Painting a picture of evil

November 4^th is election day.  For many people in the USA this day can’t come soon enough.  Our current ruler is more unpopular than Nixon after Watergate broke.  To many he is a war criminal and a liar… Hold the phone, this guy is the president of the United States of America, what’s he supposed to be?

The bumbling Democrats and the evil Republicans have chosen there champions and are set to battle it out to the bitter end.  This nation was born of fire after all.

This time there is a different smell in the air.  Values across the nation are shifting.  People are getting fed up with all the bad news, the endless wars and the stink of lies berried under the convenient blanket of a blind eye.

Information is power but information without understanding is a dangerous thing.  We’ve hit an explosion of easy to gather information at our finger tips, and many are just kind of on over load.  But in that blinding furry of both facts and fiction, through a kind of osmosis we’re starting to understand.  we’re powerless because we’re stupid.  Sometimes stupid is a choice.

From time to time people who know the score step up and say something we should take note of.  Maybe the latest was Hillary Clinton when in the death throws of her campaign let slip a truth we are all starting to think about.  The reality that evil usually wins.

Cutting right to the chase Barrack Obama is going to be the person running for the President of the United States under the Democratic ticket.  He is a man who has pointed fingers and called out the power elite, though not really directly, you don’t want to piss off your rich friends.  He is a man who has spoken to our societies need for change.  He’s the one candidate who has really made a stand on his own two feet, in a long time.  And he’s black.

We’ve seen the gray hairs creep along the sides of his head as the campaign has worn on, it’s a tough road sure, but is some of this aging because deep down he knows there is a pretty good chance someone’s already painted a bullseye on his forehead?

A long time ago in our nation a great man had a dream, and he got shot for it.  Now Barack Obama stands on the brink of making that dream come true.  It’s not just a black mans dream.

History is littered with the corpses of people who tried to make a difference, of those who stood up to the power players, and sometimes of people who just pissed them off to much.  Sometimes to make a change happen you have to take a bullet.

It’s an unfortunate truth that we usually don’t put a traffic light in a dangerous intersection until someone is killed there, in fact usually a couple have died.  Sometimes we need a real tragedy like a school bus full of children.  Many people are waiting to find out how the elections will go around the world.  For more than a few things are on hold until then.

What’s at stake is big on so many levels.  Or is it.  Is Barack a good man?  Can he remain good if he becomes president?  How much power will he really have?  Some might argue that Martin Luther King’s life had a greater impact on the world because he was assassinated.  Would the same be true of Barack.

With that in mind isn’t the most important choice Barack Obama makes going into the election choosing his running mate?  Clearly there are people who think his assassination is a real possibility, maybe a historical inevitability.

A friend sent me an email with a link to a CNN Video panel discussion of reporters.  Basically she was kind of spooked out by the panels focus on a running mate who could become president.  We’d had a discussion on the possibility Obama wouldn’t make it to office a few nights before.

The Circle of Completion

It’s a difficult time.  In truth it always has been.  Today for some it’s really amazingly good, for most it’s just as bad as it’s always been.  The bulk of humanity lives now and has always lived in abject poverty and misery.  It’s estimated that in 2001 almost 500,000 people thought it sucked so much they took there own lives.  In reality the number is probably much higher.

Power lies in the hands of very few.  No one would argue this yet the subject remains fairly taboo.  Never before in the history of mankind have so many people been so close to the language of power, yet most of us remain oblivious to what it’s saying.

In 1887 John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), commonly known as simply Lord Acton, was an English historian, the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and grandson of the Neapolitan admiral, wrote in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton the infamous, if not misquoted words:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

If power does lay in the hands of very few and great men are almost always bad men, things are pretty hopeless and we’re probably in for a rough ride.  At a certain point any thinking human being has to come to terms with this or at very least gloss over it once or twice in there mind.

The picture can be very bleak and more than a few people have probably gone insane thinking about how futile a life of lies is.  If we look back at moments in history of inspiration and hope it can get even uglier.  Just when you think a leader somewhere in the world with a chance to make a change rises up they get shot in the throat just above their kevlar vest.  Not to many people can place a bullet on a moving target with that kind of accuracy.

The burden is enormous and people turn to things like crack and booze and religion and TV.  Most people are stupid either by design or intent.  If you think about stuff like this to much without a way to focus intent through action you eventually go mad or give up.  So people give up control as a safety release valve might open on your hot water heater, to avoid exploding.

If you’re born in the dirt you’re going to have to scrape and claw to survive.  For most of the people in the world life means work, free time is the luxury of the rich.  Most of what we know came to us by-way of the people in power.  There is no end of evidence to back up the assertion that much of religious doctrine was dictated by those in power, and by those who financed the various emerging religions.  When the leader of your church gets on his pulpit and denounces gay marriage, then goes to hotel room and snorts blow off a male hookers ass… you get the picture, if you want to.

Edmund Burke wrote in his wrote in an essay entitled Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents the bold assertion “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Today more people are educated and connected to other people across the world than ever before.  The exchange of global ideas is no longer the domain of the rich.  People begin to realize that beyond the obvious “at a glance differences” we are all very much the same.  The number of people who really want to die just to kill you is pretty small.  Most people want to long happy life.

It’s a shame that peace is bad for business.  But now with so much information at our finger tips the game has gotten a lot more complex, and the cracks are starting to show.  Those with the power are getting scared because  you and I are starting to wake up to the reality of the truth.  We are starting to push back.  Blind faith is starting to look like a pretty stupid option.

nam et ipsa potestas est – for knowledge itself is power.  Take a look at the wealth of information, take off the rose colored glasses and look around you.  Once you know where you stand, you can push back.