SOCIETY BROKEN: Part One
“Why the Republican Party, and many Democrats, beg for Constant War.”
War is eternal. Since mankind first came to realize that land was not limitless, or that animals could not be hunted endlessly, the species has sought to capitalize and monopolize resources. At first there may have been some justification for this. Wars of aggression between ancient societies were waged over the best tracts of land, where vegetation was easily grown, and where water sources were easy to access. The basis of man’s wars were a step removed from his most basic instinct: survival. Wars were waged for the survival of not just the individual, but for those closest to the individual. These wars were tribal, between small groups. Then the tribes grew larger, and formed nations. Egypt rose on the banks of the Nile, India gave birth to its civilization along the Indus River, while China sprang from the banks of the Yangtze. Tribes banded together with like tribes, forming the first countries, and went to war with those who differed. For personal survival, for cultural and religious survival, they fought to keep the best shores of those rivers. They warred to have ease of access to food and resources.
Man was one step removed from survival but soon distanced himself by yet another step. War ceased to be about the best lands. Now, they became about access to the best metals. Metals could be molded and shaped into stronger and deadlier weapons. They could be crafted into shields and swords, or wheels and chariots. A reinforcing circle was now formed. The metals had to be acquired, to defend the lands already held. However, in order to continue making enough of the weapons necessary to defend those lands, even more land had to be acquired to gain the precious metals necessary to defend the lands. And so the cycle of warfare expanded.
Then mankind distanced himself from survival by yet a third step. Abandoning the old system of trade they had relied on, societies assigned value to yet another type of metal. This metal could not be used to form weapons to defend lives with. It could not be used in any practical way except to fashion money. And now humanity needed a new type of land, with new types of metals. Sometimes these metals were replaced by precious jewels, but each time they held no intrinsic ability to help the society survive. They were baubles and shiny objects that fascinated the powerful. The lowest in society never had claim to these materials. Even the lowest servant could understand the need for a cup of water or a bowl of food. The endless wars for precious metals would never be a war the peasant chose to wage.
At this juncture in humanity, war was changed. The Least and the Most now differed in their desires. The Least would never have access to the metals that the Most desired. However, the Most had changed society so that it was forced to revolve around the acquisition of those same metals. No longer could a man trade his goods as necessary. Instead, all things were weighed and measured. Currency replaced trade, and at this point the Least were forced by the Most to become dependent on the very substance they could never have in abundance. A man might set out on his own and acquire his own land to plot and farm. Yet the Least were now at the mercy of the Most, who doled out their precious metals in slivers. The Least now became dependent on the Most in a way never before possible. A sword must be paid for, to fight for the land that would produce more precious metals, that could then be held in abundance for the powerful and given in meager amounts to the powerless, who would never be able to afford swords of their own. The Least could not rebel without the money to raise an army. They could not band together without the money to pay for armor. The soldier class was a mercenary force used to threaten those of the lower classes.
Pay a man slightly more, slightly better, and he will feel better than his peers. Threaten that security and he will turn against those peers. Put a sword in his hand and he will kill those peers. The militaries of all societies became weapons that guarded the powerful from the least powerful, and because a few more gold coins made a man feel superior to those around him. A sword in his hand made him feel powerful. In both ways, human beings were bribed to become living weapons against other human beings.
Yet even a man paid might feel a sting of conscience in himself, convicting him of his actions. So mankind removed himself from survival by yet a fourth step. Traditional spiritual beliefs of the people were now fashioned into something quite different: Religion. Not the religion of the people, but the religion that the rulers of the people wanted them to believe. Whether called the Mandate of Heaven or Divine Right, rulers claimed authority under the banner of God. To protest was not only to rebel against the king, it was to rebel against God. A soldier was not called simply as a hired man, but as a divine duty. In Rome he served the god emperor, in England he fought against demonic Papal forces, and among the Ottomans he drove out anyone that was not a ‘person of the book’. The greatest conspiracy of rulers against their people was to tie money and religion as one. There was no greater way to take a man and turn him against his own than to bribe him both with his basic, physical need to survive as well as his spiritual need to survive.
And so the nations ruled for centuries, occasionally quaking when their rulership was threatened. Kings and nations did push their people too hard, too fast, too far, and they fell as a consequence. Yet the Least rarely took the reigns of power. Too often it was a middle class that drove the rebellion. A king might rule, but he still required nobles, and nobles rebelled only when their own selfish desires were so contradicted that they felt it their place to rise to the crown. In England, nobles did not force the Magna Carta in order to gain greater rights for the people, but to have their own nobility treated with equality to the Crown. In the United States it was not the common man who rallied the country, but aristocrats who felt they paid too high a tax on tea. The United States Founding Fathers did not manage to disguise their motives more than a few years before revealing that it would be the elites that ruled. Its citizens would not vote directly for senators or even the president. Instead, a select, wise few would make those decisions for the people. Even the Bolshevik Revolution was led by an aristocrat and gave birth to one of the greatest concentrations of power in human history.
We are now five steps removed from the original point of war, and yet the United States has waged war in the Middle East for twenty five years. It has waged a war on drugs for decades. Why? Because scarcity is no longer a threat, because religion no longer holds enough sway on its own, and because the powerful have mastered the means by which to turn the population against itself.
The United States currently reeks with abundance, yet a significant amount of its people live in poverty. The illusion of scarcity is created by the abundance of war. Money must be diverted by the billions to fund jets that spend decades in development. These are illusions much like those given to children. Spend enough, long enough, and one day America will rise triumphant like the Phoenix from the flame. How will America create jobs to replace those lost if it ends the war on drugs? How will America create jobs to replace those lost if it ends the war on terror? If it ends the war in Iraq? Millions unemployed, from the armed services and those that create those weapons.
Millions that could be invested into new technology, into new research, into creating new jobs to replace those lost. Not only millions, but billions. Billions that would lift the underclass up, which is the great threat that the ruling class must oppose at all turns. Billions that could educate the underclass, the greatest threat a ruler can ever face. So the Most argue that money, this scarce resource, must be diverted elsewhere first: to war. To unending forever wars, that have no limit or boundary, and that our great grandchildren will still be fighting. And so the argument will always be that we must wage war and so, cannot afford to compromise national security for other domestic needs.
The Most iron their argument with religion. Religion is no longer satisfactory, of its own. The Most rarely claim divine right or God’s command to send the nation to war. It no longer seems acceptable in those simple terms. Instead, the Most fashion an enemy drawn from the subconscious of the ruling class’s religion. Christianity is the target not because Christianity of its own is distinguished from other religions in any fashion, but because of the sheer dominance it holds among those that wield the power of the vote. Invoke the anti-Christ, invoke the threat of the corruption of children’s morals by drugs, invoke the End of Times through the threat of a Muslim conquest, and you reach back to man’s basic need to survive and thereby justify the forever wars. You invoke the subconscious specter of the world’s end, fashioned by centuries of religion and reinforced at the pulpit, to justify violence that will go on ceaselessly.
Further, the Most craft a new religion, of the State. The ruling class of the United States learned a valuable lesson after Vietnam. Glorify the soldier; he is the new saint of America, beyond criticism, held up as a paragon of all the country stands for. He must never be critiqued, never derided, because he is willing to die in your place. Indeed, how so much like Christ himself is the American soldier. At the start of every sports event we must first remember to sing the song of our religion, the National Anthem. Our priests must parade the flags. Our Arks of the Covenant must be flown on high, trailing the colors of our flag. The religion of the State is reinforced in the dollar, in sports events, and in music. Yet the population is so busy fighting over the place of religion and the Word “God” in the national anthem or school prayer, that it does not begin to fight back against the greatest religion in the country: The Religion of the State. The population can boldly take a stand against God, but will still defend the saying of the national anthem, or the presentation of flags, or the honoring of soldiers, while each one of these reinforces the country’s true religion.
And so the Most continue to manipulate man against himself. He tears into the other over personal and religious issues, fighting for equality for one’s self. The atheist pits himself against the religious, the middle class pits itself against the poor, the pacifists wage war against the war hawks, yet in the end the Most will dine on all of them like vultures at the carcass. Above all, the Most distinguish themselves now, more than ever, by money. They hoard it like a glutton at the banquet. They use it to perpetuate endless wars among the population.
Never trust a politician that distinguishes themselves by social issues alone. If they are willing to fight for your greater access to money, education and the vote, you may begin to trust them slightly. But remember that humans are animals, and the same animal that cowed at your touch may soon snap at your fingers. None of this to say that military action is unjustified. However, any military action without end, without ceasing, without a declaration point where hostilities are brought to a conclusion, are waged by those with an investment in keeping Americans distracted. Some will be distracted by the enemy abroad. Others will be distracted by the campaign against warhawks. Both will fail to recognize the Most as it further consolidates power into its hands.