Jean Luc Ponty - Civilized Evil

Let's try to wash the nasty taste of politics out of our brains with some jazz fusion. And, nope. Clearly we can't, even Jean Luc Ponty has something to say about demagoguery, and staying focused on removing its power over us. 

Unfortunately, you put all your effort into it, but the critics get bored and accuse you of being formulaic, and boring. The trouble with that is that it's you, not the artist. You're the one who can't accept the larger picture. You're the stain that can't be removed without damaging the actual painting. 

The trouble with Trump is that a lot of people mistakenly consider themselves part of the demographic he speaks to, the demographic he represents. So, let me try to describe the large scale problem as i see it. 

First of all, there is no government, only groups of people doing things, and other groups of people reacting to them. That's not a silly pedantic philosophical statement, it's a framework for understanding the world. When people say "the government," they are referring to an imaginary anthropomorphic skeleton, a GREGORY, if you will. In the real world, however, there are actual people performing governmental functions, holding office as representatives of "the will" of the people. Let's really drive that home, think of it like the will of a now deceased relative. That relative, in this case, is all of the people who lived and died for the ideals of personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without curtailing those rights of others. 

There's one big problem at the moment, and that is the fact that the federal government recognizes the owning of branded commercialization as being more important than individual liberty. When Trump, or someone sharing his mindset, speaks of draining the swamp or removing regulations, he is talking about destroying the protections and compensation needed to protect "the people." The country in his mind is a hierarchical corporate structure, he sits at the top of the pyramid speaking to his closest few executive officers, who in turn instruct their departments according to strategic plans, pass them down to their management teams who break these strategies down into menial tasks and yell "keep firing, assholes" at the labor force. You, the person who drives to work in the morning and home again at night are a menial laborer. You might also perform higher level functions in your specific context, but unless you're the governor, or the ceo of a fortune 500 company, or the manager of his resort, in the mind of Trump you are a nameless ant in the colony. Why do corporations love their layers of middle management? Because it is mentally damaging to watch yourself subjugate your fellow humans, reward or destroy their lives for arbitrary and often unrelated selfish reasons. The structure acts as a buffer, and removes that acute sense of personal responsibility.

Me? Yeah, i think that's Civilized Evil. 

Now, are Biden and Trump diametrically opposed arch-nemeses? No. Politically speaking, Biden was the available compromise, the person we elected to steer the ship without actually throwing the people who don't want to head toward the scary, pirate-infested part of the ocean overboard. 

I don't like using the metaphor of Warlords or Kings, but something similar is happening at the highest corporate level. Berkshire-Hathaway, Universal Music Group, British Petroleum, Walmart, Amazon, etc. have all grown so massive in economic and political power that they are beginning to rival the actual States in these United States in their effect on our daily lives. Read the news some time, Warren Buffet is not an individual person any more, he is the controlling interest of a vast commercial/retail/insurance empire. He's not particulary malevolent, but he easily could be. 

Elon Musk has reached the point where he is literally directing his own space exploration program. Again, he's not being particularly villainous that i can see, but imagine if he changed his mind on Monday morning. 

Imagine if we took away all the actual checks and balances of these international powers. Don't think of it in terms of good/bad or right/wrong, think in terms of capability, and recognize that removing governmental oversight from their ogranizations is akin to handing a fluffy kitten a hand grenade to bat around the living room floor. 

Imagine waking up to find out that you have no choice but to work for one of these cross-border empires. Everything you wish to do is now owned by a major corporation; every idea or design is the legal property of some enterprising mogul. Every piece of software, every vehicle, every tree in the forest belongs not to you the individual, but to our supposedly benevolent corporate overlords. 

Yes, we should encourage cooperation and big ideas, but we should also be prepared to let them go when they have run their course, accomplished their goal, or even just outright failed for most any reason. Success has become the acquired benevolence of the elite, but the common man bears all the weight of the consequences. We shouldn't punish each other just for the next guy's turn on the tire swing. 

I haven't reminded you in quite a while, but these are just my thoughts. I could be wrong. However, at the end of the day, a civilized evil is still an evil. I don't want to play that game. I want to play this record.