"Nine Rings Were Gifted To The Race Of Men Who Above All Things Desire Power."
The list is long, of those men who could not resist the temptation of power. It is worse than sex, worse than the desire for wealth. It is worse than greed, worse than envy. It is closely related to blood lust, that fortunately rare but terrible moment when hatreds unleash an uncontrollable fury.
Tolkein wrote to his son: “The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, Churchill. All had altruistic ideals, accomplished much, but yielded to the ring of power, which rules men with a mysterious temptation, and few have ever resisted it. In their wake of history lie their heroic soldiers, countless innocent civilians, and a depth of consequences that were unforeseen and unintended.
“No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly. I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe and unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.”
Yes, there have been some very rare men to resist, who wielded power in an unselfish desire to defend their people and their land, only to yield it back, when the only purpose for which power exists was accomplished. The list is short, and of course they had their own personal sins. There are our own Washington, Finland’s Mannerheim, Rome’s Cincinnatus and Marcus Aurelius.
Donald Trump’s reckless musings and inconsistencies, we can see now, were not clever ploys to keep potential and real adversaries off balance. That was our own wishful thinking. They have been the voiced thoughts of a man who was thinking out loud. Annexing Canada and Greenland? Crazy.
Yes, he has endured preposterous sufferings, assassination attempts, lawfare and endless injustices by evil forces, but forces that he now conjoins himself to. The military-industrial complex, the Deep State, has had its way, and even as yet Trump apparently does not comprehend how they have check-mated him into doing their will.
It reminds me a little of Benedict Arnold. He was the most brilliant general on either side in the War for Independence. He was twice wounded, gave of his own personal fortune to sustain his men, suffered many indignities and slights from petty politicians and jealous officers. Washington was never jealous of Arnold’s talents, and always took his side in defending him against baseless calumnies. If Arnold had been killed at Saratoga, and he seems to have wished, we would have had states, cities, counties and stamps named in his honor.
But he succumbed to the endless insults and turned into the most hated man in American History.
But do not blame one man, for we all share in it. The Eye of God is omniscient, and His judgment comes to all decaying civilizations. Did we think that He does not see the arrogance of “American Exceptionalism”? That nearly all politicians who take an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution violate it with welfare programs and undeclared wars, and are supported by the citizens?
Does He not see the contempt with which we treat His greatest of all gifts, children? Even those who fancy themselves their defenders can only see the more visibly mangled victims, but not the unseen countless, immortal souls thrown away by IVF, IUDs, morning-after or low-estrogen pills.
Then we have the foundation of what brought us to the slavish devotion to the Israeli state, from which the wrong kind of sympathy for the Nazi Holocaust has brought us. Consider the incredible situation that the last 80 years created, where both the American Left and the Right joined forces.
There is the Left, in order to pander to the urban Jewish vote, whose socialist proclivities matched their own foolish idealism, an obviously ridiculous belief that somehow increasing government power would improve the plight of the poor and oppressed. It locked in an automatic constituency of both real and contrived victims who would share the proven useless fruits of confiscation and redistribution of the hard-earned wealth of the middle class.
But just as subservient to the Israeli state has been the Christian Right, whose novel interpretation of the Book of Revelation polluted the minds of Hal Lindsey, Jesse Helms, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Incredible, is it not? That Ted Kennedy and Jesse Helms, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, could have joined forces in this foreign policy snafu, a permanent policy that has given us mindless, endless war? And even the Christian Right has been blinded to the Israeli state’s vicious oppression of Christian Palestinians.
The irrational violence seen in the American Left had it figured out, and had seen through the Deep State’s cover-up of the fascist Israeli state’s own crimes against humanity. Did we think that Jews were immune to the Ring of Power?
On the Right, only Ron Paul and the generally obscure evangelical preacher Chuck Baldwin had the foresight to see it much earlier. And even now Tucker Carlson, Candice Owen and others are being demonized for daring to voice the truth. This author will gladly join them.
And, most everyone knows that more rational Jews have decried and long denied wanting anything to do with Zionism, that expansionist and brutal desire to grow the boundaries of Israel to the Euphrates River.
And no one seems to be able to explain what the United States of America gains from this alliance. In the Cold War, our support for Israel might have been excused as an anti-Soviet platform, but that thin explanation has long since expired.
Americans must now vote on their knees, and beg Almighty God forgiveness for our own personal sins. He never refuses a sincere heart, and has a proven track record.
The prophet Job, and City of Nineveh would know.
Bob Bird
The Bird's Eye View
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