The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Can We Tell Them Apart?

As author Robert Heinlein famously opined, forget all about a candidates party and policies, the world divides into those who want to control others, and those who don't. Is the candidate who wants your vote of the former or latter persuasion? We'll call them the good and the bad and the ugly. (Rush Limbaugh said that politics is Hollywood for ugly people, so I guess we have to include them.)

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Needless to say, professional politicians are very good at appearing to be the good guys, sacrificing themselves for the good of their constituents. We need discernment, and it's not easy.

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." ~ Benjamin Franklin

I think a candidates true motivations are inherently unknowable. We cannot know the motivations of another person, especially a politician. In fact, most people are hazy about their own motives. We have to assume that all politicians are in it because of a desire to control, so we must act as though they are. If one is not, so much the better. (Old saying, you can never go wrong underestimating your own motives.)

I think the writers of the Constitution worked on the assumption that one must presume that all candidates are in it for the power, so the Republic as designed by them assumed the worst on the part of the politicians and tried to make it so that, by serving himself he would be serving the people. Politicians have been working to undermine controls on them ever since.

"Power must never be trusted without a check." ~ John Adams

All you can do is look for who is advancing policies that undermine, or at least do not advance, control by the politicians, and look to see if they are for or against against controls on themselves if elected. Many politicians pretend the Tenth Amendment, which severely limits federal power, doesn't exist. The person who looks good may be a hypocrite, but oh, well.

Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Some of my thoughts on the Tenth Amendment:

https://drp314.substack.com/p/the-stay-in-your-lane-rule

Governments amass power by fostering dependency, so that is a thing to look for since dependency translates to future votes. If they propose total governmental control over a necessity of life, that's a clue. The concept of the hydraulic-despotism comes into play, from the situation in ancient cultures wherein the central authority controlled access to irrigation water, thereby leveraging great power. Aside form water, anything that people need can be used as such a cudgel if the powerful can gain control of it. (There is talk of government run grocery stores to be set up in Chicago.)

"Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world." ~ Henry A. Kissinger

https://drp314.substack.com/p/hydraulic-despotism

One thing to look at is evidence of dishonesty. (I know, if they're lips are moving...) Playing too fast and loose with the truth is always a clue. One may recall during the Clinton administration the attacks on the Second Amendment wherein half truths, outright lies and manipulation were the order of the day. Part of the country just took it all in at face value, while around half of the country felt like their intelligence was insulted and thought it looked like a precursor to true governmental badness. (To this day many people believe that the “assault rifles” of we which we hear such blather, are capable of fully automatic, machine gun like fire.)

"You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." ~ Thomas Jefferson

The mistake of Clinton et. al. was probably that they underestimated the amount of knowledge concerning the subject of firearms in the American public, as well as thinking them simple minded. There are many more subjects out there about which they may dissemble, and many of them have only a small elite group capable of seeing through the lies.

But this is all something of a digression. The important thing is that we do not lose the protection from the power mad afforded by the Constitution. As politicians become more and more dependent on powerful organizations for support, and less dependent on the will of the voters, our protection tends to slip away.

Some of the ideas in olden times would seem a bit harsh, but consider the stakes. I have heard the story that, in the time of the czars in Russia, any prince in line for the czar-ship, the son of a czar, would be sent out into the wilderness, on an island, I believe, where he would have to survive alone for one year. I think this was in medieval times. Anyone who knows about this, please help me out. (My sources were a Russian physicist that I worked with, as well as our personal lawyer, whose son-in-law was Russian. They both maintained that, yes, indeed, it was for a full year. I asked the Russian about the possibility of the prince dying, and he said that, well, there were plenty to take his place.) This was no doubt intended to provide a great maturing influence on the individual, as well as making him a survival expert.

https://drp314.substack.com/p/to-ride-shoot-straight-and-speak

"There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution." ~ John Adams

So it would seem that these major political parties are a good part of the problem, at least in the view of John Adams, since the candidates must support the positions the parties want frequently rather than the wants of the constituents. (Assuming the elections are honest.)

So I urge all and sundry to concentrate on trying to discern the character of the candidates. Dishonesty in small things will indicate dishonesty in large things, corruption in small things will indicate corruption in large things. It's a difficult problem and needs discernment, especially with most news organizations acting as the propaganda arm of one party. I suggest asking the Almighty for help with wisdom and discernment.

"A militia law, requiring all men, or with very few exceptions besides cases of conscience, to be provided with arms and ammunition... is always a wise institution, and, in the present circumstances of our country, indispensable." ~ John Adams

The above is the final backstop. At least remnants of it are in place.

Stay Brave, Stay Free