Here is part of a speech, with modifications, made in the novel Buddha’s Cross by the Maestro—patriarch of the Old World Order—in his own defence against charges of crimes against humanity:
Empires are like people. They are born out of the throes of passion triggered by some magic that cannot be repeated. They start out as a collection of families who decide to settle in some place by a river. The adventurers and unruly types who got them there alive in the first place are slowly displaced and discredited. Those explorers, soldiers, sailors, trappers, cowboys, minstrels and medicine men become outcasts. They are too restless to grow and retain any real wealth over the long term and are pushed to the fringe. Their appetite for risk is stifled as the sensitives gain control and steer society toward health and safety, caring and sharing.
The majority, who are fearful of uncertainty and dig deep roots, are destined to inherit the earth. The farmers become the moral majority and set up a society that caters to their own interests and not those of the sailors and cowboys. The cowboys call it corruption. Time passes and there are winners and losers even among the farmers. The winners use ever more devious tricks to soak up surplus money and power. People start to complain. To quell dissent, half the booty is funneled through the social welfare system, where administrators and squeaky wheels absorb most of it while very little enriches the average Jane or creates opportunity for the many over the one.
These societies grow old and tired. A couple of centuries of half-educated politicians just earning their paycheck—or worse, trying to make a name for themselves—adds up to thousands of new rules every year and a lot of control over people’s lives. Schools and news reports—the only sources of critical knowledge and information for making decisions… or changes—have been hijacked. Likewise, a couple of centuries of accumulated wealth puts all the big powers—the corporations, organizations and fat families—in firm control of all opportunity that exists. Only the cleverest and luckiest people manage to create real wealth after that.
Our entire Western world is over the hill now and racing into the future in a frenzy to grow, invent and reinvent. Every trick in the book is used to squeeze money and power out of the economy, and systems are put in place to absorb new money without its ever trickling down to the masses. The powerful comfort the poor with a cage and a blanket, and the poor are grateful to receive it, knowing all the while that they were fooled somehow but too scared, powerless or exhausted to fight back. They begin to feel the heavy presence of the police and the state. The exits are blocked, and everyone is running for the one marked quick fame and bucks before it closes, too. Government no longer cares about its people, assuming it ever did, while corporations and professional associations are equally ruthless, so there is no morality, society or family to defend anymore. People stop having babies and live for today and to hell with tomorrow. . . to be continued
