The Cycle Of Desire Part 2: Fulfillment

     Desires are subject to a dynamic of their own. Any given individual’s desires occupy a priority scheme that dictates which ones will receive his immediate attention. Such a scheme is mutable. It often goes through several transformations in the course of a man’s life as desires are added to it and subtracted from it.

     We’re all aware that new desires can emerge according to developments both foreseen and unforeseen. (No one desired a computer before 1950, a smartphone before 1990, or Christina Hendricks before Mad Men.) What causes a desire to be removed from such a list?

     While there may be other forces, the one that functions most effectively to quench a desire is fulfillment. Once fulfilled, the typical desire ceases to motivate its possessor, at least for a time. That seems to be the pattern for nearly all the kinds of desires individuals have known.

     Nearly all. Not all, by any means:

     He who lusts for power over others is inherently evil. I trust this requires no great argument in its justification. The evil man, once he has some degree of power, will use it to acquire more, for power is a drug that doesn’t sate. However, the enjoyment of power requires that it be used. For, as O’Brien said to Winston in 1984, to enjoy your power, you must be actually coercing your victim at the moment:

     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’

     Ponder that for a moment. Perhaps it’s the second time you’ve seen it here, or the third, or the twentieth. Do it anyway.

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     Every society has been afflicted by persons whose sole, unflagging desire is for power over others. Ours is not an exception. Nor are such persons always obvious about their aims.

     It’s not widely known that Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency on a platform of reduced government spending, generally smaller government, and the maintenance of a strong, gold-backed dollar. Yet that is the case. How FDR actually governed was, of course, a hundred eighty degrees from those tenets. How much of that complete departure from stated positions and priorities was because he had intended it from the first, and how much arose from the ambitions of his “brain trust,” we cannot know. But we can know this: FDR intended to remain president until he died. By the end of his second term, he had become convinced that the office was his by right – that no one else was fit to occupy it.

     Power was what FDR most wanted in this world. That marked him as one who must not get it. But once he was in the Oval Office, in command of the vast executive powers of the federal government, it was too late to prevent it.

     Today there are many persons as avid for complete, unopposable power over these United States as was FDR. Twenty-odd such persons (and some of them are very odd indeed) are currently contending for the Democrat Party’s nomination in 2000. Perhaps one of them will be the nominee; perhaps some “dark horse” will arise late in the campaign to snatch the nod. Regardless of the identity of the nominee, he will be a person who desires power above all other things, for that is what it takes to be a Democrat of great prominence in our time.

     The moral “should” be “obvious.”

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     Barack Obama greatly desired to disarm American citizens. He edged toward trying it through executive order at several points, but held back from the attempt. We cannot know what inhibited him. We can know this: It is the development the Left desires above all others.

     I wrote not long ago that the Left is desperate, and that desperate people do desperate things. The unprecedented success of the Trump Administration, the Democrat Party’s realization of the inadequacy of its current “leaders,” and the impending storm of indictments it fears over the “Russian collusion” hoax and what powered it, are raising that desperation to new heights. The probability of a desperation play, a “political Hail Mary” from the Left, is higher than ever.

     The imposition of true totalitarian rule upon Americans requires that we first be disarmed. Unfortunately for the Left, far too many Americans are aware of this. It has been said that the First Amendment depends upon the maintenance of the rights protected by the Second. It is equally true that the Second Amendment depends upon the awareness of events and trends made possible by the First. Thus, both those guarantees are under intense attack. Soon both might be the focus of a “Reichstag fire” event, after which the Left hopes the clamor for their suspension will be too great to resist.

     If you’re not armed and ready to defend those rights, you don’t have much time left to get there.

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     The key to all of this is the recognition that the desire for power, once fulfilled, only excites that desire to a higher magnitude. Other desires are not like that. For that reason we cannot hope to appease those who want power over us. History speaks to this in a voice of thunder.

     Be armed and ready. Know your neighbors and what they stand for, and make sure they know the same about you. And stay alert for power-lusters making false promises of peace and harmony if you’ll just give up a few “obsolete” rights. They’re more desperate than ever before.