“What’s the point of having power if you don’t abuse it?” – Dilbert
My superpower is hindsight. But I can see that won’t help us now.
When I was a kid between the ages of 10 and 14, sometimes my dad would take me on his business trips. They were always to the same city – the capital city of our state. It was hours away, so it was quite an adventure. Where I grew up there was exactly one elevator (in a two story building at the college) and one escalator (at the JCPenny®) building within a 130 mile radius from town. We were so isolated that our Democrats were against communism all the way into the 1990s.
Did I mention I grew up in the sticks?
Pop Wilder was a small town banker, and sometimes the meetings in Capital City were at the Big Banks®, which were inevitably in huge skyscrapers. It was quite a thrill going up into those buildings. I’d sit in the lobby on the 20th floor, reading science fiction while Pop did whatever it was he was there for in the meeting room. One bank in particular amazed me because the bathroom, on the 30th floor, had a full length clear window – you could stand up and pee and stare out at the city below. There is probably a joke about Big Banks™ in there. I’ll let you fill in that particular blank – this is a family blog.
These trips were fun.
I kept getting checks from the banks during the COVID-19 social isolation – the kept leaving me a loan.
But one trip, we went to visit the majority owner of the bank that Pop Wilder ran. I recall this trip rather vividly, since we didn’t go to one of those gleaming towers. Pop pulled the car into a strip mall. Not a nice strip mall, but a dingy one in a sketchy area of town. Pop never talked about why he was having those meetings, so I wasn’t exactly sure why we were there. Perhaps he was going to sell me for a kid that didn’t keep his room in a condition that was specifically listed as containing elements of a war crime as defined by the United Nations?
Pop and I went up to one of those unmarked doors you see sometimes – just a steel door with a small diamond of glass about head high. You could tell it was a classy area, because the glass was the kind with the wire mesh inside. There was a buzzer next to the door, and Pop pressed it.
A voice answered, “Who is it?”
“Pop Wilder.” The lock on the door made an angry buzzing sound and Pop pulled the door open. We went up a flight of stairs – this particular strip mall doorway led to a second floor.
The Mafia chemist wanted the brake lines to rust – that way it would look like an oxidant.
I hadn’t seen any mob movies at the age of 12, but after watching them when I got older, the office had that feel. Run down. Dingy. Like the world had passed this neighborhood by on its way to making those gleaming towers that were miles away in the downtown area.
A secretary (they were called that, back then) didn’t say much more than, “He’s waiting.”
I walked into the office with Pop. The office had a feeling that I associate with movies from the 1940s or 1950s – dark, smoky paneling, a thin, worn carpet. Even the desk was ancient, but not in the “oh, cool antique” way, but in the “early prison work camp warden furniture” way.
The man Pop was planning to meet sat behind the desk. He didn’t get up as we entered. His only acknowledgement that we were there was a glance, like an annoyed man staring at what was on the bottom of his shoe. He looked, and I kid you not, exactly like Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. So I’ll call him that. After reviewing information on the Internet, I’d estimate his age at that time as about 85.
Pop Wilder: “Hello, Mr. Potter. This is my son, John. I mean, my other son, John.”
Pop didn’t really say that, but it amuses me to write it, since my older brother’s name was John as well. I guess he was Juan one, and I was Juan two.
Mr. Potter’s gaze fell upon me. It wasn’t pleasant. Normally, when I met an adult, they at least pretended to be interested and would ask some questions and make small talk. Not Mr. Potter.
“Hi,” I said, more to break the silence than anything.
He never said a word to me. Pop Wilder handed me the keys to the car, and said, “You can go wait outside, son.” That was fine with me – I had a book.
Bad puns? That’s how eye roll.
Mr. Potter, as I mentioned, was the majority owner of the bank that Pop ran. Pop and his brother owned a fairly small amount of the shares, but Mr. Potter owned the vast majority of the bank. From snippets between my parents in those conversations that last the length of a childhood, it turns out that Mr. Potter was far more than an angry bank owner working from a shabby office. He was actually a kingmaker in state politics. He was a Democrat, and no one got “the nod” unless he approved. He had spent decades of his life building up connections with every important person in state politics.
In today’s terms, the big, shining gleaming banks had Money, billions of dollars. This was the sort of Money that Mr. Potter didn’t have. Sure, Mr. Potter had millions back when millions meant something, but Mr. Potter also had raw, naked Power. Want to be governor? He couldn’t guarantee it, but he could probably make sure it didn’t happen if you made him mad.
Money and Power are different things – most people equate them, but it’s not really so. Elon Musk has Money, but he certainly lacks Power. Yes, there’s another fill in the blank joke in there about Tesla™ and power. If Elon Musk had Power? They wouldn’t have closed his car factories due to WuFlu. Power is where the governor would have found some way that the factories were found to be “essential” businesses. Real power is when the governor does what you want before you even ask.
Elon Musk has Money, but as only one out of 157 or so billionaires in California, he doesn’t have Power. But he does have $46 billion dollars*, so don’t feel bad for him. *That’s because it’s mainly in stock – a big Tesla™ crash, and it could be discharged. See, I finally made that electrical joke.
Soros was going to organize a riot of amputees, but he was worried it would get out of hand.
George Soros, on the other hand, only has a listed net worth of a little over $8 billion dollars. But Soros has invested heavily in politics. He’s created and funded a vast network of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that drive politics globally. How many connections does Soros have? According to Discover the Networks (LINK), which looks to understand who funds all of the Leftist organizations, Soros is associated in one way or another with 210 organizations that are hard Left. How hard Left? How about “Catholics for Choice”? It’s like I created a group called “Muslims for Bacon”.
But $8 billion. That seems low. Can you plot a Leftist overthrow on the cheap? Not at all. Soros has spent a staggering $32 billion on his foundations since 1984, including a recent transfer of $18 billion to his Open Society Foundation®. Heck, it once took Jeff Bezos a whole month to make that kind of money.
George Soros is just like that Mr. Potter I met, but on a global scale. Just a single one of his initiatives is active in over 120 countries in the world.
I heard that George Soros is the Lucky Charms™ evil twin – he’s tragically malicious.
What drives that kind of raw lust for Power? I mean, it must mean something to Soros, since he’s given away tens of billions of dollars to get it. Soros gives us a clue in his own words in a book he wrote about his favorite subject, himself: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood.” It’s no wonder that Soros looks like the evil Emperor from Star Wars™.
And what drove Mr. Potter? I have no idea. It wasn’t luxury – his office reminded me of the chief psychiatrist’s office at the asylum that all of those movie serial killers break out of. Notoriety? He had a very sparse Wikipedia page a decade ago – it’s gone. So not that. Philanthropy? Nope, none I know of.
I am always concerned about the motives of people who seek Power over others. Is it ego? Is it insecurity? Is it a genuine desire to help others?
Always remember what Mao said: “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.” You can have Money, but when Josef Stalin has the NKVD pick you up, you’ll learn quickly the difference between Money and Power.
Soros has evil lessons with Satan every week. I have no idea what Soros charges.
While mentioning Money and Power I’d be leaving out one very important part of the equation if I just kept in terms of those two material concepts.
There is at least one other type of Power – and that’s Personal Power. You can call it Spiritual, you can call it Virtue, or you can call it a dozen other names it goes by. It’s the Power that comes from standing up for what’s right despite the storms that will come. It’s telling your boss, “no” when he asks you to do what you know is unethical. It’s standing up when everyone else in the world seems to be against you, but you know that you’re right.
I’d take that Power over any Power that Mr. Potter ever had. And Soros? He may gain the whole world, but he’s already lost his soul.
Charles Peguy said, “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.” I think this was sometime before his last quote, “Germans, what Germans?” at the opening of the Battle of the Marne during World War I.
Tyranny seeks Money and Power. Yet?
Freedom keeps winning.
