Fools & Rascals

President Wants To Be Very Clear

On January 28th, 2011, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, publicly commenting about the then current events of political and civil unrest in Egypt, said the following:

“I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.”

Less than a year later, all over the United States, hundreds of thousands of Americans, often inspired by the people of Egypt, started to gather in public places to practice everything Mr. Obama called “universal rights”. Such inalienable rights include peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the right to determine their own destiny.

How did the US government respond? They used brute force. In hundreds of American cities, police in riot gear brutally violated the peaceful protestors, physically hurting and arresting numerous people – young, old, healthy, and infirm, without discrimination.

Just as we were ready to print the December issue of the 16 Rounds magazine, police had shamelessly attacked a group of peaceful UC Davis students who had gathered on the campus. The incident was followed by a UC Davis students rally. Students demanded that the university’s chancellor, Linda Katehi, resign.
The incident in particular as well as numerous other similar actions by the police is an offense to the people of this country. The police department seems to rather be a department of mercenaries who work for the company called government. The ridiculous part is that the mercenaries are paid by the very people, the tax payers, whom they are brutally offending. This is a colossal injustice that none of us should be capable of tolerating.

So what are we to think about Mr. Obama?

Is he a liar and therefore yet another disgusting creature that does not lose sleep over the exhibition of grotesque forms of immorality? I can not say that, as I do not know him personally.

Perhaps he is a righteous person, but unable to do much. His hands might be “tied”. Perhaps he is just a puppet that those who are really running the show dangle before the eyes of the public. Even though this might be possible, I cannot say it with much certainty, as I am not intimately familiar with politics in such echelons.

I can, though, certainly say one thing – great injustice has been done, and if tolerated, it will yield to further injustice everywhere, including the government. Due to the tolerance of previous acts of injustice, we are witnessing gross forms of injustice now. Injustice and lies result in more injustice and lies.

Srila Prabhupada wrote, more than 30 years ago, the following:

“At the present moment the so-called executive heads are more or less selected from materially ambitious persons (read ‘materialists’) who simply look after their own personal interests; they have no spiritual education. In other words, the executive heads are fools and rascals in the strict sense of the terms, and the people in general are simple workers (shudras). This combination of fools and rascals and simple workers (shudras) cannot bring about peace and prosperity in this world. Therefore we find periodic upheavals in society in the forms of battles, communal riots, and fratricidal quarrels. Under these circumstances, not only are the leaders unable to lead the people toward liberation, but they cannot even give them peace of mind. In the Bhagavad-gita it is stated that anyone who lives on concocted ideas, without reference to the standard books of spiritual knowledge (shastras), never becomes successful and does not attain happiness or spiritual emancipation.”