Amidst all the clamour from the softly spoken revelations of a simple servant, embedded within the allegations of hypocrisy, backbiting and the usual sexual dalliances came words of some weightiness from the butler of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. The Queen allegedly said to him some five years ago:
“Be careful Paul nobody has ever been closer to a member of my family than you were to Diana. There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge,”
I can certainly believe that the three-hour conversation had Her Majesty rooted to the spot as Burrell undoubtedly debriefed her on the many events in the household of her son and daughter-in-law. After all, he had not spoken to her since his royal footman days in the 1980s.
Who these dark powers are of course has whipped the conspiracy community into a collective version of Rodin’s Thinker. Have the darker recesses of Statism finally had the shining light of public scrutiny brought to bear upon them like a shaft of dawn light upon a vampire caught without his watch on?
Well, not if they are worth their subterfugial salt. As the old question goes, what is the most cunning animal in the world? The answer is the one that has not yet been discovered. So, unlike Dracula, we should not yet expect to hear fading shrieks into piles of sun-kissed dust along government corridors.
Considering the conversation came only months after the untimely death of Diana, one may suspect the Queen had her suspicions and was on a red alert. Indeed, the tabloid that ran Burrell’s revelations invited billionaire businessman Mohammed Al Fayed to reiterate his controversial claim that the State’s secret services had done his son and Diana to death. So, the debate rages and no doubt someone somewhere is battening down the hatches till this blows over.
Which brings me to my point about this whole muck-racking episode. We know the State gets up to no good behind our backs (yes, I saw Oliver Stone’s “JFK” as well). But what gets me is what they get up to right in front of our very eyeballs.
Last I time I looked, my government was taxing 40% of the nation’s gross domestic product, yet was employing only 20% of the workforce. Strike one for daylight robbery!
Last time I looked, my government was throwing people in prison for indulging in activities which harmed no one but did not conform to the modern mantras of political correctness. Strike two for kidnapping!
Last time I looked, my government was still unrepentant for marching people off to their deaths in a hundred and one battlefields over the sorry and bloody history of 20th century Statism. Strike three for murder and you’re out!
It seems we have a modicum of open issues to sort out before we consider the individuals that the more shadowy side of Statism picks off now and again. By way of analogy, I remember a conversation in which a fundamentalist Christian pressed another on the conspiracy theory that certain rock songs played backwards contained satanic incantations. The retort of the other was telling – “But they’re bad enough when you play them forwards!”
The lesson? Assess our priorities and face the Devil standing in front of us and not the one behind us. In due time we may find the one behind was just a reflection of the one in front!
November 13, 2002
