THE HALF HIDDEN FLOWER
See the little flower half hidden from view.
Don’t delay, I’m afraid it will whither and wilt
And drop into the dirt. Then, it won’t find its way
Into God’s bouquet, please honor it with your attention.
I’m afraid the moment will pass
and God’s bouquet, which is all noticed Nature,
will not be beautified by its modest charm;
and, though its unassuming color isn’t bright, and its fragrant faint:
please use this pretty little flower,
whose quiet and humble appearance
is part of its subtle grace,
while there is still time.
OH, SINNERS
Oh, sinners of fanatical fathers,
remember the innocence,
recall the lost grace,
oh eternal;
the extreme beliefs,
the vicious spite
the cruel and brutal hatred,-
and the fatal stigmata.
He bears your symbols
of good and evil,
and the scenes where we grieve,
and the images Mother Earth laments
HOME OWNERS
From my mortgaged room with its modest yard,
where I’m taxed and insured to insolvency,
I manifest my ethereal existence which extends materially
and metaphorically in the lonely landscaped gardens and exquisite interior décor.
I loath the leaden perspective
of homogeneous gray subdivisions,
synthetic 20 yr. roofs, slumbering expressionless exteriors,
and see the dim reflections of the first humble house,
as viewed between mirrors manufacturing infinite corridors
in inane repetitive reflections, ineptly populated.
But, landowners,
sharers in a dream,
striking their shallow cabbage roots,
myriads of the ordinary, being swept into oblivion,
a space for a pocket full of stars,
soft light and blurred images, indigenous peace; or, a human echo,
the death of the soul…
Subjects that fill my eye to overflowing,
a ghost’s eye filled with reflections,
which, curious, defines Death
as taking root in small narrow lots;
Life, a shadowy apparition
of someone else’s reflection.
FIGHT
Instantly igniting, the two combatants collide: bleak blades
with a crimson fountain cascading gore to the ground.
That thirsting blade accompanied by an immense silence, as swiftly voices fade away.
Today’s youth, when subliminally set up, become prey for vicious bleating sounds.
Lives shatter like glass, like waking middle aged from the dreams of our youth – abrupt and startling; and now, deceitful fangs and claws adorn duplicitous whores, who are all the fashion. The guns and knives are youthful playthings, given to them by bigoted adults, whose snarling hate ulcerated hearts are enslaved by tyrannical passions.
In the deserted alley haunted by wild and dangerous animals who stalk
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, contemporary combatants, whose remains are outlined in chalk; red flowers kiss corpses lying on the dark asphalt, no red badges of courage here.
This abyss is Hell, and populated by duplicitous friends full of conceit.
Here Hell hound! See how they’re entrapped, in their own webs of deceit!
Come celebrate the terrorism that’s deliberately designed to never stop!
THE BLUE FLAMED VERSE
It is I who’ve recently sung
the blue flamed verse that with words
reverberated both profane and profound –
a mockingbird illuminating the dark dawn.
I was the gardener in my garden of dreams
full of roses and monarch butterflies,
the falconer without a glove, the landlord of nesting turtle doves,
the captain of sailboats and guitars on turquoise lakes;
and very 17th century, and very classical,
and very modern; assertive, cultured;
equally comfortable with brilliant Baudelaire and lyrical Dario
charter members of the sacred brotherhood of the divine order of Dreams.
Late in life I learned of pain,
my youth,… what a wonderful time (!) foreshadowing Paradise?
Its flowers still haunt me with their fragrance
an aroma sweet, poignant and melancholy.
A meadowlark, my intellect blossomed,
my youth flew where instinct guided;
it went straight for the clouds with infinite curiosity;
if it didn’t fall like Icarus, it was because God granted grace.
In my garden was a beautiful fountain,
it was thought to be electrically powered, but was alive;
a young soul mysteriously inhabited it,
innocent, intelligent, inquisitive,
and reclusive before the great, wondrous World,
so that, steeped in solitude, it shyly hid
except during Spring showers when the Sun shone
and time turned symphonic….
Time of passionate kisses, and a heart flooding with Sunsets;
time of twilight’s mysterious portal and private seclusion;
time of baroque music and magic,
of I love you, followed by sweet, significant silences.
And then, floating from the pipes ancient melodies
of mysterious crystalline notes,
a renewing of Pan Hellenic musical motifs played by Pan
and a caravanserai of Indo-Arabic scales,
so amazingly alive and a sound so real
that bronze statues suddenly shifted on their pedestals,
and tree roots sprouted feet and walked abroad,
and satyrs played, while early Christian saints sang.
As much as Lord Chesterfield
I respect Lord Bolingbroke,
and so united to divine reason
a disciplined human understanding;
all analytical, all casuistry, all pure comprehension
and natural understanding; and, minus self-serving deceit,
and minus dissimulation and hypocrisy –
If there is an honest individual, a sincere individual, its me; or, a sincere soul, its mine.
The ivory tower tried to ensnare my desires;
I tried to exile myself within me,
but, grew an appetite for space instead, where the shadows of their abyss
were lost among the infinite horizons of the sky.
Like clouds saturated with moisture
from the essence of the sea, was the sweet yearning
of my tender heart, scarred with the hatred
of the wicked World, power and its corruption.
And, in spite of everything, by God’s grace,
in my pure conscience goodness picked the best part;
and, if there is bitter poison in my life
all the bitter gall became sweetened by my Art.
I freed my mind from base designs
and the evil seeds of hatred, I bathed my soul in the Ganges;
and, my heart made many pilgrimages to sacred shrines,
and brought peace back from temples perched on promontories.
Oh sacred grove! Let the wise
words of God’s divine heart
reside beneath your sacred boughs! Observe, the profound
and prolific fountain, whose virtue protects us from fate.
Perfect place, where reality complicates existence,
there the body burns, and the soul sacrifices and resurrects, and Bacchantes revel;
while below them the unicorn sits with a maid.
St. Francis, intoxicated on crystal light, liquefies the blue sapphire sky.
Philomela and Baucis transforms a magical jewel
and sweet music plays in the leafy cupola’s shade
below a stand of Oak and Linden; while, subtle Ariel sips dew from a rose,
and Cupid nibbles Psyche’s nipples with vesture floating all around.
There Mary merges with God in sacred heat,
and the wise centaur’s ancient race is reduced to naught; and
the old World springs eternally new each Spring, as it sews its seeds,
and harmonic chords emanate from the great World soul.
The Atman that goes there, should enter as a new born child,
trembling with sacred desire, filled with pure tender feelings;
a penitent, it treads over the thistles and thorns in its path:
so it dreams, so it yearns, and so it sweetly sings.
Life, light and love: create such a fire
that it generates the eternal flame of Truth within;
Art pure and honest, as a proclamation from Christ to the multitudes,
providing solace on their sightless sojourn through this mad and bitter World.
Life is a sacred mystery, whose light can blind;
a remote Truth, it appalls;
stark perfection inexorable in correcting man’s transgressions,
its terrible Justice is tempered by infinite grace.
The mysterious Ideal slumbers in nocturnal shadows,
to be sincere is to be deceived,
by proud power who resides in the corrupt;
the naked stars glint from the water of the fountain,
whose voice flows melodically away.
I only want to make my soul into a star
reflecting in a fountain, with a love of nature and art,
and intoxicated with dusk and dawn.
With the bodiless blue twilight that establishes the pattern,
resonating through eternity inspiring celestial ecstasies;
mists and a symphonic poem played in a minor key,
while the matutinal maiden walks along country roads scattering colors.
A bullet hurtles from a gun barrel,
which was fired by the subliminally set up man.
A bomb explodes from a parked pick-up,
and a wave of hatred flies off with the wind.
Virtue lives with Freedom and Truth,
and moderation resides only with the strong;
all life is ensconced with God’s love,
whose sacred flame burns within.
We triumph over spite,
and over hatred, and over death,
traveling on to Jerusalem,
the pilgrimage passes.
BLACK DIAMOND ARROW
Across the Eastern horizon,
a thin pale incision
slits the skin of night,
and then, departs diminishing downhill
a black diamond arrow;
losing itself among undulating soft silver mists
a silent rippling shroud,
in whose slumbering reflections
the moon’s serene blue home
mysteriously vanishes.
Her shadow
now retired into internal spaces,
where sacred symbols decorate the white walls
of pilgrim’s cells discussing the prospects of creating a new poetry .
Overhead, showers of constellations cascade down on a looking glass city,
the light travels through vast celestial space;
and, reflects from the congenial full moon
glancing back through skeletal tree limbs,
at the patient generations whose highway of echoing tongues
bounce off crooked doorways.
EXTENSION
Extending itself outward at last,
like dreams among clouds,
the gray road, sloping gently downward,
rambles into Portland, at the entrance to the Willamette Valley.
Debarking, with swollen red eyes,
solemn light descending as does
a doomed martyr to the thrill of the crowd,
you stumble out on to the street.
Enter, a play without meaning, written by an idiot,
for an audience of dunces.
The tedium of the debate, with its insidious intent,
malingering too long, like a tune
redundantly played on the radio,
woven into robes of sound wrapped around the city;
but, buried deeper beneath peoples artificial facades,
how solitary, how fragmentary and discontinuous existence is.
Down, down, down into the bowels of ordinary things
a bouquet of flowers, an antique plate, a person at a window;
dawn, running water, the friendly familiar furniture, how extraordinary
it all is: and, strange, in spite of its pain and misery, how I love every instant of it.
Unmasking 2nd rate minds enslaved to vicious seductions,
abandoned to sensuality, and harnessed
to the yoke of every tyrannical passion;
and, exposing their monstrous desire for power:
to humiliate; to hurt; to subdue;
to make others feel their evil mastery,
with its inherent hypocrisy, hatred and fear –
and life lived as in a prison cell;
days dwindling into narrow concrete channels
complete with traffic lights, phone lines and small business signs,
litter, shop windows, computer screens, TV and papers filled with propaganda,
where sagging buildings protrude irregularly like bad teeth.
How can anyone, even a man and wife,
communicate, across the vast abysses
compacted and contained within adjacent points of space,
the solitary, quiet dignity of decently lead lives.
REMEMBER ME
You’ll remember me –
with my strange World where words
are woven into priceless tapestries,
a strangely transforming World, stupid and full of absurdities,
whose sentinel trees, with ragged shadows, solemnly stand
over wet gardens of lunar dew; where
the immense full moon peering between branches,
sings in the sweet soft silvery night,
to phantasmal forests verses that adorn
the silence of the divine night; where
poetry painted pictures repeat choruses of stars
for singing and dancing and the smoke of joyous dreams
is pursued by bloody beasts; and, where,
lunar cycles are surrounded by spans of grace,
verses that the city’s voices repeat with the tongues of its echoes
which extend from twilight, magnified in the mirror
of the mysterious deep rivers, smooth as silk,
and in the twin full moons of sky and water: -
After all, it was the only honest World.
And, it could have been yours, too, if you had wanted it.
Midnight, and the blank barren pages, who don’t dream,
ignite the fire which converts the poems
into a fleeting white precipitation of ash. And,
the fierce fury of the colored flames
prohibiting the poetry of dreams
driving them into the portals of Sunset,
they ignore the sacred ceremonial acts and religious hymns;
and, drown the green Earth and blue sky,
in their blood red marching soldier songs:
but, between Heaven and Earth love contains everything,
even though they don’t notice, while standing on their obedient walls;
where, every great stone reflects, in polished mirror surfaces,
gleaming image, iterations of stars that adorn the black satin sky.
Was my World, too much?
Was it, too little?
Couldn’t you comprehend the superimposed realities?
THE COMMUNICATION TOWER
“Fifteen two!” – “Twenty-four for a pair and a go make three!” “I’m out!”
And, the young man, who was the older man’s son, cast his cards to the floor, with a thunderous imprecation, and smote his chair’s armrest with a hard blow.
But then Mr. Brutus, the editor, laughed good naturedly, thinking, “May I be as magnanimous in victory, as equinanimous in defeat.”.
“Yech! Its the July 4th weekend and over 80 degrees out. And, they’re so stupid that we’re supposed to believe Noman is burning a fire in his fireplace at midnight? Damn it! That’s a narc igniting one of those smokeless cartridge devices designed to smell like fire developed for ambushing in Viet Nam!”
Miles away in an unrelated fire, which initially was only an innocent sylph lost in the mist near the river, soon developed into the devil incarnate, setting off several sirens on both banks up and down the waterway.
A large number of unemployed, of disabled, of homeless, congregated in the shadows around the dancing flames, whose acrid smoke spiraled up into the devouring darkness.
And a local communications tower was illuminated like a miniature derrick and, standing on top of the West Hills staring down on the city, the region’s large communications towers, were outlined against a somber black sky, lit up with blinking red lights which looked like the local communication tower’s big brothers, from which a passing patrol car silently slid by, near where the radical right wing’s mayor to be was being informed of all behind a tightly shut door.
RUMOR MILL
The opinions of the Rumor Mill are its own.
In this election year it behooves us to reflect what we are about as a nation. In writing this essay Rumor Mill looked up the following terms in an effort to be succinct, further our understanding, and prevent unnecessary disagreements. Political Science is the systematic study of government. Government is the political direction and control of the actions of its communities and inhabitants. And, finally Politics is the shrewd or prudent in practical matters. It was here that the Rumor Mill gave up. First, the beginning two terms are circular, Political Science is the study of government and government is the political direction, which doesn’t help much in clarifying the topic. Second, our Republican lead government can be called a lot of things, but, shrewd and prudent do not come to mind,; when the Republicans fight unnecessary wars and lies to the public about them; when the Republicans deliberately bankrupt the nation and create the largest national debt the World has ever known, so they can mount attacks on Medicare and Social Security replacing them with their supporters’ inferior private plans; when the Republicans loose over 3.3million good paying jobs (computer programming and engineering) to India alone, while loosing another 2 million jobs at home; and then the Republicans claim a contrived recovery timed for the election is sustainable when the few new manufacturing jobs in America are paying wages competitive with the service sector in Republican’s on going efforts to third worldize American labor markets, but will seriously impair our ability to sustain consumer demand, which is the mainspring for any sustainable economic recovery, and which would further impair USA citizen’s dismal saving rate statistics. Unfortunately, what we have observed has historically been labeled as tyranny.
Tyranny, is the term utilized to describe any form of government or organized activity, which may make, break, destroy, interpret, impair, evade and suspend laws with impunity. The law breaker, no matter what the form of government, who has sufficient power to get by with this is a tyrant. Any nation which docilely accepts this state of affairs and endures this travail is servile and base.
The government which suffers the grievous misfortune of experiencing one faction rule, which both creates and executes political power (Republicans for the last four years have controlled the House of Representatives, the Senate, the President and the Supreme Court) must be considered a tyranny. And, it will become a bad government, because power wielded by a few can only be done at the expense of the many. If not, the existence of the few, in an organized political party, becomes superfluous. In America the right wing dominated Republicans have obtained over $500 million for only one political race - the President. If the Republicans represented America, it would be a wasteful, unnecessary act. And, if not, it becomes an effort to overwhelm a Democratic system with money.
The greed driven record of the incompetent Republicans is painfully clear. The function of $500 million is to obscure their disastrous record, and campaign negatively lying about their Democratic opponent. Currently, Republican campaign adds are running 75% to negative campaign adds against their opponent, many of these adds are overt lies. They have had four years to implement any and all programs. What the right wing has given us is what we realistically must expect in the future. More tax cuts for a wealthy few who don’t need it at the expense of good government for the people by the people. More unnecessary wars, whose real cause is to sustain bloated military budgets, which artificially elevate the Republican industrial military profits, in what has widely become recognized as Republican corporate welfare. More attacks against Medicare attempting to replace it with Republican private health insurance that will leave millions more Americans uninsured, while those who have the Republican private insurance pay more for less coverage that gives worse health every three years to 50% of our Senior Citizens, poor, and chronically ill. More Depression, as America has experienced almost four years of bad economic news, news that has left most Americans worse off than four years ago when the Republicans caused the worst stock market crash in the history of the World. More pollution as Republicans roll back all Democratic measures to protect the environment. More illiteracy and ignorance as Republican budget deficits leave us without adequate funding for schools, there are not enough spaces in colleges and universities to educate all the existing students who qualify and apply. More homeless and hungry as Republican budget deficits prevent programs that benefit people, and the Republican belief that government’s primary function is to make money for a wealthy few, witness their spending priorities and patterns, which has transformed government into a means for conveying wealth from the pockets of the vast majority into the private bank accounts of an extremely wealthy few.
But, returning to our manufactured tyranny, were the population is ensnared by a percentage of profits from perverse forms of predation and vicious seductions. In such democratically manipulated states, where the people have reached the final stage of political stupidity, and who watch while their Civil Rights, which they neither recognize nor value, are currently attacked by organized terrorists, in attacks that equate extortion, while, we alternate leaders but retain the underlying dynamics of tyranny.
Now, America is at a cross roads, and it is the Rumor Mill’s intention to discuss the two different modes of government confronting America during the up coming election. In the Fall election America will be given a choice between two alternative types of government, one championed by the Democrats and the other supported by the Republicans. Under the Democratic Party our Democracy, legislates laws by citizens from every sector of society for the benefit of all. Under the extremist Republicans power rests with a narrow factional few, and the power, which resides exclusively with them, is wielded for their exclusive benefit. The Republican plan implies what has become an unfortunate fact that they are above the law. Two examples substantiate this contention. How can the president deliberately lie about the reason for starting wars, which were nothing more than personal vendettas coupled with the desire to replace money lost in the right wing Republican Party caused stock market crash with Iraq oil money; and, recklessly publicly expose a CIA operative, which is a criminal offense?
The difference between the two types of government can be summed up in one word. The word is “Abuse”. And, how can we prevent the abuse of power in a Democratic political system. Clearly, our forefathers didn’t foresee the current concentrations of power so vast that it became global and could buy an entire nation, so the historical solution, the separation of power, is of limited utility. Ultimately, the answer is Law. Obviously, Authority that is tyrannical, like the right wing dominated Republicans, can pass laws, too, which subordinate the rights of others to their bigoted beliefs. But, I’m discussing insightful Laws that understand the importance of concepts like Liberty and Equality, and respect the Civil Rights of others to the extent that no ones rights including the smallest minority of one are violated. Laws are an integral function of society, they fulfill one of the basic functions that all societies were formed to accomplish, which is to make its citizens safe in their persons and property. Laws which respect and protect Civil Rights form the stable base from which enhanced material well being is derived and economic growth is generated. And finally, because legitimate Laws, which perform their valid function of protecting Civil Rights that provide the foundation of safety and security which promotes enhanced material well being, the consequence is that an optimum state of happiness is established for all of society’s members. It is the Rumor Mill’s belief that of the two alternatives confronting America in the up coming election, the Democratic Party provides the best available viable choice.
THE VICTIMS OF TYRANNY
In the last issue Rumor Mill stated that tyranny was so injurious to society that it corrupted even virtue itself. Further, it stated its intention to provide two examples in the next issue to prove its point. Fear is not customarily thought of as a virtue, but fear should not be misconstrued as cowardly, which is a vice. Fear in moderation is a healthy behavioral characteristic which is necessary to promote caution and prudence, both of which are universally identified as beneficial features for an individual to exhibit. Ambition is almost always identified as essential for an individual to be successful in the World. Ambition serves to motivate individuals to achieve their accomplishments, whatever they may happen to be. Rumor Mill deliberately chose both a positive and negative virtue to fully cover the domain, demonstrating that virtuous behaviors that encourage and discourage are equally effective negatively by tyranny.
Fear is the foundation and drive spring for manipulating tyranny. There are two types of fear. First, there is the fear that motivates the oppressed. This is not to be confused with the fear that makes a criminal respect the rights of the rest of society and obey the law, because they are afraid of being apprehended and punished. The oppressed person knows that besides the hardships that always confront them, there is no restraint to the arbitrary capricious will of the tyrant. It equates a desire to minimize suffering. The object in the tyrant is perfectly obvious, by excessive fear fueled by constant examples to dissidents it is believed that fear will breed ever increasing extreme circumspection, to the point of blind obedience and base submission to the enslaved and oppressed people.
However, the oppressor knows fear, too. Fear extends from the knowledge of the tyrant’s vulnerability. First, the tyrant knows that numerically they are always weaker, and so they try and distract the population with various scapegoats. This effort is what is behind America’s current populist movements, and their global counterparts, who are more tolerant to the corruption and vice of the tyrants, when they engage in so many immoral criminal acts themselves, and when they are made to believe that they profit and benefit from the vice and corruption, too. Second, the tyrant must fear and suspect those around him who demonstrate any unusual ability; because, the tyrant knows the illegitimate base of their power and has to fear any one else who may suddenly replace it. Therefore, any disloyalty is met with excessive punitive responses. The tyrant is forced to become cruel out of necessity, in a vain attempt to prevent the hatred of the oppressed from becoming an attempt to be free.
The fear of the tyrant prevents progress. The intellectual class is always held suspect. Currently, our own universities are under funded, and professors’ positions are filled based on toeing existing political advantageous positions instead of reflecting the independence inherent in academic excellence. Today, the primary function of universities is to produce technocrats, it no longer serves as the free forum of ideas, which openly competed for ascendancy and promoted progress, an educational model which accelerates progress but is viewed as too dangerous for the arbitrary power of tyranny. What talent exists are carefully directed in ways beneficially to tyranny.
Having proven the existence of fear as the primary motivational factor under tyranny let’s examine how it effects, we the oppressed, more specifically by its effects on one class. In this instance, in an attempt at impartiality, the class of educated and relatively affluent individuals has been chosen; because, they will be better off than any other group experiencing tyranny, they should have the greatest affinity for the tyrant. The first class of victims of tyranny are relatively morally sound, and they have received higher educations, which enables them to have a greater comprehension of the Truth and are correspondingly less dependant on others for their opinions. They have more education, so correspondingly, receive greater annual incomes than members of other soc-eco groups, they are spiritually elevated, and as a class they tend to be less apprehensive. This class of individuals deserve greater opportunities, and see daily the negative consequences of life under tyranny, the harsh life of the lower classes with their poor paying jobs that because of Republican policy which attacks organized labor compete with the third world labor markets, the shrinking middle class and reduced standards of living resulting from the Republican policy which promotes job flight which is designed to lower white color wages and to expand the ruling elite’s sphere of influence and who continue tyranny’s time worn tradition of starting off offering good jobs paid at lower than competitive rates only to end up dictating how the affected regions in question have to live. They see daily how the people and their children become depraved working as prostitutes and perverts for the radical right. They watch while people are dragged into poverty and forced to beg subsistent existences, in efforts designed to extort commuters into behaving who live in the suburbs. They see virtue attacked and despised and evil behaviors are considered clever. Informers are praised and advanced. They see the products of shameless vice rewarded with good jobs. They see the economic well being determined by vice ridden corrupt people who have little ability and less knowledge. Under tyranny speech is a crime and action is met with slander and open assault. The consequence is that under tyranny no one says or does any thing, except exactly what they’re told.
This is what transpires to the richest and best individuals. The lower classes experience even worse conditions. The media functioning as a propaganda machine tries to convince people that the worsening economic circumstances are really their fault, and it is futile to try and do anything about it. The new order is supposed to be better in every way, in spite of the fact that standards of well being like literacy, health care and housing and consumer price index falls in spite of reducing how it is measured. Inversely, the tyrants and their field operatives who are even more base are no longer responsible for any other members of society, except for dictating how everyone should think and compelling how everyone must behave, and they don’t identify with the community. And, as long as we submit to the tyrants’ yolk and suffer in silence things will not improve.
Everyone is victimized by tyranny, the tyrants, their operatives, successful citizens, and the working classes. It and fear are the only things that are held in common. It functions as the primary motivation for the entire society.
Tyranny is aware of the myriad abuses of their system, they know of its vices, the destructive processes, the systemic injustices, the rapes, the murders, the oppressions, in conclusion the tyrants are aware of the serious evils involved in their tyranny. They benefit directly and indirectly from each of them, The tyrant benefits from activities that bankrupt the country economically and morally, the corruption that pays for the spies, prostitutes , perverts, pimps, sexually and physically abused children’s parents, the thugs who beat up youths and form violent gangs. And the tyrant sees the injustice with its built in double standards of what is sin and criminal for society and virtue for their operatives. The tyrants see all these things and never try to correct them, because they help prop up the unstable state of oppression that benefits the power elite. If it were not for iniquity the tyrants power would evaporate like mists at the break of day. The acts of vengeance, falsely described as crimes, would become perceived as the spite driven acts of malice that they are. The overwhelming majority of acts of tyrants are totally divorced from justice. The consequence of Truth being recognized under such circumstances would be disastrous for the tyrants, because their tyranny would be seen for the center of infamous iniquity that it is. And, any residual idea about justice would cause the citizens to look at the tyrants as being the first target of true justice. The power elite are wicked and tremble at the mere thought of justice. The tyrants never feel secure unless all important tasks are entrusted to individuals who are totally loyal that is to say enslaved; they must be corrupt sycophants who are thoughtless echoes, except they must be much more unjust and paranoid than the tyrants, hence more cruel and oppressive than the tyrant, which makes the tyrant feel more secure by appearing more conservative than their even more extreme operatives.
Can there really exist any person who honestly believes that they are good, while financially benefiting from individuals violating every tenant in the covenant with God? Can any one truly say they hope that their children will be nothing and serve a faction whose children are everything? The person who hopes that children will be subject to all punishments and every evil with impunity can not be for children, they merely demonstrate no judgment. How can such people be considered good if everything they do is immoral or criminal, how can wicked people be for children, when the only alternatives that they leave for children is to be ruthlessly subjected to perverse predation and vicious seductions either as the hunted or the hunter? Don’t they realize that both alternatives are equally injurious. People can’t hurt others without making themselves wicked. And, to refuse to participate and sit silently by, while others are destroyed is morally to sin according to the Bible, and it makes a person apathetic and spiritually dead inside. Yet, there is no other path. The person who would be helpful to their neighbors and benefit society not for personal gain can not be an operative for the radical right; for, someone can not think about how to improve society and be blindly obedient, which the radical right strictly insist on, when they say that you are either with them or against them. What that accomplishes is to make the adherents to the radical right the blind followers of arbitrary power, which means they inevitably will become stupid, base, vicious, and little more than brutal beasts. What parent can love that above reason, liberty and equality?
Mankind always uses man for the measure of all things. Because Republicans only know exploitive models of government they think government is bad. The fact is that government is only as good or bad as the people who run it. The Republican Party is committed to tyranny, and it only knows bad models of government that are operated by people who exploit issues for the exclusive benefit of the factional power elite, at the expense of the public: which makes them wrong on any issue that you care to mention. A further difficulty is the fact that the people who surround tyrants have to buy into the blind obedient sycophancy, which makes them sooner or later wicked. The unfortunate consequence is that a bad group of tyrants surrounded by a wicked bunch of advisors will inevitably increase bad policies; and, if a good person should blunder into such an environment the scoundrels will pretend to be good and deceive the good person. And, after being surrounded daily by this environment the good person gradually becomes habituated to iniquitous power and abusive policies that result in their inevitable wickedness.
At first the good person will not notice anything wrong. After all, initially they personally do nothing that hurts anyone. But, by being involved with wielding unlimited power, without checks and balances, the result will be to become tyrannical, as history has repeatedly demonstrated. And, even if the leader is initially good the people who serve under the tyrant and who exercise the power, specially when influenced by each other, inevitably will begin to abuse power in the tyrants name, and then the tyrant will be subject to the same adversive relations as if they had been personally responsible for the wicked acts. Besides, what tyrant ever relinquished power once it was in their grasp. Either they refused it initially, when it was offered like Solon and George Washington; or, they fell down the path of self-righteousness and became corrupt like Cromwell and Napoleon and Caesar. The good person will refuse to serve tyranny and good people who discover that the power that they possess is so vast that it has become vicious, illegitimate and ultimately infinitely harmful, will refrain from its use and reform the system to divide and control it. However, once the critical state has occurred not one tyrant has ever voluntarily released it, which proves how corrupting power is and how great mankind’s ability to deceive one self is.
A good pragmatic check about power is to ask your self a question. If the opportunity presented itself would you place your parents, spouse and children and all of your property under the unsupervised power of another person, to do whatever they pleased for as long as they wished? If you said yes you are a fool. If they were not ripped off today, they would be tomorrow. After all that is why we have laws and a legal system. It is a central reason for the establishment of civilization, to protect oneself and one’s property. The previous questions are nonsense, and they have never occurred to any one, because it flies in the face of the over whelming majority of human experience. The fact is people are human. They make mistakes. They inflict injustices. And, people need the protection of Laws to defend their Civil Rights.
Fear is what may be classified as a negative virtue, because it inhibits human behavior. But, as a motivator it is almost all powerful under the unfortunate yolk of tyranny. And, it is equally powerful to the oppressed and oppressor. The fact that it transforms from virtue to vice under the bitter influence of a tyrant is irrefutable.
Ambition is the second example of virtue transforming into vice under tyranny. If a tyranny either identifies itself as independent of the society it dominates, or erroneously thinks that it is the society that it dominates; then, the tyranny functions in a fashion which subordinates and sacrifices all of societies activities in ways that exploit them to furthering the tyrant’s interests. Society is exploited for the personal gain of the tyrant.
Ambition is the cause by which people attempt to out perform one another or themselves, it is responsible for mankind’s most advantageous accomplishments as well as its most abominable afflictions. In a tyranny ambition is completely transformed into something base and vicious, which a moment’s reflection will reveal. By deflecting society’s business to further a tyrant’s interests altruistic and virtuous objectives are eliminated to ambition; therefore, the furtherance of power and sharing in the benefits obtained from its exercise become the only valid expression left available to ambition.
The form government takes directs the path ambition follows in accomplishing its objective. In Democracies, where government is comprised of all its citizens who try to further the needs and interests of society, ambition is realized by rendering to the people important services that demonstrate a real love of public good. A free people will only recognize and reward services that benefit society, by providing it with actions which increase the utility of all members of society. Under Tyrannies, the interests of society are exploited, which means that actions which promote and benefit the public are different from those of the tyrants. The tyrant’s interests almost always run contrary to those of society. If the tyrant is to survive and prosper it must stop efforts that are useful, like the Republican’s efforts to replace beneficial public health care programs such as Medicare and replace them with inferior private plans that financially benefit the Republicans. Another example is to engage in expensive wars, to further right wing influence abroad and gain control of a foreign country’s resources (Iraq oil) at great cost to our country, which has now become saddled with the largest debt in the history of the World, not to mention the lost lives in soldier fatalities the US experiences daily. And, if by some quirk of circumstance the interest of the tyrant coincides with the public, then the tyrant will claim that their conduct was done for the good of the public, when the truth is that they were merely following their own private interests. The individual, who would have served society, and accomplished the service will tell a different tale, they will state that they were blindly serving the tyrant. The tyrant’s claim that they were following the public good is fundamentally false. How can you benefit a people whose interests are subordinate (enslaved) without first freeing them from all vestiges of servitude? The tyrant in following their interests will discretely neglect to mention the fact that the policies that are followed primarily benefit themselves. The tax cuts of the Republicans are a perfect example. The public was told that they were to improve the economy, but in fact only helped the very wealthy class of which they were members, while impairing the effectiveness of our government. While being burdened with the World’s largest debt we didn’t have enough money to educate all of the deserving children, provide prescription relief for Senior Citizens (which wasn’t a trap to further bankrupt Medicare), to fully fund Social Security, protect the environment, fully fund the FDA, develop infra structure, and effectively employ monetary and fiscal policy tools to name only a few of the vast negative consequences of Republican tyranny here in America.
It follows that those technocrats who served the Republican factional interests, while not being deliberately bad had accomplished more that has to be defined as corrupt and vice ridden than virtuous. The façade presented to the public is a duplicitous virtuous one in order to dissimulate the Republican’s real intentions, and fool the majority of the American public, with their $500 million worth of lies in the Fall elections. The sad fact remains to serve such tyranny requires a base heart and a blind intellect. And ambition has to be tainted with base means, a petty mind, and a great deal of intrigue, deceit and wickedness, in order to out perform other corrupt competitors.
In a Democracy ambition is accomplished by other means. Public recognition can be accomplished by serving the government in traditionally recognized legitimate activities; defending the existing boundaries of the country; by developing sound economic policies which benefits all classes of citizens; by protecting the liberties of the people; by ameliorating abuses to our Civil Rights; and, if the country is corrupt attempting to point out the Truth, no matter how personally injurious it may be.
In a tyranny the ways of procuring favor are essentially the same today as they have been since the rise of the nation-state. The tyrants need protection from the citizens, who are their enemies because of the exploitive policies which injure the public interests; by devising ways which expand power, which means to oppress the public, like secretly developing a terrorist threat and then using it coercively to undermine rights; by spending money in ways which only benefit Republican factional interests, like private health care which provides the worst health care to children in the industrial world instead of Medicare; by strengthening their grasp for power behind false claims of public safety; by presenting to the public the appearance of confusion and unfathomable complexity; by creating, for purposes of manipulating public opinion, adversaries of unspeakable wickedness, who must be stopped and our safety depends on it. If anyone wants to maintain favor with tyrants they must never publicly and only rarely privately speak the Truth. Obviously, to discern the best possible policy and be genuinely for the public good one must speak the Truth. And, it is impossible for any tyranny to allow that to occur and retain power. Tyranny can not tolerate open and effective dissent, because its interests are opposite to the public’s.
The biggest objective of all tyranny is to control the courts. The Republican Party realizes this and is attempting to pack the Supreme Court. Any attempt to control the judiciary of a country is an attempt to establish a tyranny. The Democrats must act effectively to circumvent this from happening, and expose to the public the real threat they confront from this direction, a direction we as a nation are blind to, because it it’s an internal threat to our Democracy and our citizen’s precious freedoms. If we do not wish to be ruled through the courts then we must elect a Democratic President in the Fall election. The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has publicly stated that anyone who sits on the Supreme Court and as a judge in any Federal Court has to be ideologically acceptable to right wing dominated Republican Party.
In public office in the USA the Republican Party has PACs in every state in the union whose function is to see to it that every Republican running for office reflects the right wing Republican’s beliefs. In Oregon they ousted former Sen. Packwood even though he headed the Sen. Finance Committee, arguably the second strongest man in Washington DC; and, they attempted to oust, before he finally retired, Sen. Mark Hatfield, who was head of the Sen. Commerce Committee, which meant the two biggest plums out side of the White House in Washington DC were held by Oregonians. Yet, the Republican right wing tried to purge them from office. Those two men were political moderates who didn’t believe in tyranny. Further, they staid in office in Washington DC as Republican Senators, and they tried to perform good works representing all the citizens of the state of Oregon and the country. However, one axiom of tyranny is that anyone who stays in government must sooner or later fall victim to the many evil people who intrigue against them, fear them and detest them, because they are deeply offended by their intolerable virtue functioning as honest individuals. Sen. Packwood was set up with sexual improprieties, like Republican governor Schwartnegger. And, Sen. Hatfield was accused among other things of being a homosexual, and he was accused of unfairly influencing decisions on government grants to medical school, when his daughter legitimately qualified for financial aid. Thus it is where tyranny rules as master over everything, people cannot succeed unless they are corrupt in service of the tyrant. There has not been one century in the history of the World that has not conclusively proven the Truth of this axiom. And, in spite of this the majority of Americans will not believe that they are being subject to individuals who unwittingly are acting to make the US a slave state under the mastery of a tyrant.
The tyrants in the United States may be well intended with what they feel are sound reasons, tyranny has never been unleashed on any society for bad reasons. The sad Truth is that tyranny immediately corrupts all those who become involved with it; because, even though they say they will not abuse power it is inherent in excessive power; and, power always corrodes the morals in close proximity to it for the best pretences of course, like doing greater good, or obtaining a desired end, or it will only be temporary. The fact is great power excites apprehension, which turns to fear and in turn catalyzes silence; once silence sets in free speech departs, and this creates a vacuum filled by evil such as camouflaged opportunistic corruption and cowardice that becomes habitual.
Ambition on the part of tyrants, often degenerate into a blind desire for Power. The unintentional consequence is that a state of infinite power is attained. There is not a nation on the face of the Earth that would voluntarily grant infinite power to anyone and/or group. Consequently, can an unlimited, unjust, deceitfully usurped power, precariously exercised under false pretenses ever be obtained honestly? Can infinite power ever be exercised without tyranny being simultaneously established? Can tyranny ever be established without injury to the majority of citizens, if only by reducing their freedoms hence prosperity and happiness? Finally, can infinite power and its accompanying tyranny ever be maintained without fraud, cruelty, corruption, vice and abuse of power?
In a Democracy the authority that public office represents is coveted, because it represents proof that the person who holds authority has many skills and at least some virtues. Further, it provides opportunity for the individual to acquire positive recognition. Finally, it provides an ambitious individual with the opportunity to promote public welfare.
In a tyranny authority is coveted because it provides an individual with the means of realizing private objectives; to realize private passions; to force others to submit to another’s will, which is an exercise in vanity; to accumulate excessive wealth; to realize a personal vendetta; to hurt a person or persons with impunity; to reward infamous acts; and, to make people fear who were formerly equal or superior to the tyrant. Obviously, the objectives for realizing ambition vary greatly in a Democracy than from a tyranny. The citizen knows that in a Democracy power is only a temporary attribute. It is equally clear that temporarily held power is a temporary advantage which a person will be held accountable for by people who are the individual’s equal. And, any retention of power merely means that they were better than their competition. In a tyranny inversely the power a slave covets is absolute, and the power is detested by all. The only way such a concentration of power can be retained is to abuse it. And any one who seeks absolute power is either wicked, or has no judgment. The person who wins infinite power, proves only one thing, that they were more ruthless than the other competitors. If a person retains absolute power it is a clear indication that even if they were not initially wicked, they certainly are wicked now. How can any one reasonably contend that Ambition does not transform under tyranny? And, how can anyone believe that those who wield absolute power are not vice ridden and corrupt individuals, whose personal goals aren’t anything other than power, wealth and infamy.
Today, with the exception of tyranny, ambition is realized not for infinite power. The primary motivation for most people is wealth, and the majority of ambitious people who serve infinite power are ignominiously merely after money. The former employees of government become employed by the private sector, and so an endless dance continues between regulators and industry. Kept within bounds exceptional corruption usually doesn’t enter into play. And, so even though gain may be rather base it does serve as a means for ambition to be constructively channeled to serve both power and the public good, which makes for a nice functional compromise. It is interesting to note that tyranny also utilizes wealth as its primary motivator. The vast difference is that in a tyranny corruption is usually much more systemic and it occurs at the upper levels government and for far greater amounts of money. Additional corruption enters into play, but they tend to reflect the vices of the tyrants which increase with time. In Democracy wealth is utilized to corrupt and erode the concept of equality, where wealth and worth are generally confused.
In conclusion there are behavioral characteristics which are inherent in man and always with us. The line between vice and virtue is quite thin and generally established by degree. Behaviors which are virtuous when pushed to extremes become vice. The healthy caution generated by a moderate amount of fear becomes cowardice when pushed to excess, or it becomes fool hardy when not present to discernable degree; and, wealth demonstrates another example were extremes result in spendthrift and miserly states separated by a moderate prosperous mean. However, virtues become vices in another way, too, tyranny transforms even necessary virtues into pestilential vices as the two extensively developed examples clearly demonstrate.