Of course I am not talking about Nazis, nor Paris, but we may be entering a time (hopefully brief) when we must talk in a sort of code, or face censorship.
I will confess that I awoke in the dead of a night, a few days ago, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and thought to myself, “This is how the French must have felt in June, 1940.”
To think of an alien leadership marching in and overriding the will of the French people, taking control of every newspaper and every radio station and demanding absurd opinions be preached as if they were Truth! How repugnant it must have been to all French people, but especially the freedom-loving Parisians! All that was light and poetic was cancelled by harshness and hate and an overbearing demand for so-called “discipline”. For four long years they had to bear the burden, before liberation arrived from the west. Hitler wanted Paris reduced to ashes, as his troops retreated, and his constant questioning, “Is Paris burning? Is Paris burning yet?” shows his singular lack of love for Parisians.
But that is long ago and far away. Nothing so ugly could happen here. The American people would never allow outsiders to negate the results of their votes with computer-algorithm-chicanery, replacing those duly elected by freedom-loving citizens with the monsters of minority-rule. Right? The American people would never put up with the replacement of honest reporters with a media of pure propaganda. Right?
Not for long, and especially not for four long years.
It seems that such invasive nastiness destroys itself, in one way or another, because all their creativity, all their ingenious plotting, all their clever lies and calculating distortions, is creativity which attacks its own foundation, for what is the foundation of creativity? The foundation is the Creator Himself. And he does not take kindly to being mocked.
The pity is that a lot of needless hurt occurs, between the time a Hitler invades Paris and the time he retreats defeated (for God defeats all such fools.) It is far better if the retreat is far faster, more prompt, and does not require four long years of foolishness.
The Nasty love money, but on every American coin it states “In God We Trust.” The Nasty are walking out on thin ice when they mess with American money. Also the Nasty, thinking they can fool people into thinking they are not nasty, will place their hands on the Bible and pledge to uphold the American constitution, secretly thinking the constitution is stupid. They will place their hands on their hearts to look good, pledging allegiance to “one nation, under God, indivisible”, all the while planning to exploit division and thinking there is no such thing as God. But God sees.
God not only sees the Nasty, and all their shenanigan’s, but He created them, for reasons all his own. They are like an ax he created to chop down a certain tree. Once the tree is down, the importance of the ax is finished, and God may melt the ax down and turn it into a great many sewing needles. But the Nasty have no idea such a melt down awaits them. Instead they believe they themselves are gods.
I find it depressing to think too hard and too long about the mentality of the Nasty. It is darkness that can infect the thinker’s brain, especially late at night when the dawn seems forever away.
Therefore I defy the Nasty, who clamor they alone deserve attention, and wrench my thought away from their clutches to contemplations of the Almighty, who is Truth, and also Love personified. This is far more pleasant to contemplate, and can brighten midnights like Aurora Borealis shimmering heavenly curtains through the night skies.
Next thing I know I am awaking after the drenching of deep, rich and restorative slumber, and all the east is brightened by dawn’s rosy light. And I go out to face that beautiful day.
It is not for me to lead vast masses, command huge armies, or sing before thousands. All I do is my job, given to me by the Creator. In God I trust, as do most Americans. He will not fail us. So I go to my small business of running a Childcare, and attend to small children who may be presidents in the future, and even in a time of great doubt, I feel great certainty.
This winter’s fairly open: The snow pack’s Down to a hard inch, a vast white eggshell Over blue-shadowed grounds, with patches of blacks And browns on south slopes, where my goats know well Weak sun hits hardest. All else stays freezing All the short day, for the shadows stay long At noon, and the sun is only teasing When it peeks over pines. The ice is grown strong On the pond; there skaters scrape as they play Madcap hockey, voices clear in the chill And close despite distance. This tranquil day Seems a gift. Foolish politicians thrill Over uproar, but such fuss is a fetter. God creates peace, and peace is far better.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
FULL DISCLOSURE ABOUT BEN FRANKLIN:
Yes, Franklin did own slaves. Up to seven, in fact. They were initially uneducated, which enabled Franklin to initially believe darker skinned people were more stupid than lighter skinned people, by nature, genetically.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Six of Franklin’s slaves consisted of a father, Peter, his wife, Jemima, and their four sons Othello, George, John and King. Franklin had custody of this family between 1732 and 1781. I can find no records of him breaking up the family by selling any member for profit. As a slave-owner he assumed the responsibility for the well-being of his so-called “property”. He had to “care”.
Perhaps it was due to this caring for Peter, Jemima, Othello, George, John and King that Franklin did something some find hard to do. He changed his mind. In 1758 his friend Samuel Johnson brought him to a school for black children, run by an enlightened soul named Dr. Bray. By the following year Franklin was donating money to the school, and became active in the founding of America’s movement to abolish slavery. In the final year of his life, 1790, he petitioned congress to make plans to abolish slavery.
Think of the changes the man saw and physically experienced! Franklin was living proof you can teach an old dog new tricks, and had great faith that people besides himself could change, and change for the better, while being pragmatic enough to recognize some hate the idea of others having liberty, and will repress others to enjoy a sort of liberty in their own lives (which is not true liberty).
Franklin is so crucial to the establishment of the United States it makes me wonder who his teachers were. Those teachers deserve honor and praise, and I think six of them were Peter, Jemima, Othello, George, John and King.
I’m nervous I’m going to have to deal With that Big Apple. I prefer to avoid The fruit that felled Adam. I want to heal, And for me that involves forests destroyed By expanding cities: The rural green Where a bumpkin like me can just be a bump. You see, I don’t want what I’ve seen Is a deserter: Fame and Wealth are a dump Where rats scuttle. I far prefer what lasts And that is Love…I know many will scorn That statement, for they wear concrete casts. Love broke them so bad…But pain’s just the thorn Of a rose, and the rose tells us this: “Thorns never stopped heroes from seeking sweet bliss.”
Arrived in NYC for my youngest son’s birthday and we strolled around town (9.1 miles, 31 staircases) talking about (among other things) the impossible job “city planners” face. It’s unlikely anyone can herd 8.5 million cats.
I don’t think the Founding Fathers really wanted to herd the cats. They were more concerned with herding the cat-herders. When Washington was inaugurated as the first president of a new experiment in government in 1789, New York’s population was only around 33,000.
At that point the concept of laying out the streets of New York in an orderly manner was a quarter century away, (The “gridiron” Commissioners’ Plan was not published until 1811.) There was no socialist zeal to force order upon people, but this did not mean people disliked the idea of order. New York was only the national capital until 1795, as people dreamed of laying out a new capital to the south. But who was the dictator? How could order be, without a despot? Who would rule? Who could trust a dim silhouette in the distance?
Some distrust the idea of allowing people to be free. They cannot believe anything but chaos will result without a committee. Yet individuals with liberty, seeking to improve upon a set design, created beauty, whether building boats or bridges.
Which is not to say things don’t become chaotic, and confused,
However humanity’s hubbub is the true builder of cities, while those who think they control are just a facade.
One generation’s power struts and builds skyscrapers, but the glut is fleeting, and a generation later is faded, leaving a building as a historical site as final issues are printed from a warehouse.
As we headed home at midnight the subway shuddered to a halt on the bridge over to Brooklyn, and we saw how the best system cannot plan for all screw ups. Somehow a metal trashcan wound up on the rails, and then crunched under the train. Midnight on a Saturday night, and tired people just want to get home, some after work and some after drinking, but the trolley is stuck and blocking a major bridge. How’d you like to be the bureaucrat in charge? (You can bet the boss was home in bed.) Some of the herded cats squeezed out between cars and vanished into the dark walking, with the officials wailing it was illegal, as the rest more obediently trooped car to car to the rear of the train, and then into a “rescue train”, which then slowly backed over the bridge to a station some had left an hour before. At which point we turned to transportation none saw coming even a decade ago: Uber.
Liberty is a cracked concept, and I think we Americans have been taken to school in many respects for the past fifty years, learning Freedom isn’t free, and liberty is no simple undertaking.
Not that I still don’t believe our Maker wants us free. It is just that we, in our ignorance, seem to make the most incredible mistakes, when it comes to mistaking chains as being freedom.
As a former smoker, I am well aware I was free to start smoking, but not so free when it came to quitting. When I tried to quit, I felt so awful that the only escape seemed to be to buy another pack, to be “free” of withdrawal symptoms. I chose my chains. And for years I was so blasted healthy that I got away with abusing my body, but the final ten years I smoked were more and more miserable, with a horrible cough and increasing weakness. Only when emphysema had me practically crawling, and cancer cost me a kidney, did I finally quit.
The experience was humbling, and allowed me to be less sneering towards my fellow mortals who demonstrate their addictions. Pity and mercy are good qualities, especially when dealing with arrogant fools (like I once was) who insist upon destructive behavior.
One particularly destructive behavior involves people’s desire for security. People all but sell their souls for the “benefits” of a job. Even though they are never sick, they are so afraid of medical expenses that they cling to some job that stunts their spiritual growth and eventually makes them sick. They are so afraid of being poor when they get old that they cling to a job that kills them before they get old, for a promised “pension.” They think they have a “good” job, but live a shrunken life in a booth like a poor toll-taker on a turnpike.
I am quite serious about this. I have seen an amazing number of men endure decades of degradation in factories and government jobs for the “benefits”, and then drop dead surprisingly soon after they retire. It is as if, when they finally arrive at the day they “have it made”, it hits them that what they have made amounts to a big zero, and the revelation kills them.
I tend to be more forgiving of the need for security in the case of a woman with a babe in her arms. Her chest was made for feeding, not thumping with fists like a manly gorilla. She is more vulnerable, and has a greater need for security, and men are suppose to display guts and gain that security, by going without that security.
I know that some will call me a sexist for saying what I just said, but even the old Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom From Fear” shows the woman tucking the children in bed, as the man deals with the newspaper.
I know that critics of the above picture will point out the man isn’t fighting. They will assume he is some fat-cat capitalist, and sending sons off to die so he can sit smugly at home. What they fail to see is that he has done something right, to create Freedom From Fear for the women and children. What he has done-right is out of the picture, behind the scenes, and only suggested by the fact he is holding a newspaper. Also critics fail to see the alternative is ridiculous. I know it, for I lived it, back when I believed women were liberated by being promiscuous without having babies. This new “freedom from fear” was perhaps accidentally portrayed by Mad Magazine:
Even if Mad Magazine had some utterly different aim, they used what Jung would have called an “archetype”. The woman does the tucking, and the man deals with the newspaper. The woman is more tender, and the man is more tough. The woman is more concerned with immediate and personal security, and the man is more able to go without such things.
I have great respect for men who die young in battle. I even have respect for men who die in middle age working life-sapping jobs in factories or government bureaucracies. But when I was young I thought there was a greater battle to fight, and I have fought it.
I am anti-war, because war is stupid, and I am anti-life-sapping bureaucracies and factories, because they too are stupid. I am a firm believer in “If Only People Weren’t Stupid.”
The polite word for “Stupid” is “Ignorance.” Ignorance is something we all can confess to, because only God has the omniscience that knows everything. We, as mortals, can either side with attempting to end our ignorance, or side with furthering it. If you have done your best to side with the former, you side with “good”, and if you side with the latter, then, sad to say, you are “evil.”
Men who suffer tedious work to support their homes are, up to a point, like soldiers suffering wounds to save their homelands. They are heroes. But past a certain point they should not go. Past a certain point they are being loyal to a Hitler, and damning their wife and children to the social destruction eventually earned by dictators. They should have told their boss, “Take this job and shove it”, but lacked guts. They were timid and cowardly, and subservient to ignorance, thinking some medical insurance or pension mattered more than freedom from ignorance. They were not free from fear, and when fear controlled them they became like addicts.
I was not prone to this particular addiction, because, after I had been loyal and faithful to a boss up to a certain point, and excused his sins as “shortcomings” up to a certain point, I drew the line. It did not seem to be a matter of my brains as much as it was my stomach. I had guts, so I got fired. This is the price of Liberty: Good-bye health insurance, good-bye sick-pay, good-bye vacation-pay, good-bye pension. You are reduced to the status of a hobo. But you haven’t sold your soul and, praise great God almighty, you are Free!
There is some suffering involved in being a hobo, but in my humble opinion it sure beats the suffering of the alternative. I tried out the alternatives, and even worked a union job for an amazing two years. So I talk of the alternatives with a little bit of experience, when I say slavery stinks, when compared to Liberty.
At times it can be strange, when I confess to people I was a hobo until age 37. When I describe getting fired from job after job, rich people get green with envy. Many never dared, because they were addicted to money. At times, when I was younger, talking of my life as a bum became downright awkward, because rich men’s wives looked at me lustfully, (I suppose because a hobo sometimes is a man, and a rich man sometimes is not).
In other words, Liberty has little to do with money. To some this is obvious, but to others this is like saying up is down, because they are addicted to ignorance. In fact they are the ones saying down is up. And history shows that these down-is-up people do get their comeuppance.
America (so far, at least) has always tended to side with Liberty, and not down-is-up people. Not that America isn’t misled by its down-is-up minorities, (Mad Avenue bankers addicted to money, Washington politicians addicted to power, Hollywood imbeciles addicted to fame), but so far these attempts to capsize Liberty have always been righted by the sanity of tiny, little people.
When you study history this power-of-the-small becomes so apparent that, for me at least, I see the fingerprints of the Almighty. The laws of reaping-what-you-sow jump out at me, even in the exact same historical events where the down-is-up people claim to see proof that injustice pays. They have eyes but cannot see, yet deem themselves wise. They think they will get away with stealing Indian’s land, but later look up to see Sherman come marching through Georgia. They think they can get rich clipper-shipping slaves and selling opium, but then their sons die marching through Georgia and their great-grandchildren die of heroin overdoses. The kick-back of Karma revisits sins on succeeding generations with a complex and inescapable perfection.
This is not to say down-is-up people can’t be gifted, brilliant organizers and administrators, but they can’t beat God. If they fail to see their gifts are given by God, and fail to be humble about being gifted, all the might in the world can be defeated by a flea, and a great army be stopped by a snowflake. Sennacherib marched 185,000 to Jerusalem, and his soldiers all died in in their sleep at its gates. Napoleon marched a huge Army into Russia, and few returned from the snowflakes alive.
The down-is-uppers tend to feel they are sharp as axes, and can cut others down, but what they fail to see is that no ax cuts by itself. The Creator created the ax, and can cast it aside. If our pride over the gifts we are given becomes that of a megalomaniac, rather than doing the cutting we are cut down. Of course, the powerful laugh at this concept, and say, “How can a tree cut down an ax?” They never like learning the answer.
The time of Napoleon is fascinating, because he was a megalomaniac who began as a flea who the big-shots were blithely ignorant of, yet was given gifts that allowed him to become an ax that shook the world, before falling as the mighty all fall, into the afterglow of glory. As he disrupted the calm and disturbed the peace he forced friends and foes alike to dare to be great. Men had to leave the cozy security of home, leave wives and children, and be men.
I like this time in American history because back then we were a flea, compared to European powers, and when the War of 1812 eventually erupted we were like a flea taking on an elephant. Not counting the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, we had a Navy of some 8 ships, and were taking on Britain’s 600. President Madison does not come across as exactly smart, (but, after all, he was a democrat).
However in order to find crews for its 600 ships England, (and to a lesser degree France), had to bully unwilling men onto their ships, and this had been going on for some ten years before the USA declared war. The impressing of American sailors ruffled American feathers, for, while the USA might have only had a 8 ship Navy, it had developed the second largest fleet of Merchantmen in the world, and these ships were not crewed by men bullied aboard by press gangs, but by men who dared put personal security aside, for their wife and children, and risked death on the bounding main, calling it liberty and relishing it. They wanted no part of Europe’s war, but Europe wanted American goods to supply their troops, and both sides wanted to prevent America from supplying the other side. Jefferson faced an undeclared war with France, (which was angry we didn’t side with them, after they had sided with us in our Revolution.) Jefferson also faced Arab states in North Africa who demanded we pay tribute. And the English were increasingly demanding as well.
Of course it was not Jefferson, and later Madison, who was actually out on the ocean facing these troubles. Besides courage, strength and wisdom, life as a merchantman demanded diplomatic skill, and often involved having to smile as the English or French absconded with your cargo, and sometimes your ship. The amazing thing is that the sailors kept sailing. I suppose the profits were better than the profits from farming, and there was also the not inconsiderable fact that sailing is just plain wonderful fun, for many men.
In any case, the United States may have had a small Navy, but it had a wealth of excellent sailors who were out on the sea because they wanted to be there, as opposed to the English crews who sometimes had been dragged on board their boats kicking and screaming, and would desert at the first opportunity, though doing so meant they risked being hung.
What then happened, once war was declared, was that the American merchantmen turned into “privateers”. They were suppose to get an official slip of paper from the American government, but not everyone bothered. I think it is for this reason there are hugely varying estimates on how many privateers sailed against the English. Officially there were some 500 “licenced” ships, but I have read estimates there were well over a thousand privateers in actual fact. (If you had a licence you were suppose to report your booty, when you got home, at the custom house and pay a tax. Of course this was not always done, by sailors who knew a great deal about smuggling, and about getting around red tape. In fact, in New England, which was most dependent on merchantmen, and where the war was very unpopular, (called “Mr. Madison’s War”), one way around the British blockade was to meet with the blockaders. The British blockade was actually depriving Britain itself of supplies that were needed. Therefore some merchantmen arranged to be “captured”, and then, after goods were off-loaded and cash changed hands, they conveniently “escaped”. So you see, there is a way around red tape, if you look for it.)
When a privateer set sail it had a over-sized crew, for every time it captured an English ship some of its crew had to board the captured ship and sail it home. Some ships would sail off with over a hundred men and return home crewed by fifteen. Some of the ships they captured were recaptured by the British, but many captured ships sailed back into American ports loaded with needed supplies, and as they arrived they told a thrilling tale of the parent ship’s exploits.
Some of the tales are wonderful. The Paul Jones set sail from New York in 1812 with 120 men aboard, but only 3 cannons. She had holes cut in the side for 17. The captain had logs painted black to look like cannons and sailed up to the British merchant ship Hassan, which carried 14 guns, but had a crew of only 20. The Paul Jones sent the extra crew swarming up into the rigging to look like marines. The captain of the Hassan was so fooled by the bluff that he surrendered without firing a shot. In this manner the Paul Jones not only gained a “prize ship”, but 14 cannons, and the captain was able to fill the Paul Jones’ gun mounts with actual guns.
Captain William Nichols, aboard the Decauter, eluded the English frigate Guerriere, but was unable to elude a faster frigate despite throwing his cannons overboard to go faster. To everyone’s relief the faster frigate was the American ship Constitution, and Captain Nichols was then able to direct the Constitution where to find (and defeat) the Guerriere. However as the Constitution sailed out of sight the Decauter’s crew promptly mutinied, insisting they should head home because they had only two cannon left to fight with. After subduing the mutiny by bopping the ringleader over the head, Captain Nichols proceeded to get cannons by capturing seven ships in five days, and headed home with hardly any crew left aboard his own ship, after capturing a total of ten.
The official tally, kept by Lloyds of London, was 1175 British ships captured, of which 373 were captured back by the British Navy before getting back to the United States. The actual numbers were likely higher, as insurance rates got so high as the war went on some ships may have sailed without insurance. Though the British blockade deeply hurt American ports, the English were forced to resort to sailing in convoys. They were able to keep troops supplied (except in the Great Lakes), but the American privateers then sailed across to England, even into the mouth of the Thames, and made the English fishermen fear to go out and fish, resulting in a shortage of that staple to the English diet in English markets. Lastly, there is a lot we don’t know. Of the privateers that officially reported their existence to the American government, 317 never reported capturing any ship. Hmm. Makes you wonder what they were doing with themselves, sailing around out there all that time.
The thing that fascinates me was this was a completely disorganized effort. It was not military in nature, and involved no planning board writing up logistics. It was just a bunch of individual captains and their crews, going every which way without any particular order, and becoming a total thorn in the side of the British fleet. It was not what one would expect, looking at the original of odds of 8 American ships against 600. To me it demonstrates what individuality can accomplish, when set against a vast and seemingly all-powerful organization. Watch out for the flea.
Meanwhile the Americans in charge (being democrats) were making a shambles of things. A flea smaller than even the United States was Upper Canada, but the political appointments in charge of the war made such a mess of things that little Canada initially whupped our butts. Further south British troops marched into the White House and ate Madison’s dinner, before burning the place down. (Baltimore was saved only because a political appointment was booted out, and replaced by a Revolutionary War veteran who knew his ass from his elbow.)
Another small flea that made a difference consisted of some 3000 black slaves, who used the war as a chance to make a dash for freedom. In many cases the men joined the British army and fought against their former masters. (After the war many were settled in Canada, while others settled with their families as farmers on the south coast of Trinidad, where they live to this day as the “Merikins”.) (So perhaps democrats do get credit for freeing some slaves….with the law of unintended consequences kicking in.)
It is odd how liberty works.
In the end the United States did quite well to escape that war with the event called “a draw”. (The real losers were the Indians….but that’s another story).
Happy Independence Day!
Liberty has its price. At dawn I pay The toll and buckle my worn leather belt And plod out into the duty of new day And remember no dreams, nor how I felt When young, but a cloud then catches my eye.
It’s just a wisp of white in the west; Just a mare’s tail, a curl of cirrus in the sky, But disturbs me from my dormancy’s rest.
Toil has its peace, a dulling mindlessness, But the cloud’s a disturbing reminder That Liberty’s more than mess after mess. It’s aim is higher, sweeter, kinder.
Liberty’s price is: Blood waters it’s root, But Liberty’s hope is a fine future fruit.
There is a certain feeling I awake with, when some shock has occurred in my life. Often it occurs after someone near and dear has died. It isn’t actually disbelief, for it involves the grim recognition of a changed reality, yet there is an element of incredulity involved. The words, “I can’t believe”, seem most apt in expressing the brassy clang of a harsh dawning. Even though one does believe, one says they don’t. One says something like, “I can’t believe he/she is dead”, or “I can’t believe I’m fired”; or “I can’t believe the house burned down”, or even, “I can’t believe I graduated”. It is the dawn of great change, and trauma is involved.
Lately I have been waking in the dark before dawn with that odd feeling involving my homeland. I can’t believe what is happening is happening. Largely it involves the behavior of the leaders in Washington. To me they seem to have forgotten what America stands for, and to have “exchanged their birthright for a mass of pottage”. “Freedom for all”, the very thing the nation stands for, no longer matters as much as their personal gain.
These people are generally called “The Elite”, and they have their ways of justifying their greed, lust, hate and general selfishness. Usually it involves some “ends justify the means” illogic. When you examine their thinking, it resembles a thin scab over a growing abscess. They ask others to sacrifice their freedom, as they themselves waddle in wealth. Their manner of justifying their dishonesty and hypocrisy involves warping the Truth, and misinforming the public with a dishonest media, and misinforming the children with dishonest history. Nothing is sacred; even the temperature records of the past are “adjusted” to further their cause, which, in the end, is not freedom for all, but glut for a few.
The very existence of the so-called “Elite” is an affront to what America stands for, and is every much our enemy as are Islamic terrorists, who also are a reality that I awake to, who cause me to say, “I can’t believe it has come to this,” to my bedroom ceiling.
The “Elite” and the “Terrorists” like to portray themselves as opposites, when they are actually the same thing. The Elite like to portray their selfishness as a broad minded, Truth-seeking “progressiveness”, utterly different from what they see as the narrow-mindedness of fundamentalist religions, even as the terrorists like to see themselves as standing for Truth, and see the Infidels of Babylon in the grotesquely selfish behavior of the Elite. Thus they both stand for “Truth” and, in the name of God, commit ungodly acts. They both dress as priests while behaving as devils. They both hold out the promise of a harmonious, heavenly future, while creating a present tense that is a divisive hell.
In fact goodness does not wait in the future. Goodness begins now, as does Eternity. Unity does not begin only after you are done killing all who disagree. Unity begins when you accept some fundamental Truths, such as “All men are created equal,” and in order to do this you must believe in what some scorn, what some disdain as being naive and mushy: A thing called “Love”.
In medieval French drama evil was often portrayed as a priest who had a distinctive laugh, a sort of “Bwah-ha-ha”, which was doubly ironic as it was the distortion of “bārūkhhabbā”, which was a phrase recieted by priests that meant, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Ps. 118:26) The priest-character was the absolute wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, and from his ability to make chaos of harmony, and to then laugh “Bwah-ha-ha”, comes our word “brouhaha”. Sadly, while a brouhaha is laughable in a play like “Much Ado About Nothing”, in real life it can result in horrific misery.
An example of this misery involved the freedom of India, which a century ago was the “jewel of the English Empire”.
The British controlled a broken collection of principalities which in many areas involved Muslim princes ruling over Hindu peons. It was a highly complex and delicate political situation, with Hindus and Muslims the majority, but also involving Buddhists, Sikhs and others. The British actually did a fairly good job of keeping the peace, but they were the smallest minority of all, and had blown their chance to be good rulers by being too haughty, too greedy, and dragging India into a couple World Wars. India wanted to rule itself, but the urge for freedom faced the divisiveness of a population that did not agree about how to Love (IE: Religion.) In some area Muslims were the majority, and in some Hindus were the majority.
The first result of freedom for India was a loud, “Bwah-ha-ha”, involving a double genocide and the most massive migration the planet has even seen (until the current one in the Mideast.) The death, rape, abductions, carnage and human misery were unbelievable, and the true numbers on both sides who died are unknown, but may be above a million in both cases.
A grandfather of my age, who had lived in the same area all his life, in his grandfather’s home town, might suddenly see people he had known all his life go insane, burst into his house, abduct his daughters, kill or castrate his sons, and take all property and valuables, sending him packing to walk with his little grandchildren to a distant land as much as a thousand miles away. Here is a picture of a Muslim grandfather who didn’t make it:
This is the sort of Brouhaha that the Elite like to point at and say, “Do you see what happens when we do not rule over the ignorant masses?” However I can all but guarantee this was brought about by the Hindu elite and Muslim elite saying something other than “All men are created equal”, (and also by the British elite abdicating from their responsibility).
As I poked about looking at what happened during the partition of India I wondered what the spiritual people did. In every disaster there are those who do good, besides those who are vile. My curiosity led me to leaf through a gigantic tome about the life of Meher Baba called “Lord Meher”, to the year 1947, and on page 2590 (!) I read Meher Baba said, “Selfishness is the root cause of all troubles. It is all the more dangerous because, under the subtle influence of selfishness, the worst evils are apt to assume false colors of chivalry, sacrifice, nobility, service and even love. In spite of sometimes turning into a beast with cruelty, anger and the lust of aggrandizement and subjugation, man can and often does cheat himself into believing that he yet remains a man, a patriot and so on.”
The above rang a chord in me because I feel both the Elite and the Terrorists are beasts that believe they’re above bestiality, for the low often fool themselves. A cowardly man too spineless to fight, struggle and die (as did the poor old man in the picture above) for women and children will often justify his inaction as “pacifism”, and call himself a saint. In like manner, in the eyes of the disillusioned public the phrase “for the children” is now spoken ironically and even derisively, because it has been misused so often by deceitful and selfish politicians, doctors, pharmacists and social workers, who see themselves as saints.
The problem is that the vile can become (and may even intend to become) damned discouraging. I’ve been griping and bitching about the sheer stupidity of certain aspects of American life for a half century, and what good has it ever done? The idiots just go on becoming more and more idiotic. They are like drug addicts increasing their dosage, hellbent to drag themselves and many others over a precipice to doom. What is there to be encouraged about? Why get out of bed in the morning?
I flipped ahead to page 2591 and read the answer is Love:
“Pure love is matchless in majesty, it has no parallel in power and there is no darkness it cannot dispel. It is the undying flame that has set all life aglow. All the same, it needs to be kindled and rekindled in the abysmal darkness of selfish thoughts, selfish words and selfish deeds in order to burst out in a mighty spirit to serve as a beacon for those who may yet be groping in the darkness of selfishness, be it deep blue or all black.
The light of love is not free from its fire of sacrifices. In fact, like heat and light, love and sacrifice, so to say, go hand in hand. The true spirit of sacrifice that springs spontaneously does not and cannot reserve itself for particular objects and special occasions.
Just as it can never be too late or too early to learn to love for the sake of love, there can be nothing too small or too big to be sacrificed or sacrificed for. The flow of life, the flow of light, the flow of love is as much in the drop as in the ocean. The smallest thing is as big as the biggest, and the biggest thing is as small as the smallest. It all depends on the particular yardstick with which one measures a thing.
The spirit of true love and real sacrifice is beyond all ledgers and needs no measures. A constant wish to love and be loving and a non-calculating will to sacrifice in every walk of life, high and low, big and small, between home and office, street and cities, countries and continents are the best anti-selfish measures that man can take in order to be really self-ful and joyful.
May you one day behold the ever-shining Light of Love that never dies and knows no darkness.”
Well…umm….It’s hard to be quite so discouraged after that. I especially liked “the smallest thing is as big as the biggest”, because I think big things are needed, but I’m more likely to do small things, for I’m not quite up to running for president, this week.
I also like the above because it does not suggest that Freedom is an accessory, attached to the ordinary state of slavery on rare occasions, and just as easily snipped away, but rather Freedom is the base state, the foundation. Slavery is the add-on, and Freedom continues to exist even in the enslaved, like the sun above the clouds.
I don’t think the Elite like the fact people are free to think what they will, even if enslaved, and regard them with eyes that see them in an unfavorable light. Some Elite would like to find ways to enslave minds, as would some Terrorists. Perhaps some even think they can, with false media and false education and even drugs the public might be required to take, but they face a very big problem because there is one mind they cannot control, and that is their own. Lurking in their own skull is an enemy to their desires. The Elite are confronted by examples of members of their own class who abruptly go mad or become religious, and Terrorists are confronted by traitors to terror, who abruptly get sick of it, such as the man who handed the computer chip of all terrorist addresses to the German authorities.
Who would have believed in 1947 that Great Britain would back out of India and continue backing up until it was so backed-up it had to fight to regain its independence in 2016 with the Brexit vote? And who would have believed that the world’s greatest democracy, (in terms of population at least), would now be India?
This is not to say we are not living in dangerous times, and may not be confronted by a brutal choice between Elitists and Democracy, or Islam and non-Islam, such as the subcontinent of India faced in 1947. I might even wind up an old man dying on the roadside like the poor grandfather in the picture above. But Freedom itself cannot die.
At that point the concept of laying out the streets of New York in an orderly manner was a quarter century away, (The “gridiron” Commissioners’ Plan was not published until 1811.) There was no socialist zeal to force order upon people, but this did not mean people disliked the idea of order. New York was only the national capital until 1795, as people dreamed of laying out a new capital to the south. But who was the dictator? How could order be, without a despot? Who would rule? Who could trust a dim silhouette in the distance?
Sunrise's Swansong 