Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010
“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods?”
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
"Public opinion has become the object of intensive efforts to control, manage, manipulate, and increasingly intimidate. In political, military, economic realms, power becomes, in varying degrees, uneasy before the suspected opinions of masses, and, accordingly, opinion-making becomes an accepted technique of power-holding and power-getting. The minority electorate of the propertied and the educated is replaced by the total suffrage— and intensive campaigns for the vote.
As the scale of institutions has become larger and more centralized, so has the range and intensity of the opinion-makers’ efforts. The means of opinion-making, in fact, have paralleled in range and efficiency the other institutions of greater scale that cradle the modem society of masses. Accordingly, in addition to their enlarged and centralized means of administration, exploitation, and violence, the modern elite have had placed within their grasp historically unique instruments of psychic management and manipulation.
The men of the higher circles are not representative men; their high position is not a result of moral virtue; their fabulous success is not firmly connected with meritorious ability. Those who sit in the seats of the high and the mighty are selected and formed by the means of power, the sources of wealth, the mechanics of celebrity, which prevail in their society. Commanders of power unequaled in human history, they have succeeded within the American system of organized irresponsibility.
Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal— and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated— and the higher immorality is institutionalized. It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.
A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.
America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology-appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality."
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford Press, 1956
"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."
Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933
Stocks were parked today, after a week of substantial gains.
Gold and silver rocketed higher, with silver putting in a short-scorching rally.
The Dollar was nominally unchanged.
There are big events on the move behind the scenes.
For now we only feel their tremors.
And when history unfolds, does it matter?
After even the most shocking of events what remains is the rewriting of history and the forced suppression of dissent from the prevailing narrative.
For those who manage the conversations and control the evidence, the truth is a very malleable thing— at least for those who would be as gods.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.
Have a pleasant weekend.
