I don't suppose anybody thinks that the world is really ruled by its pretended rulers – the likes of G.W. Bush and T. Blair, etc.
And it is certainly not ruled by the courtiers who have the ear of such worthies, people like Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etc.
The Lord Jesus made reference to someone called the Prince of this World, presumably the chap in charge, whose rule the Christ was sent to invalidate. He was crucified for his pains. The world is still trying to sort that out. Did Lucifer win, or did Christ?
Lucifer is the eternal Darth Vader, bringer of Death. Christ is the eternal Man, bringer of Life. It seems everyone has to choose between them for himself.
Where war, is there is Lucifer. War is his sacrament. Wars chew up men and materiel gloriously. It is superb, ecstatic destruction. A true warrior, a Kshatriya, a member of the caste born to defend the realm, attempts always to prevent war, but when a necessary defensive war presents itself, he leads. A false warrior aims always to foster war, but he prefers to wage it from behind the lines so as not to put himself in the way of death. Lucifer is nothing if not the patron saint of egoists/egotists.
That's how the present thing looks to me from the religious perspective.
From the practical, political point of view; this is my present reading:
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are lost, but our pretend ruler can't admit it or even plan for stopping the wars and pulling out. After all, one's image is at stake, and that is all-important. It must be protected at any cost. Bush is said to see himself as a War President and therefore, ipso facto, a "Great President." I am sure that, to bring these wars to a successful, that is, a triumphant conclusion, Bush would gladly hurl an atom bomb or two, but Higher Levels are currently nixing that.
(You ask me who are these Higher Levels? I wish I knew. But I do know they are the same clever folk who saw to the almost miraculous accomplishment that we got to choose between two precommitted-to-war Skull-and-Bonesmen in 2004.)
At some point Higher Levels (you have no doubt realized that I see them as in service to Lucifer, or Mammon, or War – all more or less synonymous terms) may decide we have had enough of George II and pull the plug on him. But it could also be that they view him as performing right well. He is speeding this once-fair nation along the path to destruction, and that may be, as I have suggested before, what they want.
A nation anywhere near as free, brave, independent and solidly wealthy, that is, unindebted, as we were in 1912 is anathema to them. In 1913 they engineered the takeover of our economic system via the takeover of the money system, and that readied us for the supreme folly of entry into the First European War, which otherwise we might very well have stayed out of. The destruction of that hated icon "America" has proceeded apace ever since.
I have, however, made a firm, irrevocable decision to sign on with the incorrigible optimists. I think Higher Levels, those anonymous servants of Lucifer, or Darth Vader if you like, whose legions of flunkies have brought us Iraq and Afghanistan and would obligingly bring us more of the same if we will put up with it, are going to go down in flames. They can't win in the long run. But they can (and have) destroyed many a nation and even many an empire in their previous incarnations.
When all these posturers are gone, and all their days and ways, what is left is the people, and the people, as all true artists and poets have always known and said, are mostly jolly good fellows willing to work and help out. This is true, that is, as long as God and God's laws are honored and nobody gets too big an idea of his power and might and starts drumming up an army to attack his neighbor and steal his goods.
June 25, 2005
