be treated, where you
respect human life, where you respect the dignity of women, and
of children, and of people who we have increasingly degraded in
our society.  This culture of death is becoming pervasive.  And
if it’s not addressed by all the imperfect people in this room,
with a sense of purpose and a sense of aspiration, I think we’re
going to see a continued trajectory that’s not good.
Many things have not changed.  There have always been guns,
and there were fewer restrictions.  There have always been guns
in homes, and fewer rules.  It isn’t to say that these rules and
these restrictions are necessarily bad, but what has changed is
what we do or don’t do as it relates to acknowledging the value
and the dignity of every human life.  And when you couple that
with the number of psychiatric drugs that are increasingly
systemic and that have very severe warnings associated with them
related to depression and suicidal thoughts, you put all these
things in a mess and no one among us is bold enough or willing to
step up and challenge the fact, that this is a problem, this is
why it goes unchallenged.
And I would call on you, Sir, as I’m calling on my
fellow-governors and myself, to seize the opportunities we have
to call America to higher action as it relates to our mores.
Thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you Matt.
And that’s why we’re here.  And I think  — I don’t know if
it’s going to be mentioned, but you have to also look at videos
— they’re {vicious}, you look at some of these videos; I mean, I
don’t know what this does to a young kid’s mind.  Somebody
growing up and forming, and looking at videos where people are
just being blown away left and right.  The internet movies, you
look at these movies that are out today, I see just by a
commercial, the level of craziness and viciousness in the movies
— I think we have to look at that, too.  Maybe we have to put a
ratings system on that.  They have a ratings system for other
subjects, maybe we have to do a ratings system for that.
But it has to have an impact on — it doesn’t take many
months — if it was 1% or less, that’s a lot.  That’s all it
takes.  It just takes one person to do tremendous damage.  I
think it’s something we have to look at also. [end video]

OGDEN:  So, we can see an awakening happening in this
country.  And it’s very significant, when confronted with the
real world consequences of a failure by our society, by our very
culture itself, a failure to protect our children, to protect our
young people, to protect our future; where literally, we have led
ourselves to a culture where {children kill children}, and this
is almost becoming commonplace.  Finally, people are beginning to
wake up.
But the discussion, while very good, to the extent that it
has progressed, it must, must go much further, and much deeper.
Let’s look back 20 years, and this was at the moment that
the first such high-profile, horrific school shooting happened,
which many people who were alive at that time, remember today:
Columbine.  Ironically, a lot of the kids that are now in school
today, have lived their life under the shadow of Columbine and
were not even born at the point that that shooting occurred.
But Lyndon LaRouche, in the immediate aftermath of that
horrific event, wrote a paper in which he addressed the reality
of what actually that horrific event represented. This is in the
aftermath of that, but not only should the realization of
LaRouche’s prescience for what we’re seeing today, and what we’ve
seen over the past 20 years be shocking to you, and think about
how many children, and how many other victims have died and have
suffered in the intervening period, because nothing was done, at
that time, to address what the root cause of this sickness was.
But also, you should be challenged by the depth of what he
addresses as the necessary cure to this cultural sickness that
has led to these events.
So let me read you some excerpts from this paper that Mr.
LaRouche wrote, and this was back in June 11, 1999. [“Star Wars
and Littleton,” {EIR} July 2, 1999:
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1999/eirv26n27-19990702
/index.html]

“Unless the U.S. government, and many relevant other
influentials, change their view of this problem, abandoning the
useless approach they have publicized thus far, the horror will
continue, gun laws or no gun laws. Unless relevant institutions
get down to the serious business of addressing the actual causes
for this pattern of incidents, this murderous rampage will
persist….My function, in this report, is to define the methods
which must be brought to bear, if the danger posed by this new
form of terrorism is to be brought under control…. If you are
willing to be serious, at long last, you will now turn your
attention to the scientific roots of the problem….
“…Merely ending the sale of satanic video games, such as
Doom…, will not put this horror back in the box from whence it
came. This new problem of terrorism must be attacked, by
focussing on the conditions which many readers have been
complicitly condoning. Face the fact, that it might be your
negligent tolerance which has contributed to the popularizing of
such video games and cult films, especially the spread of these
among suggestible children and adolescents.
“…What are the methods which have, similarly, turned so
many among our children and adolescents into such “zombies” as
those killers?…
“To grasp the horror posed by such cases, restate the same
problem as a national-security topic. For that purpose, the
leading subject for discussion, as posed by the Littleton and
kindred cases, is {terrorism by children}. Stating the problem in
that way, brings the sheer, satanic horror of the matter into
focus.
“The following pages … will represent a serious
intellectual challenge for many readers, but, for those who
really wish to bring an end to the spread of more horrors like
the Littleton massacre, the extra reading-time and thought this
report requires, is more than well worth every second spent….
“How does one corrupt innocent children into becoming
psychotic-like killers? The quick answer to that question, is:
{dehumanize} the image of man. The details of the way this leads
to the production of youthful ‘Nintendo’ terrorists, are a more
complicated matter. Nonetheless, it is no oversimplification to
say, that once that first step, dehumanizing the image of man, is
accomplished, the axiomatic basis has been established, to make
war, and killing, merely a childish game….
“Before you pull that trigger, tell me: ‘What is the
difference between a human being and a beast?’…
“…[T]he focus should be on the conflict between the view
of mankind as specifically human, as against the intrinsically
immoral view of the human species as ‘just another animal.’ …
“The difference between the man and the beast lies in the
quality of human cognition. This is otherwise known as those
cultivatable creative mental powers through which an individual
mind may contribute to all mankind the original discovery of a
single, validatable, universal physical principle. This is also
the method used in those Classical humanist modes of education,
in which the student’s re-enactment of some historic discovery of
a validated universal principle, is the mode of education
employed, as opposed to so-called ‘textbook’ learning. This is
also to be recognized as the principle of metaphor central to all
Classical artistic composition since the time of Classical
Greece.
“The fact that we are able to demonstrate the validity of
these discovered universal physical principles, shows that the
universe itself is predisposed, by design, to obey man’s will
when such universal principles, discovered in this way, are
applied to man’s increasing mastery over nature. {The act of
discovery of a universal physical principle, whose application
directly increases mankind’s power in and over the universe, is,
in first approximation, the only rational definition of truth,
the only proof that human reason is in accord with the Creator’s
definition of truthfulness.}….
“This faculty, of validatable cognition, is the quality of
the human individual which sets all persons apart from, and above
the beasts….
“…See a child’s face suffused with happiness, at the
moment the child senses a validatable original rediscovery of
some principle. The passion which ennobles the great performance
of any accomplished work of Classical artistic composition,
whether in poetry, the performance of great tragedy, great
Classical painting, or music, is the same joy with which the
child is illuminated by experience of a cognitive act of
discovery of some principle–whether or not the child knew that
many people had made that same discovery earlier….
“…The non-deductive process of discovery, which leads to
proof of principle through experimental validation of that
discovery as a universal principle, is the proper strict
definition of the term {Reason}. …It is that capacity for
{Reason}, so defined, which defines the unique quality of the
mentally healthy human specimen, as representing a distinct
species, apart from and above all beasts.
“This quality of the person, this divine spark of Reason
innate to the human individual, is the kernel of the proof of
Moses’ formulation, that man and woman are each made (equally) in
the image of the Creator of the universe….
“An idea, is any validatable discovery of universal
principle, which is generated within the mind of the knower, by
no different means than cognition, as I have defined cognition
above. The tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the
dialogues of Plato, or the tragedies of Shakespeare and Schiller,
are models of artistic compositions, by means of which the artist
prompts the regeneration of his idea respecting principles of
social relations, within the mind of the audience….
“…[T]he underlying social relations among persons must be,
axiomatically, the relations among their cognitive processes. The
underlying issue of social relations, is how individuals interact
in terms of the ordering of, or, the inertness of their
respective cognitive processes….
“The progress of civilization has been shaped by a process
of humanizing the image of man, as distinct from, and higher than
the animals. Christ and his Apostles embedded this principle
within European civilization. The process of Nietzsche’s and
others’ de-civilization, is to attempt to reverse that process,
to dehumanize the image of man, to bring man’s status back … to
the status of just another lower form of life….
“…The only moral purpose of education, is to develop an
entire population up to the level of scientific and moral
knowledge necessary, not only to perpetuate society at no less
than its present level of power in the universe, but to carry the
process of development of the whole population a step upward.
“The purpose of education is to develop the cognitive
potentials of each and every person up to that standard of
quality as a citizen, to develop an individual whose life
qualifies as a permanent part of the simultaneity of eternity.
{The proper purpose of education, is to affirm the universality
of humanity, and to accomplish this through embodying the history
of the discovery of universal ideas within the cultivated
personality of the matriculated student.}
“See, from this standpoint, how things went so terribly
wrong. Think of the successive downward steps in our educational
systems and popular culture, which brought us up to the point of
decadence that phenomena like the Littleton horror are now a
typical feature of our culture in this time….
“…When we allow the natural, human nature of children and
adolescents to be crushed …, when we seek to suppress the role
of the cognitive function, when we substitute the act of merely
learning for the act of actually knowing, we produce, as was
done, increasingly, during the first post-World War II decades,
the kind of future adult who will come to haunt us, and menace
our world, when we have become old.
“What happens, when we allow those changes in national
policy, which create an economy in which the adult members of the
family household must work two or three jobs, or even more, among
them, ‘simply to make ends meet’? … What happens when we have
done to education what has been done during most of the recent
three decades? Did you ever think about that, or do you avoid
pangs of guilty pain by refusing to think about that?
“What happens, when your toleration of the past decades’
changes in U.S. economic policies, creates a situation, today,
when the family is no longer able (between many jobs to work each
week, and much commuting between besides), to provide nurture to
the children and adolescents of the family household? If your
economic situation compels you treat your children so, as if they
were stray dogs to be let into the house at feeding and sleeping
times, how are you educating them?…
“…Think! What kind of a social identity are such
unfortunate children and adolescents expressing?
“Perhaps you were building the road to the Littleton
massacre? Not everyone who expresses such a poor sense of
personal self-identity in those ways, is necessarily going to go
all the way to becoming a Littleton-style terrorist; but, such
low self-esteem is a step down in the direction which might lead
to such a horrible result in the succeeding generation of youth.
You may not have intended that outcome, but, year by year, the
parents and grandparents built the road which made reaching that
destination possible.
“That explains, in part, how the road to the Littleton
massacres was built….
“To understand the kind of mentality which fosters the
proliferation of horrors such as the Littleton massacre, look at
the way in which so many in the U.S.A. responded to the way in
which the British monarchy’s Blair government used its U.S.
puppets…. British financial oligarchy, and its debased
monarchy, have openly stated their intent to revoke the doctrine
of international law established by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia,
this time in the case of Bloody Blair’s Balkan War….
“The moral nation-state, the modern sovereign nation-state
which our U.S. republic was intended to be, never conducts wars
for pleasure, as the Littleton killers and Blair have done, or
wars for revenge….
“When we examine the role of sections of the U.S. military,
in shaping the policies and techniques carried into action by the
Littleton killers, we must take into account the fact that there
is a connection between the recently increasing tendency for
moral degeneration in our military and related institutions, and
the causes for the Littleton horror and related cases…. If such
thinking within our military, is among the well-springs of
phenomena such as Littleton, how shall we be rid of the latter,
without purging ourselves of the former?…
“The American way, is [to use] the power of victory to
establish an order which is justly beneficial, to the victor and
formerly vanquished, to rebuild, as Lincoln’s last public address
proposed to rebuild the nation as if the Civil War had never
occurred.
“Similarly: only by bringing that spirit back into our
nation now, can we wean the damaged souls among our adolescents,
of that wont for Nintendo warfare so horridly displayed at
Littleton….
“If we take into account, together, the present physical
state, and direction of the world, and also the deteriorating
mental and moral condition of populations throughout most of the
planet, as in the U.S.A. itself, we have already reached the
threshold of the worst disaster known to the recorded history of
the human species. Unless we reverse the policy-trends of the
recent several decades, especially those cultural trends inside
the U.S.A., there is little possibility of the survival of
civilization in the Americas, western Europe, or Africa much
beyond the beginning of the coming century.
“For most among you, that means that you must change, must
free yourself from, especially, those habits of thinking you have
built up during the recent quarter-century or longer. In a sense,
you must be prepared to go back to the way we used to think when
John F. Kennedy was President. Admittedly, there were lots of bad
habits loose back then; but, that is still a good point of
reference at which to begin the process of cleaning away the mass
of cultural rubble which, unless cleared away, will ensure that
our nation does not survive.
“Look at the Littleton horror as an omen, as the hands of
the clock of history, pointing to the time in which we are living
at this moment.
“You must change this nation, and perhaps yourself, too,
before this nation, soon otherwise dies. Take Littleton as that
kind of warning. It is past time that you acted to change the set
of definitions, axioms, and postulates which have been
controlling your opinions and other behavior during recent
decades.”

OGDEN:  So, that was Lyndon LaRouche on June 11, 1999,
almost 20 years ago.  And it is shocking how prescient Mr.
LaRouche’s warning were, at that time, in the aftermath of the
{first} of what has proven to be countless numbers of {horrible}
spectacles that we saw at that Littleton massacre.
Now’s the time for us to let that sink in, and not be
satisfied with just halfway, practical measures and partial
solutions, but to realize in a moment of truly self-conscious
reflection, in true Classical tragedy form, that the horror we’re
witnessing today, really is the sign of the disintegration of our
society, a potential Dark Age, as Mr. LaRouche said in that
report.  And a stirring within ourselves of the realization that
the only solution, is a clean break from those follies which have
led us down that path, and decisive action to create a
Renaissance in our understanding of what it means to be human,
our view of man, a re-humanizing of the human individual, not to
just try to negate evil, but to try to replace this reigning
culture of violence and this culture of death, with rather, a
culture of creativity, which recognizes and celebrates that
unique nature of the human species.  And cultivates that divine
spark creativity within every human individual, {every} child.
Now, as Mr. LaRouche pointed out in that report, one cannot
separate this sort of sickness in our culture, from the policies
which have been expressed by our governing leadership for the
last 50 years; especially the policy of endless war, killing,
endless warfare, which has dominated our nation, really, since
the Korean conflict, but in ever-increasing rates since the death
of John F. Kennedy. And this was very usefully pointed out, just
last week in an interview podcast by Coleen Rowley, who was a
former FBI agent, and a whistleblower, actually, in the months
leading up into 9/11. And you can see there, on the screen, that
her podcast with “WhoWhatWhy” is titled, “FBI Whistleblower:
American Culture of Violence Starts with Perpetual Wars.”
In this interview, Coleen Rowley addresses the issue that
this kind of “domestic terror,” as she calls it, as we’re seeing
with these mass shootings, in schools and otherwise, really does
have very much to do with this culture of violence which we now
have in the United States. And she pointed to the media’s role in
fostering this kind of widespread culture of violence.
She stated that while the tendency in law enforcement is to
try to treat every single one of these as the specific set of
circumstances, which led down the path to every single one of
these crimes, she said, the reality of what we are dealing with
is really something much larger.  She said: “Our culture is doing
this, it’s promoting this violent culture. And of course this is
over and above the availability and easy access to weapons.” You
put all of this together and just those added up on their own
“does explain the question. Columbine, why is this happening? Why
are we experiencing an epidemic of mass violence? Again, our news
never mentions that because … we want to compartmentalize this
and make it seem as if it’s easily, it’s not us as a culture.”
And then she pointed to some specifics.  She said, it really
is the influence of this perpetual war mentality on our society.
She indicated that there are several studies that have come out,
that veterans of these perpetual, endless wars are twice as
likely to become mass shooters; and she also pointed out that the
CIA and the Pentagon have had a sort of devil’s bargain with the
mass media and the entertainment media, movies and video games.
And she said that “The CIA and the Pentagon have been backing,
helping make about 1,800 movies,” including among them are the
famous “American Sniper” movie from 2014, “Zero Dark 30” from
2012, and numerous others. She said in those movies, the hero
will always be someone who is wronged, and then in the end, they
shoot everyone: “A mentally impaired or emotionally troubled
person is seeing themselves as that hero in those movies.”
That’s a very useful affirmation of exactly that point, that
you cannot compartmentalize, you cannot separate out all of these
different, sick, sick phenomena.  And our tendency is to try to
scapegoat one thing, as opposed to realizing that the fault,
perhaps, lies within ourselves as a culture.
But it goes even further than that, and I think as Mr.
LaRouche made clear, we have to not be satisfied with partial
remarks, and partial considerations.  In the last number of
years, more than just perpetual war and bloodshed, in an age of
thermonuclear weapons, the ultimate conclusion of a culture of
death, and this culture of perpetual war and violence, in which
human life has lost its value and weapons of greater and greater
destructive capability have become the central pillar of
international policy and relations of states with other states,
in this age of thermonuclear weapons, the ultimate conclusion of
this mentality is the extinction of the human race.
We’ve now reached a point of decision.  With the
announcement just yesterday by the Russian President, of a new
generation of weapons which have been developed by Russia which
have the power to evade all known ballistic missile defense
shields, flying at hypersonic speeds, some reaching Mach 20 —
unbelievable speeds — under the power of nuclear propulsion,
which allows them to fly almost endlessly, and can deliver, as he
said, a doomsday payload literally anywhere on the surface of the
planet at any time, truthfully, the era of belief in survivable
limited nuclear war, or preventive nuclear first strike, or this
global strike policy, which believed that you could knock out one
nation’s defenses and then launch a nuclear or conventional
attack against them, that age is now definitely over.
And this announcement has really caught the world by
surprise.
As Helga Zepp-LaRouche characterized this: If everything
which President Putin announced is in fact real, and there’s no
reason not to believe that to be the case, this is a complete
“Sputnik-type” shock.  It’s also being compared to the Soviet
development of the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s, which completely
shifted the so-called “strategic balance of power,” and took the
entire idea, at that time, of a preemptive nuclear strike against
the Soviet Union off the table.
What Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s assessment is, is that this
announcement of an entirely new weapons system, based on
“completely new physical principles,” an obvious echo of course,
of the language that was originally used in discussing the
Strategic Defense Initiative, the SDI, that this is a qualitative
leap of extreme significance, which shifts the entire
international strategic framework.
And the follies of our belief in statecraft based on
Mutually Assured Destruction, of dominance and so-called
“deterrence” of geopolitics, all of these follies have now been
exposed.  The mask has fallen away.  And humanity itself now sits
before the judgment seat.  Will we continue collectively, to
pursue an ideology of nihilism, which necessarily, in the end,
must lead to the destruction of civilization and the extinction
of the human species in its ultimate consequence, if allowed to
proceed to that point? {Or}, will we finally recognize the
horror, {which we ourselves have wrought}, and awaken to the
awful reality of the ultimate, real-life tragedy in the making,
which is now unfolding around us
President Xi Jinping of China talks about creating a
“community of common destiny.”  Now obviously, he discusses that
in a beautiful sense, a win-win relationship among nations, where
all nations are working toward the mutual benefit of others and
are working towards the “common destiny of all mankind.”  Well,
ironically, that common destiny already exists, but, in a
negative sense, with this thermonuclear Sword of Damocles hanging
over our heads, the potential for a “common destiny of humanity”
for a global annihilation, is a very, very real thing.  As Lyndon
LaRouche made the point with regards to the warning that he
delivered in that report that I read excerpts from — which he
wrote, now, almost 20 years ago — when he foresaw the horrors
which the events in Littleton presaged.  Survival under these
conditions will not come from within the theories, the axioms,
the postulates, of the prevailing system, but survival can only
be delivered through the overturning of those failed ideologies
which form its foundations, and the construction of an entirely
new outlook, based on truth, truthful principles; based on a
recognition of what it really means to be man.
The ultimate principle which must come before, and precede
everything else, not only in philosophy and education, and social
relations, but in international strategic policy, and economic
policy, is the recognition of the true nature of man, a species
which is unique from all other species in its capacity for
creativity, and the necessary ordering and subordination of
everything else, to the cultivation and promotion of that.
So how does that principle play out on the world stage?
It’s through rejecting the kind of anti-human, anti-development,
anti-progress ideology, which has prevailed in the form of
competitive strategic geopolitics, zero-sum economic
policymaking; and instead, to consciously and scientifically
decide, that the common destiny which man must pursue is not
thermonuclear extinction and Mutually Assured Destruction
warfare, but rather, mutually beneficial development and shared
creative progress: Space exploration, the Strategic Defense of
Earth from asteroids and other cosmic threats in our cosmic
environment; the development of limitless power through the
development of fusion energy  — all of these, the list goes on
and on and on.
{But this New Paradigm is already there. It’s already in
existence.}  Just look at what China is doing, with the Silk
Road, with the One Belt, One Road initiative.  Look beyond all of
the propaganda that you’re being fed, about “Chinese hegemony”
and so forth and so on.  This is where the future lies:  Mutually
beneficial progress, development, the giving of the opportunity
for the full cultivation of creative reason to every man, woman
and child on this planet.  The most beautiful example of this,
just in the recent months, has been what China has already
accomplished in the otherwise hopelessly destitute areas of
Africa.  And a beautiful report has just come out of Nigeria,
where the idea of the Transaqua program to refill Lake Chad
through massive water development and water-transfer projects,
this idea which has been on the books for 20 years or more, is
now becoming a reality.
These are the kinds of projects, these are the kinds of
visions, these are the kinds of goals which bind us together as a
common humanity, and will affirm, for our children and for
ourselves, the beauty of mankind, and the true creative nature of
this species.  This is the antidote for a culture of death and a
culture of despair which has plagued our nation and this is the
vision which will inspire us, as we work to build this shared
destiny, this common future.
It’s not only through negating what is evil, but it’s
through cultivating what is good, that man can be redeemed, and
that we can cure this sickness which has infected our culture at
its very root.
So let us allow those masks to fall away, and let us allow
the truth to sit in judgment, recognizing that that the fault
lies within ourselves, within our very cultural values and
beliefs which has led us down the road of tragedy. As the nation
has mourned alongside the victims and the family members of those
horrible events in Parkland, Florida, but has also been inspired
by the courage of those family members and those survivals who
have said, “Enough is enough:  Let’s bring an end to the
so-called status quo.  This must be allowed {never] to happen
again!  Let us commit ourselves to action now, before we reach
the point of no return, to cure this culture, and to cure this
world, of the sickness which threatens our very survival.  And to
resolve, that out of evil {must} come greater good.”
For those who were victims in Florida, for those who are
victims every day, of the diseases of depression and despair,
addiction, overdose, opioids and heroin, and for all of us who
now live under this thermonuclear Sword of Damocles which
threatens to exterminate mankind in the blink of an eye, let all
of us resolve: That we will no longer accept this culture of
death, which prevails not only in our media, and in our
entertainment, but underlies the very economic and strategic
fabric of society.  If there was {ever} a moment in which it is
clear that the necessity of a New Paradigm for civilization is
literally life or death, that moment is now.
So, let me conclude by returning to that essay by the poet
Friedrich Schiller that I cited at the outset of this show, and
read to you the closing section of this essay, which he titles
“The Theater Considered as a Moral Institution.”  What Friedrich
Schiller had to say, was:
“When grief gnaws at our heart, when melancholy poisons our
solitary hours; when we are revolted by the world and its
affairs; when a thousand troubles weigh upon our souls, and our
sensibilities are about to be snuffed out underneath our
professional burdens — then the theater takes us in, and within
its imaginary world we dream the real one away; we are given back
to ourselves; our sensibilities are reawakened; salutary emotions
agitate our slumbering nature, and set our hearts pulsating with
greater vigor.
“And then, when man at last, in all districts and regions
and classes, with all his chains of fad and fashion cast away,
and every bond of destiny rent asunder — when man becomes his
brother’s brother with a single all-embracing sympathy, resolved
once again into a single species, forgetting himself and the
world, and reapproaching his own heavenly origin, each takes joy
in others’ delights, which then, magnified in beauty and
strength, are reflected back to him from a hundred eyes, and now
his bosom has room for a single sentiment, and this is: to be
truly human.”
So let us resolve to make mankind truly human, to be our
brothers’ brother, and to usher in a culture of creativity to
replace this culture of death.
Thank you very much.  And please stay tuned to
larouchepac.com.