The Divine Mr. M

~With all this #occupywallstreet stuff going on, the average citizen is once again being thrust into the middle of the political scrum. But politics is constructed in such a way as to utterly confuse and confound those who do not know its arcane rules and rituals.

Therefore, as a Public Service, I have made this simple guide to understanding how politics works. Now 'simple' does not mean 'easy'. This method involves homework. But trust me that if one sticks to this simple construct, all will be made clear in due course.

This construct consists of just five words. That's all: five words. These five words are actually two quotes from a pair of veteran players in the cutthroat politics of legalistic republics.

Cue bono [pro; Q-E bono] These first two words are a question, Latin for To whose benefit? They come from a speech by Cicero, who in turn was quoting the respected Roman consul and censor Lucius Cassius. This was twenty one centuries ago and it has since entered the language of modern jurisprudence. But it also fits perfectly for following politics. After all, the Romans did found the first Great Republic of Lawyers.

Follow the money. These last three words are an instruction. They were uttered by “Deepthroat” to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein when they were investigating the Watergate coverup. And 'following the money' blew the entire Nixon administration wide open. “Deepthroat” turned out to be Mark Felt, an Associate Director at the FBI. Mr. Felt was also a lawyer, as was nearly everyone involved in the scandal.

So, five words: “Who benefits?”-“Follow the money.” Like I said, 'simple'. Now comes the homework example: Google “Freedomworks” and “Tea Party Express” and keep following the links, all while repeating in your mind, “Who benefits?”-“Follow the money.” The personal experience of this process will explain all of this far better than any rant of mine.

"October 2. People are asking my thoughts on Occupy Wall Street. Here's an article about five ways OccupyWallStreet has succeeded. But notice the level on which it has succeeded: public opinion. In the middle ages, there was universal agreement that the church was corrupt for hundreds of years before the church began to reform. Even then it did not reform because of public opinion, but because it was losing to competing churches. Wall Street has no incentive to change, because it has a monopoly on our lives. We can't buy houses or go to college without bank loans; we can't drive without oil companies; we can't eat without agribusiness. Predictable assholes are saying we have no right to protest if we use products made by the systems we're protesting against. They're so wrong, they're almost right: the whole reason we're protesting is that we can't get what we need without going through corrupt systems; but until we have other ways of getting what we need, we have no leverage to do anything but shout into the wind.

I'm not hopeful about sudden positive change. At the global scale, fast changes tend to be destructive and traumatic, while good changes take decades. Maybe this is like one wave of the tide coming in. The next twenty waves will be smaller, but then one will go a little higher than this one, and eventually the giant blocks of money will be washed away, except for a few islands."

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