Misappropriation of terms

Day 1,874, 23:46 • Published in USA United Kingdom • by wingfield

Politicians, religious leaders and despots love to appropriate symbols, practices, concepts, names and heroes, rarely with any particular honesty, but mainly for their own purposes.

The story of the re-conversion of Britain to Christianity by Augustine of Canterbury includes the orders of Pope Gregory to usurp the pagan altars, deities and holy days and incorporate them into Christian ritual, although it is doubtful whether the spirits of the deities appreciated being demoted to mere sainthood!

History has a surfeit of examples of an appeal for freedom and liberty from those whose true objective was to rule and enslave others. Treason and tyranny have often been the means to “establish”, “preserve” or “restore” “freedom”.

Then there are the popular or iconic heroes, whose name is invoked in posterity to achieve the opposite principles of the historical figures. In the eUS, we see several of these disturbing activities, not confined, sadly, to the PTOer community.

True, the name of “freedom” is purloined as always in the name of the main front for our chief internal opponent and he himself has stolen the name of a true American hero who somehow managed to draw the support and respect of both sides of politics.

However, we see in our home community signs of the adoption of historical symbols, mindless slogans and religious imposition. The eUS does not follow the RL American Constitution but the Founding Fathers knew what they were talking about when they insisted on the separation of Church and State.

There is no room for a fake religion in eRep, even when the nominal deity is co-opted from a meme based on cartoon characters. It is disturbing when game characters assume to themselves the same name and endlessly spam the rest of us with it.

Mindless slogans taken from a long dead militarist empire do nothing for the ordinary citizen either. I saw a comment in a shout feed that there was a reason that particular empire fell. I should suggest that there were many reasons, two of which were the proliferation of tyranny and favouritism, combined with the fatal alliance with an emerging religion from the East of the empire. My own comment in the particular shout feed was that the sewer access covers in the modern city still bear the symbol of the long dead empire.

Other abuses in the name of freedom include the suppression or perversion of democracy in the name of resisting an external threat. The first casualty of any such arrangement is accountability. Those in control of the emergency measures turn them into a means of oppression in themselves.

How can anyone claim to be speaking for unity when the person selected to represent the so-called majority is chosen by around five to ten per cent of the actual electorate. Placing decisions in the control of an unrepresentative forum is simply disenfranchisement of the majority.

When an existing order has been in control for too long, as has been the case for four years in the eUS, fatal weaknesses creep into the system. The average Congressional experience of each new elected Congress has gradually risen, not a problem in itself, but exacerbated when only those in charge of parties actually get to decide who holds winnable positions on party tickets. The resulting weakness is the frustration and marginalisation of new blood.

Even worse for the body politic is the selection for unelected and unaccountable Cabinet positions either the same old time-servers or sycophantic and treacherous newcomers from other countries, able to become citizens due to association with the right people but without scrutiny of their activities in other governments, including gross abuse of power.

When the State is rotten and corrupt, even a worthy cause such as fighting PTOers can be fatally weakened. We must reform the “unity” process immediately and give the parties back to their members. The time-servers and sycophants must be cleared out from the executive. The pseudo-religious nonsense must be jettisoned and those who support cheating and multiple accounts must be discredited.