The Collaborator's Song (Will Grigg)

Will Grigg says the road to undisguised totalitarianism is paved by those who collaborate with the enemy. An excerpt:

The premise of the movie from which those scenes are drawn, the 1984 jingo-fest Red Dawn, is the conquest of the Midwestern United States by a Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan invasion force. Wildly implausible at the time, that storyline has not gained credibility over the past quarter-century. However, the movie's depiction of young, athletic mountain boys harrying and wearing down a vastly superior military force through guerrilla tactics in some ways foretold the eventual defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and Washington's impending defeat there as well.

In addition to presenting a creditable dramatization of fourth generation warfare, the movie also offers some valid insights regarding the tactics employed by totalitarian rulers and those who oppose them.

While it's profoundly doubtful that Americans will be ground beneath the heel of a Russian-led occupation force, there's a growing likelihood that the government ruling us -- a quasi-socialist kleptocracy supported by a militarized proto-police state -- will metastasize into undisguised totalitarianism.

Every totalitarian system, whether imposed through military conquest or internal subversion, requires the services of people like the gelatinous Mayor Bates -- those who have spent their lives seeking power and the favor of those who exercise it, and are willing to betray anybody and everybody in order to remain personally secure once power is in the hands of those who are utterly ruthless.

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