This picture has gained quite a bit of popularity as it has floated around the internet in the last few days.  The picture reveals two obvious truths to me.  One is the unconditional love of pets and how important that support is to our emotional and physical health.  Especially in a dystopian world where community has been obliterated by the corporate state.  The other is also obvious.  It isn’t uncommon to hear that many people choose to live on the streets rather than being boarded up in asylums as we used to do back in the dark ages.  You know, a handful of decades ago.  There is no intermediate solution between asylums and just dumping our citizens on the streets?  Really?   This is the best our government is capable of?

Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me.

Were it not for the never-ending efforts of mostly average citizens of average means to provide some level of dignity to those around them, our society would allow countless people to simply disappear.   Those people who sacrifice so much to help others achieve some level of human dignity are the nameless faces of those without a voice.  Those who offer little as measured by the corporate state, yet selflessly give, aren’t granted title and authority.  Then there are those they seek to lift up and help achieve some level of human dignity.  They are the people who have absolutely nothing  to give as measured by the corporate state.  They also aren’t granted title and authority.  

It’s a reflection of our leader’s values that the further away from average, everyday citizens they become, the more they are concerned that someone is going to take what they believe is rightfully theirs.  Sharing, when it does happen, is often a gesture of publicly giving with a name attached.  A donation of what has been taken from society returned as a new hospital wing with my name on it.  Look at me.  I am so magnanimous.  But, the nameless faces without a voice still aren’t seen or heard.  They are pushed aside for the new mall I am building.  Or they are pushed aside for the new condominium complex I am building.  Or they are pushed aside because I can take even more from society by sending your jobs off to a slave labor camp at Foxconn. 

Obviously all of this is for the greater good.  You know, that invisible hand of self-interested capitalism that mysteriously leads to a more virtuous society.   Adam Smith must have been high on crystal meth when he wrote that in 1776.  You remember that date?  He was on the wrong side of the trade then just as he is now.  Now the invisible hand has become a religion that anyone who understands anything about the human condition knows is nonsense.  But, then England was a fascist empire ruled by corporations, birthright authority, feudalism and a brutal king at the time of its writing.   And, most in the empire without birthright and title lived like dogs while the rest pillaged the world.  You know, just like we see today.

Leadership is not a position to aspire to.  Leadership has nothing to do with title and authority.  It is about empowering people around you to do great things.  It is about empowering people around you to do greater things than they could do on their own.  In other words, it is about creating community.  It is about leading by example.  It is about giving more than taking.   It is about recognizing there is something more important than the self. 

We live in a society of disposable citizens, disposable employees and disposable soldiers.  When they no longer serve a purpose, they are cast aside without a thought.   We live in a Godless society run by Godless people.  As a whole, authority in the corporate state has no conscience.  They are consumed by the self.

Do the kings and queens in Washington hear the cries of suffering they have created while they feed at the trough of power, money, arrogance, divisiveness, hate, gluttony, war, violence and greed?  

Is this the best that self-granted title and authority can do?  Why, yes it is.  That is why our nation was created.  So, that we would have citizen government.  Community government.  Not a king or queen in some far off land making edicts from high on a hill.   The voice of the people and community has been lost.  It is replaced by the voice of the predatory corporate state.  We no longer live in a democracy.  We live in a capitalism.  

Corporate Personhood must go.  Money in politics must go.  Public-private partnerships must go.  Corporations that no longer serve the public good must go.  The concept of career politicians who rule with self-granted authority and title must be abolished by law.  Secrecy of the state must go.  Until then, citizen government is dead and the invisible hand of self-interest and all of the greed, arrogance, divisiveness, hate, gluttony and violence it can muster will continue to rule.