It's not just the priests...

...that are more concerned with their own power and position than the public weal.

It's the merchants, too.

And the syncophants of all these powerful and wealthy people in U.S. politics as well as the U.S. public in large.

One of the parts of the current U.S. infatuation with "the market" that infuriates me more than the rest is the widespread ignorance of (or willful indifference to, which may be worse) much of the U.S. public to the fairly obvious and simple reality that any person or group of people whose primary objective is short-term profit for themselves is and are going to be indifferent at best and actively injurious at worst to anyone or anything not actively assisting them in turning said profit.

The Great Iniquity of the modern GOP - the worst of the U.S. public in this respect - is its insistence that "government is the problem" because that screed actively smokescreens the fact that only government - that is, only the public acting through its representatives - has the power to act as an effective check to these profiteers when their pursuit of profit comes at the expense of the public good.

But this power is not power when the public doesn't even know what its government should be checking, and especially when its government is involved not in checking this chicanery but acting to facilitate it:

“I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant,” Warren explained. “In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”

No duh.

This, this is the poison at the heart of all the harm done by this crony capitalism, this secret spying, this "security"; all these deals and agreements and policies made in night and fog.

A people that rule themselves must know what is being done to them, for them, and in their name. A people that rule themselves must know - at the very least - what their own government is doing, with whom, and why.

A people that is ruled will not, and do not.

A people that will not, and do not, will become a ruled people.

When, and how, are merely details.

While I understand that We, the People seem indifferent to this distinction, I cannot reconcile myself to the fact, and I cannot see anything good coming from it.