Why Absolute Power Corrupts Outrageously

The Clintons, their friends the plutocrats, and their greedy servants have behaved ever more outrageously, ever since they outrigged, out-performed and outreached Reagan himself. This is part of a general pattern: absolute power brings absolute outrage, and that’s the only way to get rid of it.

Why are all too powerful individuals inclined to outrageous acts? Caligula fed his horse gold flakes while visiting serious tortures on many. French king Louis XIV honored the mightiest in his kingdom by pooping while they watched.. Then, naturally enough, the self-described Sun King pooped on French civilization, by pooping on his grandfather foremost achievement (peace with Protestantism). The end result was a weakening of France, thus Europe, which persists, to this day.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, self-described greatest lover of Great Britain, launched a world war in July 1914, mostly because he could. It was certainly an outrageous, gratuitous act, from a man with absolute power. 

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s “Daughter” & Business Woman Extraordinaire Will Say, Or Do, Whatever To Cling To Power

[While chief of staff at the State Department, Abedin was officially allowed to pile up other jobs outside, with her own consultancy, and, of course, the Clinton Foundation. Don’t worry: she is now 40 years old, and a multimillionaire. Brought up in Saudi Arabia and connected to Muslim Fundamentalists, Abedin looks like an agent of the Saudi government of sorts. Remember that Obama was just overruled by Congress and the Senate to enable the prosecution of Saudi Arabia for 9/11… The elites of Wahington-Wall Street have long been entangled with the monster they created, Saudi Arabia.]

Adolf Hitler went on a succession of quasi-suicidal, outrageous acts, starting in 1939. In 1939, Hitler allied himself with Stalin to invade Poland, facing a world war with France and Britain (a war which clearly Hitler could not win). Then Hitler went on, invading all sorts of countries, all the way to attacking the USSR and declaring war to the USA (hey, why not, since Hitler felt he had lost in 1939). The result of all these outrages was that Europe lost the leadership of the civilization it had created (which has passed to start-ups such as Russia and the USA).

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Beyond The Will To Power, The Will To Outrage:

Clearly, from their own words, the behavior of many of the mighty, from Caesar to Napoleon, is explained by an obsessive “Will to Power”. Nietzsche explained much human behavior that way. However, what happens when people have already all the power? Well, folly happens.

Think about it. How does a human being demonstrate power over another human being?    

More recent examples? US government officials (like Rumsfeld, US Sec. of Defense) declaring the Geneva Convention “quaint”, and violating it, for the whole world to see, in all possible ways, while invading and devastating Iraq (at least the Nazis tried to hide the evil they were doing). Or Obama conducting “signature strikes” (using the US military for deadly strikes within countries the US is not at war with, just because some gathering had the ‘signature’ of possible gathering of whom some secret organization in the US as possible malefactors).

Outrage can be profitable: Clinton was told of debate questions in advance. As I listened carefully (recording and re-listening to the debates), it seems clear to me, at least for the first debate with Trump, that Clinton knew of the coming questions. The questions were so ridiculous, Trump was surprised, even baffled, but Clinton came up with slick, rehearsed answers. That’s how I know. Since then, Wikileaks has revealed that knowing the questions in advance, in excruciating detail, is how Clinton defeated Sanders. It’s not just because it was advantageous, but also because it was dangerous, outrageous. That made it exciting.

Why did Bill Clinton officiate at the Abedin-Weiner wedding? (He actually did not have any authority to do so.) Weiner, long a “Democratic” congressman, is an obsessive-compulsive serial adulterer and pedophile who loves to publish his feats on the Internet. Weiner called himself “Carlos Danger” on the Internet.

So Weiner married to Clinton’s “second daughter”. Speaking of daughter, Chelsea Clinton travels around the world with the best accommodations, thanks to the “Clinton Foundation”. Clinton, a presidential candidate, travelled free of personal charge, thanks to said Foundation. All this costs a lot to the Foundation. Right, Bill Gates does the same (using the private airline he owns with Buffet to do so; thus double-billing taxpayers).

The Foundation Law was passed within minutes, and to compensate for, the creation of Income Tax Law. So the wealthiest Americans, like the Clinton or Gates, give millions to a Foundation (the Clintons have actually two entangled Foundations). Then those millions are deduced from the taxes they have to pay. Then as officers of the Foundation they need “first class, or private jet travel because of security and other requirements” as the Clinton Foundation explains. In other words, they live like aristocrats.

According to Roman historians (Suetonius, Cassius Dio), Caligula intended to make his prefered stallion, Incitatus, Consul. That was too much, and the head of the Praetorian guard decided to plant his sword in Caligula’s groin, and other crucial places, bringing his demise.

How did Caligula’s mood grow? As the preceding commander-in-chief (“imperator”) Tiberius sank into melancholy and increasing depravity, his influence rubbed off on the young Caligula. (see the case of Sextus Marius who was charged with incest with his daughter on the pretext of seizing his Spanish gold mines even that could have been done in the name of the state). As Tacitus puts it: “It was it probable that, when Tiberius with his long experience of affairs was, under the influence of absolute power, wholly perverted and changed, Caius Caesar [nickname: Little Boots, Caligula], who had hardly completed his boyhood, was thoroughly ignorant and bred under the vilest training, would enter on a better course, with Macro for his guide.

As I hinted above, the Will to Power is not everything: those at the top have to feel themselves exerting it. In the case of baboons, the subordinate has to offer his, or her bottom for the superior to consider (doing whatever it please with). But what of the case of one of our baboon-leaders, in the age of the Internet? Or in the age of the Roman empire, for that matter? The superiors, those with absolute power have to feel the subjugation and submission, of their inferior subordinates. They feel it, when they commit obvious outrages, and the miserable subordinates can only deplore the outrages deep inside, and do nothing about them.

The Roman empire, at least until Diocletian (circa 300 CE) was, formally, a Republic, SPQR, The Senate and People of Rome. The (now so-called) “emperors” were just commander in chief (“imperators”) and “first”, or “principal” in the Senate (“Princeps” from which “Prince” was evolved). In practice, they had absolute power.

After Tiberius, the principle that the Republic would be led by a imperator-princeps was more accepted. Thus, for the individuals at the top to feel that power, to be rewarded by that feeling, to compensate the risks they took, outrages had to be performed. The mood of committing outrages started discreetly under Tiberius (who performed tortures in Capri, but, overall, ordered at most a handful of executions, arguably less than Obama (I explained this in the past: of the 36 or so executions under Tiberius most were ordered by the Senate, and fully justified, because of very serious lethal conspiracies, which killed his sons, without him knowing!)

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The More Powerful One Is, The More One Seeks Outrage:

For years Hillary has been hanging around the outrageous Bill Clinton (bad enough! Clinton apparently used the power of the offices he held for various sexual favors with many women, and lied about it under oath, leading to his quasi-impeachment). Apparently unsatisfied by these puny scandals, Hillary pushed onto her apparent closest friend and collaborator, Huma Abedin, her “second daughter”, a sex maniac (initially Abedin resisted). Weiner the Wiener, a sex addicted Congressman, sent unlawful material to, or in the presence of children, from 4 to 15-year-old.

Thanks to his Clinton connection Weiner is not yet in prison. However, the FBI just came into possession of a device of containing 650,000 emails, some of them (probably) classified Clinton emails. (A crude approach to insurance, if you want my opinion.)

As Weiner’s monicker, “Carlos Danger”  indicates, people who already have power do not want just power, as they already have it, but danger. But what happens when they have had it for a very long time, and got away with it, and did all outrageous things they could dream of? Well, they get new dreams, even more outrageous that the preceding ones. For Clinton to flaunt her relationship with lovers of pedophiles qualifies.

So does considering Bill Gates, or Tim Cook, the Apple chief, as Hillary did, for Vice President. Many people around the world consider Bill Gates to be a criminal. No, not because of the way he founded Microsoft (mostly from appropriating others’ property, thank in part to his mother, an IBM director). But rather in the way he co-opted local government official to push for Genetically Modified Organisms made by Monsanto, a Gates investment vehicle and collaborator of its Gates Foundation. Monsanto GMOs turned out to be a disaster for African peasant who were ruined and devastated. Countries such as Burkina Fasso just made them unlawful.

Caligula wanted to make his horse a Consul, because he wanted to get away with outrage greater than any he had visited on We The People before. The equally endowed from birth Commodus would get away with even greater outrages than those Caligula wrought (who reigned only 4 years).

So it was with many Roman emperors: ever greater outrages. Diocletian proclaimed himself god, and his quasi-successor Constantine, proclaimed himself to be the Thirteenth Apostle…. Until the entire grotesque show became so dysfunctional, the semi-barbarian Germans, the Franks took over, and started the slow process of re-establishing civilization (starting around 400 CE), by reducing the power of the oligarchs and plutocrats.

The present leaders of the USA have been so powerful as to be arrogantly outrageous. They treated the state as their private property. That the same holds for Russia, China, North Korea, or Zimbabwe, or Venezuela, is besides the point: the US is supposed to be a democracy. And so is the West (although, as the West is more united than it looks, the rest of the West has become as democratic as the US, by obeying Washington-Wall Street orders).

Time for a flood, to clean the mess.

Patrice Ayme’

Tags: Caligula, Clinton Hillary, Huma Abedin, Lies, Outrage, Power Absolute, Systems of Moods, Weiner