What's the point of questions that seek neither answers nor solutions? Rhetorical questions like what if... you were founders who created founders?
Founders
You have all the answers.
That is, before a single question blooms within a single mind, you possess every answer to everything.
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Armed opposition? Crush the enemy with increasingly terrible arms. Terrorists? Exterminate zealots who dare breathe and salt their systems of belief that sow blind hatred. Threats unseen and horrors unimaginable? Annihilate unborn specters yet to come.
Immigrants? Stop them. Homeless encampments? Incinerate them. Addicts and their addictions? Judge them and condemn them.
As if simplistic generalizations of them and cavalier edicts of consequences are not only just and moral and necessary but also great!
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Which is to say, you are blessed with every answer to them.
As for:
Your armed and combative, your extremist, your alarming and violent number. Your converted, your dependent, your vulnerable member. Yours
deserve an incalculable margin for error. An
inexhaustible grace, accommodating care, and unconditional material support. Yours
are flawed and ignoble but only human.
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Because you have found an alternate reality of alternate exceptionalism, manifested from hell-broth, that answers everything:
glory.
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Glory is the halo and the shine and the paradise. At least, it could be. Or would be. Or dammit: should be. If not for spoilers who ruin everything.
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Suffice it to say... in the real world, 'glory' isn't granular. It doesn't wind the masses like a colossal clock. Or the rains. Or the galvanizing glitter of gold. You know,
it doesn't make the world go round. And nothing wrecks intangible immateriality like
real world reality.
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Of nations that rise up and decry your swords and crowns as false as idle pledges of probitas. Of humans who behold flimflams glitter like crocodile tears and declare: we plural people are not footstools of lords or masters! Of mortals who bear witness to self-determination denied for dominion, the cornerstone of paradise that is
neither a democracy nor our republic.
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What is glory... if it sacralizes what's indefensible... here, on Earth? If it shields an indwelt belief that you are more than they who are damned; an unapologetic faith in favoritism irrespective of fairness or decency; an imperious mission to subject every human life to unanswerable. absolute. inhuman. power. and its dictates?
Not after life and death, but now? As if this could be... no, would be... dammit, should be
heaven.
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Needless to say, before a single question arrives upon an expectant pause, you know every answer leads to one solution.
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Founders.
No, not them. Not figures cast aside by modernity, mere shadows. You. Main characters of a moment, for a moment, by a moment. A moment that is
a plot.
An invention. A creation. A fiction. Of what isn't true, for what isn't righteous, by what isn't just. Because being founders who create founders means unanswerable. absolute. power. isn't inhuman after all.
Epilogue
How you hiss and froth like hell-broth runneth!
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Any nation, any human, any people can be 'founders' and creators of 'founders'. Whether what's 'found' is an experiment. Or a narrative. Or a belief. Whether who's 'found' is real. Or fake.
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That is, when an emperor parades new clothes, he 'founds' a narrative. Of his indisputable superiority. For his unassailable favor. By his stature before mere mortals.
His loyalists testify so, too. Not because this is witnessed, but because testifying to what isn't true is flawed and ignoble but only human. Such that an emperor exercises unanswerable. absolute. power. not without fealty.
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Which is to say, to speak as if such allegiance is virtuous and courageous, never mind what is really happening, is to act as if the fairness and reasonableness of main characters and their plots could be... no, would be... dammit, should be measured by the anointing of 'founders' and creators of 'founders'. Not by the inhuman and immortal power of a deity. Please. By followers. and. fans.M
The origin of so-called founders is seductive. The rise of people from the dirt that we live in to palaces beyond belief, fueled by personal courage, risk taking, and drive. It makes all believe we can be founders, that our opinion will matter, that we can be divine and powerful and rich. Some estimate that close to 30% of the rich and powerful and famous are self-made. They list such great examples of Bezos, Gates, Musk, Bushes, Coppola, and so on. Except… it’s a myth, one that is farther than the truth than the idea that unicorns exist. Bezo was given a quarter million dollars from his parents, Gates secured his legacy through his mother’s connections, Musk’s family was rich due to an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa, the Bushes owned a business empire, and the Coppola all come from a rich tradition of artists dating well before their most famous. And then there is the Chicken Wing whose father funded his empire through exploitation of the poor. None of these folks pulled themselves up by their bootstraps – they were already there. So, who cares? They are still helping to save the world, right? Wrong, not only do they poison the well with their ideas that oft are steeped in autocracy and that the rich and powerful know best but they also fail to pay their share of wealth to make things better for all. Some routinely get away with not contributing anything in the form of taxes while others get you to pay for their failing businesses or to subsidize their risk. And through it all many engage in questionable practices of exploitation in pay, working conditions, or just denying the people what should be available to them thus fostering poverty along the way for most. They also lead you to believe that they have the answers (hence the founder thought) and are more wise, more efficient, and more noble than the government, and every dollar invested in them equates to more prosperity for all. Except… they don’t spend wisely, taking on projects that only benefit who they want it to benefit, their ideas less wise as there is no risk for them if things fail (they are still rich), and the only prosperity out there is them getting richer – they are creating more jobs for the people, they are simply putting more dollars into their bank through foundations, loopholes, and other methods. Yeah, founders have all the answers for you – and all those answers lead one place – back to them.
ReplyDeleteThank you – my age consumes me, but I know that the world will be okay as you are still here never giving in, never surrendering, and always pursuing the truth for untold generations.
Pre determination is a cornerstone of theocratic mongers who wish to be the very thing that they worship: founders who are neither divine nor right.
ReplyDeleteI know a man that predicts the future every day. He knows that if you drop a stone, you can predict where it will fall. If you know that someone is a liar, you can predict that they will lie to you. If you know the terrain, composition, and skill of an army then you predict which one will win. He is therefore divine and knows what your life will become as it has already been written. You scoff? Why? Is it because you don’t like the answers he has? That all that will happen is what has already happened before and that we are devolving instead of evolving. Life back then was no better than it is now, and it will remain so until such a time as people stop thinking that the answer lies in what has already occurred. Until then, he is the closest thing to divinity we have as he will continue to be able to see a future of oppression, limitations, and ABBIES.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that a difference of opinion that we have no certainty of makes people hate, despise, and enslave others – imprisoning them through law, burning them in media, and destroying their beliefs. I do not wish for your forgiveness; I do not wish for your charity. I wish for you to act in a manner that admits that all God’s creatures, believing or not, have equality of thought and judgement about what is their path even when it is not yours. It’s a dream, I know that, but cannot one dream of a time and place where organized and powerful humans, institutions, and other devices stop pretending that it is a divinity’s plan for this universe instead of that which is their own predicated on them holding all the power, the wealth, and say in their Grand Inquisitorial manner which sanctimoniously assumes their plan is a divinities plan? Who is more divine – the ones who wish to enslave, control, and destroy or the one who wishes to end suffering, hatred, and free all? If you can’t answer that with what you read here, then the world will be what it is meant to be because of you UNLESS.
ReplyDeleteYou never met...a Founder that... You could get... Behind or that... You would let... Be Behind You...
ReplyDeleteNo one controls what a seed will become no matter how much you control where, when, and how it is planted.
ReplyDeleteI know god loves each of us but the kingdom of god is only reserved for those that are enjoyable, honest, and free. Do you really think that god is going to let anyone in that is hateful, lying, and denies others?
ReplyDeleteTrue founders rise above division to see community and commonality which cannot be achieved through autocratic 5 year plans that use force, coercion, unjust actions, and limitations to solve disagreements about how we should live.
ReplyDeleteIt is not enough for us to just win. People like you are those that we wish to rescue from the grip of those that have led us to the Great Awokening. Steer the course or it will steer you.
ReplyDeleteThose that attempt... to steer her... course to there... learn that the... Gatekeeper is coming... a feral breed... brother to Bear... and mated to... she who you... wish to steer... thus you are... fucked my friend....
DeleteI have learned that who I am is two different sides of me. One side understands that I am changeable and the other is sorry for the change that took too long to occur.
ReplyDeleteFast forward to priests looking down into the pit and instead of turning their face to the heavens, they turn them to the ground as they sing, “This is not as the kingdom of heaven on earth should be, our souls are meant for pilgrimage from the dirty, the unpure, and rotten that you all wish to punish us with,” as they screw the poor, the different, and the wise into vises and other apparatus.
ReplyDeleteThey settle to drink and to eat with their lords and saviors in full view of the poor and starving as they tell them to, “Suffer, suffer as we have suffered so that you might better understand the will of our founders as we suffer now and learn all that he has to tell!”
Belief is not always about what you know, what you see, or what you learn; or even what you truly feel in your mind. Anyone can be made to believe when they hear the same message over and over again while they are made to starve, left bankrupt and poor, and yearn to be at a table that they feel they belong to. And perhaps the kicker of it all is as these, “men” and, “men with boobs,” continue to strip away all that you have and are and are promised, they will have the audacity to ask you, “raise your hands to heaven, bend your knees to the ground, suffer without complaint, and pray for those of us who must test and harm you so that your prayers and blessing allow you to become what will open the stairway so you can finally see paradise.”
And this is how we find ourselves where the masses are chained in ignorance so that the won’t stand and fight those that rule in the name of the lie that they have a divine right to see the world molded into what they believe.