In all truth, Mr. Rove, I do not preach to you. One does not swerve a high priest from his purposes,--rather, one dodges the stones. Which, when one strips away the hypocrisy and fine words is what boys do; tho it may be that you missed out on some of that. The sting of the stones is honest, sir, of that I can attest; but no, I do not preach to you, only those that you deceive. Rest assured, it will not be me that records the history of your time upon the stage.
cursus honorum
Our path of honors diverge, mined mired in dog shit, yours as a lap dog in the seats of power, in neither, I'll warrant at least, was honor very much involved. The temper of the times, perhaps, as there were few that licked that dog's ass in Sodom, as we all lied in the struggle to be free. Fact is, I've met a few good men, but not many, though the definition of good might vary, and it may be that you would include yourself as one of those. If so, I could not agree, not having met you, I have only your actions as a guage. Possibly, should you become apprised of my own actions, you would find them objectionable; I would not fault you for that, as I said our course of honors did not seek the same path. The path of authority did not appeal to me, to you it was all that did. "what matter if a man should gain the whole world...?" Let's just say the price deterred me.
After Caesar, it all fell into some disrepute, an archaic ritual, the game changed to a lavish boot licking, a list of those who must be pleased today--the toady who sweeps about the room bearing good news and gifts, false words upon the health of the king. As to that, you would know far more than I, I have only the histories to guide me. In those it seems the good men most often are dead in short order. They often lie unburied, and rot outside the palace walls. To judge by the pages, one might consider that the conservative ideal, I would not be so hasty, as times change, and more insidious methods are employed.
I might argue, were I so inclined, that the dignatas associated with the path of honors, would depend not so much on the honors themselves but rather on the influence of truth in their acquisition, a point not lost upon Caesar as he hesitated at the Rubicon. In the end, it might be said that he chose himself over the welfare of the state, and the Republic ended. Is it not sad when such men no longer respect the institutions which brought them into such a position in the first place? of what worth is a path of honors in such a case? Empty titles, one might imagine. A humble man, such as myself, might be glad not to have such a treasure to toss away. Not to repeat myself, as Haughty Anthony did--but our paths did diverge.
Caesar was ambitious, so they said, and they were all honorable men.
One comes to the nature of success, in some sense I suppose, that depends on one's own nature, that is to say, are we tied to the trappings of life or to life itself.
We must look through the prism of ourselves, the fiction that is "me"--a fractured entity that peers through the veil at the other actors on the stage--and like Augustus we ask if we have played our part well, and the answer lies in the part we choose to play. We want to know if we had a role in the outcome of the Game, whether someone might remember our name. Time out of mind, most are content to melt back in the river, some want to leave a scar, some let the matter be deferred, and in due course some are more revered than others, having in some way changed the water of the river. Success might be more than what we first surmised when we began our enquiry, in some ways easier than we thought, and in others impossible. We create a ripple; at least the fiction believes he did, and who's to say, perhaps he really was for a time, tipping his hat to the passersby.
Ethical Man
Ah, Mr Rove--I have put you off for several days--perusing your accusations, your depravities, your failure.
What a mess! Talking some shit to make it all shiny? Won't wash, nope--still a mess. I'd apologize; thanks to you, America is tottering on the brink and may fall into the tank with hungry sharks. Seems kinda idiotic to me, seeing you dance from from the desk of one mad dog to another spewing blame on everyone but yourself. Machiavelli would have laughed at you, then cut your throat--Dumb fuck, you can't go half-way to Hell and then turn back again. The Armies of the Night don't sleep, they just keep gnawing away on you.
You call that crap an Idealogy? Just wondering. Stolen elections, blackmail, libel, torture, bribery, coercion, fraud?--and that makes you rich, an American success story? Is it like success when you get up every morning making the rounds of the shit slingers defending yourself till you fall over dead? I reckon that's the price you pay for only going half way, had you finished the trip your enemies would disappear wouldn't they? As it is, you can't even frame them anymore.
I don't suppose there is a right & wrong, all that matters is where you wind up.
I wonder though just where you'll be in the Roll of Great Americans, somewhat down the list of ones who didn't quite measure up I'd surmise, somewhat north of John Wilkes Booth, but a bit south of Boss Tweed.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
First Part Of An Open Letter to Karl Rove:
preface to the Lie itself:
We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.
Manifesto of Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984928625323721.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123862834153780427.html#mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."--Karl Rove
One wonders which of those positions is closer to the view held by Jesus? It's rather amazing the ignorance which can be uncovered by a policy of lies, fear & hate. One wants it all to make sense, but the schemes force the data to be manipulated, and the money changers gossip on the temple steps--a tale a congresswoman should read as she frets about the fate of the almighty dollar, and its brief waltz upon the stage.
the larger Ideals are lost on these petty little men, ambition reduced to the angles in the next deal, firewalls, blind alleys, and connections, same as it was in Ur, it may be imagined, as thus the city grew. Upon this cusp, the forces drawing to a point, it is easy enough to deplore their selfish schemes. It could be recalled, should one wish to, Paul, how much of his time was spent in keeping them from falling away, oh, into one idolatry or another--children as we are, despite our pretensions, happy with our toys, our absent pleasures. Pleasantly unaware that bullies do not mature, they simply age. And Paul? the Wisdom he has acquired, he mostly keeps to himself, as like Simon Magus he is bent on acquiring more, though nothing, as we should have learned by now, will buy us one second more. A worrisome bit of news that, all in all. Spun in Gossamer these new little Napoleons, unwrapped;
nothing is to be found at all. Old Will, finding smoke and fading voices in the sound & fury, as he waits through the next commercial with his Ovaltine, product placement doncha know, none of us are immune, nor particularly healthy all in all. The words all run together, the elegies, the prophecies, the wills and the contracts.
The sermons all get a bit stale, at the point where one can stare through them at the lies and the hypocrisy. One notes that charismatic is costume jewelry and blinking lights. Criticism nothing more than a bath in a bloated vocabulary: "Daylight obscured in the fog of our exhalation". The testaments pile up in the sunlit dusty room, arcane, obscure--paranoid, the currents drifting in history ignored in favor of green slimes crawling on the insides of the mind, the rot produced by (insert fav adjective here) society; just another day at the beach, watching each other carefully for signs of imperfection, the undertow of communication in the isolation. Gets to the point that there should have been a spark in all the connections, something in the way the car was parked, or a wrinkle out of place in the rumpled blankets on the bed, nothing shakes loose though, nothing occurs; maybe it was just a failure in the current observation, might be good to turn Hope over and kiss her ass, or wait for a messiah to start another crusade with poppies growing over the killing fields. What then when it stares directly into the eyes? The last wall of illusion crumbling away?
Another bedlam of words, another dusty testament, fraught with error, something to be tidied up, edited and collated, and placed carefully atop the pile, storage for another bit of poison, an act of muttering. Nothing more--even the loud voices are muted in the din; those that sing of greater things beyond the rim shouted down, and beaten with sticks. Something to answer the need, the throb and rhythms of another pestilence, a palanquin from which coins may be thrown into the streets to subdue the ennui, some fair tower from which to mock the dying city, and the fools marching in tidy rows against an onrushing tide of fire, umbrellas folded beneath their arms.
These learned fellows expect recompense, for that which survival demands, failing that they steal...
In the wake of faux tea party, the principles of Mr. Goebbels applied directly to the body politic, the Lie repeated often enough, it becomes increasingly difficult to untangle the truth from the web; and few in the weariness have the energy to try.
Tomorrow it all begins anew. The sturdy peasantry whipped into new frenzies of fear by the oligarchs, the promise of the old republic kindled in their hearts, the myth of "what was" scribed upon the tablets-- the voice of opposition seems plaintive, the whine of a chained dog, that which was the Law in another time, now, a favored toady, lost somewhere in the endless words its teeth pulled. Slowly the lie pulls on the populace, the honey in its tone as sweet as the devil's own words, insidious is transformed into spontaneous, hatred becomes love--the old song sung from the temple steps, the promises dipped in a sweet wine; words woven to suit the moment. The chained dog whimpers, sniffs the stale air; content with despair, the occasional bone tossed from the banquet table.
Come now! Should we not believe these promises? The nightmare from which we have recently emerged prove their worth. Slander, innuendo, torture, the bodies stacked in the city squares, the Lady clothed in oil and tossed into the sewer.
The question hanging in the air: "Are you revenged as yet?"--the years that slip into decades, the blood carried in buckets by the children at the behest of pudgy little men issuing directives to conceal the actual aims of their schemes. The false prophets permit hate, and promise power--they know that Adam is always innocent and full of desire. The prophet that counseled love as a harder road and that the meek shall inherit the world is put on a war horse and sent to slaughter all those who will not obey. "We are a Christian Nation!" they tell you, and the boys come home in caskets swelling the coffers of the rich--in truth they war upon the wretched and the poor, and preach to you the spreading of the truth, when behind the facade there is only the lie.
Time stands still in the new gospel, we do not walk from place to place, we do not climb the hill. It is always yesterday when we were better than we are; new words are uncrated to explain that what happened didn't really; or that the founders meant to say what they didn't really, and upon that we should all agree or be cast into the outer darkness. The minions of the dark lord counsel conciliation, reconstruction, peace, choice, the progress of the soul--nay nay nay they tell you, we must beat our plowshares into swords and wage war against such infidels as though their blood will expiate our sins. Happy we are in the Lord, yet who profits from our faith? Who is it, in fine clothes, who preaches the doctrine of the righteousness of the rich: has it not always been the priests who take the finest cuts of meat from the altar? Has the king not always paid handsomely for their smooth words?
It is not God who is the disease, but his servants, and they twist the words to serve their own pursuits. God becomes their lackey, and they sell him to the king. Uriah is put in the forefront of the battle, David puts on sackcloth and bows, and Bathsheba's son inherits the throne; with God's blessing.
You have only to open the book to look upon the future of their lies:
15 For behold, I will make you small among the nations,
despised among mankind.
16 The horror you inspire has deceived you,
and the pride of your heart,
you who live in the clefts of the rock,
who hold the height of the hill.
Though you make your nest as high as the eagle’s,
I will bring you down from there,
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 49
****
We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.
Manifesto of Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984928625323721.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123862834153780427.html#mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."--Karl Rove
One wonders which of those positions is closer to the view held by Jesus? It's rather amazing the ignorance which can be uncovered by a policy of lies, fear & hate. One wants it all to make sense, but the schemes force the data to be manipulated, and the money changers gossip on the temple steps--a tale a congresswoman should read as she frets about the fate of the almighty dollar, and its brief waltz upon the stage.
the larger Ideals are lost on these petty little men, ambition reduced to the angles in the next deal, firewalls, blind alleys, and connections, same as it was in Ur, it may be imagined, as thus the city grew. Upon this cusp, the forces drawing to a point, it is easy enough to deplore their selfish schemes. It could be recalled, should one wish to, Paul, how much of his time was spent in keeping them from falling away, oh, into one idolatry or another--children as we are, despite our pretensions, happy with our toys, our absent pleasures. Pleasantly unaware that bullies do not mature, they simply age. And Paul? the Wisdom he has acquired, he mostly keeps to himself, as like Simon Magus he is bent on acquiring more, though nothing, as we should have learned by now, will buy us one second more. A worrisome bit of news that, all in all. Spun in Gossamer these new little Napoleons, unwrapped;
nothing is to be found at all. Old Will, finding smoke and fading voices in the sound & fury, as he waits through the next commercial with his Ovaltine, product placement doncha know, none of us are immune, nor particularly healthy all in all. The words all run together, the elegies, the prophecies, the wills and the contracts.
The sermons all get a bit stale, at the point where one can stare through them at the lies and the hypocrisy. One notes that charismatic is costume jewelry and blinking lights. Criticism nothing more than a bath in a bloated vocabulary: "Daylight obscured in the fog of our exhalation". The testaments pile up in the sunlit dusty room, arcane, obscure--paranoid, the currents drifting in history ignored in favor of green slimes crawling on the insides of the mind, the rot produced by (insert fav adjective here) society; just another day at the beach, watching each other carefully for signs of imperfection, the undertow of communication in the isolation. Gets to the point that there should have been a spark in all the connections, something in the way the car was parked, or a wrinkle out of place in the rumpled blankets on the bed, nothing shakes loose though, nothing occurs; maybe it was just a failure in the current observation, might be good to turn Hope over and kiss her ass, or wait for a messiah to start another crusade with poppies growing over the killing fields. What then when it stares directly into the eyes? The last wall of illusion crumbling away?
Another bedlam of words, another dusty testament, fraught with error, something to be tidied up, edited and collated, and placed carefully atop the pile, storage for another bit of poison, an act of muttering. Nothing more--even the loud voices are muted in the din; those that sing of greater things beyond the rim shouted down, and beaten with sticks. Something to answer the need, the throb and rhythms of another pestilence, a palanquin from which coins may be thrown into the streets to subdue the ennui, some fair tower from which to mock the dying city, and the fools marching in tidy rows against an onrushing tide of fire, umbrellas folded beneath their arms.
These learned fellows expect recompense, for that which survival demands, failing that they steal...
In the wake of faux tea party, the principles of Mr. Goebbels applied directly to the body politic, the Lie repeated often enough, it becomes increasingly difficult to untangle the truth from the web; and few in the weariness have the energy to try.
Tomorrow it all begins anew. The sturdy peasantry whipped into new frenzies of fear by the oligarchs, the promise of the old republic kindled in their hearts, the myth of "what was" scribed upon the tablets-- the voice of opposition seems plaintive, the whine of a chained dog, that which was the Law in another time, now, a favored toady, lost somewhere in the endless words its teeth pulled. Slowly the lie pulls on the populace, the honey in its tone as sweet as the devil's own words, insidious is transformed into spontaneous, hatred becomes love--the old song sung from the temple steps, the promises dipped in a sweet wine; words woven to suit the moment. The chained dog whimpers, sniffs the stale air; content with despair, the occasional bone tossed from the banquet table.
Come now! Should we not believe these promises? The nightmare from which we have recently emerged prove their worth. Slander, innuendo, torture, the bodies stacked in the city squares, the Lady clothed in oil and tossed into the sewer.
The question hanging in the air: "Are you revenged as yet?"--the years that slip into decades, the blood carried in buckets by the children at the behest of pudgy little men issuing directives to conceal the actual aims of their schemes. The false prophets permit hate, and promise power--they know that Adam is always innocent and full of desire. The prophet that counseled love as a harder road and that the meek shall inherit the world is put on a war horse and sent to slaughter all those who will not obey. "We are a Christian Nation!" they tell you, and the boys come home in caskets swelling the coffers of the rich--in truth they war upon the wretched and the poor, and preach to you the spreading of the truth, when behind the facade there is only the lie.
Time stands still in the new gospel, we do not walk from place to place, we do not climb the hill. It is always yesterday when we were better than we are; new words are uncrated to explain that what happened didn't really; or that the founders meant to say what they didn't really, and upon that we should all agree or be cast into the outer darkness. The minions of the dark lord counsel conciliation, reconstruction, peace, choice, the progress of the soul--nay nay nay they tell you, we must beat our plowshares into swords and wage war against such infidels as though their blood will expiate our sins. Happy we are in the Lord, yet who profits from our faith? Who is it, in fine clothes, who preaches the doctrine of the righteousness of the rich: has it not always been the priests who take the finest cuts of meat from the altar? Has the king not always paid handsomely for their smooth words?
It is not God who is the disease, but his servants, and they twist the words to serve their own pursuits. God becomes their lackey, and they sell him to the king. Uriah is put in the forefront of the battle, David puts on sackcloth and bows, and Bathsheba's son inherits the throne; with God's blessing.
You have only to open the book to look upon the future of their lies:
15 For behold, I will make you small among the nations,
despised among mankind.
16 The horror you inspire has deceived you,
and the pride of your heart,
you who live in the clefts of the rock,
who hold the height of the hill.
Though you make your nest as high as the eagle’s,
I will bring you down from there,
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 49
****
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