Government, Religion, etc.

It does not matter what government you are ruled by, sooner or later it becomes corrupted by those within and without. An ideal is a wonderful thing but put into the hands of humans it becomes warped, twisted and abused. This will happen, time and time again, until mankind either grows up or destroys itself. It doesn't matter what your ideals are. It doesn't matter how wonderful the plan is for your new government structure. When it goes from paper to just being discussed to make it a real thing it immediately starts to be corrupts. The "Mars" (Red, Green, Blue) series by Kim Stanley Robinson makes a good point of this in the third book, "Blue Mars". They come up with a concept of a government that, to me, sounds pretty darned good. Then the politics, the bickering, the slow corruption of the ideals begins as the different factions on Mars (and the U.N. reps, too) argue over the details of every aspect of the government. In the end not everyone is happy but you can't expect everyone to EVER be happy until we all get to that place in our minds where we see the truths of life and discard all these crazy, distorted, disastrous notions we have. I'll let you decide what those "notions" are since you undoubtedly have different notions than I do - at least about some things.

The old axiom "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." is very true. I guess it's fortunate that no one in this world has absolute power...yet. But, if you can believe the rumors (and I guess I'm paranoid enough to believe them) there is a secret society of very wealthy people out there. Not everyone that's wealthy or powerful or influential belongs to this group. This group's ultimate goal is to control the world - "by hook or by crook." Not all of them care if anyone knows who they are. Some of them WANT anonymity. They're a smaller target if people don't know about them. Some of them have control over important public figures - through bribery, coercion, extortion, blackmail, you name it, but other public figures go along for the ride so they can reap the rewards, too.  Puppets, I call 'em. How much power, who they are, where they are, how close to their goal they are...I don't know. I'm not sure I even WANT to know.

Naturally, this is not limited to goverment. This problem of "corruption in the hands of mankind" extends to anything that can be influenced, pressured or otherwise made or forced to change. Religious institutions are a prime candidate. Ask those "people of the cloth" and they can tell you of their personal experiences with the politics of their sect. One would think that religions would be above such a petty thing as politics until one remembers that there are people involved. If it were only God/Yahweh/Allah/the Creator/Jehovah/etc. and devoted, selfless angels and prophets running the show then one would have no doubt as to the cleanliness, the sanctity, the beauty, the altruism, and the RIGHTNESS of the church. But, sadly, that's not the way it works. I've observed the workings of different religions, talked to people involved, heard stories, read things, watched things on TV. Infanticide; rape; child molestation; seduction of parishioners; sex between same and different sex members of sects that require chastity; genocide; Holy Wars/Jihads motivated not by their god but by other, more human, reasons; suicide/murder of an entire group (usually cults like the one headed by Jim Jones); discrimination; manipulation of the masses, the government, the educational system, and much more. I've watched supposedly devoted members of a religion engage in all sorts of things that are against the tenets of their religion. Why? They believe in their religion but they're not ready to commit to it; they don't think that some of the rules apply to them; hypocrisy. I see that all the time. Hypocrisy. What comes from the lips doesn't match what the body is doing. Forget what the brain is THINKING - just look at what they do that smacks of the basest forms of hypocrisy! Love thy neighbor and then go and sue them in court because they did some little thing you don't like.

Oh, wait, don't get me wrong. I'm as human as anyone else. I make mistakes and do things that go against my beliefs. I'm not really any better than many people. I'm just calling the shots as I see them and I can't exclude myself just because I'm the author. I do make a good, honest, effort to stay with my beliefs, to not betray them, nor do I force them on others. If someone believes something different than I do and they want my counsel I give it to them from the perspective of their religion. I ask them what their holy book says to do. I ask them to remember their god and pray to that deity. But I digress...

But, again, you can see this corruption at work in most institutions whether it's an educational institution, a union, a company or a village it's there to be witnessed if you just look.

In this age of dictators, tyrants and hard-liners we in America are very lucky to have a government "for the people, of the people and by the people". Sadly, some of that freedom is not real. Things like "eminent domain" and "the electoral college" continue to play a factor in our lives although, for most people, these two things don't seem very important. Other things, like taxes and loans however, weigh heavily on everyones' minds. True, there's no debtor's jail here, but you can lose everything you own if you're not careful. The "necessary" institution of the IRS will not disappear unless our government is revamped. The bloated monster that is the U.S. government has to continue to feed itself and what better way is there to do that than to tax everyone and take about 1/3 of their income? And, of course, periodically they'll give themselves another payraise without consulting the public. But the American public doesn't seem to mind shouldering the weight of our piggy government. Not yet. Maybe one day we'll get tired of having a bureaucracy that's so massive it needs to act like a vampire or a feudal lord and take huges sums away from us to support the same type of structure that repeatedly causes Korporate Amerika to downsize, rightsize, or whatever other name those politically-correct idiots come up with. If our government were run like a business I suspect it would be a good deal smaller. And so would our taxes. But then, like the construction workers who labor, year after year, laying down roads made of inferior materials that need to be patched in a few months, and replaced the next year, because our government agencies accept the lowest bid instead of using companies that will use materials that will last for years or decades...but the...but then...What would all those  poor, dishonest, slobs do for a living? Interestingly, despite the use of computers and robotics, our workforce doesn't find itself in a huge job shortage situation. Nor, I suspect, would they if we started doing things sensibly, like using high quality materials in our roads. Or providing electricity by using alternative fuels that don't adversely impact the environment. Sorry, that means no nuclear (it's nu-klee-ar you idiots NOT nu-ku-lar!!!) power plants and no dams. When will it happen? I don't know. Maybe when our society is so close to destroying and overpopulating the planet that they see there is no choice, that they can't pass the buck on to the next generation any more. Oh, damn,  I'm digressing again.

It's only a government "of the people" insomuch as the people get involved. No involvement means your voice isn't heard. If you never send a letter, fax or email, never join a group that lobbies, never make a phone call or do anything else to contact your local, state and federal representatives in the government they'll never know what you want. Of course it doesn't always make a difference what you want. If they don't agree with you there's not a lot YOU can do. But if thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people voice their concerns to their reps THAT can make a difference. But it requires people to get off their lazy asses. And many people won't do that. Most Americans don't even vote! The minorities that always complain how bad they've got it constitute a minority of the votes! The majority of voters are older white people.  So everyone sits there and complains while their thumbs are up their butts because they're too lazy to do anything about it. And, truth be told, the laws in place to protect the minorities (some of whom, by sheer numbers in some areas, outnumber the "white majority" by a large number) and to stop discrimination and racism often only end up making the problems worse. It's too bad we can't all be blind so we'd stop worrying about skin color and other visual factors. But, then, we'd be prejudicial about the sound of one's voice, wouldn't we? People already judge how handsome or pretty an unknown caller is based on their voice. They judge the character of a person by how they shake your hand, what you say, how you say it, and many other factors we don't consciously think about as adults.

Much of what we have we take for granted not realizing that what is so normal for us is a privilege or a dream for people in other countries. Waiting in a long line at the grocery store to pay for all the food we've chosen is a far cry better than waiting in a longer line outside of a store in the hopes that there will be food left to buy and that you have enough money on you. We have relatively uncensored freedom of speech and the press but in other countries this same thing could get you imprisoned, tortured or murdered. There is a TV in almost every house, a car in almost every driveway, but in other countries these are luxuries for the rich and powerful. Our mail is delivered, countrywide, at a normal pace of up to a week from one end to the other, in other countries it can take a month or more to get your mail. When you order services in America you usually get them in a matter of days or weeks and they usually tell you exactly when you'll get them. In other countries you may have to wait weeks, months, even YEARS to get a basic service like a telephone line installed and you never know when it'll happen. Here there are no inter-racial, inter-country or inter-denominational WARS but in many other countries war is a fact of life. Here, no matter what socio-economic class you were born into you have the chance to advance yourself as high as you want but in other countries the class you were born in is the class you die in. Some countries require that you carry identification with you where ever you go and you have to display it to authorities to prevent being harassed or imprisoned. You don't have to worry about having to bribe police officers, customs officials, immigrations officials, judges or other people just to get them to leave you alone when you've done nothing wrong. You don't have to worry about secret government agencies breaking your door down and taking you away in the middle of the night just because you said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

It all comes back to human involvement. We can make this a great world...Or a terrible one. But it requires some growth, a lot of maturity, and a change in perspective. I hope it happens.