Just when you're getting the taste for it, they're bringing out the hammers and the boards and the nails.... (Joni Mitchell)
I listened to these song lyrics for what must have been the thousandth time and got to thinking about arrogance and power.
General Pinochet, the Marcoses, Mussolini and countless others all stand as 20th century testament to the transience of arrogance. Fame and Glory are short -lived in the big scheme of things, passing in a short lifetime, while the rocks and the trees go on. Some of us leave a lasting legacy like poetry or music or just memories of themselves; timeless and destined to give pleasure to generations to come, while others, often the most successfully arrogant ones, warrant little more than a footnote to the century.
Remember this, even those that appealed to the ultimate baseness of human nature, greed and bigotry lasted barely a decade, leaving in their wake the 6 million striped-shirted, hollow-eyed, lost souls.
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