Wise as Serpents

There’s nothing sinful about having a good solid mental grasp of reality. This is how the rest of the world believes things work, and we need to be aware of where their heads are if we expect to help them trust their hearts instead. How many ways do we have to say it? Just because the world tends to work that way most of the time doesn’t mean God is pleased with it. What most people regard as reality is simply the world as run by Satan (by God’s permit), regardless whether they are aware of it in those terms. So long as they live by their logic and emotions, so long as they ignore their heart-mind and retain a purely intellectual awareness of things, they cannot connect to God’s truth.

God’s truth teaches my heart that I should not pretend to know who is going to win the coming elections here in the US. Since not a single candidate has manifested a heart-led awareness, there is no “favorite to win” in any election that comes to my awareness. Thus, the whole thing falls into that morally random space where it probably doesn’t matter who wins. God will certainly have His hand at work, but it’s all about the herding of those utterly unconscious of His will. Yes, I include in that mix the entire range of politically active “Christians” and their religious organizations. They have no clue, at least on the issue of politics. Given that there are so many of them pushing contrasting guesses, somebody will inevitably guess correctly. And because their favorite wins, they will imagine that they actually know what’s going on. I’m not in that crowd, and I’m not guessing, at least not with the fervor and commitment they hold for any particular candidate.

It is purely my intellectual speculation that favors the probability that Trump will come up with the prize. He won’t get what he and his supporters imagine he will get along with that office, but I tend to believe he’ll win. Now, I’m quite familiar with all the warnings from those who know a lot about the nuts-n-bolts of Republican politics, particularly the criminal shit behind the scenes. (Vulgarity sometimes is the best language for something morally vulgar.) What these informed commentators seem to ignore is one of the primary reasons I make no pretense of caring either way: Trump has his own criminal organization behind him. Have we forgotten how often he negotiated deals that necessarily involved the Mafia and similar folk? East Coasts politics and big money deals with real estate and buildings ain’t gonna happen without the various mob bosses playing along, and Trump has played them quite well. Who did the mob-boy Christie endorse?

So do you imagine these Mafia/Mob folks might want some of the payoff of a Trump presidency? Do you suppose they will sit quietly while the other criminal gang — establishment politicians — try to hijack Trump’s nomination? Never mind the popular will; I think all parties are quite willing to spitefully ignore that. But here’s one big difference: The mob is entirely unlikely to kill the host from which it feeds. The political establishment is more mindless, and has proven a complete lack of such measured depravity. In other words, I suggest that America will be better off with the limited plundering by the Mafia/Mob nexus than by allowing the “respectable” folks to keep stripping us of all the necessities of life. Trump spoke in the last debate about how we spend all this money around the world and get nothing back from it. We can probably afford to keep our country going if we simply stop wasting money outside our borders. So if Trump promises to reduce our profligate national waste on international adventurism, I am willing to believe he means it for the simple reason that it will require we bring all that national wealth output back home for the measured domestic plundering that will otherwise be impossible if we don’t change course.

In a purely academic sense, there is no effective difference between an official government and a de facto government by gang/mob. They both do the same things, using propaganda and threats of force to stay in power, taxing the normal human economic activity in various ways simply because they can. However, in human history the record is rather clear: Official governments with faux respectability always hurt the citizens far more than a government that makes no such pretense.

So what we have is really a case of shadow-government elite seeking ways to undercut old alliances. When there was enough plunder to go around, these alliances stood. The system of plunder has outgrown the source of human production, so there’s less to share. These people will start throwing each other under the bus soon. People who think they have real power, and want you to believe they have it, may be surprised when their armies suddenly change uniforms. What happens when the mainstream media can’t get work from the vast army of “little people” that keeps their operations going? Those pampered mouthpieces don’t know how to run the broadcasting operation themselves. What happens when the Pentagon can’t get beans and bullets because the deal-making CEOs can’t get workers to fulfill those supply contracts? What happens when truckers decide not to drive those trucks? There are too many ways the system can be twisted and big names left hanging for public mockery. Only a fool will stand on “principle” in these times.

The current system is unsustainable and it will break down, but there will always be empires and plunder. Those are the facts of our human existence, but also the deeper moral truth anyone with a heart-led awareness can see. What we can easily discern from the facts is that, going back as far as we can in the annals of history, whatever new system rises from the wreckage of the old is built of the same stuff. Systems aren’t radically replaced wholesale, but someone comes along with a better way of using what’s already there. I can’t say whether Trump can leverage things well enough to win, or whether it means with or without the GOP, or some portion of the organization. I think we all know that if Hillary Clinton wins, there will be a civil war of some sort, more serious breakage before the system changes. I believe we should expect more than anything else that some previous mythologies will be crushed. They’ll persist, but without any visible means of support and advocacy by folks in power.

Listen to your heart first, but don’t hesitate to use your intellect as God intended: Wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Be ready to exploit the situation for Our Savior’s glory.