In the Christian tradition, God was a kind of King; the one with
all the power and glory; the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills.
In that same tradition, human beings were the children of God,
created by him (sic), flawed, rebellious, and possibly redeemable.
According to the mythology, as it grew over the centuries, God
send his Favored Son to redeem humankind, and lead them home.
Evildoers killed the Favored Son, but the spirit of the Son lived on
in the community of believers. So God was a kind of trinity:
an all-powerful Father, a Favored Son, and a community of
people filled with God's Spirit. A Holy Trinity.
Kingships pretended to be something like that. The King
was the patriarch; a kind of god within his own kingdom.
Centuries later, our political system--our Republic--is a kind
of Holy Trinity, too, with Godfathers, Favored Sons, spirit-filled
communities. We, more familiarly, call them the people with
money and power, our politicians, and the voting public.
It is a kind of family.
There is, first, almost always a Godfather; the one with the money
and power: the patriarch with a fortune to protect.
He (it is almost always a "he") is shrewd, hard-working, and
will not to let his family take the money and power, and run.
There is not just one Godfather. There are many. They used
to be the Cabots and the Lodges and the Rockefellers. Now
they are insurance companies, oil companies, drug companies,
and every other instance where enormous fortunes are found.
The sons and daughters in the family are the great mass of voters.
The voters like to think of themselves as embodying the spirit
of the founders, and like most families, they are a contentious lot.
They encompass the whole range of human virtue and perversity.
In a republic, they meet to vote for someone to represent them
in the Presidency, the Congress, and the County Sanitation Board.
The person they elect is the Favored Son; the leader of the Family.
Right now, our Favored Sons are talking to each other in Congress,
trying to decide what to do about health care, global warming,
energy resources, education for the Family, and preserving the money.
There is almost always a great tension between the members
of the Holy Trinity. It is not just a matter of the Family electing
representatives. The Godfather sometimes chooses a Favored Son,
giving him lots of money to do what the Godfather wants done.
The hand-picked Favored Son uses the money to try to persuade
the members of the Family that they should follow him. He buys
TV time, hires an agency, rigs polls, and arranges circuses.
Within the family, sometimes there is a Crusader who wants
the Family to do something besides just maintain itself; something
like health care for everyone, or a first-class educational system.
Such motives often clash with the intentions of the Godfather,
and with the comfortable position of the Favored Son, too.
In extreme instances, politically, sometimes the Family commits
fratricide, killing the patriarch (figuratively, or literally), thus
instituting, perhaps, a period of idealism, until someone puts the
fortune back together, again, and a new Godfather emerges.
Sometimes the Favored Son gets shot, too. The Godfather
of the Community of Voters get rid of him, or his siblings do.
Sometimes a member of the Family decides that the problem
with the Family is too much intermarriage with immigrants,
or that the people with brown skin or other sexual orientations
are ruining the Family. That is a fascist urge. Then the family
becomes a mob, and the mob gets mean. They buy guns.
Politics is not just the community electing representatives.
Our laws say that money is free speech, and that the more money
you have, the more free speech you have, as Godfathers know.
Godfathers manipulate the electoral process however they can.
The electorate, the voters, like to think that they are choosing
someone to represent themselves, but very often, they are
being manipulated by both Godfathers and Favored Sons.
Favored Sons pretend they are simply representing the voters,
but just as often, they are doing what Godfather wants, or
conning the Family into agreeing with what Favored Son wants.
Who do you think Kent Conrad or John Boehner represent?
Surely not just the people who went to the ballot box!
Who is manipulating Favored Sons with enormous contributions?
The people taking the money know what they are supposed to do.
How much do voters analyze and choose, and how much are
they being whiplashed by money and slogans and manipulation?
There are three participants in our political system.
Our representatives don't simply listen to the people who voted
for them. There is another participant, where the money is.
Political manipulations today are just as medieval as ever.
The real crime is probably not that money talks, or that
the democratic process is manipulable, or even that voters
all too often are calibrated, and conned, and lied to.
The real crime is that we pretend that it isn't happening.
all the power and glory; the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills.
In that same tradition, human beings were the children of God,
created by him (sic), flawed, rebellious, and possibly redeemable.
According to the mythology, as it grew over the centuries, God
send his Favored Son to redeem humankind, and lead them home.
Evildoers killed the Favored Son, but the spirit of the Son lived on
in the community of believers. So God was a kind of trinity:
an all-powerful Father, a Favored Son, and a community of
people filled with God's Spirit. A Holy Trinity.
Kingships pretended to be something like that. The King
was the patriarch; a kind of god within his own kingdom.
Centuries later, our political system--our Republic--is a kind
of Holy Trinity, too, with Godfathers, Favored Sons, spirit-filled
communities. We, more familiarly, call them the people with
money and power, our politicians, and the voting public.
It is a kind of family.
There is, first, almost always a Godfather; the one with the money
and power: the patriarch with a fortune to protect.
He (it is almost always a "he") is shrewd, hard-working, and
will not to let his family take the money and power, and run.
There is not just one Godfather. There are many. They used
to be the Cabots and the Lodges and the Rockefellers. Now
they are insurance companies, oil companies, drug companies,
and every other instance where enormous fortunes are found.
The sons and daughters in the family are the great mass of voters.
The voters like to think of themselves as embodying the spirit
of the founders, and like most families, they are a contentious lot.
They encompass the whole range of human virtue and perversity.
In a republic, they meet to vote for someone to represent them
in the Presidency, the Congress, and the County Sanitation Board.
The person they elect is the Favored Son; the leader of the Family.
Right now, our Favored Sons are talking to each other in Congress,
trying to decide what to do about health care, global warming,
energy resources, education for the Family, and preserving the money.
There is almost always a great tension between the members
of the Holy Trinity. It is not just a matter of the Family electing
representatives. The Godfather sometimes chooses a Favored Son,
giving him lots of money to do what the Godfather wants done.
The hand-picked Favored Son uses the money to try to persuade
the members of the Family that they should follow him. He buys
TV time, hires an agency, rigs polls, and arranges circuses.
Within the family, sometimes there is a Crusader who wants
the Family to do something besides just maintain itself; something
like health care for everyone, or a first-class educational system.
Such motives often clash with the intentions of the Godfather,
and with the comfortable position of the Favored Son, too.
In extreme instances, politically, sometimes the Family commits
fratricide, killing the patriarch (figuratively, or literally), thus
instituting, perhaps, a period of idealism, until someone puts the
fortune back together, again, and a new Godfather emerges.
Sometimes the Favored Son gets shot, too. The Godfather
of the Community of Voters get rid of him, or his siblings do.
Sometimes a member of the Family decides that the problem
with the Family is too much intermarriage with immigrants,
or that the people with brown skin or other sexual orientations
are ruining the Family. That is a fascist urge. Then the family
becomes a mob, and the mob gets mean. They buy guns.
Politics is not just the community electing representatives.
Our laws say that money is free speech, and that the more money
you have, the more free speech you have, as Godfathers know.
Godfathers manipulate the electoral process however they can.
The electorate, the voters, like to think that they are choosing
someone to represent themselves, but very often, they are
being manipulated by both Godfathers and Favored Sons.
Favored Sons pretend they are simply representing the voters,
but just as often, they are doing what Godfather wants, or
conning the Family into agreeing with what Favored Son wants.
Who do you think Kent Conrad or John Boehner represent?
Surely not just the people who went to the ballot box!
Who is manipulating Favored Sons with enormous contributions?
The people taking the money know what they are supposed to do.
How much do voters analyze and choose, and how much are
they being whiplashed by money and slogans and manipulation?
There are three participants in our political system.
Our representatives don't simply listen to the people who voted
for them. There is another participant, where the money is.
Political manipulations today are just as medieval as ever.
The real crime is probably not that money talks, or that
the democratic process is manipulable, or even that voters
all too often are calibrated, and conned, and lied to.
The real crime is that we pretend that it isn't happening.
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