GEORGE II - THE "SON-KING"
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 10/24/02]
"L'etat c'est moi." ("I am the state") -- Louis XIV, (1643-1712) The Sun King of France
Under Louis XIV, all France existed merely to reflect his luster. All around him were but satellites to his greater glory. Wars were fought, and lands were seized as soldiers were slain, for the glory of Louis, who shone like the sun.
An American state, Louisiana, was named for him.
Under his reign, the idea of the divine right of kings, their inherent and eternal right to rule, reached its highest form.
Today, such ideas seem almost laughable.
This is the age of the divine right of capital, of the inherent and eternal right of amassed capital to rule all things. Corporate wealth and economic interest is the ruling principle of the day, and states are but instruments of their lust for gain.
George W. Bush, like his father, is hungry for reflected glory, and no glory shines in America like that of war. But we are not facing a war for glory. We are facing a war for oil, a war for capital. The Bush dynasty, and those that rule them, believe in the divine right of cash.
Iraq stands as a dark straw man, while personalized in the singularity of Sadam, who is in the maleloquent words of the Commander in Chief, "a bad man". Query: Would there be these rumors of war if Iraq were -- oh, I don’t know, oil-free? In Africa? In Latin-America?
Louis XIV was busy basking in the "glory" of his French Empire. George II is trying to realize "Poppy’s" dream -- a New World Order -- with the United States as the eternal Empire, Pax Americana.
The brilliance of Louis has been succeeded by the dullness of George W., who boasts of his C-averages while a student of privilege at Yale.
Louis was the ultimate peacock in Versailles; George is the boring manager of a business; his pedigree is, in truth, his business degree. And the construction of an empire is the objective of business, so that Iraq, with its 24% of the world’s oil deposits, will be little more than a vast gasoline station, with a flag.
To the charge that it is in violation of international law, business has a straight-forward, simple, and, from its perspective, compelling retort: it's good for business!
When one listens to the White House these days, if you listen closely, you'll hear the nation's 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, saying, "The chief business of the American people is business." He praised the rampant speculation that fueled the stock market. He also presided over the Great Wall Street crash of 1929, when the economy tanked. Coolidge is back!
No empire lasts forever. Rome didn’t. The British didn’t. The French didn’t. Neither will the U.S. Empire.
Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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