Trump

Bertrand Russell: The State

“Thinking ill of others is not in itself a good reason for thinking well of ourselves.”

The destruction of other nations, allies or not, were of no concern. Only the continued well-being of America’s richest mattered. It was where they were and as long as their state was a stronghold the rest of the world was of no import.

At the end of the day it was a competition and the good was on their side; it was manifest destiny! Those that surrounded him always reminded him that God was an American God, and America was destined by God to rule “His Kingdom”.

He knew who they were talking about but also knew that it would be him doing the ruling. Competition was heating up but he had a plan-he and his small group of hand-picked cohorts. The Fathers of Freedom (FOF) were happy as long as he gave them their moral superiority on a plate.

But soon they wouldn’t be a problem either. They were stupid and easily subdued. They loved what he loved, as all Christians did: money and more importantly: power.

Commodity

It’s important to remember that they are misguided fools.  They will believe that the scribblings and rantings of our psychopath, and hold the contradictory thought that he cannot change the world, our world.  We have violence on our side.  Our followers are ravenous and bloodthirsty.  They will soak up these empty ramblings of a madman.

We can’t believe in quick and efficient change from peace and prosperity to chaos and poverty because it will not happen to us.  Just let those bleeding liberals preach piously of peace and talk of rights and justice.  They’ll do so long after these things are just fading memories.  Remember, naïve expectations of normalcy outlive their usefulness like and old, old man.

“We have to realize that this is a ‘now’ era.  It’s important to realize this or be relegated to the past instantly.  No longer can we pretend to stand for anything other than what sells.  That’s what counts.” 

He paused, not expecting anyone to say anything, but just to make sure that his last sentence sunk in.  The minions sat staring as if at their cellphones. 

“We must market sales and that will become easier as Truth disintegrates.  Mass marketing, and everything can be mass-marketed, is what counts.  Everything is a commodity.  Remember that.”

Pride

It was strange to watch a traffic accident.  Everything seemed to slow down.  It was the same with the slow death of our country.  It started with a quiet ritual, a pageantry of sorts, as if nothing had changed.  But it had changed and everyone knew it.

Those that supported this change radiated with spite and revenge in their eyes, or with subtle hope-for-what-I-can’t-comprehend.  Others saw the coming change as one might watch a large asteroid hurdling towards earth: with awe and disbelief; aware that something had not started as much as it has ended.

There was a desire to protect just as there was a desire to explain to the blind what color was or to the deaf what music was.  And so we stood back and hoped there was something left when the atrocity was over, which it always and inevitably would be.  But we all knew one thing:  Human idiocy was only overshadowed by the pride we had in being so.

The Other

What the advisor understood was that there needed to be an ‘other’.  There  always needed to be an ‘other’.  And if there wasn’t an ‘other’ one needed to be invented.  Law, he understood, would be accepted by their followers and would control those that weren’t.  At the end of the day it was all pomp and circumstance but it worked.

“Remember the motto: guns, god, and greed.” The Assistant had reminded everyone at the daily meeting that morning. “Those are the things that sell!  Those are the things that our people want!”

The advisor knew he was right and at the same time knew because he was right he needed to be watched.  But this was a different thought altogether and so he neatly filed it in the back of his mind.

“If you sell those things you can own the fucking world!”  The Advisor had chimed in.  The assistant smiled silently.

The Ruse

First things first.  The system needed to be dismantled but the illusion of legality needed to be maintained.  The mask had been taken off but the illusion needed to stay.  A naked emperor was no good.  The populace needed to say that he was not naked.

“That’s the secret.” The Advisor continued.  “Law, oddly enough becomes tradition the very thing it is based upon.”  He continued.

The more intelligent minions realized that law, if void of trust, is meaningless and so somehow law needed to be both destroyed and maintained.  The less intelligent of the minions were the larger of his problems.  If they weren’t espousing idiocy they were acting like idiots.

“These morons cannot continue blabbering shit!” he yelled.  “They are undermining everything and making us all look like fucking morons.”

“Just calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!  This is a problem.”  The Advisor was pacing the room.

“No.  It isn’t” The Assistant calming continued.  “Think about it.  The American public has the attention span of a fly.  Give them drama and spectacle and keep the spotlight off the places we don’t want attention.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!”  The Advisor retorted.

“What I’m talking about is that these idiots, and they are idiots, give us time.  They give us shelter.  While everyone is up in arms about meaningless shit, we get things done.  I’m not going to beat around the bush here.”

The advisor had stopped pacing and was starting to listen.

The Game

The election had been a joke, a 1.3-billion-dollar joke.  During the last few days of the farcical show The Leader had danced on stage and rambled about personal vindictiveness and paranoia.  There was no sense to any of it.  He knew that he was going to “win”.  He knew that he was just biding time.  The billionaires had told him this and so when he simply ran out of things to say he bided his time in public as a flabbergasted public looked on.

Some of his minions were worried.  The Leader was not.

“Sir!”  they would say.  “You have to have an agenda.  You have to something, at least pretend…”

“I tell the truth and my followers want the truth.”  He would interject.

“I tell them the truth.  And you know what they want to know?!”

The Leader paused.

“Um, yessir.  What do they want to know?  The truth?”

The Leader smirked.  He could smell the fear and confusion.

“Yeessss.”  He said slowly.

“They want to know that they are right.  They want to know that they will be vindicated.  I know what they want.  They want to win.  The problem is that everybody thinks this is serious.  It’s a rigged game.  Not just this, but the system.  And so you have to know how to play the system.  And you have to know how to play people.  I am the best at both.  I am a master.  So don’t come and tell me what I need to do.  I’ll tell you what I need to do!”

The minion stood silently.  Then, The Leader laughed.

“It’s a game.  It’s a game!”

The minion was confused.

“It’s all just a game.”

The Spectacle

The mind falls prey to the trinkets and baubles that amaze babes in cradles; the spectacle begins.  Hungry for knowledge, driven by curiosity, desiring understanding, a black box of entertainment must be given to them instead.  It must contain nonsensical ideologies wrapped in tradition and empty answers concealed in thinly vailed hatred of “the other”.  The box must have ready-made games to keep these babes in arms occupied.

The hypnotized must be made to believe that these things, these ideas are important but we know that they are not.  They are arbitrary.  And technology will help.  It used to be that propaganda was important, but now propaganda is ready-made and drips into the minds of everyone; everyone must “keep up” and be “in-the-know”.

We can let technology do for us what in times of want took mass amount of rhetoric and upheaval.  And to those few that complain, that point out the spectacle that we have created we can ask: “Where would we be without it?!  Hasn’t it given us progress?  Hasn’t it made us happy!?”

But there is no room for doubters in this world of make-believe.  Let them scream, I say!  They will scream to deaf ears because we will live in a spectacle of life created by us.  We can smile as those doubters scream.  We can smile because those that walk away do so without their minds.  I know this because they have sold them to us.

Remember One Thing

“You need to remember one thing.”

“And what’s that?!”  The Leader asked lackadaisically.

“There’s always a weakest link and that link will define us in the end.  And the fact is these people, these weakest links, never think that it is them.  They are certain they are progressive and understand the circumstances.  They don’t.  They are looking for solutions but we are looking for answers to a specific question.  What they don’t understand is that solutions are easy, answers are not.  These elites’ solutions are based on the promise of good, virtue.  We have to promise victimhood.  We have to point out conniving, scheming, evil, these elites are.  We have to remind these followers of ours how the weak hold the strong down.  What those who are looking for solutions don’t realize is that it is ego and arrogance not thoughtful analysis that wins the day.  We have that on our side.”

Guns, God, and Greed: From Chp. 2: God’s Children

The Leader sat and listened to religious and voting statistics, how the religious of the country needed a strong-man leader, how the government had stood in the way of God’s work, of the FOF, and how, if he followed their plan, he could bring about a new world order, one not tainted by heathen-ideas or ‘progressive’ thought.  He sat and for once he listened.  While the delegates from the FOF rambled he thought about God.  He didn’t understand there God.  He was their god, if they knew it or not.

Like guns, god is the ultimate fear and the answer, the salve to the fact of life that most do not want to face: we die.  But god is more than that.  Much like a gun, god mirrors that arrogance of mankind; god is an excuse and a hiding place; god is the ultimate ideal and as such an answer to all things.

God is not only the best of mankind but the ideal of all ideals, both virtuous and despicable.  God is an old idea created by even older sages and philosophers.  God is set and defined in thousands of ways, each according to the inventor.  God ‘wants’, god ‘demands’, god ‘will punish’.  God can do many things but one thing in particular that god lacks is empathy.  You cannot have empathy with a gun in your hand.  But you can feign empathy with god.

We can create a god and god is the best we can do.  It is not wonder that we spend the greater part of our time killing one another and even the planet we live on.  God is indeed the best that mankind is capable of and we are proud of our God.

In one sense these people were no different than him.  It seemed to him that they wanted the same thing: to get rich.  On the other hand, he didn’t hide it and they did.  All of their talk about “God and Jesus” was, to him, just a ruse to justify their greed.  The only difference was that he didn’t lie about it.  In fact, he had four of the richest men in the world in his cabinet.

Guns, God, and Greed: From Chp. 2: The Plan

The Leader opened the large black, plastic binder and flipped through page after page of print.

“We know it’s a lot and so we also have a synopsis.”

The man nodded and one his assistants handed The Leader a small, white book.  The Leader put the burdensome binder down and opened the book.  On the first page was the title “DAY 1” and under the title were bullet-pointed orders.

“This synopsis has a one year, day by day, plan that if implemented can bring this country back to its original glory and greatness.  Sir, this country has a manifest destiny to be the great country that it once was but we must act swiftly and succinctly in order to undermine the powers that have been working tirelessly against our destiny; your destiny, sir.”

The room was silent and the leader lay the book in his lap.  He looked around at the faces staring at him.

“Well…” he began.

No one said anything.

“I know what’s in it for you.  But…” he paused, “what’s in it for me?