Spite is the sign of defeat

It's easy to rule the world if you have absolute power. You own the military, the civil institutions, the law and all the people. You rewrite the theology of your religion and kill those who argue. You can blame everything on those who have less power than you. Marry and behead your wives if they don't produce sons. Public executions end debate about right and wrong. You can threaten other nations with trade sanctions.  You can lie and demand that everyone calls it truth.

You can dismantle the UN, blow up cities, exterminate ethnic groups, shut down schools, ban music and theatre, fund fascism and hate groups, take children away from their parents and raise them on propaganda. 

None of this is new of course. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and many others have written about dystopian worlds where no trace of integrity or justice can be found.  But men and women who worship power are eager to suck up whatever crumbs that fall from the table, in order to gain more for themselves.

Pundits are ever ready to sell themselves for a few points: -  Tory MP declares that diversity will destroy us; young man gunned down in road rage; man flies his plane into home after fight with wife; Conservatives side with authoritarian regime that beheads, crucifies, and flogs citizens.

If revenge, spite, guns and killing are the only subjects discussed in my community, it leaves me without agency or representation. Those who have done all they can to keep a job, rent a home, feed their family - still end up jobless and homeless, are led to believe they have two choices - blame themselves or blame others. It's a universal problem. 

In trickle-down economics, it's not wealth but propaganda, a hierarchy of importance, a class system, a pecking order, a food chain. It's easy to rule the world because those with the largest arsenal of weapons have the capacity to invent the gimmicks to keep the rest of us occupied until it is too late to see what we have lost. Then all that's left is to kick the dog for revenge, attack the minority, send back the refugees, watch the beheadings of those who dared to speak up, vote for the politicians who campaign on punishment, and so on. 

After the shooting on the Danforth in July, Matt Gurney wrote in The Walrus "I wanted these people who had seen violence first-hand to care more. Not to be traumatized, of course. But I wanted to see signs of engagement or curiosity or a focus on policy."


When spite is the only thing we have left, we have nothing but misery. This is the boot on the face of humanity, polished and paid for by an ideology that worships power, not life, not struggle, compassion, or vulnerability.