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Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Dear One,
Surviving times of absolute power requires a focus on absolute beauty.
In 1887 Lord Acton writes a letter to Bishop Creighton regarding how to write historically and morally about the Inquisition.
“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
Since the time I can remember having self-awareness, around 5, I have been present to the danger that we are in.  It just all seemed so obvious to me that this whole thing was a set up. Of course, as I colored in my wonder woman coloring book, I was listening to the women at the kitchen table, drinking wine, and smoking cigarettes late into the night, talking about revolution. Danger and power over paradigms.
Yet this awareness goes further back than that, because as I breast fed, my mother was engaged in conversations of safety, of food, of welfare, of shelter, of care. Not just for herself, but for the other women in the community who had even less than we had. And it seemed we had so little, because we were on welfare, but then, because my mother and my grandmother were artists, we were surrounded by the beauty of their creations. They built a lot of all our furniture by hand with wood and sewed some of our clothing, and our bedspreads and embroidered our pillowcases.  Beauty goes a long way.
I think my somatic memory goes even further back, because my mother was attacked when she was pregnant with me. Research from the womb shows that the fetus has awarenessess of the things that are happening around them, that they react to the energies and language, and physical environment, how the mother treats herself and is treated by others. How could that not be the case, yet it is only recently that prenatal studies have proven the impacts on the fetus.  I think I was born hypervigilant. I feel like I was born watching.
Born watching bad men do bad things. To themselves and to others.
There is a part of me that finds myself surprised about what’s happening in the United States right now. Not because I ever trusted the government, but because the blatant arrogance and ugliness is being televised and tolerated. Yet that part of me that remembers, has been anticipating actions like this, that continue to erase anyone who is not the white male authority of the day, who declares himself in charge, regardless of the structures set up to protect us from such behavior.
Of course the system was already broken. Of course, there was already corruption. Yet, in my view, what we are we are witnessing, and experiencing in our bodies, our hearts, our brains, our communities, our stories, is absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Many of us may not have seen something like this in our lifetime. But it’s happened before. Over and over and over and we never learn because the history of what happened is written by the conquerers. Of course since there are over our over 100 armed conflicts right now, we are certainly not the only place that is experiencing something like this. I think the irony is that the world and we, have viewed ourselves as somehow an elevated nation. Then there is this: "We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within." This is a quote attributed to the late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
This kind of dominance has been happening for over 10,000 years. Since the first people conq
Published on 8 months, 4 weeks ago