Envy as a Political Strategy

We are witnessing, before our very eyes, the emergence of a political force headed by Barack Obama that is based upon envy, turmoil, anger, and a sense of entitlement. Well, I say "headed" by Obama, but its unclear exactly how much power he has to steer the beast. Looking at his cabinet nominations, there is no denying that he had to pay off the power brokers that rocketed him to his current status.

Let's start with a simple example. Have you ever seen a fit, attractive male or female get this comment - "You're not going to have any cheesecake? You can eat whatever you want!" The superficiality of an obsession with outward appearance aside, this comment and the emotion that gave birth to it are based purely on envy.

And no, they can't eat whatever they want. If they ate whatever they wanted, they wouldn't look the way they do. Here's the point - the envious onlooker has a sense of unfairness. They have been outdone in this scenario. Someone has achieved something beyond them. And this person, who has committed the crime of disciplining themselves to the point where their body takes on attributes that the onlooker judges more attractive than their own, must be gotten even with. They must be brought low, back down to the level of those who have been outdone.

Is this not what goes on in our minds when we make comments like that? If you will be honest with yourself, it is. I am not concerned with the deeper question of how these feeling arise in the first place, but rather the blind obedience I see displayed for a political ideology that functions on the same emotions. And it is emotion. Obama's rise to power has worked because he capitalizes on the emotions of people, but I will deal with that in a later post.

So, you Obama voters out there, if your man limits the pay of executives, and raises taxes on people who make more money than you, and confiscates the earnings of money they have invested, and takes a large portion of what they leave to their children....has your life changed? Has your situation improved? More importantly, have you been motivated to do anything differently for yourself, with your own energy and creativity?

Precisely the opposite has happened. You have been had, you have tricked into being a spectator, given a free pass to watch other people "pay" for excelling. The word 'motivation' means to draw forth, to bring out. We should ask what is being motivated in the population of this country when a man gets elected President because he is very skilled at telling large numbers of people that their situation in life is not only less than they should accept, their life is so ordered because anyone that excels beyond their situation has nefarious intentions, and their success is keeping you down.

Envy and anger are being motivated. The populace is being incentivized to hand over power to the central goverment because they, somehow, have a right to the earnings of other citizens, and the gov't is going to collect it for them. There is an anecdote of a Greek king who received an envoy from a neighboring kingdom. The king was asked how he was successful in keeping his population under control, thus securing his own power. The king walked out into the garden, and wherever one flower was taller than the ones around it, he took his scepter and cut down the tall flower.

Wealth cannot be mulitplied by dividing it. This is how demogogues rise to power. Obama is an excellent salesman, and he has sold enough people in America on the idea that whatever ills they suffer, it is caused by the people who have done better than them, and these "victims" need not change anything about their life, their values, their work ethic and principles. Obama the Savior will go get even with all those evil achievers on your behalf.

This is pure envy. You elected a man whose basis for governing is one of the deadly sins. Nice going.