Sex,Money, and Power
In this land of milk and honey, nothing speaks louder than money. It buys boats and cars and candy bars. If you want to take a bath in champagne there’s somebody waiting to fill the tub, as long as you are willing to fill their pockets. Anything can be bought. Especially people.
For a little or a lot of that green stuff people will cut your hair, or strip you bare; massage your feet, or kiss you sweet. Or they will take a knife, and stab your wife. It doesn’t matter. Just show your dough and watch them go.
It should come as no surprise that almost any election can be bought. In the latter part of the 19th century, for example, bankers and railroad barons likely bought every sheriff and marshal from St. Louis to San Francisco in the 3rd biggest land grab in our history. The first came when Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island for $24 worth of beads from Native Americans. The second came when we bought Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, parts of Wyoming, and Colorado from Mexico for a pittance while holding their government hostage in their own country. The acquisitions and mergers, assets and absorptions during that period made legends out of tyrants, and heroes out of gunslingers. It all came down to who got to hold and fold and walk away with that tantalizing commodity. In the words of the today’s street poets, “Money talks and bullshit walks.” It’s in our DNA.
Back in 1976, after watching Nixon show us that he was indeed a ”crook,” and after learning that Gerald Ford had no grasp of who controlled Eastern Europe, we opted for a soft-spoken peanut farmer to lead us to the promised land. But as soon as we watched him carry his own suit in a bag slung over his shoulder while disembarking from Air Force One, he was in big trouble. Hell, even our colonels had aides for that kind of lowly task. But when he put the presidential yacht into moth balls because he thought it was an extravagant waste of money, we dumped him faster than he could stop saying “I once lusted in my heart.”
We love to link money with power. It’s an artificial linkage. And it’s deadly. Apparently when a man loses his virility and can no longer satisfy his sexual partner, he switches his orientation and wants to dominate other men with his money. Call it that devilish transformation from lust to greed. By any other name, most of the men we elected to the ”top position” were into that chronological phase of life when they became president.
Want some proof? John Kennedy and Bill Clinton were young virile guys when they took office. We all know about their sexual exploits. Kennedy kept his affairs quiet, while Clinton was more like a teenager with a ’49 Ford who loved to get caught with his pants down, so to speak. With both, there was no hint of money as power, at work or play. They were just young boys with fun toys.
But a power trip that involves money and territory and control over the toys of war is a different matter. It is an affliction of age, or to be more precise, it is a sign of sexual impotence. (Ah yes, there are a few real men who carry their sexual potency well into their 80s. We know them by their smiley faces. But that’s another story). Adolf Hitler was a relatively young man when he sought power. According to reliable sources he had but one testicle, and no interest in sex. With him it was all about power. Kim Jong Il had 2,000 young girls in his harem. He sorted them into three groups: dancers, prancers, and players. It’s hard to say which group he favored most or which group saw the most action. But he was so ugly, it must have been a scare’em harem.
Let’s explore this thing psychologists call a “need for power” a bit further. We all know about “those who can.” They are the doers. They live to satisfy a “need to achieve.” That drive is way up there on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. It means to find your life’s work, and to get about doing it, making your contribution to society. It’s called giving rather than taking.
But what about those who can’t?—sexually or intellectually. Morally or manually. Culturally or artistically. Those in this group can’t win in life or love. We sometimes brand them as losers, but not until they have branded themselves as losers. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to know them when we see them because they are smart enough to know how to hide their shortcomings. Hitler, with all his flaws, did not give up on his shortcomings. From his prison cell he wrote Mein Kampf, an incoherent discourse in hate, propaganda, and megalomania. Rudolf Hess rewrote his thesis a dozen times or more in trying to make it readable. Until then, Hitler had referred to himself as an artist, even though he had been rejected by the only authority of his day, the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Once Mein Kampf was published, he called himself a writer for the rest of his life. Once he was released, his need for power surfaced as the driving force in his life.
Tyrants surely have a need for power. But, at the risk of repeating myself, so do politicians. Consider this: Every politician that leaves our Congress typically walks away worth millions of dollars. Most enter with very little. Yet, they receive only a modest salary, and most maintain two homes during their tenure. How does this economic miracle happen? It is a justifiable premise to assert that all those legislators who attained riches on the job were bought and paid for by others. A little “reverse engineering” of their career paths would likely reveal that we do indeed have the” best Congress that money can buy.” What a great premise for a book! But it would be great reading if it also contained names, dates, places, and amounts. In this age of untraceable PAC money, but with openly biased billionaires, and disdainful Supreme Court justices, who knows where a journalistic investigation might take that author?
And now we arrive at the presidential election of 2012. What combination of money, sexual potency (or impotency), a need for power, a need for achievement, integrity, love, hate, bias, baloney, or bullshit will carry the day? This time I’m betting on youth, potency, and integrity.
It’s a long shot, but so is life.
Additionally, ordinary American response to Sandy has been cooperative and generous. Civilian and government entities are moving in rapidly to recover normalcy. Neighbors are helping neighbors. That's as it should be. The PACs should be funneling their money to help.
Ron