We all know George Orwell’s famous saying, “Who controls the past controls the future,” and we should remind ourselves on the hour of yet another, “To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.”

Who or what forces might control our perception of the past and why? What natural and unexpected forces have any will or capacity to manage our memories well enough we pay taxes to criminals fight war after war, betting on prosperity, half asleep, making book on our own extinction event? What “invisible laws and powers” Have brought us to such confusion we have unwittingly built our own technological ergastulas, and transformed our former nation in a prison death camp where we ourselves are the ultimate intended blood sacrifice?

Roberto Calasso: “In the twenty first century massacres have replaced sacrifices. They mark out the course of time, of a formless convulsive time, in the same way that sacred ceremonies marked the circular course of the calendar. The officiant can sacrifice himself along with his victims; or otherwise keep a distance, as far away as remote control will let him. The massacre may be a final conclusive act, or one of a series. The Basis remains the same. Compared with any other act-whether, political, military, diplomatic or subversive- the massacre offer certainty: the guarantee of effectiveness. It is the only act of undoubted efficacy, among countless other acts about which one might have doubt. It is the safe anchorage of Meaning The meaning can be wholly private and secret or wholly public and declared. But the difference between the two acts is much less than what they share-in-common: the certainty that killing is the only unshaken all foundation, the only gesture whose meaning is certain."