Paine-ful entry

Dear diary,

The obligatory image for this post is from a book that I checked out from the library: Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine. The back cover has the following note printed finely at the bottom: “Cover painting: Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, AKG London”; so that’s what I assume it is. Also I added a strip of sushi over the top (at least I think it’s sushi — now I’m starting to doubt my first impression) which I clipped from the junk-ads; you can see it ascending from the slaughter like souls of the dead. I did this because its colors and shapes seemed to jibe with the feel of the pic. Now, perhaps, to your eye, the combination of visuals does not jibe: in that case, I made an artistic misstep, and this post’s image is a failure.

I’ve only read about ten pages of the book, so far; and I only planned on tackling “Common Sense”; and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to finish, because I find it dull. But the reason I checked it out in the first place is that I watched a video of a public talk by three people, all of whom I admire: Cornel West, Chris Hedges, & Richard Wolff; and the subject of their lecture-conversation (chosen apparently by Hedges) was “Thomas Paine: Then and Now” or something like that. The way that they spoke about Paine allured me, so I thot I’d give his popular essay a chance. Then when I began to read it, I just kept shouting back at the text in annoyed half-agreement. But the problem with text is that it cannot hear you, when you curse at it verbally; thus it does not answer you — either that, or it can indeed hear you but it is rudely indifferent, or it thinks your views are not worth acknowledging. Perhaps I’ll feel my semi-discomfort for Paine vanish if I continue to read him, but my main problem with Paine, speaking as a beginner who’s (I repeat) only read the first few pages of his pamphlet, is that he’s so against kings:

I myself love kings. I wish we’d never gotten rid of kings. But I agree with Paine that kings can be bad, and that many kings were indeed extremely bad; but I blame that badness more on the royal advisers and all the people who surround the king. The king himself is not the problem. Or, rather, if he’s the problem, then he’s a real easy problem to solve: you just put him out of his misery with a smidgen of regicide. But the advisors or group of elders who act as a buffer between the king and his public — that small group of powerful influencers is the serious danger. It’s the difference between one angry wasp versus a whole swarm of angry wasps. And, like I tried to imply, a good king isn’t even a wasp: he’s more like a puppy — you can get him to like you (“you” being the general populace); then he’ll fetch you things.

But the part of the text where I stopped reading yesterday (I began the book last evening) was actually starting to get good. Paine was quoting from the bible, trying to build up a case against kings, to back up his point. That wins me over in a general way: it puts me in a good mood, when someone begins quoting the bible to prove their point. I don’t even care what exactly they’re aiming at: I just like the act of propping one text on another; it’s just so weird that I never stop marveling — especially when the text is a weird one itself, like the lord’s share of the bible is; and especially when the “source text” blatantly contradicts the point you’re advocating: this latter phenomenon is precisely why I love the Apostle Paul (there are many reasons why I hate the Apostle Paul) — his prooftexts can always be recycled & reused as dis-prooftexts, for every scheme he tries to hard-sell. Anyway, as a foundation for his anti-monarchy stance, Paine cites the part from the First Book of Samuel which portrays the people’s desire for a king as sinful.

On a side note, the idea of common sense, in and of itself, makes me wince. It irks me; it does not appeal to me. It’s one of those ideas that is too easily commandeered by gangsters and mobsters, thugs and politicians. I prefer blatant lying — at least that’s honest. I’m no fan of secret knowledge, or of secret priesthoods who meet in secret and keep all their findings under wraps: that way actually pisses me off even more than common sense; so if the unwashed masses ever fight a battle against any covert elite, I’ll join the common folk in a heartbeat. But I celebrate people’s individuality, their eccentric uniqueness, as opposed to what the consensus of average thinkers assumes we all agree upon. Remember that famous outburst from William Blake (to Revd. Dr Trusler):

You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients considerd what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the faculties to act.

So this is not an argument in favor of elites over idiots. I consider myself as one of the idiots. It’s an argument in favor of us idiots rouzing each other’s faculties — intellectual, artistic, etc. — and what can be made explicit to us idiots without at least a hint of rouzing obscurity — that which is undeniably common-sensical — is not worth our care.

But let me try to give Paine a chance to squeak a little, before I run out of time. (I’m just sitting on my couch in the morning, before the sun has arisen, typing leisurely; I usually stop when my sweetheart awakes. She never beats the sun; she always wakes only after the sun has vulgarized everything, because she draws her strength from the sun. Whereas I side with Whitman: “Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.” — “Song of Myself”, §25.) In the part called “Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession”, Paine writes:

Near three thousand years passed away from the Mosaic account of the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a king. Till then their form of government (except in extraordinary cases, where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of Kings, he need not wonder, that the Almighty ever jealous of his honor, should disapprove of a form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven.

I found this interesting: Paine seems to approve of the “form of government” that the ancient Israelites’ ancestors enjoyed in their pre-king days, which he calls “a kind of republic” — I interject here a suggestion: this government was exactly like the government of the U.S.A. — “administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes.” The U.S. has more judges than just one, but otherwise it’s a perfect match, if we consider the “elders of tribes” to be the Senate, and Jehovah God as our everlasting President. The U.S. is a few hundred years old, but that biblical populace lived in accordance with the “prerogative of heaven” for more than ten times that duration.

I assume I’m unteachable tho, cuz I have all sorts of questions when it comes to this stuff. Paine sez “Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts.” My first thot is: what’s the difference between a King and a Lord? Don’t Kings and Lords sorta stem from the selfsame system? I’m probably wrong. “Lord” reminds me of “landlord”. Owner of the land. Someone to whom one owes rent. He owns; ye owe. What’s a King? I think of a King as someone who owns everything, maybe even everyone. What if the King even owns all the lords? That’s probably what makes the Lord so mad at the King: nobody likes to be owned, least of all someone whose very name means OWNER.

But here’s where the pious censoring of the name Yahweh (the tetragrammaton “YHWH” [old Hebrew had no vowels], which got mistranslated into English early on as “Jehovah”) causes unnecessary confusion: for the priestly scribes reverentially changed the proper name “Yahweh” to “Adonai”, which got English’d as “the LORD”, when copying the scriptures, back in the days before the advent of electronic xerox machines and the hand-crank printing press. I mention this to point out that the phrase “Lord of Hosts” means, literally, “Yahweh of the Armies” (the sun, moon, and multitudes of stars were seen as shining warriors in heaven’s military, of which Yahweh was the Commander in Chief: “Yahweh is a man of war! Yahweh is his name!”—Ex. 15:3). Now if we bring Paine’s statement into accord with this fact, it might be rendered like so:

Kings they had none, & it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but Yahweh the Commander of the Army & Navy of the Seventh Heaven, and of the Militia of the several adjacent Dimensions, when called into the actual Service of the Six United Sub-Heavens.

That makes a lot more sense, to me — for a King is the commander of an army; so how can you give the army a duplicate commander who’s equal in power to its highest existing commander? What’ll happen is that the earthly commander will issue a decree to “Shoot your heavenly commander so that I may be your only true love!” while the heavenly commander will bark a counter-order: “No! don’t shoot at me, but rather shoot at your earthly commander, the one who calls himself ‘king’, so that I alone may be your fascist dictator!”

This case of “God vs. King” was half-solved when God decided that he’d make himself into an earthly being and crown himself King. That’s why he became Jesus, a mortal man, and died to prove that he really was willing to jump thru all human hoops; then the aforesaid Apostle (the one now known as Saint Paul — & by the way, someone should write a diary entry discussing the differences between Saints, Kings, Gods, Warriors, and Apostles), I say, the aforesaid Saint Paul declared Jesus to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (recall that “Christ” simply means “King” — that’s why Robert Graves titled his masterpiece novel King Jesus). This solved everything. A spiritual tyrant who owns all kings AND lords, because he legally IS the all-caps LORD, alias Yahweh, in mortal disguise — that’s St. Paul’s theory. It has yet to be tested. I know: it’s not as convincing as some of the better ads that you see coming out of the bigger agencies in North America nowadays. But it does give people confidence in the U.S. President, for some reason.

Now Paine goes on to quote at length from the story of Samuel; he offers an excerpt and then cuts in and gives his two cents. I love that he does this, and I wish I had time to do the same to him: it would be fun to cut in on Paine while he cuts into Samuel. But I think I’ll pass on that idea — maybe just stating it as a possibility is as good as wasting the time of actually performing it — yes: let’s don’t and say we did. Instead, let me quote for myself (and react to) the full passage where Yahweh-god tells his prophet Samuel to go ahead and give the people what they want, & to grant their demand for an earthly King, BUT ALSO to warn them about all the things that the King will do to them (1st Samuel 8:7-18). It’s interesting to me, because I’m taking the pro-King stance for this entry. So my job will be to argue against not only what Yahweh saith but what Paine is saying, in this joint press-release, which they both signed their name to, in blood:

The Lord God Yahweh said unto his prophet Samuel: “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for, by demanding a King, they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Yea, hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” And he said, “This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you:

“He will take your sons, and appoint them for his army, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots; & he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war.

“And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

“And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

“And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

“And he will take your menservants, & your maidservants, & your goodliest young men, & your asses, and put them to his work.

“He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

“And ye shall cry out in that day because of your King which ye shall have chosen you; and I, Lord Yahweh, will not hear your prayers in that day.”

Now let me just quickly compare this King to our Prez. My aim is to figure out if our current system, which Paine apparently approves of, is better or worse than a monarchy with hereditary succession of heirs like the Bush fam, Clinton fam, Roosevelt fam, and the Adams family. For if the King system is just as bad as our Prez system, then maybe we should go FULL ANARCHY (which would be my personal preference, if I dared to voice my opinion, but alas I’m too timid). Yahweh-god predicts that the King will:

take your sons, and appoint them for his army… to make his instruments of war.

No our Prez doesn’t do that; so we’re safe, so far. The U.S. does not engage in warfare.

And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

The U.S.A. is an entirely plant-based phenomenon. The U.S. only eats vegans.

The King will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

First of all, We the People don’t even have any fields, vineyards, or oliveyards to steal. Go ahead and try to take them — none of us United Statesians owns a thing. Everything was already given to the “servants” (read: cronies) of our Prez before we were born (and to the multinational corporations for which he stands). We’re all just waiting to die, to see if we can win the lottery of rebirth and become the son of a billionaire.

Moreover the King will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

We here in the U.S. abolished slavery long ago, so we don’t have servants of any kind; nor do we believe in sex, so there are no “men” or “maids” here: everyone is just a number on some bank’s financial statement. And none of our young men are “goodly”, so there is no “goodliest” among them — everyone here is equally impoverished and unattractive. And all asses went extinct. That was our doing, too.

He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

We’ll do you one better, here: we’ll be the sheep AND we’ll shear ourselves, free of charge, and weave our wool into a curly white wig, which he can wear when he judges us.

And ye shall cry out in that day because of your King; yet I, Lord Yahweh, will not hear you.

Well, everything checks out. I conclude that we of the modern world have created a system of government every bit as excellent as the systems of old; whether you measure from before or after that 3000-year mark.

CONCLUSION

Our Prez even trumps all ancient Kings. And God still won’t listen.