There are many treaties written about how individuals like G. Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte, that though sheer force of will, remake the world around them. They are the stuff of legends, truly. However, could there have been a Caesar without first the Gracchi brothers and Sulla before him? Could Napoleon come to power if the Bourbons had been able to maintain the strict class divisions that defined high military service? Without the Revolution would Napoleon have simply gone un-noticed and un-noted by history? This stuff keeps me up at night, sometimes. The could-have-beens and the should-not-have-beens.
Colonel Eisenhower stuck behind a desk instead of a 5-star general and eventual President if not for any number of factors. No Hitler if a different person had evaluated his water color paintings in Vienna? No Castro if he could hit a curve ball better? No Bolshevik party if Trotsky had been even a little more suspicious with Lenin or better at dealing with the thug from Georgia? Would it all have happened anyhow, just with the names changed? Would others of equal drive, ambition, intelligence and luck grasp at history when the opportunity presents?
I like the quote attributed to Frank Herbert of Dune Fame, "Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible." I mix this into the thought recipe and see how it changes the flavor...
Lets use modern personalities, that most everyone should be familiar with. How about I start with some public figures, perhaps a married couple who each had their law licences revoked by the Bar for corruption. William Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. They came to "power", or perhaps prominence when I started my career in the medical field. It seems so long ago for me, but in reality it was only 1993. A governor from the State of Arkansas that carried a noticeable baggage train of scandal and rumor, he came to the Presidency unexpectedly. At the time, I did not think that this man would be President. By the time he ran, our culture and society had been under assault for 30 years. Was this man of the same caliber of the other men who had held that office? Was he the equal of FDR or Eisenhower? Did he take responsibly for those who worked for him like Harry Truman? Did he have the steel and determination of Abraham Lincoln? Did he have a reputation for integrity and honesty like George Washington?
I think the answer to all those is, "No". Society and culture had been weakened. Coarsened by assaults on virtue and personal responsibility. Want to have as much sex as you like without consequences? We invent the birth control pill. Got pregnant anyhow, hey, Roe v Wade now allows unlimited abortion. Perhaps Jefferson slipped that one in when no one was looking. When the bar is lowered to allow behavior into common society that was not permitted before lessens us as a people.
The Clintons came to power in a final refutation of the "Greatest Generation". GHW Bush was the last of that generation to hold the Presidency. Since then, they have all been Boomers. The X-ers may come to power in the 2020 election; who knows. Bill Clinton in the 90's is on the official record as NOT supporting same sex marriage. He is on the record as being against unlimited immigration. He also had to watch while the electorate rejected his grab at power by nationalizing the healthcare system via his wife, the "co-President", Hillary Rodham. His crushing defeat in the mid-term elections of 1994 forced him to the center. His second term was far less ambitious than his first term. One think I liked about Bill Clinton is that he was not soaked in any particular dogma. He liked money, power, and women; and not necessarily in that order.
Obama came to power after eight years of intense cultural demolition. Now we had abortions in the last moments before a baby could cry. Wars that were blamed on us, despite being the victims of a Pearl Harbor-style attack. A recession drummed up by the media that intentionally scared the cattle in the futures market (an overt example of media manipulation of the masses...wait, isn't that called Agi-prop?).
Today, the Democrats fall all over themselves trying to erase the southern border, empty the pockets of the unborn (those they don't kill), and promise anything and everything to the mobs of Rome, er, low information voters. They say things today that Bill Clinton could NEVER have gotten away with. Hell, there are things Obama still seems afraid to say or admit to. I know there is a reason for him to buy the mansion/compound that sits within strolling distance of the White House...why you still hanging around there? I wonder...
Obama took advantage of a willing bureaucracy, grown fat and powerful at the expense of the taxpayer. Entrenched and no longer thinking of themselves as Civil Servants. Instead, there are now princelings who lord over their piece of the sprawling federal machine. Presidents and cabinet members come and go, but the cogs remain...and have become powerful individuals in their own right. Perhaps the best, first, example of this would be J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was created as an inter-state investigative body to deal with mob crime, violence, and intra-state legalities. He remained in his position, President after President. Rumor was thick about the dirt he had on everyone in Washington. His longevity in the office likely did have something to do with knowing dirt on everyone. How many Hoovers were in the gears of government then? How many now?
What do you call it when the gears of government no longer respond to the will of the elected officials placed in power over them? Today the term "Deep State" is tossed about, and I guess that is a decent enough description, though I think that it still lacks something. President Trump has pulled a part of the paneling away and we can see the termites and cockroaches teeming thick and foul in the political machinery of our country. It absolutely frightens me. I am afraid that even Donald Trump will be unable to sufficiently fumigate the entire, sprawling complex corruption in our country.
Some examples? When the law no longer matters certain groups of people, but remains in full effect on the masses. Such as? Ok, a man takes a photo of an obsolete nuclear reactor on an old submarine and is tossed in jail, yet the former Secretary of State can, cough, mis-handle sensitive classified information and simply laugh it off. The former Directors of the FBI, CIA and NSA lie repeatedly to Congress and directly to the face of the President and then go on book tour to promote a book about their patriotism...am I the only one bothered by this? How are they not in jail? How are they not even "in trouble". It is loud, bright, and unashamed.
Is my country still a Republic? Was Clinton the Gracchi and Obama a Sulla? Who will become Caesar? Unfortunately, I fear Trump will share the same fate as Cato and some powerful demagogue will flourish in the foul soil of our spoiled Republic and put an end to the mockery of justice as it exists today and rule in the open, with the organs of power firmly grasped in their tentacles. The power brokers in Washington, like the Praetorian before them, will only allow those to serve as President that will not disturb their fiefs, continue to shower wealth and power upon their stations, and always look the other way when the public catches a glimpse of the hand on the levers of power.
What is this called? Do we share the fate of the Greek states of antiquity or that of the Roman Republic? Will our next overlord be a Caesar Augustus, ruling with a light hand from behind Republican organs of government or will they rule nakedly like a Caligula or Nero?
Congress is already largely irrelevant. Budgets are voted into existence and then placed on auto-pilot. The grain dole, er Welfare State, is already firmly entrenched and a 3rd rail of politics. The Supreme Court has already been simply rubber stamping painfully obvious violations of the Constitution (I am looking at you Mr. Chief Justice). The President, as we have seen, can be wounded and weakened by the media complex and their political allies in the Progressive movement.
It seems as if the stage is set. Actors have been seen moving about in the wings and in the shadows for some time now. President Trump may be an aberration, a Black Swan event in the machinations of the Progressives, but he can't last forever. His impact will be immediately undone, invalidated, and crammed down the memory hole.
Was he a Black Swan event? Someone to temporarily halt our slide into authoritarianism? I don't know. I do hope that the 100+ years of Progressive ROT can be halted and we can heal our republican organs of government. Demote the Princelings back into Civil Servants and award merit instead of cronyism and nepotism.
Do we allow the obviously corruptible near the levers of power? How to we guard against a future Deep State take over of government, or has it already happened?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment