Part 2 of 7

Superb Nests

Institutions make superb nests. Although, institutions tend to maintain guardianship of established cultural traditions, even if they are false. To change an open mind is possible, if you speak the truth. Institutions tend to block any such efforts, as threatening the status quo. They reach a point and say, "Enough."

The Lord responds with: "Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough!" (2 Ne 28:29)

We complain while the Lord does His best to persuade us away from Babylon. We love our institutional traditions because they make us feel comfortable, and special. It is comforting to have other, supervising, mortals always there to ensure our success. We love our comfort. Never have a people lived so well, and been so ungrateful and naïve. We no longer endure to the end, we coast, thinking that, somehow, the journey downhill will take us upward. Like the children of Israel, we would rather die slaves of benevolent leaders than live free in liberty.

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." (Learned Hand)

"And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell." (2Ne 28:21)

The lament given by the actor, Chief Dan George, (no relation), in The Outlaw Jose Wales, pretty much tells the tale for all lovers of liberty and truth: “…they call us the civilized tribe. They call us civilized because we’re easy to sneak up on. White man has been sneaking up on us for years.” They have, indeed. (Lest anyone mistake the term “white man” for “Caucasian,” the term here is used as if to say “the powers that be.”)

The Prince of Evil

Now we’re going to jump down a rabbit hole for an in-depth view of social manipulation techniques from an early 16th-century master of the craft, Nicolo Machiavelli, from The Prince. Read carefully, as papa spider teaches baby spider, how to catch flies. Many centuries earlier, keep in mind, we also discover in Moses 5:47-51, some of the ancient secret oaths and combinations obviously passed down to Machiavelli. Leaders have deceived the people they lead for millennia. This is a view of a textbook on the subject of effective leadership in Babylon. It is worth the trek through sometimes difficult thought patterns, to gain a direct knowledge of the stunningly immeasurable quality of evil presented. My comments and highlights, intermixed:

“Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft.

(“Craft,” today, might be called public relations and advertising. “To live with integrity” sounds like a good plan. We are yet, naïve.)

“Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. 

(What were the first two items on our list of “weaknesses” from 3rd Nephi? Lyings and deceivings? If circumstances require it, a leader, in Babylon, needs to know to lie, deceive, and stab their associates in the back. And, all with a sincere, George Clooney smile.)

“You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man…

(This is why the Lord wept before Enoch. We are without affection and we hate our own blood. (Moses 7:33) As leaders, we will view the masses as nothing more than beasts, and treat them accordingly with coercion. An understanding of power and war are essential when advantage may be taken with those tools.)

“A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.

(Be cunning like a fox and strong like a lion in Babylon. Use cunning to expose deceivings, and when you find them, you are no longer bound by your word, so use that to your advantage. Expect this to be a regular occurrence and since men are inherently bad, a promise is never binding. A leader will never be without a legitimate excuse for his actions.)

“But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.

(P.T. Barnum knew all about that when he said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” We wonder if power corrupts, or if power simply attracts the corruptible? Either way, there are too many willing to be led down a destructive path by a charismatic leader, as long as their basic needs are met.)

“…it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

(Everything is about appearance. Appear to be “merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright” and use their appearance to your advantage. Just be ready to “change to the opposite” if required to do so for some gain.)

“For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality…

(Any evidence left by a leader in the court of public opinion must contain our five appearances. Most valuable of all for persuasive purposes is religious. You don’t have to be religious; you just have to look and sound religious, when it is to your advantage.)

“For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

(Leaders come and go and so let them have their authority, as they suppose. The people will be happy to have some stability from the leader’s efforts. Besides, the “vulgar” masses are easily manipulated and conditioned by “what a thing seems to be” and the relative peace attending it. The “few,” or something akin to Plato’s Golden People, sit above the vulgar world and only interact with it when the vulgar in the common world are in trouble and “have no ground to rest on.”)

This analysis reveals an intricate understanding of the natural-man world. The world we call Babylon. This extraordinary knowledge of evil and its workings mostly stays underground in the dark caverns of conspiracy. What is not understood by most people who exist in a sheltered place like Mesa, Arizona, is not the quantity of evil in the world. Everyone understands and accepts that there is a lot of evil here. What is not fully realized by most, is the stunning quality of evil. Real-live, on-purpose, knew-what-they-were-doing, and-liked-it, evil; engulf-with-chains-and-laugh kind of evil.