Planet and PEOPLE

Donald Trump’s proposal to take over  Gaza, move all the people out  and redevelop the strip as a rich man’s playground was really only to be expected.    Trump is the epitome of America – a country built on hypocrisy and violent crime, that seems to believe itself ‘entitled’ to rule the entire world, as it pleases, for its own benefit completely, without regard for people or planet.   

Trump is refreshing in that he doesn’t do lies and diplomacy.  He now dares to say in public what previous US presidents have not:  that America is entirely founded on the idea that wealth sets you above the law, that money can buy you anything and anyone you want.   It is its own justification. 

Trump is just the public face of the gangsterism that has ruled America for generations. On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” We now discover that Ukraine holds one of Europe’s largest lithium reserves, estimated at 500,000 tons, or approximately 3% of global total reserves. In fact, Ukraine — described by the World Economic Forum as “a key potential supplier of rare earth metals” — is believed to hold about 5% of global rare-earth metal reserves, a group of 30 substances classified as “critical raw materials” by the European Union (1) The problem there is that Musk and his friends are up against nuclear armed Russia, whom they cannot defeat.

It’s not surprising that a country founded on settler colonialism should see  the pursuit of wealth and power is the only path worth taking in life, and that the ends always justify any means.  It’s ‘force majeure’, or in American terms, ’eminent domain’ – the ‘fittest’ to survive are apparently the most reckless and ruthless.   Success in war and peace are demonstrations of God’s favour.   There is no place for ethics in such a philosophy.    Rule by naked violence, where any pretence of democracy is just performative virtue signalling,  is a good definition of fascism. 

The roots of this belief in naked violence go very deep in European culture, at least to the Roman generals whose military conquests could make them Emperor over the whole of southern Europe.   Conquest was (and still is) simply murder and theft, a demonstration of absolute power designed to strike fear into any opponent and reward any supporter.    Land and booty seized was distributed to the troops, and the colonised people became their property too, to be sold as slaves.

Out of this savagery the Romans built up a complex administration to secure their power and try to prevent challenges to it.    But the purpose was always to maintain exclusive control over people, land, and other resources.   The wealthy and powerful practised ‘shock and awe’ – the shock of horrific punishments meted out to dissidents, and the awe of their displays of wealth through  the patronage of art and architecture, the exotic and the golden.   The message was that ordinary  people could never aspire to such magnificence.  ‘Look upon these works, ye mighty, and despair’.  But if you served and obeyed them, some of it might ‘trickle down’ to you as a share of the spoils.  Followers would be well rewarded.   

And since the gods, or God, appeared to favour the ‘successful’ , religion could be appropriated as a form of psychological warfare.   Christianity became the official religion of Rome when Constantine saw a vision that told him, ‘in this sign, conquer’.  It was a powerful incentive to many petty kings and warlords to adopt the faith later, but it turned Jesus’s actual teachings on their head.  However the price Constantine paid for his temporal sword was to give up the spiritual one to the Pope.   This was resented by every king afterwards and led to a power struggle that led eventually to the Reformation.

The Roman Empire fell apart because it was based on violence, and violence breeds violence.   The expectations of followers became became harder and harder to satisfy; and the cries of the oppressed became harder and harder to resist.   And of course the neighbouring peoples demanded to compete for the wealth on display and were increasingly willing to fight for it.   

So the Roman empire failed to suppress internal dissent or adequately reward its supporters.   It transitioned from a real physical presence into a dream for kings and princes (and their relatives in the church) to aspire to, becoming (in the west) the Roman Catholic Church.   Many aspects  – vestments, church layout, administrative and legal structures, Latin as a common language, were all drawn from late Roman models.   The church used this to good effect by offering its support to warlords who would protect it.  This included not just the aura of ‘Roman civilisation’ but  a legal system,  a civil service and control of subjects by what might now be called ‘cognitive warfare’ techniques.   It also offered a way to usefully employ younger sons who might otherwise prove challenging.   

However,  no generals or warlords could summon the power to conquer the whole.   The ‘Holy Roman Emperor’,  who was supposed to wield the physical sword, found it impossible in practice to do so; the Pope, who had taken on the Emperor’s spiritual sword (semi-divine, psychological power)  found himself dependent on military might to sustain his own position.  It was a very uneasy partnership.

Trying to rise above partisan involvement and unite the warring barons in Europe against a common enemy, the Pope declared the 1st Crusade in 1095.   The ‘Holy Land’ was to be reclaimed by the Roman Empire’s successors.  It was ‘rightfully’ theirs.    This was an opportunity for both to gain new land and resources by expanding Christendom at the expense of non-believers rather than each other.  Perhaps the most successful would achieve an edge over their rivals and pacify Europe.   And of course, the warrior ‘elites’ of Europe, while endlessly fighting and scheming against each other, had to recognise that they were all intermarried and therefore family.   This must have had some dampening effect on their activity, although there’s not much evidence of that.  

What actually happened was that the ‘Christian’ warlords arrived in Jerusalem and massacred the population in a ferocious genocide.    There was nothing the Pope could do to stop it.   It just widened the horizons of the dealers in violence.   Like their Roman predecessors, they aimed now to look further afield,  conquer new territory, and grab more resources before others did.  

The other consequence was that the work of classical Greek and Roman philosophers and writers that had been suppressed by the church started to become available in the west, and they were eagerly explored by those who loved the idea of Roman ‘civilisation’ and its  supposed benefits.   So began the 12th  ‘renaissance’, the supposed rebirth of Roman civilisation.   Kings and princes competed to patronise art and architecture worthy of an Emperor, and horrific punishments for rebels and dissidents were adopted.  Not crucifixion of course  in a ‘Christian’  world, but burning at the stake, torture of prisoners, and other sadistic practices revived after hundreds of years.  This all seems to me to be evidence of growing insecurity and fear as competition for wealth and power grew.   State terrorism was a key element in the growth of the ‘nation state’, the geographically defined mini-empire, modelled on Rome.  Those who might threaten the increasingly autocratic rule of late medieval monarchs were ‘othered’ as Jews, witches, foreigners, supposedly dangerous elements to unite against.

The same period also saw a very different development:  the growth of a market economy.   In the immediate post-Roman period, people identified with a cultural or ‘ethnic’ group.  Kings were kings of people, chosen (at least in theory) by consent.   The main unifying factor was  sense of kinship, expressed by a common language.   However, competition for land had revived the Roman idea of subject peoples –  one group could rule another.   Increasingly, kingdoms became defined by  territory –  ethnicity referred now to the rulers.   The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms contained many Welsh speakers;  Norman England was ruled by a group who spoke a language unintelligible to most of their subjects. Eve today there is a difference in cuture between Scotland and its southern neighbour. The king in Scotland is traditionally king of Scots; whereas in England he is king of a territory – England, the UK etc.

Increasingly the rulers of these kingdoms saw themselves as emperors holding land and ruling subject peoples rather than fathers and protectors of a kindred.   This entitled them to go out and conquer others as the Romans had done.   But this required the various peoples they ruled to adopt a common, land-based identity.   

The fusion of Roman imperial autocracy  with kindred-based power by consent created feudalism.   In this model, the people give up their land in return for protection.  The king holds it in trust for them and grants it back in return for services rendered.  Those would include military service as required.   

Note that the king who failed to protect and support his people could be deposed.    Power was however retained in the leafing families by ‘rights’ of inheritance.   So we had the rise of the feudal warlords.   Although the concept of the territory based nation state was developing these warlords did not think in nationalistic terms unless it suited their purpose.   They might hold estates from several different kings.   This produced conflicts of loyalty and encouraged the kings themselves to centralise power in themselves.  

A land-based power structure also did not allow for the growth of non-land based wealth, in other words, money.   Rather than reluctant soldiers who had no wish to fight battles that were not theirs, the king or warlord could employ more effective mercenaries.   

Again, before the cash economy collapsed in late Roman times, the Roman authorities had done this, inviting Anglo-Saxons in to Britain to defend them.  As they discovered, soldiers need to be adequately rewarded or they can turn on their employers.   

Emperors, kings and warlords needed to satisfy their armies with the spoils of war, or with other kinds of payment.   And ordinary medieval people, like the tribes before them beyond the Roman frontier, preferred to be paid off than fight and die.

All this drove a demand at all levels for movable wealth, that is, cash.   The wealthy demonstrated their status and power by displays of magnificence – patronage of arts and architecture.    But they did not themselves have the expertise to produce these things, so those who did, for example the masons who built the castles, palaces and cathedrals, achieved extraordinary power over their employers.  They could, in effect, set any price they chose – so long as they never revealed the secrets of their craft.

Money was now the real source of power.  By lending it at interest, it could be made to grow by itself.   It was like magic.  Of course it was, and is, based on the concept of debt:   If the debtor cannot or will not pay up it is worthless.   The secret of capitalism is that those with money can enforce debt obligations on others (by violence if necessary) while escaping them themselves.   The limited liability company is a legal fiction.

In the 16th-17th centuries the bankers and merchants and skilled tradesmen, having discovered the power of money decided to  overturn the medieval idea of hereditary privilege and take power themselves.   Their wealth and power was a sign of God’s favour.  They ‘owned the science’ and this made them superior to all others.   

And so it developed.  Religion was eventually ridiculed because it did not concede absolute power to the super-rich.   It was just ‘virtue signalling’, ‘opium for the masses’.  Materialism meant that their money would own and control everyone and everything.   The only value in life was now a monetary one.

They would in future rule the world and even kings and Emperors would do their bidding.  They could play whole nations off against each other, back both sides, manufacture war and peace and quietly reap the rewards.   In fact the more suffering, the more demand for their ‘protection’ in the form of basic commodities like food water and clean air, homes, and of course weapons.   Everything and everyone would be dependent on them.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump, the product of this philosophy, for whom ethics have no meaning at all.   Clear the Palestinians out, because we want Gaza, and that is all that matters.   Conquest, followed by rewards for the supporters  – not just the ‘real estate’ but the supplies of natural gas already sold by the Israelis to BP and others.

In Ukraine, another disaster for those who live there, for which the Americans are to blame.  If it cannot be conquered by military might, just divide the spoils with the Russians.    The suffering of the Ukrainian people is of no concern; again, ‘resources’ are all that matter.  It reminds me of Yalta. Churchill was no fool when he proposed a European Union.

In Afghanistan and elsewhere, US military imperialism has actually backfired for decades.   But it has been very determined to create its ‘unipolar’ world nevertheless, by any means possible.   

That includes the World Economic Forum, that great friend of Elon Musk and king Charles.   One aspect of its ‘Great Reset’ is the depopulation of 30% of the planet by 2030.  Supposedly to benefit ‘nature’ it is really just a land-grab by the super-rich.   The Masai are being turned off their traditional lands by the Kenyan government for ‘tourism’;  and sadly we too, here in the Highlands and Islands, will suffer the same fate unless we stand up for ourselves.  

The ideology of power over, of rule by violence, has run its course.   It destroyed the Roman empire and all other empires since, because you cannot build a peaceful liveable ‘civilisation’ through the barbarism of endless fear-mongering and war.    A philosophy of violence can only destroy itself and we are finally seeing that happen.  Let’s make sure it doesn’t destroy us too.  

Jesus’s own teachings are worth taking seriously.  He and other spiritual teachers throughout history have tried to tell us that we will only survive and thrive if we put aside our fear and unite in co-operation, not against an ‘other’ people  or species – but against the ideology of violence itself.   It is possible because we are all active, living elements  in a planetary ecosystem.  We have agency.   We are not robots or mere ‘human resources’ to be exploited and destroyed at the whim of madmen like Trump, Musk, Schwab, Gates,  Bezos, Zuckerberg, and their friends, or their puppet politicians; or for that matter, a ‘divinely appointed’ king.

The planet and its people ‘belong’ to no-one but ourselves.

Note: Since it now seems to be impossible to even mention the Palestinians without being accused of ‘Anti-Semitism’ I would like to add that Jewish people are victims of Zionism. They are not collectively responsible for Israel’s genocide.

(1) https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5309996/ukraine-rare-earth-minerals-metals-deal