Blog 10 Midsummer New Year of Johns Eve 2012

The Fabled Lake Burtnieki in Latvia.

With more American troops committing suicide than being killed in combat, we have come to a story the main theme of which is, unavoidably, the absence of ‘authentic moral authority’ http://exposingthetruth.info/more-us-soldiers-committed-suicide-than-died-in-combat/ .  

The statistics mentioned in the link surely ought to wiggle the White House ‘human concerns’ meme, because, when all is said and done, it is the way the United States government and its NATO wing relates the citizens of America to the citizens of other countries. If what the soldiers see and experience causes them to decide to leave the human fold, there cannot be much doubt that the God of Enlightenment (born in the 16^th century) must either switch back to the proto-God of the Bible, or go out look for yet another.

While this hyper-news story concerns only the ‘democratic’ Empire, there are countless smaller tragedies regarding the absence of moral authority being projected all over the world. One such is small Latvia, where the seizure of politics by former Soviet Latvia apparatchiks in 1993 could not go unnoticed—marked by a public self-sacrifice by a tool and dye maker from the region of Zemgale in front of the Freedom Monument—has by 2012 trickled down like wet urine to all those Latvians forced to live in the fictitious, nevertheless very imaginable and dank political sewer system of the country.

The corrupt Latvian political system, paradoxically a zionationalist conundrum originally almost exclusively staffed by ex-Soviet officials who ‘privatized’ (prihvatizehja) most of the formerly public property to themselves and became, overnight, oligarchs or almost oligarchs. Today, the system is somewhat diluted by politically inexperienced youths, but liberalist conversions (assuming that both capitalists and communists are liberalist ideologies) continue apace.

While the economic condition of Latvia is one that concerns everyone most, the collapse of authentic moral authority in Latvia is perhaps best noticeable in the cultural arena.

Going from an economic policy best expressed by the slogan: “Push the gas pedal to the floor!” to one that screams “Push the brakes to the floor!” The cultural policy that let the orthodox and unimaginative Latvian National Opera soak up most of the funds that should have gone to the small theatres in the small Latvian countryside cities, the Cultural Ministry is now cutting the opera’s budget so drastically, that the choir and orchestra of the opera company are to receive pay commensurate with amateur status.

While this writer is very much in favor of an overhaul of the orthodox orientation of the opera, as a practical matter of how to switch gears, I made the suggestion that the opera adapt one of my works, re “Oedipus Rex Rewritten” http://oedipusrexrewritten.blogspot.com/  (which received favorable responses from several professional sources) be presented sans music, but letting the choir prove its professionalism and carry the weight of the entire performance on its shoulders. Needless to say, my ‘rewrite’ reverses the orientation of this Sophoclean masterpiece from the currently favored ‘sexual incest’ theme to how to regain authentic moral authority among political leadership.

As if a catastrophy in the “high” arts were not enough!

Another cultural disaster is shaping up with regard to the Latvian Holy Day (or holiday if you prefer) of Johns Eve and Johns Day. It is not in the least surprising that with so much of property in the Latvian countryside being bought up by foreigners (the Russians and Chinese are reliably reported to be bsuying up the city of Cesis), the town famed by legend and literature, Burtnieki, on the shores of famed Lake Burtnieki, is preparing to let the Johns festival make one step further from being a community “low” arts festival to that of an ‘estrade’ spectacle led by a Norvegian DJ come to town to bathe in the politically and culturally enervated Latvian ‘paradise’.