THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

"It may be true that money does not equal power, but there are exceptions. When is comes to money equaling power, Fidel Castro, a baboon king for a nation of baboons, is stupendously successful".

"He pulls off owning everybody and everything, accumulating untold billions in his secret private kitty, and is loved and praised and respected across the board for it in all nations of the world".

"George Soros eats his heart out in envy of Castro, who actually makes money work for him".

"So does George Will. For George Will, Castro represents the ideal of lifetime appointments, having produced not even galling babble for decades without ever having his slot of OFFICIAL CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL in doubt."

Comment by Dave -

MY OBSERVATION

Dave's point is well taken. He is thinking in the terms I am here to try to instill. But I am not interested in producing a bunch of Wordist robots, who "agree" with me and think that's all I want.

His discussion of Will and Castro is unique to Bob's Blog, which makes it worthwhile.

Where else would a commenter routinely make a connection between George Will and Castro? The world outside our blog would be mystified.

I still feel that I have introduced you to this kind of THINKING so well that even YOU don't understand how deep your change has been.

Dave, let me now toss in some points about what you said that nobody outside this blog would understand.

Please don't knock yourself out saying I am misinterpreting you. What I say here is cautionary stuff everybody needs to read, and this is an OBSERVATION, not a REPLY.

Look at what I said again, and you will notice that I made it clear that in the third world big money is routine for those in power.

The Communist dictator of Rumania had billions in foreign holdings. I didn't know Castro had all that.

I do know that when Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Batista left with $300 million of his OWN, not including another equal sum his followers had. In 1959 money, that amounts to many billions now.

But I also know that Castro had very little money when he took POWER.

Making my points is a lot like trying to push toothpaste back into the tube. Nobody will take my EXACT point. I said that power does not come from money in the big leagues.

You can't get into the big power leagues just with money. I did NOT say the opposite, that someone in power cannot get money, especially in the third world.

I am beginning to get a little desperate about this.

Just a little inadvertent twist in your understanding of my logic can lead to a whole new avenue where I have to make yet another statement like this to reign you in. That is my JOB, and I sure as hell would rather rein a MIND like yours in than deal with the usual tape recorders outside our commenters.

But part of my job is mental discipline. Power can be traded for money. In banana republics, you can buy power. But how it comes to all-chips-in level you and I are dealing in, this is not the point, not by a mile.

They can have the money. They can have the offices. They can have the fame.

All we want to do is rule the world.

I love the word "default." It describes our reality perfectly. Everybody wants things. But the fundamental reality of the modern world is that everybody wants somebody ELSE to rule the world.

No, as I get tired of repeating, the Chinese do NOT want to rule the world. They want someone to make a world where the Chinese can have China.

People want a world where THEY can get ahead. Soros wants a world where he can GET Bush.

The Lenins are dead. The Hitlers are dead.

As I pointed out before, Mussolini almost missed the March on Rome when the Italians masses marched to Rome to give him power. To the Practical Man who is shouting in a bar, this fact is incomprehensible.

Italy was wallowing in hopelessness, so Mussolini said in a speech, "We need to march on Rome and take power." It was just one of his speeches. Then he found out that Italians had taken him up on it. He was barely in time to get his picture taken at the front of the parade when hundreds of thousands of Italians marched on Rome to give him power.

The whole government melted in front of that march. They were relieved to do so.

Before the very day of the March on Rome, every Political Scientist was doing detailed analysis of the bureaucratic struggle inside Rome; it was an exact replay of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

NOBODY supports the present system. In fact, nobody knows what the present system IS.

There are only two groups of people who BELIEVE that there IS a Present System: Respectable conservatives who make their living explaining it and fanatics who tell us how immovable and powerful it is.

To make the whole present concept more ridiculous, we just had the spectacle of the Soviet Empire just disappearing.

Nobody CARES. Bob's Mantra can destroy the whole thing. People who say, "We are Americans. We'll give you a system you can get what you want", can destroy them.

It is FAR from a joke: 1) YOU can HAVE your money; 2) YOU can HAVE your high offices; 3) You can HAVE the fame and the headlines.

Just let ME rule the world.

Not only are they WILLING to accept that deal. They are desperate for somebody to offer it to them.

Unlike those of us who want to rule the world, other people "have lives." Crap like that is for nerds like us.