There is an inevitable end to political and military madness. It doesn’t really matter what type of misadventure — dynastic, imperialistic, militaristic — eventually the pawns and peasants, peons and sacrificed military lose their enthusiasm and gain a bit of sense. After all, propaganda, appeals to patriotism and manufactured threats eventually come face to face with reality.

Unless an invading force rapidly achieves the capitulation of its enemy, the mission and the exploit will fail. Deceit, fabrication and ignorance have shelf lives. People will remain passive and acquiescent, massed under the banner of tribe or nation, for a limited amount of time.

This brings both good news and bad. The good news is that hubris and failure often compel the transference of power. The bad news is that power is transferred to another member of a ruling class, economic or military clique or bloodline. The powerful, governing institutions of state are more concerned with the maintenance and transference of power than with collective welfare.

Great institutions and organizations of state, capital, religion and armed force, never question the assumptions which brought them into being. Science seems to move progressively forward. Power, however, would rather decorate a saddle, than create a car. Unless, of course, the car will increase power, profit or control.

The power-wielders, the controllers of natural resources and the receivers of great fortunes in unearned income from absentee ownership, care not one whit about those who ignorantly support, emulate and celebrate them.

– Raphael O’Suna, Haiku