Feet of Clay

Our ancestors brought their children to picnics at guiotinings. They threw stones at people in the pillory and watched witch burnings during the age of 'Enlightenment' in the 17'th century. Trafficking in humans for various practical and prurient purposes of muscle and flesh was a booming business, traded as robustly on the stock exchanges of major cities as were its products gleaned from the outcasts of society by professionals and legal courts and sold for cash in the slave markets of the filthy stalls. Food riots routinely turned into lynching and looting and an accusation was, and is, enough to condemn one to torture and death. Murderous gladiators were once rock stars and temples were erected to torture vastly exceeding those dedicated to Demeter. One of Janus’ faces is a demon. The other celebrates our enlightenment at the opera.

In the name of peace and prosperity wars are fought. In the name of freedom and self-determination nations are enslaved. In the name of culture and refinement lands are decimated. Warlords rule and poets herald their heroism.

How many stock portfolios and retirement plans are indexed by blood diamonds and apartheid regimes? There is a cruel streak just south of everyone's moral compass, cleverly occulted by our self-righteousness. What cost empire?

Nice race you’ve got there, human.

The Apostate Election

I had a difficult time deciding who to vote for in the 2016 presidential election. Do I vote for the war criminal, who I considered actually given over to evil, or the mafia businessman from New York who kept his ego afloat with Daddy’s money, pomposity, and hubris?

Tough choice, but I finally opted for the war criminal, mainly because she at least understood international politics and would understand the rules of the game in dealing with domestic and international players. I’m not a moralizer. I’m a pragmatist who understands that even the most evil player can we swayed by necessity. Look at Stalin. He was one of the most domestically evil men in the Twentieth Century and he won the war against the fascists in WWII. General Zhukov drove the fascists from the borders of Siberia in Stalingrad, formerly and presently Volgograd, away from the Urals, to Moscow, the liberation of St. Petersburg from a 900 day siege, across Poland, the liberation of Auschwitz, to Germany and finally Berlin where he accepted the German surrender and placed the Soviet flag on the Reichstag. Eisenhower was not trying to win the war by the D-day invasion. He was trying to stop the Red Army from occupying Paris and forever cementing Communism as the liberator of Europe. The memory hole is veracious.

The rest of the world is rising against us. I have been watching this kettle simmer and steam for thirty years. I’ve followed alliances; economic, political, and military; form between countries in the Second World and the Global South; BRICS, SCO, BRI, ASEAN, the MIR and CIPS monetary clearinghouse systems; declining US influence across the world, vacillating allies playing both sides against the middle, outright desertions of western authority. The kettle is boiling, western hegemony threatening to boil over and burn upon the stove.

The president is not a Caesar. She must deal with other players and states and bow to conflicting palace power brokers. She can be deflected by reality. The presidency of the United States may be a game between internecine global psychopaths, but it’s not gratuitous masturbatory solitaire. Thus it has been since time immemorial. As with the Soviet victory in Europe, history will clean it up.

As they say, Hold your nose and pull a lever.

This time our choices are the failing intellect and the buffoon, each the figurehead of some unelected powerhouse finally driven into the open. Why not just admit that the elected government of this country is not the actual government of this country and get it over with? Our country has reached the logical conclusion of every empire since Harappa in the third millennia BC whose corruption, rot, and filth finally poured from the fetid guts of rulers with feet of clay for all to see? We are run by morally bankrupt war criminals, sadists, and merchants who use our differences, perceived and exaggerated, against us to keep us from seeing how we are being manipulated, a process we enthusiastically embrace.

Bread and Circus?  I’ll add one: Bread, Circus, and Perceived enemies; Domestic, International, and Microbial. Anything to keep us at each other's throats.

Vote for me! I’ve got you.