Hidden power in America, one must note, has European origins and is intertwined with political and social evolutions in Europe over the course of the last few centuries. As Hannah Arendt wrote: “The breakdown of the feudal order had given rise to the new revolutionary concept of equality, according to which a ‘nation within the nation’ could no longer be tolerated. Jewish restrictions and privileges had to be abolished together with all other special rights and liberties. This growth of equality, however, depended largely upon the growth of an independent state machine which, either as an enlightened despotism or as a constitutional government, above all classes and parties, could, in splendid isolation, function, rule, and represent the interests of the nation as a whole.”
Arendt added: “Therefore, beginning with the late seventeenth century, an unprecedented need arose for state credit and a new expansion of the state’s sphere of economic and business interest, while no group among the European populations was prepared to grant credit to the state or take an active part in the development of state business. It was only natural that Jews, with their age-old experience as money lenders and their connections with European nobility – to whom they frequently owed local protection and for whom they used to handle financial matters – would be called upon for help; it was clearly in the interest of the new state business to grant the Jews certain privileges and to treat them as a separate group.”
Business and law coincided with self-preservation and survival for the Jews living in the West, for as Arendt wrote: “There is no doubt that the nation-state’s interest in preserving the Jews as a special group and preventing their assimilation into class society coincided with the Jewish interest in self-preservation and group survival.” Hence, whereas the delineation and elevation of the Jews on the part of the Western nation-state meant getting credit to finance expansionist and imperialistic policies of conquest and global hegemony, for the Jews, engaging equivocally in such an enterprise meant deterrence and survival.
In turn, politicians who flock to Washington from across the country and are essentially blinded by megalomania do not know or do not care about the core functions, motives, and operations of hidden power. Nor are these politicians important in the bigger scheme of things, as we have demonstrated by the background and the context of hidden power. As Jerrold Post wrote: “The narcissist’s exaggerated sense of self-importance tends to be manifested as extreme self-centeredness, egocentricity, and self-absorption. Abilities and achievements tend to be unrealistically overestimated, but setbacks can give a sense of special unworthiness. There is a preoccupation with fantasies involving unrealistic goals.”
Post added: “These goals may include achieving unlimited power, wealth, brilliance, beauty, or fame. These fantasies frequently substitute for realistic activity in pursuit of success. Even satisfying these goals is usually not enough. There is a constant search for admiration and attention and more concern with appearance than substance.”
As a result, egocentricity and self-absorption blinds politicians to both history and reality which in turn diminishes their importance and in turn reduces them to spiritually impoverished tools and instruments of brute hegemony and survival. As the Ancient Roman poet Ovid wrote:
Am I the lover
Or beloved? Then why make love? Since I
Am what I long for, then my riches are
So great they make me poor.
Adam A. Azim 