Th3 Simple Questions

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

AND RESURRECTION FORCES

WHO AM I?

I am Niccolo Machiavelli. My treatise, which separated politics from morality, was called The Prince and was published in 1513. The brand has done very well! Only a modern mind would apply a then radical concept, amorality, in so many practical policy ways at all levels of society worldwide!

This year is the 30^th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s and Oliver North’s (two great American patriots) Iran/Contra dealings. Reagan said publicly he’d never deal with terrorists. North diverted funds to terrorists and summed up the situation with language that sounds as relevant today as it did 30 years ago: “There is great deceit, deception practiced in the conduct of covert operations. They are at essence a lie. We make every effort to deceive the enemy as to our intent, our conduct, and to deny the association of the United States to those activities. . . and that is not wrong.”

Only you have now applied this principle exponentially and everywhere! Well done! You still have the powerful 1% which govern the 99%, or, as I called them in my day, “the mob.”

The way I put it in The Prince: “All men will only see what you seem to be; only a few will know who you are, and those few will not dare to oppose the many who have the majesty of the state on their side to defend them….For the mob is always impressed by appearances and by results; and the world is composed of the mob.”⁵

WHY AM I HERE?

I stopped by to remind you where your modern thinking comes from. You don’t call them princes, you call them governors, but they will soon be saying: “What are you thinking? We can’t decriminalize anything. We’re certainly not going to let an entire generation of black men out of prison because of a little thing like overly harsh drug penalties, are we?”

Remember, it was me who said: “I say that every Prince ought to wish to be considered kind rather than cruel. Nevertheless, a Prince must be indifferent to the charge of cruelty if he is to keep his subjects loyal and united.”

Forces of amorality go hand in hand with brutality. And you have media today, something I DIDN’T have! As I always said, “…a Prince should make himself feared in such a way that…he escapes hatred; for being feared but not hated go readily together….And if he finds it necessary to take someone’s life, he should do so when there is suitable justification and manifest cause….pretexts for taking someone’s life arise more rarely and last a shorter time.”

Your media and networking and the brilliant law that says corporations are people make so much more possible today, for who can really attack a corporation for corrupting the land, seeds or food? Not even your government. Justice bows to economics.

WHAT DO I WANT?

Ah, what a long strange brand development journey it’s been; the memories tumble together! The big dogs of racial, religious, political and economic levers move cultures around the world: Black Panthers; Red Brigades; Soviet-style ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and Rwanda; eco-terrorism; Jewish settler massacres; gang wars in Mexico; Waco/Branch Davidians; trade union massacres; race riots; MOVE bombings; Chinese Communists; South Africa spying; Rodney King; 9/11; priest sex scandals; pipelines; GMOs; the Arab Spring; financial plundering; no jobs, no future, with the complicity of princes of all sorts.

The modern age has learned the lessons of amorality well.

But there is a final lesson which princes do not want to hear and so will overlook. A lesson they find incomprehensible. There is a force more powerful than their amoral politics, economics or false religions because it comes from the heart of man.

I wrote, “…when the people begin to look upon a thing with horror, they will persevere in that attitude for many centuries, but princes will not do so.” And over the years I watched this perseverance and suffering at the hands of Princes and something happened. I beheld the power of transformed horror.

A prince should never forget that artists take in the forces of amorality, the horror, death and brutality, and transform them into art. And when they do, their art has resurrection power.

You princes and people, look around, can you see this resurrection art appearing and transforming the bitter into the sweet?