Transfixed as I am with the impeachment hearings and the circus atmosphere that has preceeded this event, the long buildup to it, I cannot help but marvel at the strategies each side has employed in order to get its way.
There are only two choices, really. Either there are rules to the game, or there aren't.
Now rules to the game, any game, are what make the game itself possible. In sports there are agreements made that this line will be out of bounds, accomplishing Y will get you X number of points, you only get so much time for this or that action, and so on. Within those rules, those bounds, a game is played.
Life is like a game and I suppose way back there weren't very many hard and fast rules as to how to play it but over time rules became necessary for the pain for many became too great. The strong overcame the weak, survival was dicey, and being subject to the whims of the masters was extraordinarily unpleasant. Losing was bad, very bad. Rudimentary rules had to be established.
Over time, humans played at making rules and breaking rules and through that they discovered the consequences of not so well thought out behaviors and so the rules for the game of civilization have been tweaked, many times considerably so, but people being people, as soon as any rule is made the commonly known 'unwritten rule' is that some will try and break it! Thus, there are no rules set 'forevermore' for there are always life hackers about.
Says it all, don’t it?
I never have been one to take much of an interest in politics but man these last couple of years I can't keep away from politics because there has arisen a new breed of life hackers, a group of people relentlessly driven to get their way at any cost. The boundaries that have been in place for a long time to keep nefarious people in check have been under tremendous seige. There hasn't been a corner, crack, or crevice that has not been subject to exploration (and hopefully exploitation) of some kind, these actions being taken in order to penetrate the mighty fortress that civil society resides within. Huns have been at the gates, so to speak.
Though the preventative rules against unfavourable behaviour have been substantial, strong enough to keep most malevolent aspirants at bay, this latest crop of usurpers will not be dissuaded. Shameless they are, and increasingly have become (if that's even possible). The general populace has been and is currently being asked by these miscreants in myriad ways to abandon reason, logic, and explanation and if anyone throws up resistance to that, woe be them.
The maleficent tribe's strategy is to be relentless, to wear people out. Break them. Get them to cry "Uncle!". To blurt "Enough already, you can have the planet, the country, the power, the money!". To utter the hoped-for, exasperated, and momentous cry "Just take all the marbles!"
However, We The People aren't that kind. We haven't lost our marbles. In fact, we know for a fact that we have earned our particular marbles, hard fought, many of them, and don't want to give them to you, whoever you claim to be, so go and cry about that. But the immoral, depraved, and overly bold ambitious don't understand the word "No" and so here we are at these bizzare impeachment hearings, inquiry, and all that has brought this mess about, which has been due to the steady erosion of morals and ethics by some. This has been by design, over decades, and has only been accelerating, as if they have sensed that the time for unprincipled behavior is just about up and the door to getting their way through manipulation and trickery is closing.....
.....and it is closing, for the increasingly aware populace now contains enough citizens who cannot be bamboozled, who can see right through Machiavellian inclinations and will rise to thwart any barbarians at the gates. Huns, be gone! You will not gain entrance here.
Not in a hundred,
a thousand,
a million years.