The Germ Theory - of Government - 6

Recently Dredd Blog has focused several posts on the uproar caused by the whistleblower Ed Snowden revealing the wrongs of the federal government via the NSA spying (see e.g. On The Origin of Security - 2, On The Origin of Security, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller, The Queens of Stalingrad - 2, The Queens of Stalingrad, FISA Court Rules Domestic Spying Violates Constitution, A Tale of Coup Cities - 4, Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset).

The NSA spying on Americans is actually a direct attack on the American public by the federal government, according to Noam Chomsky (Guardian).

The recent lawsuits filed against the government back up that viewpoint (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller).

In this series, containing five previous posts, we have been analyzing this type of government behavior in the context of a social disease:

The fundamental concept of government, which the founders of the American structure of government believed, was summed up in the well known, and oft quoted, statement "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (About Toxins of Power).

The founders of The United States knew, perhaps intuitively, that "something was wrong" when people were exposed to too much power, because "bad things happened" to the people, the citizenry, in those circumstances (ibid).

Their hypothesis and analysis eventually led to the formulation of a treatment scenario, which was essentially to dilute the exposure to that "something" which was called "power", by spreading the power amongst many people, rather than to overly expose any one person (The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine).

(The Germ Theory - of Government). This sounds, at first blush, like a stretch into the implausible imagination, however, when one looks at current scientific theory, it is not so "imaginative" after all:

Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus that lives entwined in every person's DNA.

(The Insanity Virus). In prior posts of this series similar themes and theories have been discussed.

The idea of analyzing psychological problems of groups, nations, and even civilization was thought to be a viable endeavor by well known people of history who knew the subject well:

"I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness." - Sigmund Freud

"Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this --hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension." - Sigmund Freud
...
“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
...
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Dredd Blog Quotes Page). So, the notion that something should be done to assist those who are in power, assist them in maintaining their sanity, is not a far fetched idea, but it is an idea whose time has come (see e.g. V: The Evolution of The Vaccime).

The Global Climate System has been damaged for over a century by now, and continues to be damaged with an ever increasing intensity (Government Climate Change Report - 3).

This current civilization is feeling some of the bad results (All Time Heat Records - Alaska, Antarctic Melt Caused By Warming Ocean, Same).

One of the things that is exacerbating the situation, in the mind of one of our greatest statesmen, is a particular mental germ:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting "The Father of The Constitution", emphasis added). Like with individuals, "germs" (or toxins which germs produce) can impair the mental functioning of governments.

Get out your antidotes: march, complain, voice your objections, Occupy, and tell your congress, president, and neighbors why.

"The government is getting more and more sick."

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

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The illusion of progress.

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