The struggle for power is as natural to human nature as love and hate. On a sociological scale it is as fundamental to the patterns of history and culture as the struggle for survival. If world history has taught me anything, it is that there is, and always has been, a portion of every human society that wants nothing more than world domination, even if that world is the size of a school play ground or mobile home. Sounds like a group of Marvel Comic villains, I know, but they’re for real.
In each grand struggle for rule, for control, a group usually ends up with a primary figure, even if only a figure head, who becomes, in the end, the face of evil for a time. These often grow into a caricature of themselves in reflection, which is a boon to future oppressors the world over, because rising tyrants rarely appear in the demonic guise they will come to wear in the end. They always show up declaring themselves saviors, lovers of humanity promising grand things if the people will only grant them a free hand.
We could talk about Genghis khan, Attilla the Hun, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao, but in order for these men, and thousands of other rulers just like them, to do what they did, in order for them to murder their combined hundreds of millions, and to oppress their combined billions, they had to have money, team support, followers, muscle. They had to have a shared ideology, a plan, and organization. It took time; it had steps; people sat back watching it happen… many doing nothing, others warning to no avail. “Surely this can’t happen here!”
It has not even been 70 years since over 150 million people were murdered in the death camps of Germany, slaughtered wholesale by the Japanese, starved and butchered by the Soviets and Chinese. Those who did such things the world over had many a supporter in the United States, powerful and vocal figures in complicity with the ideologies that lead to these deeds—presidents, congressmen and senators, media moguls, International business leaders, even lowly playwrights turning their wit to war. These were and are people determined, by one means or another, on one timetable or another, to gain control. They were and are frothing in their souls, striving for dominion over the whole human race.
So anyone who tells you not to be paranoid, tells you not to listen to those voices, who imagines or at least claims to imagine that these things could never happen here, could never happen to us, is either a fool or hiding something. It can always happen here, because it can and has always happened everywhere. A person may, but people will not, not ever, outgrow or evolve past the desire to dominate… and those so inclined will always use everything at their disposal to do so.
What terrifies me most…
[Please don’t write me letters telling me that perfect love casts out all fear, (1 John 4:18) that’s not what it means, and even Jesus said that things would come upon the earth that would make men’s hearts fail them for fear. (Luke 21:26) I am afraid of tigers, sharks, and the occasional overly intelligent stare of infants in strollers… I think they knooooowwwww something… and my love and trust in Jesus, protector of my soul, doesn’t make me less so. I consider it wisdom to be wary.]
So, what terrifies me most, since I am a sensible person who doesn’t want to suffer, is the idea that the heinous deeds of men like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were all done without modern technology… other than guns, bombs, and tanks and the like. No drones, no digital cameras on every corner, in every shop, no computer network monitoring them, no internet, no electronically connected systems tracking our every movement, purchase, visited site, text message or email. They brought billions to their knees and ushered millions into eternity without the aid of the most powerful intelligence gathering and monitoring equipment to ever cast its shadow in the mind of man.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
In our great advancement, in our unprecedented technological wonders, we have created the very tools that men like Mao and Stalin and Hitler will use to bring upon the world an age of oppression like few have even conceived. The only thing stopping them [from an earthly perspective] is the will of the people[1]… a people who are often too preoccupied with the day to day worries of life, and too distracted by a myriad technological amusements to pay attention. “Surely, it can’t happen here… can’t happen to us.”
[1] I am speaking from a human perspective. I am not a fatalist, nor one who believes that the rising and falling of every foot is predestined. Nothing happens without divine allowance, but I am not convinced that good Christians divorce themselves from the common concerns of society.
