The Ride of the Valkries

I remember when I was growing up listening to the exciting piece of music "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner. The music has this tremendous urgency as the Valkyries, the mythological female figures who carry the dead from the field of battle to Walhalla (the hall of the slain in Norse mythology). There's a link between this music and the defeated German nation at the time of their conquest by Napoleon as the Germans bitterly seek to maintain their past history by building their own Valhalla in which to assemble representations of all the important figures that had preceded the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1807. One of the most idiocentric reactions to history, this determination to keep alive what Germany stood for in this age of Napoleonic hegemony was the work of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

Like Goethe and Grimm where language was a utilised to develop the image of a nation, so Ludwig realising the disastrous effect occupation had on a nations people and was determined to preserve German dignity.
         How far we have travelled to our present day denial of our history and the glories of our past for the trivia of the present, where attention span is becoming less and less as people allow their minds to gallop around at breakneck speed, looking for its next fix.
History has become something to apologise for as politically correct brain washing proceeds on its course.
How often the hair shirted, sandal wearing apologist who sees nothing but pain and resentment, place all the blame of today's "human condition" on the actions of the past.
Context is lost. Today's (false) morality is is used to judge the actions of even as recent as 50 years ago, without recognising the insidious, homogenising effect of "group think"practised through mass media, particularly the television.
Sitting quietly in the corner of the lounge is the conduit for all the propaganda Joseph Goebbels could have dreamt of.
It floods our psyche with messages about ourself and who we 'should' be.
It subtly creates another type of Valhalla, not of heroes but of creatures who are but parodies of who they should be.
The 'free rein' chicken is lauded for its stress-free meat and, as a contribution to ethical breeding, but the contaminated mind set of the "pre programmed, consumer dominated human" (the PPCDH) which has been developed in the laboratories of Western capitalism would make Socrates turn in his grave (provided the Valkyries haven't carried him off)