There's this idea that I often hear repeated. You know the one: "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
This is not true. Power is corrupt.
Power is force aimed at the innocent. It's the interposing of force between a mind and reality. It renders the mind, man's primary characteristic, impotent as a means of survival.
Another idea I often hear is that those in power become more and more corrupt. This is what is believed to lead to collapses such as the dark ages or the inquisition or the Russian revolution. But does it?
Lets look at the Catholic church in the middle ages. They were the state. They were absolute power, subjugating millions on a daily basis for close to a thousand years.
Towards the end of their reign they were seen as thoroughly corrupt. Not before when they were crushing everyone and everything with an iron heel. No, not then. They were considered corrupt when they were enriching themselves through indulgences, when they were sating their appetites with wenches, feasts, booze, gold.
Yet this is precisely backwards. When those in power reach this state it is less corrupt because it is an indication that their absolute power is slipping. When in this state they can be bribed, persuaded, bought off. Then those who simply want to live have a means of doing so. They have a way to side-step the beast and get on with the business of living, of producing.
Because this state is universally held to be a corruption of the purity of what went before it inevitably leads to a point where things snap back with a vengeance. When Luther nailed his theses to the church door he was calling for a return to serious tyranny. He was tired of the ways in which those in power were allowing the masses to escape the iron heel and wanted a return to the times when there was no escape. No way out for anyone.
The inquisition was one of the results. Ever since then there have been calls for a return to "old time religion". To really meaning it. To have an iron heel that cannot be avoided.
It's not that politicians as such scare me. Their open, flaunting corruption still leaves room for those of us who want to live.
What scares me is that somewhere in this country, right now, is someone who sees this corruption and damns it, not because it hurts "the people" but because they are not taking it seriously enough.
Is this Hillary, Obama, McCain, someone as yet unknown? I don't know. But somewhere there is someone who means to mean it.
