The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.
- Abraham Lincoln
Damn the professional left!
The seeds were sown in the 20th century as we butchered every truth-teller we could find. Since "morning in America" there has been none and there will be none until the time of revelation and the world reverts to its original state (and many who are first will be last). What we have seen is the rise of the cult of personality and a disconnecting to reality. One need only study the decline of the Roman empire for a blueprint of the road we currently travel.
As each emperor became more crazed, debased, and wretched than the one before, so do we see the same regression in our leadership. But of course, any decline in leadership reflects the same decline in the people who raise them up. Our 43rd and 44th Presidents were tragedies and the 45th will be the same but without the mask of the previous two. No constitution can protect us from the self-loathing of the masses. Our search to restore former glory will prove fruitless and wasteful and delusional. We had our chances to do the right thing in the previous century but threw them away. Those bills are coming due.
History will speak ill of us and our continual sinking into conservatism (both right-wing and left-wing) and its erosion of human rights in all forms (social, political, and economic). It would be far easier and more accurate to refer to this century's leaders as President Judas. We barely even bother to hide the daylight treachery both planned and carried out. And why not? What did we do but give a collective shrug when we invaded a country unprovoked to plunder its resources? When our banking system betrayed us we instituted no meaningful reform, setting us up for a final fatal blow. There's seems to be no crime too large to ignore (except showing a breast at the Super Bowl! Then we get on our hind legs protesting our phony outrage with relentless conviction.)
Those who don't read the newspaper are uninformed.
Those who do read the newspaper are misinformed.
Those who read the human heart divine the truth.
With the rise of the cult of personality, as long as "our guy" is doing the dirty deed we turn a blind eye. We shut down our conscience and "trust" the hero in charge who executes "classy and elegant" drone strikes and "inspires" us by repealing civil rights. As we descend, we hear more about the person than policies. We argue vociferously on whom we should give our allegiance, presumably because the arguers have no allegiance to themselves. At what point do we stop and ask what's the endgame to this perpetual power-grabbing?
All the world is a conspiracy. You know the truth and I know the truth. Yet we pretend not to know when we meet. It's understood we must keep the lie alive so as to not disturb the unnatural order of things on which our lives (and lies) are based. But living a lie causes anger and frustration - and bad choices. It's not that there's no solutions out there. It's just that our guilt prevents us from choosing them lest we admit our wrongdoings. All pollution is unnecessary. In the future it will not be understood why we failed to choose that.
With the current elections, our mask has been ripped further away. We are not the just people we say we are. The longer we fail to come clean, the more ludicrous we become. In this state we will continue to see the rise in phony morality ("I need to be nicer to evil!"), the rise of phony populism ("Those other people are fucking you!"), and the decline of the human condition. It's happening right before our very eyes. In our vain search for a savior, we eschew principle for personality (thus making arguments of principle moot). Make all the clever arguments you want on "how things must be" but by our fruits we will be judged.
No comments:
Post a Comment