Sadly, too many of the world’s people today are struggling. Far too many are in war zones due to conflicts their country is involved in, or created by their own leaders against them. No one should have to live with that, or die because of it, especially private citizens.
For others around the globe, thankfully, mortal danger isn’t a daily crisis, but life is still difficult. Especially now, many people would be improved and most would be more than satisfied to live, even simply, in a world where everyone could be safe and comfortable. Great wealth won’t come, but most people know that and are okay with it. Simplicity would be enough if everyone was simply able to live, work and worship in the knowledge that the world was, and would stay, safe for all people and every family, every day.
In such a world, we could all be free and able to achieve on a grand scale. Such a world wouldn’t prevent those who need it from accumulating great wealth. It would, ironically, make their needs easier to fill. Sadly, though, most of those who need great wealth can never get their needs filled; they’re compelled to keep accumulating more.
Most of us want for others what we want for ourselves. We don’t want aggression or war and carnage. That includes those who are presented to others as hostile, which is just a politically necessary method of manipulation and a manufactured animosity. Governments create the climate they need to pursue power by agitating their citizens through misinformation, propaganda and contrived controversies.
It is the imperialists, the fascists, the avaricious, vested, and aggressive who pursue not just more of the whole share, but the lion’s share of everything. However, we’ve learned even the lion’s share doesn’t satiate avarice. Historically, kings who had everything and everyone in their command couldn’t be satiated. Once they controlled all the wealth in their kingdom, they desired to command the viability, hope, and the very life and death of their people. Then, they battled to gain that in other kingdoms.
We can witness that behavior even today, around the globe and right here in America. There is extensive research – deep and fascinating – which supports that power and great wealth are, literally, addictive, that the craving is an entity all its own and is insatiable.
Long proven is the fact that the same hormones are produced in our brain whether we are addicted or in love ... pretty strong stuff. It will turn people away from everyone they love and know, and everything they are and believe.
Today, Stephen Miller comes to mind because he is a unique example. As White House senior advisor for policy, he is a very public figure and currently in the news on this very topic.
He has come under fire from much of the Jewish community, his childhood rabbi and his own family for upholding Trump’s treatment of border families. They’ve publicly verbalized their discontent with his abandonment of what he’s been taught as part of what they value in life and their religious values as well. An uncle, stating he did so at the encouragement of several family members, spoke out against Miller in an editorial in which he wrote his nephew had become “the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country,” and prominent Jewish journalist and member of a national Jewish news group, Jane Eisner, stated, “Jews … adhere to a basic respect for human dignity. I don’t see how Stephen Miller is part of this community.”
He remains implacable. We should wonder what anyone can be gaining that validates enduring such a shunning; family is, after all, what matters most to most of us. We all know, however, just from being alive, that addiction will trump family until it is overcome through intervention; that’s difficult. Sadly, no Narcan shot will stop it.
I think America is overwhelmed right now. We’ve never before seen the greed, the control, the power-lust on steroids that we witness, and are being subjugated because of, in our nation today. We’re in a bit of shock but, hopefully, we’ll come out of it as our eyes are opened by continued exposure.
When we look at the blind ambition, hubris, obstinance, bravado and lack of compassion to the point of self-humiliation that is overtaking much of our representation, when we see them in overt dismissal of the laws that govern our nation and them, there’s little left to say. The seduction is complete. The addiction is in control.
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