105 Tribute to the King

All throughout history, men of notice have come before their kings to pay their tribute. After all, authority is impressive, and we all want to be on good terms with the head honcho, right? Every now and then (especially more now, than then, it seems), one or the other of those kings turns out to have been of less than noble ambitions, which has never deterred the worshipers, though.

Authority still rules, even if it sucks.
One problem about those boot lickers is: nobody ever hears of them again. After the demise of the former "German Democratic Republic," not many of those artists and celebrities that had been loyal to the socialist regime were still able to butter their breads with their trade, to give one recent historic example.

Yet those solitary few who have dared to stand up against the tyrants of their day are forever honored in our history books.
From Moses before Egypt's Pharaoh over Jeremiah the prophet before the king of Judea, and on down to Sophie Scholl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they are remembered, while the man-pleasers have gone down into oblivion. They are the Salieris of their time, popular, celebrated and successful for a season while the Mozarts go down in flames, but forever forgotten.

And what is the only thing we learn from history? Right. That we never learn anything from history. Even so, the vast majority of the populace stands behind their - more or less - elected kings, even if they tear them down to the abyss with them. Strangely enough, a lot of people don't even notice they're falling (they apparently think they're still flying) - presumably until they hit the ground.

One of the lone voices speaking out against Nixon during his time once said, "Nearly the Devil's entire power is in fear."

Seems to be pretty effective.

Maybe that's why the explicit order not to be afraid is mentioned a couple hundred times throughout the Bible. As Irish Folk singer Frances Black once put it: "Fear is the enemy of love." What eliminates fear is faith in the God of Love, the REAL head honcho, Who, by the way, can help anyone interested to discern whether what your current local head honcho is up to, is any good, so you don't have to go down the fools' road along with the rest of the silent majority.

Of course, it would also help to learn something from the misery you've seen in the past, say 8 years, and try as hard as you can to keep the same mistakes from happening. And if nothing else, pray like a house on fire. Your world and your country needs it more than you may know.