The Sleeping Sword

Once upon a time, back in the days before Global Warming, before the ever widening gap between rich and poor was large enough to notice (O Happy Days!), before there was class distinctions, everybody lived a happy and carefree life of vegetarian plenty and One world of Gaia's children's abundance. But then is not now, now is it.

Back then, everybody agreed about everything. Which makes sense because everybody was really a close or sort of close relative. There were not too many people, they all grew up together, they shared their values. Do you disagree with this? Back then, there were social problems as well. Everyone agreed that there were crimes, and what the punishments for the crimes should be. Murder was bad, everyone agreed; murderers were killed, which was good, everyone agreed. Because everyone was like minded on the bad and the good, anyone could and did execute murderers. There were some issues with strength, ability, and opportunity of weapons, but we can leave that to the historians. Back then, they agreed on what was good, what was bad, and how to deal with it. So, if two young men went up to an isolated farm house, murdered the farmer and his wife (incidently stealing his few coins of money out of an old coffee jar) that would be agreed to be bad, the penalty would be agreed to by common understanding, and most anyone could carry it out (they had to; the state apparatus for such things had not yet been invented, which is my next point, but I am not there yet); and if the two young men came back the next day to where the lifeless bodies of the farmer and his wife were starting to swell with rot in the heat, and they found the little daughter of the pair crying beside their bodies; if they took the five cents the little girl had (offered up to buy her life), and locked her inside the house and burnt it down, then all would be in agreement about who was bad, and what should be done to them. In fact, if you did not hang them, there is something wrong with you. But that was then, and this is now.

This is, in a non-academic way, a description of the social contract. Everyone agrees on what is bad, what is good, and what to do about it. As society became better, progressive, it was agreed that designated others would specialize and carry out specialized functions: cops would arrest the evil, judges would decide what crimes they had committed, and hangmen would hang them if the criminals had committed and offense that everyone agreed was worth hanging for. Everyone was happy; some would throw a coin into a pot to pay the cop, the judge, and the hangman. Justice was swift, as we all know it should be.

So, now I look out at society. Everyone I know agrees on what is bad and what is good and what to do about it. Drowning your wife and children in a car is bad, we all agree. Kidnapping two strangers and raping, torturing, and murdering them, is bad. But I do not see much effort on the part of the people me and mine pay to do stuff about it do stuff about it. It is glossed over with the excuse that these murderers have a different culture. Their ancestors were harshly dealt with in the past. Excuses, excuses. Me and mine, we can accept this. As long as the guy drowning his wife and kids is not drowning my wife and kids; as long as the people being kidnapped, raped, and murdered are far away. Until then, thanks to not knowing about this stuff (thanks to the secret agreements among non-ability hired media personalities), thanks to ignorance, the social contract is still on.

As you may have guessed, the social contract is getting a bit worn. For the last few decades most have wrapped their lips around the white guilt dispenser of the progressives and swallowed. Bad people are good because their grand daddy was hard done by. Good people are bad because their grand daddy had a mule and a pig. As long as this did not actually touch people, it was ok. After all, the people squirting out this white guilt are smart people, whom we respect; they speak nice using fancy words; they have class; and it only cost us a few coins; you could feel better knowing that this five cents on your gallon of gas was helping the useless, the lazy, and the shoplifting public urinators stay away from your useful, hard working, and safe homes, neighborhoods, and communities. One begins to suspect the hired agents supposed to carry out the public will are more thieves than servants, that the practice of law has become an excuse to delay the public will in exchange for fees, and that the bad people of society are being coddled because they are co-opted into manipulation of the electoral system. Somehow the system looks to be run by thieves, using murderers as enforcers. But this belief does not touch everybody, only some. They can adapt by moving away. They can stop paying the thieves guild of government by embracing the black market. They can talk quietly among themselves, but not openly, because we have no freedom of speech.

The tipping point. I still do not like murderers, and everyone I know agrees. The murderers that our hired staff tell us are really victims of us, not killers of you; that our hired staff sends to live closer to us than themselves, do not bother most people. But lately, there are too many coins taken from the ever decreasing number of people with coins; and the murderers that walk the streets are walking too close to where we live, and certainly around where we work. The people running things are starting to look like thieves themselves. And since the social contract is breaking down, things will revert back to the days when thieves got their hands cut off before being burnt alive as interest on stolen money. This is not just me talking, it is just the way things always are. Tell me it is not so.

My morning post is done. I can go stand on my porch and have my first cup of tea of the day. I can watch the welfare people slouch by, spitting on the sidewalk. I can watch people make rolling stops, drive drunk, and talk on their cell phones when they drive with their knees. It is all good; and will be so until it is all bad. The servants raised up as masters do not see a thing coming. I guess their eyes are gummed shut with white guilt.