All Aboard For Circles Five And Six! 'Board!

photo: http://tobybelt.blogspot.com/index.html

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita...

Dante Alighieri

La Divina Commedia  
(I use the illustration above, since I am heartily tired of Dore woodcuts and mediaeval prints that give the impression the Commedia is an ancient artefact. The lights could be fires; this could be a denizen of the nether regions; this could be Virgil; it could be Phlegyas...)

The fifth circle of hell, according to La Commedia, is the venue of the Wrathful. The sixth is that of the Heretical. Our journey has just begun. In Salon there is an article: Is there life after Bush?

Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/02/20/after_bush/
and we find an interesting observation:

Paradoxically, the more you hate Bush, the greater the danger you will become as hollow as he is. (This may help explain the Carville-Matalin phenomenon: Perhaps people who are utterly political, even when they hold diametrically opposed views, in some hidden way are exactly the same.)

Perhaps...perhaps. And what is that way by which they are precisely the same? Perhaps it is their unbridled lust for power. What do you make of the present where Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton both assert they have to raise 100 million each in order to run in 2008? Power, wealth, riches...and... nothing... else... We often make the mistake at this point of foolishly trying to finish a thought, as if the thought were a debutante who had been accepted at Miss Simpson's Finishing School For Young Ladies, and needed to catch the train to Connecticut post-haste. No such need exists. Just repeat it: $100 million each. Then do whatever you feel like, short of tacking on some nonce conclusion. Dance a jig, shake your head, dig potatoes, whatever.

Let the obscenity stand alone. Let the monstrosity that is our political system be seen for what it is. It is 100 mill for Sen. Obama, 100 mill for Sen. Clinton, and at least 125 mill for the GOP guy. (I am assuming the Republicans won't be running a woman.) Let it stand alone in all its gilded glory, in all its pecuniary shame. What is the future after Bush? (1) Big Bucks, (2) Big Wars, (3) Big Religion, in the sense of Dominionist strvings for power, and that absolute, for absolute faith solves the bond of corruption and absolute power.

Herein is the millenium. The Religions devoted to Power are the same everywhere, being a crude Wahhabiism whose great appeal is its fundamental simplicity, summed up in the injunction to obey the leaders, be they Robertson, Bin Laden, Falwell, Haggee, or the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, or the new Atheists. There is a book where I found:  

Be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and ye all are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Matthew 23: 8 - 12

All those peoples who will aggrandize themselves and arrogate to their own persons the authority of God and of Power will feed upon our bones, for they are the Abomination of Desolation.

To be humble is to deny the ego. It is to understand that one is not a center of the universe, one is not really a character in a story or a screenplay, and there is no audience who watches and applauds one's every move and laughs at every joke.
There is life. There is family structure. There is social structure. There is the structure of Faith, and there is the structure of Reason. There is the structure of Music...and so on. There is no ego.

Those who have an Ego, find it to be a potent idol whose hungry maw they must stoke with the souls of their followers. This is why Jesus said what He did, as recorded above. We shall fight the Christian Wiseguys just as we shall the Islamic Wiseguys. John McCain, the forerunner among Republicans, has already had a sit down with the Capo of one family, Don Jerry Falwell, for which he will be repaid LARGE.

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