Darvish Khan Writes

A problem of a homogenized society is the inability to remember. The cauldron of American patriotic identity demands forgetfulness. We are not our past, but some nationalistic stew that demands we lie about history.

The genocide of the First Americans is relatively undocumented. The slavery of the African  American is glossed. These twin catastrophes are subsumed in the idea of Manifest Destiny- it was all God’s plan.

Christopher Columbus discovered America, land of the free and home of the brave. Any other narrative is un-American. Such is the tremendous need to repress and prevaricate about the facts.

If the problem of Europe was class and monarchy, the problem of America is the strenuous need to bury the history of rape and pillage that was required to create an “egalitarian” society- one in which only genteel male whites could draft and sign the Declaration of Independence.

The myth of America is a classic example of how desperately important it is for nationalism to lie, and lie again, to fabricate a narrative that sells.

America has always excelled at marketing. America is a con. This is the enduring legacy of a patriotism based on amnesia.

America is all about democracy and free markets, right? This is what we relentlessly preach to ourselves and the world. This is a hundred times more false a narrative than the lie of communism, which is transparent. The idea of democratic capitalism is an opiate that demands an ever increasing fix until corporatism becomes the new tyrannical King clawing on our backs.

And thus came King Baby Trump, the inglorious fulfillment of corporatism as our new sovereign. And The People cry and cry, but the stinking turd of royal greed has assumed the throne- and we can’t account for how it happened.

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The 50th anniversary of  MLK’s sacrificial death is upon us. He is the “greatest American” for the reason of the complete veracity of his critique of American hypocrisy, venality and hate, and his dream of what might be- and will be by the grace of God: the triumph of love.

He is the greatest American for believing in the triumph of a love that embraces truth and justice as the proof of a American polity that works. America is not a polity that works for a few- the fabulous and filthy rich, but for all. And especially for those on whose backs capitalism and the wealth of nations was made possible to begin with: Red genocide and Black slave labor.

The exceptionalism of America must not be a racist joke. This is the essence of King’s prophetic oratory. For America to rightfully aspire and claim the destiny it longs for, it must deserve it; Americans must rise to this task of acknowledging and redeeming its tragic history.

The problem of racism, economic exploitation (corporatism) and militarism is as American as apple pie. It is a problem that appalling few Americans grok. The liberal elites- forget about conservatives, can not grok the enormity of the problem. Our first biracial president could not grok the enormity of the problem. Our first female Democratic Party nominee for the presidency could not grok the enormity of the problem.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren can not grok the enormity of the problem.

Congress can not grok…

What is wrong with America?

The most simple and cogent answer is that ideological corporatism has America by the balls. America is run by corporations. Politicians are owned by corporations- AND special interests, which are in turn exploitive and racist in nature.

American foreign policy is completely corporatized and racist. Saudi Arabia and Israel are the two most jingoistic nations in the world. Both are fully dedicated to a sick and racist faux religious nationalism. Saudi Arabia claims to be the guardian of Islam’s two most holy places of pilgrimage, Mecca and Medina- but has utterly defiled them with a materialistic fanatic iteration of revisionist Islam. Israel has done exactly the same with its embrace of  Zionist Apartheid. Both countries have  become  fantastic vortices of raging religious nationalism- but are America’s best friends in the Middle East.

Is there any wonder how and why America has such a raging problem with corporatism, racism and violence? America’s foreign policy is the mirror of its own domestic catastrophe. There are more blacks now incarcerated than were held as slaves at the time of the Civil War.  This was exactly what MLK talked about so eloquently 50 years ago: our domestic racism is conditioned and guaranteed by our corporate violence abroad. Halliburton invaded Iraq and murdered brown bodies with “Shock and Awe” even as corporate greed twisted politicians to criminalize and imprison brown bodies here in the land of apple pie.

But the greatest American lives on; Yes, the greatest American lives on!

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The great problem with our Orwellian New World is the collapse of genuine spiritual common ground within and among nations and the rise of arch chauvinism as a failed compensatory strategy.

The US, Great Britain, India, Russia, China and France, on the one hand, and a great number of other nations on the other hand, have all collapsed into pathetic national narcissism. All the gods of the world’s religions have become vampires bleeding their victims to death.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam- and Hinduism and even Buddhism as well, have proved to be bankrupt strategies in informing the public with a sensibility that works.

Israel is nothing but a chauvinist Zionist lie; the West- but especially the US, is nothing but an inverted Christianity worshiping the Cross of Corporatism; Islam has become a metaphor for suicidal zealotry and Hindutva little more than religious fascism.

State sponsored terrorism has become the normal response to unruly former colonial subjects. The US in particular has taken it upon itself to punish not only its own citizenry but that of the world for not submitting to its ordained exceptionalism.

With every passing day, the US is proving that it is the lumbering giant that will shortly tumble out of the sky and split its head open for all to applaud and lament.

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Avatar Meher Baba’s place of burial at Meherabad, India supports a community of Indian and foreign devotees who have implicitly or explicitly taken an oath of omerta (code of silence with respect to public oversight) with regard to the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Charitable Trust that administers Meherabad and Meher Baba’s residence, Meherazad.

The foreigners, largely Americans, whose visas have been sponsored (until recently because of changes in Indian government policy) by the AMBPPCT take an oath of spiritual service and commitment to the Trust based on the premise of “spiritual training”. This “spiritual training” prohibits public disagreement with Trust policy.

Never mind that Avatar Meher Baba passed away in 1969 and left no spiritual successor to guarantee the integrity of any such project; As long as Baba’s closest mandali (disciples) were guiding the Trust, everything pretty much went well. But for the past decade or more the linkage of visa sponsorship to “spiritual training” has increasingly taken on the hubris of institutional presumption: the Trust can do no wrong and its servants had better grok this.

It’s like Meherabad and Meherazad are now administered by well trained Jesuits who are infallibly inspired. There is a curious resemblance to a similar presumption in Sufism Reoriented which believes that Meher Baba has guaranteed that this religious organization   will be infallibly guided for the next 700 years.

The Trust is a typical Indian organization with near total control of the Trust residing in the chairman. The trustees basically rubber stamp the chairman’s edicts. Not only is public dissent among the “spiritual trainees” who staff the various Trust projects not allowed, but the trustees themselves habitually defer to the chairman and never publicly counter him.

In short, those who work for the Trust, especially those whose visas have been historically sponsored by the Trust, must never publicly question and criticize the Trust. This is the omertà to which I refer.

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