The fourth estate arrived. The court room, in its majestic gloom, would have been pleasingly empty were it not for their arrival. In the ancient times, when man was more given to directly oppressing his fellow man for personal gain, there had been three other estates. Over time, the oppressed gradually threw off the first three estates such that none were plenary present in this court room, and, for a time, the fourth estate had aided this action. Now, the fourth estate styled itself the savior of man it had once been while it attained a concentrated evil never attained by the first three as it had gained all the weight of boot on the neck the other three had attained yet managed to maintain the facade of the helper it once attained.
While the fourth estate filed in, with their studied visage of learnedness, with their effortless concentration on the facts pertinent to the case, with their knowledgeable essays to effect the wishes of their real clients, the fifth estate chittered from their basements and bedrooms and college dorms, adding little but noise. No, the fifth estate was not going to save the world from the fourth estate.
There are no saviors. There are those who struggle against power, often attaining power themselves. While it is said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is said facilely with little understanding, and primarily by those who have not attained power and thus believe themselves incorrupt. The seed of their corruption is in them; it merely has to be watered by the mist of success, tempered in the aggrandizement of their egos and finally made strong in the prideful ascension to actual power, to precipitate their subsequent fall from grace at the hands of some other young and hungry incorruptible.
There is happiness. There is satisfaction. There is contentment. These are the things people seek. Gaining these things for the populace is a difficult and tiresome effort and thankless. Thus do those seeking power seldom make an effort to this end, as happy, content and satisfied people generally do not flock to the polls to reward the seekers of power and it is an aphorism that disaster sells.
So those who would achieve power are driven to produce disasters. The disasters do not have to be rooted in fact; they merely must play on the fears of the populace. One such disaster is the arrival through the efforts of a businessman of a monopoly, however achieved, which means that the businessman is in the position to oppress the populace, who certainly could not buy someone else's thing and thus must pay extra for the businessman's thing regardless of whether it is worth it or not.
Thus begun the argument in the court. The judge listened with appropriate gravitas; the jury listened with simulated understanding, the fourth estate wrote down something else that sounded better, and all thought it was going very well. The defense with our man the industrialist sat with stoicism wrought of the imposition of the ridiculous case of the prosecutor upon their souls.
The tableau set, as with Jesus and his disciples, except that the Judas was known, yet which party was the Judas depended largely on the observer. For some, the Judas stood on the floor of the court, his gildedness gleaming like his smile, oratorically expounding to the jury the nature of the crimes to be decided this day, alternating between conspiratoriality and commiseration with those wronged by the grand scale of the dastardly deeds accomplished by the defendant, that man there, in the natty suit, his top hat set on his desk, as he obviously strove to show his superiority, to flaunt his riches and to demonstrate his inability to connect with the common man.
To others, the Judas did, indeed, sit in the defendant's chair as asserted the prosecutor. There he sat with his smug clothing, his smug smile and his smug lawyer, paid for out of a fortune acquired on the backs of the suffering masses. Truly, did he oppress the masses, did he not? To be someone with such wealth must mean he took more than deserved, and were not the masses deserving? Should not the things he made be given freely, or at a more modest price? Such that all the masses could be party to the great happiness he had created, as was their right, surely? Did not the prosecutor stand as Hercules defending the common man against such as he?
Maybe the Judas sat on the bench or in the jury pews, the last vestiges of the second and third estates, the bench holding the lord of justice and the jury pews the free middle class who would stand in brave judgement of our man the industrialist, and would not be swayed by the prosecutorial eloquence, would not be drawn in by a pretty turn of phrase, but would severely and earnestly consider only the facts on the case, as they had been led to understand them.
The prosecutor was, come to think of it, the last vestige of the first estate. The prosecutor stood in priestly robes, white suit, gilt cane, gleaming smile, and cared not of substance so long as form was followed. The prosecutor would win, it was assured, as righteousness was on his side, as he proceeded to inform the jury, and he would demonstrate such by dint of superior argument. He would demonstrate more subtly his contact with common man, that he would happily fight for the rights so trampled by the defendant, he who would sell a thing for more money simply because it was better. The prosecutor would bring the defendant down as a lion drags down its prey, then give the bloody meat and remnants to hoi polloi as a reverse sacrifice in expiation for the sins of the prosecutor and in hopes that the populace would see such a sacrifice and provide the prosecutor with an improved career track.
So much, then, was at stake. The judge would one day gain the right to write a book and sell it and maybe become a minor celebrity and retire to Maui. The prosecutor would gain the notoriety he needed to further his career. The jury would be free of any obligations to further judge their peers for a whole year. Only the defendant had anything to lose; above the defendant's head swung the pendulum of Damocles, to torture a metaphor into giving up the sense of the tableau, a pendulum that swung perilously close to the throat of the defendant as the prosecutor gleamed and gilded his way through his opening arguments, artistically painting his picture in the dramatic way that the jury came to expect, the theatre of the thing attaining the level commiserate with the great stakes of the play of justice so set in this tableau.
While the fourth estate filed in, with their studied visage of learnedness, with their effortless concentration on the facts pertinent to the case, with their knowledgeable essays to effect the wishes of their real clients, the fifth estate chittered from their basements and bedrooms and college dorms, adding little but noise. No, the fifth estate was not going to save the world from the fourth estate.
There are no saviors. There are those who struggle against power, often attaining power themselves. While it is said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is said facilely with little understanding, and primarily by those who have not attained power and thus believe themselves incorrupt. The seed of their corruption is in them; it merely has to be watered by the mist of success, tempered in the aggrandizement of their egos and finally made strong in the prideful ascension to actual power, to precipitate their subsequent fall from grace at the hands of some other young and hungry incorruptible.
There is happiness. There is satisfaction. There is contentment. These are the things people seek. Gaining these things for the populace is a difficult and tiresome effort and thankless. Thus do those seeking power seldom make an effort to this end, as happy, content and satisfied people generally do not flock to the polls to reward the seekers of power and it is an aphorism that disaster sells.
So those who would achieve power are driven to produce disasters. The disasters do not have to be rooted in fact; they merely must play on the fears of the populace. One such disaster is the arrival through the efforts of a businessman of a monopoly, however achieved, which means that the businessman is in the position to oppress the populace, who certainly could not buy someone else's thing and thus must pay extra for the businessman's thing regardless of whether it is worth it or not.
Thus begun the argument in the court. The judge listened with appropriate gravitas; the jury listened with simulated understanding, the fourth estate wrote down something else that sounded better, and all thought it was going very well. The defense with our man the industrialist sat with stoicism wrought of the imposition of the ridiculous case of the prosecutor upon their souls.
The tableau set, as with Jesus and his disciples, except that the Judas was known, yet which party was the Judas depended largely on the observer. For some, the Judas stood on the floor of the court, his gildedness gleaming like his smile, oratorically expounding to the jury the nature of the crimes to be decided this day, alternating between conspiratoriality and commiseration with those wronged by the grand scale of the dastardly deeds accomplished by the defendant, that man there, in the natty suit, his top hat set on his desk, as he obviously strove to show his superiority, to flaunt his riches and to demonstrate his inability to connect with the common man.
To others, the Judas did, indeed, sit in the defendant's chair as asserted the prosecutor. There he sat with his smug clothing, his smug smile and his smug lawyer, paid for out of a fortune acquired on the backs of the suffering masses. Truly, did he oppress the masses, did he not? To be someone with such wealth must mean he took more than deserved, and were not the masses deserving? Should not the things he made be given freely, or at a more modest price? Such that all the masses could be party to the great happiness he had created, as was their right, surely? Did not the prosecutor stand as Hercules defending the common man against such as he?
Maybe the Judas sat on the bench or in the jury pews, the last vestiges of the second and third estates, the bench holding the lord of justice and the jury pews the free middle class who would stand in brave judgement of our man the industrialist, and would not be swayed by the prosecutorial eloquence, would not be drawn in by a pretty turn of phrase, but would severely and earnestly consider only the facts on the case, as they had been led to understand them.
The prosecutor was, come to think of it, the last vestige of the first estate. The prosecutor stood in priestly robes, white suit, gilt cane, gleaming smile, and cared not of substance so long as form was followed. The prosecutor would win, it was assured, as righteousness was on his side, as he proceeded to inform the jury, and he would demonstrate such by dint of superior argument. He would demonstrate more subtly his contact with common man, that he would happily fight for the rights so trampled by the defendant, he who would sell a thing for more money simply because it was better. The prosecutor would bring the defendant down as a lion drags down its prey, then give the bloody meat and remnants to hoi polloi as a reverse sacrifice in expiation for the sins of the prosecutor and in hopes that the populace would see such a sacrifice and provide the prosecutor with an improved career track.
So much, then, was at stake. The judge would one day gain the right to write a book and sell it and maybe become a minor celebrity and retire to Maui. The prosecutor would gain the notoriety he needed to further his career. The jury would be free of any obligations to further judge their peers for a whole year. Only the defendant had anything to lose; above the defendant's head swung the pendulum of Damocles, to torture a metaphor into giving up the sense of the tableau, a pendulum that swung perilously close to the throat of the defendant as the prosecutor gleamed and gilded his way through his opening arguments, artistically painting his picture in the dramatic way that the jury came to expect, the theatre of the thing attaining the level commiserate with the great stakes of the play of justice so set in this tableau.
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