Verv wrote:I appreciate your concern but I truly and faithfully believe he cannot permanently damage the Republic. In fact, I think what damages the government permanently is trying to prevent populist sentiment from letting us have a President who gets to try to fulfill his mandate legally...
And that's just the faith in the institutions.
Let there also be a very far left President if the time comes - if they win the election, let them be fought in the legislature, and let only proper, principled decisions from the judiciary concerned purely with legal precedent be an impediment...
I believe in the Constitution, and if it is grossly violated I will be there with the people fighting the government, even if they are on the left and suspicious of me.
You can say I am completely wrong and a fool but I promise you... if I am wrong on this I will apologize and feel it.
Oh Verv, you and I are completely different in life experiences, education, and perspective. Which is what PoFo is supposed to bring together and have debates about.
You have faith in the Constitution and the US government. I do not. I think they renege when some powerful people find it highly inconvenient.
Lol.
It is about internal and external power plays. It's not about principles to live by. If it was about principles Citizens United would have never gotten legal standing. It is about manipulations of what is allowable and how people must battle it for justice. Democracies are fragile Verv. So are ideas of nations and the myths that are powerful and bind them together. If you lose faith in the myth? You wind up losing faith in the institutions. They lose support. And internal vacuums are created, and filled by people who no longer believe in the foundational myths.
Let me tell you a little story. If ever you come to visit the state of Yucatán in México where I currently reside? You can take a van or a bus or a rental car to a place called Uxmal. Pronounced in Mayan as USH-MOL. Across the Archaeological Zone, there is a Chocolate Hacienda. It is a Museum dedicated to the history of Chocolate in the Ancient world of the Maya, the Aztecs, and the many other tribes of Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche, and the Yucatan. It has a dome. A large dome that is called a Planetarium. They play a film called something like The Origin of Mayan Myths...it is very interesting. Too bad it is only in Spanish. But they cover the reasons why these places were possibly abandoned in the jungle long ago. The reason is that over time the myths that held these civilizations together and bonded everyone socially together stop being believed. The Mayans were astronomers, mathematicians, agronomists, priests, soldiers, warriors, fishermen craftsmen, artists, slaves, laborers, etc. The religion stated the reason human sacrifices were necessary was because the Sun God, or the Rain God, like Tlaloc, etc had to be fed human blood and hearts. For what is more precious in the social and natural order than human life? That which is valuable for wealth and work, and to give life that is strong and valuable and beats with the very essence of the spirit is to honor the gods that are ruling the Universe. If you do not do that consistently? You wind up angering them, that is when storms come, fires, and calamities occur you do not respect their authority over the events in your world.
Pacify them with human sacrifice and you restore the balance of nature and they will ensure your continued ability to have crops of corn, squash, beans, chocolate, tomatoes, avocados, chilis, honey, fish, sweet potato, and many other great things including guajolotes or turkeys that in Mayan is called Úulum, (m)tso-
They will ensure the stars continue on their trajectory and so on. Fail at giving them tribute and the world will collapse. What happened? Drought happened, crops failed, and many disasters fell
despite the many human sacrifices that were given over to the gods for pacification and offering.The real reason for the conflict was about power relationships Verv. The sacrifices tended to come from the lower classes, the poor and the peasants, the priests children, and relatives were rarely chosen for sacrifice. The disrespect in constant wars with their neighbors and so on internal fights for power in the Priesthood and so on, and between the Mayan Kings of the Mayab land? Was the reason for many overweening ambitions and oppressive taxation. Tributes, which caused a lot of famine, overstepped the available resources and caused a lot of lands to be burned, water to be dried up and fights for power caused constant instability. Tribal warfare and finally trade routes were damaged. Many people would flee the greedy areas of constant conflict.
The people stopped believing in that myth about Greatness if only you gave up human sacrifice. This is interesting. What did the elites do? They lost power and no one believed in their myths. The ones who survived it all were ordinary Mayans. Who kept their milpas (corn fields and squash and beans) and no longer had an obligation to pay tribute to the Priests.
Human civilizations are built on ideas that people believe in. Once those ideas are discarded the whole thing sort of comes crashing down. The ones who survive all the tumultuous fights for power between the ruling elites are the peasant classes and the regular people. They live on. To this day, the Mayans who survived those Mayan Elite kings and the Spanish Empire are still there. Growing crops, speaking Mayan, and living a traditional life. The myths of the Mayan Elite are gone. No one made human sacrifices, and the Spanish never could force the Mayans to give up their language either, their ways of living, and their own thoughts about the universe. But the days of Mythology based on ideas that were false like thinking that killing a lot of human beings for appeasing a god that requires it and then making sure there is no famine or plenty of rain...turned out to be not true.
But if you understand what faith is? Faith is about what a huge group of people put their trust in. They really believe it is true because there is an agreement that it is for the greater good. For something important. Life. Sunlight. Food. Shelter, Crops. Civilization. Rituals. Stories. Labor. Work. Marriage. Progeny.
It can all unravel if the need for that belief turns out to be false.
Someone's myth is faced with reality. Of the world of Nature and the limits of human imagination.