I am not a political analyst. Nor do I enjoy politics all that much. However recent events have brought on a new interest in what goes on with the governance of the land in which I live. When we elect people to run the country we would hope that they have some scruples. Unfortunately, most politicians are liars, they lie about what they will do for us once in office, they lie about what they do while in office as well. It used to be that leaders were the best among the people that they led. They were the wisest, the smartest, the strongest, the highest in good character, the most educated, the most God conscious, humble, courageous, steadfast, cool tempered, truthful, caring, generous, and merciful.
On the contrary, our leaders of today are the antithesis of these qualities – foolish, weak, foul in character, ignorant, heedless, arrogant, cowardly, capricious, hot headed, liars, selfish, miserly and wrathful. Where can such a ‘leader’ lead us except into ruin? It brings me to a level of indignation and frustration that I have not known before. It boggles my mind why we as a nation continue to put up with such mockery – can we not see that we are being played for fools? Do we not have a government in this country that is for the people by the people? Where are the people? Can we really choose this for ourselves, is this what we really want?
We are standing on the precipice of what is inarguably the largest financial breakdown the world has ever seen. As more and more information makes its way to the surface, it becomes clear that the driving force behind it all is Greed, or in other words, the love of material wealth. As the great Moroccan scholar of the thirteenth century, ‘Abdul-Wahid Ibn ‘Ashir said, the source of all wrong action is the love of material wealth. In fact he used the Arabic word ‘Ajilah, which literally means that which goes away quickly, as a descriptor in place of the words ‘material wealth’.
When one loves money, there is nothing that he or she will not do to acquire more of it. And its not that the person actually needs any of it, for we can get by with very little physical wealth, but it burns into the heart in such a way that it literally consumes the person. They love it for its own sake. They just want more and more, regardless if they actually need it or even use it for anything, they just want to have it and revel in the fact that they have it. The sad part is that we can’t take it with us. We will all die, and we find three things will accompany us to our graves – our family and friends, our wealth and our actions. Two of them return and one stays with us – family and friends leave us behind to squabble and consume our wealth that leaves with them and we are only left with our actions.
And here we are faced with the financial destruction of an entire nation because of a leadership that encouraged greed, fostered its growth and now wishes to reward those who brought all this upon us by bailing them out at our expense. The numbers they speak of are absolutely staggering! I don’t think we can even fathom the amount they speak of; it’s just not something we can get our minds around. And yet, the very people who propose the solution to this crisis are the very ones who not only allowed it to happen, but also fostered it and are diseased by that very sickness, greed, themselves. It leaves me to wonder if what motivates the solution is not the very thing that brought on the problem to begin with.
The real deal is that our leadership has failed us terribly. When this happens do we have anyone to blame but ourselves? For did we not put them in the position? When this happens do we have any other choice but to remove those who lead from the position of leadership? I hope we are not too late in acting on this, for if we are, I fear the end of freedom as we know it will be knocking on our doors.
