Governments that succeed in keeping people off the streets become a funding mechanism for the vain and lazy. To stay in power, they pretend to “care deeply” about “fairness” . That motivates them to pretend that they care about people. Decreasing numbers of people believe such claptrap.
When officials need money to make investments to buy off newly organized groups of “protesters”, “demonstrations” are scripted. “News” about “the importance of fairness” is widely broadcast to the largely bewildered and increasingly uncaring wider populace by a media hired to convince people that their taxes should be raised for “compelling reasons of fairness”.
When governments need cheap labor, demonstrations about “the rights of immigrants” become popular. When governments need to reduce their outflows to established fund recipients, “demonstrations to defend the rights of the truly disenfranchised” are orchestrated.
No one who will encourage the rights of any group to be free or left alone is encouraged to demonstrate. If they do, the “news” will follow government orders. Those directives are always the same. The media will either ignore them, or quickly brand them as “crackpots” and “radicals”. Governments prefer that any beliefs that may undermine or lessen its power be removed. All governments encourage attacks on those who think that there is a higher power than government.
Another reason for allowing, and, even encouraging, demonstrations is twofold. It allows the established powers to create leaders and then remove them from the demonstrating group by welcoming them into the establishment. Suddenly, organized groups are leaderless, and, like a headless chicken, thrash about until they disappear, often with the help of those who’ve been successfully co-opted. This is a road that can lead someone who successfully organizes various groups all the way to establishment leadership.
Be thankful for your government.
Catholic Fundamentalists believe that we should be thankful for the funding mechanisms that support the vain and lazy who rule us and launch their endless attacks upon us. Without them, we would have no battle against the lower spiritual orders. Without that battle, it is impossible for us to save our souls. Governments, especially oppressive ones, are a great gift. As St. Columban explained, “Without a battle, there is no victory. Without a victory, there is no crown.” So, we should be happy to be maligned, insulted, impoverished, and denigrated by our governments, even as they labor mightily to destroy all that is good and decent.
Some say that we should pray for the strength to stand for His truth so strongly that we end up being killed, loving those who kill us as they do so, thus ensuring an eternity of joy. That is much easier to say than to do.
