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Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Elections of Pontius Pilots - 3

I Will Ask Congress To Turn Lead Into Gold
In this series regular readers know that Dredd Blog has been discussing what we think is becoming more and more a modern day form of ancient alchemy: U.S. Elections.

In the first post we discussed, among other things, the original Pontius Pilate and the interesting meaning of his name.

In the second post we discussed a cruise ship that had been run aground by its captain and crew, pointing out some similarities between the captain and crew of that ill-fated vessel, who abandoned their passengers to save their own skins, and those who want to be the captain and crew of our own ship of state.

In this post we will focus on the reality that our elections, and therefore what we call our republic or our democracy, are not what they are purported to be.

Rather, any such election is more of a money making/losing drama, depending on what part you play, like a Broadway production that is choreographed in full accord with The Onion Script written by McTell News, the mouthpiece of MOMCOM.

This gala democratic nova has evolved to become symbolized by last night's presidential debate, where The Shape Shifter tells his latest form of lies ("reinventing himself"), and the other is Mr. Nice Guy, calmly saying nothing that would appear to be extreme:
In this film ... the ... main character is born in Chicago and is raised poor. After seeing the violence of crime on the streets he becomes a hitman for [the Wartocracy] a local gang.
(Mr. Nice Guy, Wikipedia). Meanwhile, The Shape Shifter is going around saying "I don't get no respect from 'McTell News'", or alternately has his wife do it for him.

The basic plot of the play concerns the ability to nuance the two actors as the debutante and the crumpet, together with the scripted argument about who is who, i.e., who is the debutante and who is the crumpet.

The Brits have always claimed to be able to see through this, at least ever since the Beatles song "I'm Looking Through You", and still claim it today:
Both Obama and Romney are very intelligent men.
...
Neither of them [in the debate] says a serious word about the causes of the financial crisis; the lack of prosecution of banks and bankers; sharply rising inequality in educational opportunity, income and wealth; energy policy and global warming; America's competitive lag in broadband infrastructure; the impact of industrialized food on healthcare costs; the last decade's budget deficits and the resultant national debt; or the large-scale, permanent elimination of millions of less-skilled jobs through both globalization and advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.
(America's Duopoly). At the end of the play on opening night, the biased in the U.S. scriptorium (McTell News) snort, chuckle, and exude what they call savvy words a la American Idol, encouraging each actor to plod on to the finish, while at the same time urging the actors to spend more money on advertising ... on their network of course ... lest they lose the race.

In closing, we are likely to see, then, business as usual until the final curtain, which is the alchemy, mentioned in the opening sentence of this post:
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners' claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base metals into the noble metals gold or silver, as well as an elixir of life conferring youth and immortality. Western alchemy is recognized as a protoscience that contributed to the development of modern chemistry and medicine. Alchemists developed a framework of theory, terminology, experimental process and basic laboratory techniques that are still recognizable today. But alchemy differs from modern science in the inclusion of Hermetic principles and practices related to mythology, religion, and spirituality.
(Alchemy, Wikipedia). Let's focus on that alchemy, by describing our part in this play, which is the voting we will do as the final act, the bit part we the audience will finally play, because "it's all we got":
Election priests will write official words on a piece of paper called 'a ballot', we will then take that piece of paper and put additional marks on it, selecting either The Shape Shifter or Mr. Nice Guy, and then drop our ballot into a ballot box, comforting ourselves by thinking "this will solve the problems we face."

Global warming induced climate change will subside, wars will end, prosperity will return, and peace will guide the stars.
Lead will be turned into gold, "so we are told."

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.


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