Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves Preparing to Occupy Atlanta After Christmas

Have you noticed, prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing is a scam these days? The Bed­ford Falls Amer­i­ca of my ear­ly child­hood has now become a true-to-life Pot­tersville. And if you dont know what Im talk­ing about, thats because you are liv­ing in Pot­tersville. Youre not sup­posed to know any­thing about Bed­ford Falls. Bed­ford Falls­bad. Orange Man­bad. And good peo­ple old enough to know what Im talk­ing about seem­ing­ly have no escape. Pot­tersville is build­ing all around them. There is no going back, or it feels that way.

Of course, things have nev­er been per­fect in Amer­i­ca, and Im not say­ing they were. Things were nev­er per­fect in Bed­ford Falls. Yes, there were bad peo­ple in Bed­ford Falls. But, in Bed­ford Falls bad peo­ple did not win. They did not run the place. They did not use gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions for pri­vate gain, design­ing each pro­gram as a new inno­va­tion in grift­ing, swin­dling dol­lars from those who earned them to place them into the hands of pri­vate inter­ests, or even the hands of politi­cians direct­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this nation, and the State of Geor­gia, all the way down to our local gov­ern­ment, has been over­run by gyp­sies, tramps and thieves. We now live in Pot­ter­ville, friends, Pot­tersville, USA.

Gov­ern­ment, at all lev­els, is a foun­tain­head of rich­es for any shys­ter, any grifter, any art­ful dodger who can fool the vot­ers to believe that he (or she), is work­ing for their inter­ests. Hes not. Vir­tu­al­ly, every one of those indi­vid­u­als, politi­cians well call them, even those you con­sid­er the good ones, have per­son­al, hid­den agen­das. Every one of your elect­ed offi­cials has a self-serv­ing rea­son for seek­ing office in the first place, and once engrossed in the job, will go to great lengths to main­tain con­trol over that office after elect­ed. The desire to be pop­u­lar, and well-liked by peo­ple among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, whether good peo­ple, or bad, or peo­ple in-between, is a trait unique to the politi­cian. If you are like me, you do not care if bad peo­ple like you. Bad peo­ple have noth­ing you want or need. The politi­cian, who rel­ish­es the office he seeks, or holds, prac­ti­cal­ly above all else, can­not say that. The politi­cian is an oppor­tunist by trade. He must seek favor among the entire vot­ing pop­u­la­tion, dur­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty, con­tem­plat­ing dur­ing each sleep­less night, how to bet­ter cul­ti­vate addi­tion­al polit­i­cal favor, curs­ing him­self relent­less­ly for fail­ing to sum­mon the best words as he relives the con­ver­sa­tions of the pre­ced­ing day, had with each poten­tial sup­port­er, in an attempt to engen­der the max­i­mum sup­port out of each oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Beware the politi­cian who says he, just wants to serve, or that he has a ser­vants heart. Walk away. Do not pass Go, do not col­lect $200. You are being had by a nar­cis­sist. Being a nar­cis­sist politi­cian is not easy. Rest assured, any­one who would endure all he must to become elect­ed, and do so over and over, suf­fer­ing the slings and arrows of polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing, is a spe­cial breed of cat. Hes not endur­ing all that for you. Even Don­ald Trump does not endure all that he does, sim­ply for you. Rest assured, Trump derives mean­ing­ful ben­e­fits, intrin­sic in nature, to under­take the pur­pos­es he does, a spe­cial breed of cat for sure.

So, for­get the smile. For­get the hand­shake. For­get the politi­cian who can name your kids and ask how old they are now, or whether they are in this grade or that, or what their plans for the future might be. Its an act. Nar­cis­sists do not care about your kids. They are actors in a stream­ing life dra­ma in which they have become the pro­tag­o­nist, and every­one they meet is a sup­port­ing actor or a bit play­er. These actors live on a pub­lic stage. The spot­light they crave is on them. They are vul­ner­a­ble on that stage and they know it. They must always be on. Even though they rarely, if ever, call you, or solic­it your opin­ion or best thoughts on a polit­i­cal ques­tion, they must always appear glad to see you, effec­tive­ly blow­ing up the bal­loon which is your lat­est super­fi­cial impres­sion of their worth to you as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the gov­ern­ment.

Com­mon­ly these days, you will meet pub­lic-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als who are new to pol­i­tics, but who have recent­ly reached a point in life at which they say they now want to give back. At that stage of the devel­op­ment of a peren­ni­al politi­cian, I do not dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty that what they tell you may derive from some loca­tion in or around the heart, such as maybe the aor­ta. But under­stand, the aor­ta is not the heart. The aor­ta is not the essence of who an indi­vid­ual is. The aor­ta is that ves­sel enabling the body to con­tin­ue liv­ing in a world of lim­it­ed resources. With­out the aor­ta deliv­er­ing those resources, such as oxy­gen, to all areas of the body, the body dies. And so, the aor­ta is that ves­sel which rep­re­sents an indi­vid­u­als stream of life. The aor­ta rep­re­sents the pur­suit of lifes pur­pos­es, what­ev­er they may be. Every­one must have a pur­pose or they die. Every­one must have an aor­ta or they die. The con­tents of the aor­ta derivefromthe heart but are notofthe heart. As soon as oxy­genat­ed, life-sus­tain­ing con­tents of the aor­ta leave the heart and enter the body, that which makes the stream of life pos­si­ble begins to deplete. What was once the essence of life, the con­tents of the heart, full to capac­i­ty with all that God gives any­one, upon leav­ing the heart and enter­ing the world of the body, soon becomes cor­rupt­ed. Red blood cells, rep­re­sent­ing the life pur­pos­es God has for every indi­vid­ual, con­tin­u­al­ly pumped away from the essence of life which is the heart of God, stream­ing from that heart to all areas of the body empow­ered to ful­fill Gods inten­tions, begin, steadi­ly, turn­ing blue, per­haps fit­ting­ly I sup­pose. Red cor­pus­cles only hold so much oxy­gen once beyond the heart. By the time the aor­tas con­tents deliv­er life-sus­tain­ing ingre­di­ents to the bodys fur­thest extrem­i­ties, its dilut­ed con­tents must return to the lungs to receive more of what God pro­vides, life-giv­ing oxy­gen brim­ming with more of Gods pur­pos­es, enter­ing the heart to once again be pumped into the body.

Once a well-mean­ing, elect­ed office hold­er, brim­ming with the pur­pos­es instilled by those who empow­er him, leaves the heart of his dis­trict, stream­ing via the states main arter­ies to the bow­els of the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly, those pur­pos­es, oxy­genat­ed into the mind of the politi­cian, rapid­ly deplete. Devoid of the means to renew those wor­thy pur­pos­es out­side of the heart of his dis­trict, time after time oth­er pur­pos­es enter the politi­cians blood stream, cor­rupt­ing the life-force of true rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment. And when an over­whelm­ing num­ber of for­mer­ly well-mean­ing, for­mer­ly civic-mind­ed politi­cians come togeth­er to exchange pur­pos­es dur­ing the first month of the new year, each mem­ber of that august body, the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly, work­ing to incen­ti­fy oth­ers to act against the pur­pos­es orig­i­nal­ly giv­ing rise to their respec­tive polit­i­cal lives, those orig­i­nal life-giv­ing pur­pos­es soon deplete beyond a func­tion­ing lev­el. Soon, your local politi­cian becomes bet­ter acquaint­ed with those he meets in the bow­els of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly than in the heart of his dis­trict, and the result iswell, the result is what we con­tin­u­al­ly expe­ri­ence, a gov­ern­ment unre­spon­sive to the pur­pos­es of the peo­ple, com­posed of stage actors whose days and nights through­out the year become con­sumed with the sched­ul­ing of feigned activ­i­ties and the ren­der­ing of disin­gen­u­ous pub­lic pro­nounce­ments designed to sus­pend dis­be­lief in the minds of local sup­port­ers.

Share Han­ks Sub­stack

And all that I express is why I pity the politi­cian. Politi­cians have built-in, exag­ger­at­ed per­son­al­i­ty defects. Any­one who desires to become a politi­cian ven­tures that he can sup­press his own per­son­al weak­ness­es, baked into the human cake by God our Cre­ator, to the extent that he can­not, and will not, find him­self cor­rupt­ed after an extend­ed expe­ri­ence in office, deal­ing from a van­tage point with­in the polit­i­cal sys­tem I describe. My expe­ri­ence, watch­ing the cor­rupt­ing of orig­i­nal­ly well-mean­ing politi­cians, time after time, leads me to expect that most will become cor­rupt­ed giv­en time. Giv­en time, each well-mean­ing politi­cian will become that which he orig­i­nal­ly sought to change. As the process of cor­rupt­ing the orig­i­nal­ly well-mean­ing politi­cian matures, it will mat­ter not that good cit­i­zens reach out to engage respect­ful con­ver­sa­tions with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It will mat­ter not the issues of their gen­uine con­cern. All that will mat­ter is that the politi­cians show must go on. Elec­tions must be won. Meet­ings with pri­vate inter­ests must occur. Funds must be raised. Votes must be com­pro­mised. Pup­peteers must be sat­is­fied. Sleep­less nights must con­tin­ue. The shame of aban­don­ing repub­li­can ideals of Amer­i­c­as found­ing must be borne, with a smile, and a hand­shake, to every­one with whom the politi­cian meets dur­ing the day.

Just know that, once cor­rupt­ing influ­ences in the bow­els of gov­ern­ment take hold, the only way good cit­i­zens can begin to affect the man­ner their rep­re­sen­ta­tives behave in such a ran­cid, for­eign envi­ron­ment, is to instill their minds with polit­i­cal fear. Once the process of cor­rupt­ing the politi­cian takes root, per­haps with the first vote influ­enced by the grant­i­ng of favors or cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, the only tool remain­ing at the patri­ots dis­pos­al, is to occu­py the politi­cians relent­less, sleep­less nights with thoughts result­ing in man­i­fes­ta­tions of per­fect­ing, dis­com­fort­ing anx­i­ety.

Jef­fer­son wrote, The tree of lib­er­ty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patri­ots and tyrants. That is like­ly because, in keep­ing with my mes­sage today, blood nat­u­ral­ly oxy­genates once exposed to the atmos­phere and light of day, restor­ing the life pur­pos­es of God. This may not have been the Christ­mas mes­sage you expect­ed from me today. But real­ize, we are deal­ing with nat­u­ral­ly-cor­rupt­ing influ­ences in our gov­ern­ment, which can eas­i­ly affect the man­ner in which your inter­ests are regard­ed dur­ing the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly. Indi­vid­u­als with­in that body are obvi­ous­ly coop­er­at­ing, con­scious­ly and uncon­scious­ly, with inter­ests whose fond­est inten­tions would be for Mon­day to become Amer­i­c­as last Christ­mas.

Whether it be this Mon­day, or whether Chris­t­ian influ­ences might endure in dimin­ish­ing effect for a few more years in Amer­i­ca, just know that every one of us has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure the sur­vival of our nation and what it means. I encour­age you, there­fore, to make 2024 a year of unquench­able effort to ener­get­i­cal­ly acti­vate a revived sense and pur­pose dur­ing this Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly and beyond, to hold your elect­ed offi­cials account­able to serve your best inter­ests, an activ­i­ty which includes stand­ing up for the sur­vival of Amer­i­ca. If we can accom­plish that togeth­er, I will look for­ward to writ­ing many more uplift­ing Christ­mas mes­sages in the future, con­cen­trat­ing more on peace, and good will toward men.

I want to thank all of my sub­scribers for their sup­port and encour­age­ment through­out the year, and pledge to you my con­tin­ued dili­gence in spread­ing the truth in the new year. I wish for each of you a heart­felt Mer­ry Christ­mas, and a Won­der­ful Life as we work togeth­er to pre­vail in the com­ing days.