I have never had a need to believe. Though this mental state of apostasy has saved me the anger that accompanies the disillusioned man in his 30s who finally discovers that some important pillar of his life was built upon a lie, it is no sign of superior intellect. It is a matter of perspective and when one is born weird he’s of necessity born with an alternative perspective. I did, for my family, for my greed, fight this view for some years. But the vast Lie I was born into would not cease its infernal grimacing from every quarter, high and low. I am willing to peek into rabbit holes others fear but not willing to descend for the authentic weirdo’s fear of losing his defining perspective.
Recently I was linked a fascinating video in which a person I suspect is a reactionary weirdo goes down a fascinating rabbit hole, debunking the “Theory of Relativity,” which I lack the intelligence to even comprehend. How do I judge this without a basis? I am a science-fiction writer, after all. Then the guy—after demonstrating definitively a real case of online censorship—claims that nuclear weapons are a hoax. How do I determine if this rabbit hole of his is worth more than a glance, perhaps even a full neck-stretching peek?
He claims that there are no such things as nukes, that all of the tens of thousands of regular military guys subjected to these tests [many of whom died horribly due to radiation exposure] kept the world’s biggest plain sight secret to their grave.
I clicked the kid into the ether and busied myself with other concerns.
If you are prone to investigating The Lie that has ordered our world for ages, I have some cautions.
The first is that the most effective lie is mutely stated among real discernable truths, all of them obscuring the root of the Lie that is Civilization, namely the omissions. This factor has often been expressed in the saying “the victors write history.”
Let me state it in another context, according to my craft. As a fiction writer the bulk of my work is in the nonfiction realm. Indeed, most of my books are nonfiction texts investigated to support fiction projects. The fiction writer, particularly the writer of weird fiction, has one task above all other, the suspension of disbelief. This is the very same task that defines the theologian and politician. The fiction writer, if he wishes to be great, must achieve a higher mark than his political and ideological counterparts, for he must manage the suspension of disbelief with the full knowledge that he is telling an entertaining falsehood. The weirder the tale the more factual the supporting elements must be.
So, in your finding a nasty lie—such as the commonly accepted “fact” that the only people held in bondage as chattel in the 400-plus history of the English-American experience—recall that this lie, that there were no white slaves, this foundational lie of America is not stated, but unstated, the focus being on assigning exclusive suffering o but one of the many races that suffered America’s “peculiar institution. ”
Lies tend to muted grays overlaying a fallow field of omissions. The actual lies that keep a nation chained are no more large by comparison as a ship’s anchor is to the vessel, or a convict’s cuffs are to his body. But what of the symbolic bars, walls and razor wire of this vast metaphoric prison you ask?
That is simple: the unquestioning belief and acceptance of the ox-eyed multitude of human cattle, who are more surely secured to their masters’ will through the simple ingestion of the pleasing fictions bounding their reality than all of the visible, tangible chains that bound our ancestors.
America in Chains
James, do you have a compiled reading list on your sources on the issue of white slavery in America? Just looking for a list of links or publications.
I put the sources in each of the three books.
Stillbirth of a Nation has many book reviews of sources.
I am currently using archives at universities and state historic societies.
The major sources are:
They Were White and They Were Slaves, Hoffman
The Slave Trade, Thomas
Puritans and Adventurers, [can't recall author]
The slave narratives and letters of Williamson, Franklin, Browning, Sprigs, Revel, Craft, Roper, Douglas, Brown, Northup, Keckly and others I am having trouble remembering at the moment.
Thanks for your interest. I'll keep publishing whatever I can find. In the case of Hellier this means gaining admittance to a university library. I never expected the project to get anywhere close to this size. It just began as research for a novel.
Our host said...
"Puritans and Adventurers, [can't recall author]"
After pulling a Jim Rockford, I found out the writer's name is T. H. Breen.
buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/48327/Reviews
Tex
("At the tone, leave your name and message, and I'll get back to you.")
Thank you, Tex. I m away from my library—well, the book pile under by unfolded clean clothes—and was unable to recall. You stand as a bibliophile of the first order.
What about The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn?
The facts seem to be the same you describe in your articles here, although of course the slant is in the orthodox direction.
I will seek it out—thank you!