We don't see the dark money funding our feuding governments, any more than we see the dark matter throughout our universe.
How much, and where, and whence?
We see the gravitational light curving through spacetime, but not the actual stuff doing the bending. We just know it's there.
Likewise, we see the corrupt beneficiaries of the dark money, but not the superwealthy ones supplying the payoffs. We just know they're there.
In both cases, the numbers don't work otherwise. We infer the dark causes. What greases the palms of both terrestrial and celestial coercion is invisible, this mysterious stuff bribing our futures and hopes into the unknown.
In the universe of dark matter, we know more of what it is not than of what it is. It is not like the stars and planets, it does not absorb or reflect light. Is dark matter composed of a new subatomic particle? Will it keep accelerating as it expands? Will it bring about implosion and turn inwards? Will we still be here when it does?
We don't know.
In the case of dark money, though, we do know where it comes from: the uberrich, the .01%. Their accountants and lawyers even know the real numbers.
Before the Mexican revolution, José Posada's satirical cartoon of La Calavera Catrina symbolized the over-consuming bourgeoisie. Eventually the skeletal lady came to represent, on each Dia de los Muertos, all the follies of human vanity and riches.
Whatever you call her—aristocrat, kleptocrat, oligarch—she's a parasite sucking the life out of her host, her workabees, us little people, as Leona Helmsley called us, who pay her taxes and keep her rich. She bribes and lobbies our leaders to keep us marginal, powerless, overworked, too tired to revolt.
Until we do.
Who exactly are the terrorists?
Two headlines today:
'Ex-banqueiro Rendeiro volta a tribunal and 'Rússia declara Navalny como 'terrorista' '
João Rendeiro, current poster child for African-Portuguese corruption, is back in court. His wife had to give up all the artwork.
Navalny, now in a Moscow prison for a year, is officially a 'terrorist and extremist' today, along with all the other Russians hoping for a bit of freedom and democracy.
Who exactly are the terrorists? It's the dark money that decides what the generals and foot soldiers will do, which wars will be fought, which armies we will fill...
...until we don't.
Vive la Résistance.
27 JANUARY 2022