As Fascism Burns Our Stories, Return to the “Campfire” To Save Them

tyunglebower ♦ February 19, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

National Parks. Presidential libraries. Museums. The National Archives.

All are both vital to the health and success of a free country.

And all of them have closed or come under threat by an aspiring tyrant and his billionaire lackey. Who knows what is next?

In these times of encroaching authoritarianism and the evils of the Republican Party as now constituted, the writing, telling, and above all preserving of stories is roughly 5 times more important today in the United States as it was before the Reich-inspired MAGA movement took hold.

And their value was already incalculable.

Depending on who buys what or caves in to the demands and preference of whom, this blog may or may not persist. Obeying Regime 47 in advance has become a popular past time anywhere from entertainment companies, to PBS itself. The time may come when I either have no access to this platform, or the demands of same on my content becomes so great I no longer make use of it.

In which case, it is back to MSWord and the old printer. Failing than the pencil and the paper.

I will burn a damned stick and write stories and thoughts down on napkins if I have to.

And I hope, pray I am not the only one to go to these lengths if/when needed.

If the institutions charged with keep out. hiSTORY alive are gutted, censored or burned up (figuratively and literally speaking) the story of who we are, were, and hope to be needs to be preserved for certain, and it will only be done by the dedicated wealthy or the resourceful poor.

We may take our cues from our past and a different kind of fire–the campfire.

Both facts and the telling of fictional tales must not be forgotten the midst of all of this. The epic tale, told by the village poet or chieftain around the community fire preserved the collective experiences of the tribe. The concept far predates the book, or even paper as we understand it.

Songs. Chants. On and on. They all told what was in many ways a fiction designed to keep alive the sense of wonder, or “more-than-nowness” unique to the human social animal.

When it is exercised that is.

The Fascists, with their gutting of the arts want to prevent such imaginative exercise. Let us make sure we do not allow it, no matter how far back to the Stone Age the try to send 99% of us.

So let the stories continues. Ad let us all familiarize ourselves with other ways of consuming them and telling them. Let us be ready for the campfire epics of history and culture again. not merely for the aesthetic–the natural conclusion to the path we as a nation are on now may require it.