Xenonlit: Horse detail from the stagecoach mural.
I've been thinking about comparing thought proccesses between the four horsemen of our nation's apacolypse: Right wing extremists, sociopaths, drug opportunists and deviant religious thinkers.
These four entities are the precursors that show up just before the decline of great civilizations. They are the announcement that a new teacher, one who could not care less about history, is coming.
It is amazing how drug opportunists and sociopaths think alike. Lying is a fact of their lives because they know that the truth will do the opposite of setting them free.
Their mechanisms for lying are so common and effective. They talk fast and have an answer for everything. They thrive on the promise of a future outcome without thinking about outcomes they promised in the past. They wear a weak, uninformed, gullible person down when confronted with proof of their lies and bad acts.
Sociopaths and drug opportunists live on the edge of the truth and well across the border with reality. They are as glib, charming or pathetic as they need to be. They think with grandiose expectations of themselves and of life. They are narcissistic to the extreme.
They are incomplete human beings. They are neither alive nor dead. They cannot live completely functional lives and they do far more damage than good.
Xenonlit. Detail from the Stagecoach mural
Political extremists and religious deviants are different. They have external authority to back up their lies, or so they think.
If the ultimate authourity for having their way cannot be found in the constitution, then the authority comes from the bible. If it is not the bible, then it comes from intellects that rely upon twisted interpretations of human intellectual constructs. Political extremists can be highly educated academics and they can be poorly educated, even illiterate.
Whenever they are confronted, they cite lie after lie before anyone can check their claims. They are not whole citizens. They do not care how much they take for themselves. They do not care how little they give to others. "Noblesse Oblige" is a great evil to such people. They demand to rule over all of us by divine imperative or through corrupted means.
All four of those horsemen are known to out talk and over talk. All four of will claim to have an understanding of the world that is greater than our ability to understand. Well hell yea, verily! We have no business understanding worlds where drug addicts, charismatic religious deviants, pychosocial monsters and political opportunists rule.
We cannot allow the four horsemen to determine what is real and what is not real.
It all comes down to three things the four horsemen of our apacolypse will do to people: control the conversation, make the worst ideas seem reasonable and determine what is true and real.
Thanks to the media, the four horsemen are like the world's worsts street artists who annoy their captive audiences with plates that keep falling off their poles and crashing to the ground. They are busy creeps who cannot stop seeking audiences for bad plate spinning.
"No no!" They say, "Let me show you this new trick!"
They are antichrists who advocate everything that Jesus told us not to do. They discourage everything that Jesus did tell us to do. They are the real traitors and they are the most dangerous internal ememies of America. They cannot stop parroting concepts that go against everything we stand and fight for.
Drug addicts, sociopaths, political extremists and religious deviants have no power on their own. They can only slip through the cracks that form when civilizations age and settle into complacency.
The four horsemen flow through our aging civilization's cracks by the thousands now, sweeping up the weak minded, the willing, the greedy, the gullible and the confused.
It is time we called out the liars, overturned the moneylender's tables and turned our backs on the wicked. It is time we opened our eyes and saw the drug addiction epidemic that exists right in our own homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals and police forces.
It is time we had a midterm election with historical turnout by the poor, the formerly well-to-do, the betrayed soldier, the brown and black, the young, the elderly, women and the disenfranchised.
It is time for us to use every power we have, be it the power of one or the power of the many. It is time for us to be so vast we cannot be denied and so unified, we cannot be set against each other.
It it time because a new teacher is coming and we do not understand the lesson. We allowed the most destructive, corrupt administration in our history to steal an election and we allowed that administration to continue the destruction for a second term. We did not understand that we, here and now, are no more immune from history repeating than any other civilization that exists not or that has existed before.
We made the mistake of allowing the media and the corporations to determine our priorities in life.
The lesson is not at fault. The teacher is not at fault. We have had a very patient teacher named "History". We are at fault because we did not respect or pay attention to the teacher.
A better teacher is coming soon. That teacher is called "The decline of a civilization." The four horsemen are just a sign of times that have happened many times before now.
Xenonlit Detail from the Beckwourth Mural