Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Voltaire – Seeing POWER



POWER is everything; it is the means and the end. 

Does power beget power, abuses?  See Declaration of Independence for historical examples and any public or private action for current ones. 

Power is not necessarily discrete, discretionary.  
Power does not have to hide its actions though it may be more effective when doing so (the element of surprise…shock).   

State power is described as “the long arm” and “the heavy hand”, to mean that its reach is far and its blow, serious and severe.  State or similar forms of power depend on money as a means; first by using force to take others’ money and then additionally by printing and/or issuing money well beyond its base value—if it any has such.  

The more money, the more power. 

Voltaire writes,
Everywhere the weak [loath] the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell.
Are you a sheep…led by a sinister shepherd or worse, a wolf in sheep’s clothing?  

You may know the kind; those who fain victimization but indeed are the perpetrator. 
It is bad enough to face evident powers but worse to go up against those hiding behind a fleece; they who attempt pull the wool over the less than perceptive eye.

Still, and from Voltaire once again,
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
If it’s not bad enough that some are fooled,  it can only get worse when want to be chained. 

Tyrants are clever and calculated to do some good (or intend to…) amid all the bad as Voltaire describes: 
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. 
More to come on the tyrant. 

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