[Note to the reader: earlier today I made a posting with the title below, but the text was an incomplete version; the completed version was on my thumb drive but didn’t get transferred in a timely manner. My apologies. The version below is what should have been posted to begin with.]
IS THIS ALL THE CHOICE WE GET?
From the way this election cycle is shaping up, we might be left with the choice of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for our next president of the United States. What kind of choice is that?
Clinton has an extremely shady past. Her Machiavellian acquisition of wealth and power at the expense and lives of others includes the Benghazi debacle that smacks of an unthinkable abandonment and the email scandal that reeks of a felonious placing of self before the interests of our country. But even before those more recent suggestions of malfeasance on a grand scale, she had left in the wake of her self-centered acquisition of power and wealth the Whitewater scandal and the death of associate Vince Foster that evoked a number of unanswered questions that suggest murder rather than the alleged suicide.
Machiavellian is a strong word. It implies a dark and deadly hunger for power that descends below normal humanity. It will be useful to explore the word in some detail. To that end, I have extracted from Part 3, Chapter 1 of my book Family of God information relevant to the association of darkness with Machiavelli:
“Truth perverted has the power to enslave us. In the two thousand years since the death of the innocent [Jesus] who was thrust before Pilate and evoked from the Roman the famous question “What is truth?”, battles have been fought and countless people have suffered in the struggle to define truth for gain. No one knew this with more clarity than Niccolo Machiavelli, the fifteenth century Florentine who set out in The Prince to describe the means by which an ambitious man might acquire and maintain power over others. It has been recognized for centuries as a handbook on deception and betrayal in which the manipulation of truth is wielded with the objective of obtaining unfair advantage over innocent people. This kind of self-service is the very antithesis of the Judeo-Christian God; it represents a horrifying death of the soul. Below, in his own words (translated by N. H. Thomson), Machiavelli relates a classic instance of the application of duplicity:
“In our own times, during the papacy of Alexander VI, Oliverotto of Fermo, who some years before had been left an orphan, and had been brought up by his maternal uncle Giovanni Fogliani, was sent while still a lad to serve under Paolo Vitelli, in the expectation that a thorough training under that commander might qualify him for high rank as a soldier. After the death of Paolo, he served under his brother Vitellozzo, and in a very short time, being of a quick wit, hardy and resolute, he became one of the first soldiers of his company. But thinking it beneath him to serve under others, with the countenance of the Vitelleschi and the connivance of certain citizens of Fermo who preferred the slavery to the freedom of their country, he formed the design to seize on that town.
“He accordingly wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that after many years of absence from home, he desired to see him and his native city once more, and to look a little into the condition of his patrimony; and as his one endeavor had been to make himself a name, in order that his fellow-citizens might see that his time had not been mis-spent, he proposed to return honourably attended by a hundred horsemen from among his own friends and followers; and he begged Giovanni graciously to arrange for his reception by the citizens of Fermo with corresponding marks of distinction, as this would be creditable not only to himself, but also to the uncle who had brought him up.
“Giovanni accordingly, did not fail in any proper attention to his nephew, but caused him to be splendidly received by his fellow-citizens, and lodged him in his house; where Oliverotto having passed some days, and made the necessary arrangements for carrying out his wickedness, gave a formal banquet, to which he invited his uncle and all the first men of Fermo. When the repast and the other entertainments proper to such an occasion had come to an end, Oliverotto artfully turned the conversation to matters of grave interest, by speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and Cesare his son, and of their enterprises; and when Giovanni and the others were replying to what he said, he suddenly rose up, observing that these were matters to be discussed in a more private place, and so withdrew to another chamber; whither his uncle and all the other citizens followed him, and where they had no sooner seated themselves, than soldiers rushing out from places of concealment put Giovanni and all the rest to death.
“After this butchery, Oliverotto mounted his horse, rode through the streets, and besieged the chief magistrate in the palace, so that all were constrained by fear to yield obedience and accept a government of which he made himself the head.”
One does not need to look closely to see obvious parallels between Hillary Clinton’s past actions and this brutal example of reckless self-devotion.
Opposing Clinton is Donald Trump, whose immense ego and empty-minded bombast suggest a deranged personality far darker than the self-absorbed immaturity of a schoolyard bully. Elevation to the presidency would have a good chance of placing the consequences of his inevitably misguided acts on a destructive level with that of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator who brought his country to its knees in World War II.
The young Mussolini was described as a disobedient and unruly schoolyard bully, who couldn’t be handled by schools noted for their expertise in discipline. Nevertheless, his intelligence allowed him to educate himself broadly if not deeply in philosophy and political theory. His self-assurance, speaking presence and apparent knowledge of the political issues of the day granted him the respect of his political peers despite the shallowness of his actual knowledge, which few bothered to explore in detail. Embracing violence as a means of acquiring political objectives, he was arrested a number of times. He was also becoming a person of note in the socialist community, enhancing his standing in that community with frequent articles.
He was known for frequent and radical changes in position, morphing from a socialist to a fervent nationalist, and from there, as it suited his rise to power, to a Fascist dictator.
During World War II he cast his (and Italy’s) lot with Hitler’s Germany, anticipating an equal standing with the Nazi dictator. To his jealous dismay, that never happened, and Hitler’s stronger control over the war in Italy virtually destroyed that nation as the conflict brought in the Allies. As the end of the war approached, he attempted to flee the country disguised as a German soldier, but was recognized and shot along with his mistress. Their bodies were put on display in Milan, hung downward.
Disturbing parallels between Mussolini and Trump include a shallowness of political understanding, a proclivity toward changing position on issues, and, of course, their common self-aggrandizing bombast. True wisdom was lacking in Mussolini, and it’s probable that Trump shares this characteristic. In the end, Mussolini almost destroyed Italy. Given their commonalities, it is possible that America’s future would also be in peril with Trump at the helm.
Mussolini got the Italian trains to run on time, true to his promise. But then he destroyed them.
The poverty of choice that limits us to either Hillary or Trump was handed to us by an electorate who is unable to distinguish between the ability to act boldly and the ability to act wisely. As Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Having removed God from the public domain, we appear to have lost our wisdom.
friendofthefamily 