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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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Appealing to our worse selves
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News July 29, 2008
Everyone has a worse self and a better self. That is what makes life
interesting. The absence of such a tension would result in terminal
boredom.
Politically speaking, this tension makes it much, much easier in an
electoral system for a politician to be a hypocrite, because our
better selves are easily satisfied with words but our worse selves
want results. Our worse selves want power and money. And that is
what our worse selves have gotten throughout most of US political
history. |
Want land? Dispossess the natives.
Want power?
Relentlessly pursue an aggressive and imperialist foreign policy.
Want luxury and privilege? Designate some segment of the population
as without effective rights and allow for their exploitation,
indentured servants, black slaves, desperate immigrants and now the
entire working class, so that those enfranchised by wealth and
privilege can see their luxuries as earned necessities.
Want cheap
goods? Destroy domestic production in favor of imports made cheap by
virtue of heinously exploited work forces in far away lands.
Want
bigger houses and credit lines to spend on bigger and better toys?
Set up an economic system that is indistinguishable from a Ponzi
scheme that is fueled by one speculative bubble after another and
charge future generations for the bill by encumbering them with debt
that can never be repaid.
Want to feel secure against the threats of
the dispossessed? How about an enormous military establishment that
periodically demonstrates its power to
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Oh, and keep up a steady stream of nice sounding lies about how all the above is part of how a free country that honors human and civil rights operates and imbue the people with a sense of exceptionalism and manifest destiny that puts them in the role of bringing "American Democracy" to the rest of the world.
And by all means make sure that people believe that God is on our side.
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destroy any who oppose the
policies of the US government.
Oh, and keep up a steady stream of
nice sounding lies about how all the above is part of how a free
country that honors human and civil rights operates and imbue the
people with a sense of exceptionalism and manifest destiny that puts
them in the role of bringing "American Democracy" to the rest of the
world. And by all means make sure that people believe that God is on
our side.
Of course the underlying problem is that such deceptions in service
of greed and indulgence lead unerringly to catastrophe. Want
freedom? That comes, under the rule of hypocrisy, when there is
nothing left to lose.
© by the author.
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