(A Roman Déjà Vu? On a scale beyond imagination!*)
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him."
Cicero was exiled from Rome but not from his conscience. He continued to plead the cause of honest government. But the people he pleaded for were not concerned. His friends, the lawyers, the doctors, and the businessmen told him: "We do not meddle in politics. Rome is prosperous and at peace. We have our villas in Caprae, our racing vessels, our houses, our servants, our pretty mistresses, and our comfort and treasures. We implore you, Cicero, do not disturb us with your lamentations of disaster. Rome is on the march to the mighty society, for all Romans."
And this:
Cicero's bitter reply was "Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions and laughed delightedly at his licentiousness and thought it very superior of him to acquire vast amounts of gold illicitly. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man."
And thus we carry on:
▪ denying that the pursuit of power and gain is (and has always been) a deadly “game” of deception, conspiracy, corruption, and blackmail;
▪ hailing / trusting each new supposed savior of freedom, values, principles, transparency, greatness, hope, etc., etc.;
▪ marginalizing / ignoring / targeting / attacking witnesses and whistle-blowers who try to reveal disturbing truths about systems, governments, corporations, crimes, officials, and treasons beyond imagination;
▪ believing that a profit- / agenda-driven, corporate-controlled mainstream media (MSM) reports truth and would never deceive with fake news or suppressed stories.
Perhaps we need to reread Justice Caldwell's entire 1965 speech. Here is a sample:
The simple majority, and I emphasize the word simple, composed of decent, ordinary businessmen, doctors, farmers, mechanics, preachers, and just people, does not realize how it has been duped. The honest fellow has always been an easy mark - the easiest to rob.
The simple majority is slow to anger. They are not given to sit-downs and sit-ins, to placards and to violence and to hate. But neither is that majority watchful of its own rights and the freedoms it inherited from brave ancestors. The majority is slow to express its opinion - slow to write the Congressmen or the President or the Supreme Court or the newspaper; it is, because of its supinely acquiescent attitude, slow to stand up and be counted.
If you, per chance, are among those who would rather be governed by constitutional law than by the whims of men unfettered by restraint, I suggest that the war will have to be fought on a wide front. You can't win with brush fights in special area. You must join and coordinate your efforts with the professions, with business and industry, with agriculture and all facets of American society concerned with the preservation of personal liberty. The centralizers can lick the isolated groups, but they could not defeat a sustained drive by the consolidated believers in constitutional government. (Source at footnote 1)
Perhaps our greatest, current duty is to inform ourselves and to unitedly demand investigation and prosecution of all those involved in the mounting evidence of vast treason—decades of treason being suppressed through blackmail, fear, suppression, lies, and murder.
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* Read the last several posts, particularly Outside the Box? to explore how bad things are.
1. Misattributed(?) to Cicero: see “Misattributed” section, quote #3 at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cicero . And see the apparent source of the quote at Cicero's Prognosis -- by -- THE HONORABLE MILLARD F. CALDWELL, Justice - Supreme Court, Tallahassee, Florida; Presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc., October 7-9, 1965, Columbus, Ohio Reprinted March, 1996 at http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/cicero.htm1. 2. Marcus Tullius Cicero (3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC), at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." (OT:Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)
"Dwell in the past and you'll lose an eye. Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes." (Old Russian Proverb)
(Subject to change over time: experience/learning/ evidence)
▪ Life is a three-act drama with pre-mortal, mortal, and post-mortal stages. ▪ The second act boils us down toward test one:[1] the test of power. ▪ Abusers of power lose it in Act Three when justice and equity take the bench. ▪ Tipping points happen—over time and a fulcrum. ▪ Motes and beams are everywhere.[2] ▪ Folly is a shadow of every ism, including capitalism. ▪ Money talks louder than morals—all the way to the tipping point. ▪ The direction you are facing, matters.[3] ▪ Extremism in the defense of liberty is extremism.[4] ▪ When the blind follow the blind, it is time to blow the whistle.[5] ▪ Opposites attract the same lobbyists. ▪ Solon of Athens espoused, “Nothing in excess;” laissez-faire capitalists pursue “Everything in excess” (except the costs of gross profit). ▪ “Simplify” displayed on the counter-top of a new 21,000 sq. ft. home does not compute. ▪ High fructose corn syrup is not the staff of life. Unfortunately, sweets can twirl your teeth. ▪ Revolving doors between government and business do not admit sufficient fresh air. ▪ The common good doesn’t seem to be very common. ▪ N. American football is a testosterone pageant in tights.[6] ▪ Exploitation is a delusion of grandeur. Stewardship is a grander conclusion. ▪ The excesses of major religions occur when members fail their espoused values. The excesses of ideological tyrannies occur when tyrants act upon theirs.[7] ▪ Praise is best deflected toward God. ▪ Too many who say, “I do, I do,” don’t. ▪ Electronic media has become the Roman Coliseum of the 21st Century. ▪ The First Law of Attraction[8]: the Devil is more obsessed with persons striving to do and be good than with persons who are not. ▪ The trans-rational[9] is beyond most of us, so if it’s “turtles all the way down,”[10] maybe it is “revelation all the way up.”[11] ▪ Egoism accounts for 80% of human problems. The remaining 27% lies with rhetoric and propaganda.
In the near words of Groucho Marx, “These are my [views]; if you don’t like them, I have others.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [1]New Testament: Matt. 4:2-4—The first temptation presented to Jesus, to misuse His power to satisfy self-interest/-will/-gratification. [2] Ref: Matthew 7:3-5 [3]Old Testament: Jer. 32:33 [4] A Barry Goldwater phrase “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” A phrase applauded by some of the GOP. (Suggestion: reverse liberty and justice to see if it sounds more palatable, or is the latter half merely castor-oil for the first?) [5] Ref: Matthew 15:14 [6] Observation of a friend, MS, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. [7] Ref: Ravi Zacharias [8] Ref: Adam & Eve; Biblical Job; Jesus in the Wilderness; CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, etc., etc., etc. [9] Ref: Flatland by Edwin Abbott. In summary, circles, squares and other flatlanders can’t get a fix on spheres and cubes; can’t quite reason themselves into the properties of those in 3-D space. Enlightenment of things beyond (i.e., trans-) Flatland takes condescension from those above & beyond. Any parallels here in 3-D? [10]Google this phrase if you have not heard of it. It’s just one way of saying we don’t have a rational explanation for some things. [11] Conditional on the will of the Revelator and the willingness/ ability of the revelatee to receive.
About SMS
A few 6-to-7-Word Memoirs: ▪ Hope for the world comes and goes. ▪ Loves to read more than eat. ▪ Loves to think more than eat. ▪ Eats too much while reading and thinking. ▪ Always running out of time and daylight. ▪ Finds extremes too far from the center. ▪ Troubled by the world’s failure of memory. ▪ Has a tendency to counsel God. ▪ Learned gratitude before it was too late. ▪ Apparently hasn't learned enough gratitude yet.
3) People are free to post divergent or convergent views on their own blogs; 4) Learning from comments here would be preferable, but— (see 1, 2, & 3).
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Blog Title Credit
*"This is like déjà vu all over again" is perhaps the most perfect tautology possible and is credited to Yogi Berra.
