Drinking With Dead Men: Albert Pike

Despotism and Democracy in Twenty-First-Century America

Albert Pike (1809–1891) was a multifaceted American: a lawyer, soldier, and writer, best known for his role in Freemasonry. Pike elevated to prominence within the Masonic community, eventually becoming the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction, a position he held for 32 years. He authored Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a seminal work on Freemasonry. Pike's contributions to Masonic philosophy and ritual significantly shaped the Scottish Rite. His legacy is marked by his intellectual contributions and the controversy surrounding his Confederate service during the Civil War. He is verbose but in a fun way.

I imagine sitting down with him for a chat and a drink. My responses in block quotes.

Mr. Pike. Which forms of social organization are you the most suspicious of?

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy, they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth. Experience will probably prove that these odious and detestable vices will grow most rankly and spread most rapidly in a Republic. When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. 

You are still right. May I call you Albert? Today in America, we find despotism wrapped in democracy. Office and wealth canoodle in the coital bed. And these detestable vices have, indeed, grown rank. But the people put clothespins on their noses and hustle themselves to the poles anyway because they still think they are in control. Democracy is the high fence behind which the despots gather to divide the spoils and tally the livestock (us).

When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected to render service. Other qualifications, less honorable, will be more available. To adapt one's opinions to the popular humor; to defend, apologize for, and justify the popular follies; to advocate the expedient and the plausible; to caress, cajole, and flatter the elector; to beg like a spaniel for his vote…

Indeed. How is it that men can be both spaniels and wolves? Our political system has created such mongrels. Terms like “dignity” and “honor,” which are but curiosities today. The glad-handers and baby-kissers are definitely still with us, but party men (and women) have become decidedly more scare-mongering. It’s a little less about flattery and a little more about fear. They blast us from their pulpits with fire, brimstone, and sanctimony—then ask you to chip into their campaign coffers.

Yet they are the ones creating our hell.

Today more than 330 million souls live from sea to shining sea. There is no “serving” a country of this scale from Washington. We should break up, even if into smaller republics, though that would require the wolf-spaniels of Washington to let go and the people currently in their thrall to wake up to their own thralldom. Americans are content with their illusion. Like one who imagines pressing a lit button will make the elevator speed up, voters think they will vote harder next time. 

At length, office and honor are divorced. The place that the small and shallow, the knave or the trickster, is deemed competent and fit to fill, ceases to be worthy of the ambition of the great and capable; or if not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be used wherein are unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits of unprincipled advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates, and pettifoggers wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and the lives of millions are at stake. States are even begotten by villainy and brought forth by fraud, and rascalities are justified by legislators claiming to be honorable. Then contested elections are decided by perjured votes or party considerations; and all the practices of the worst times of corruption are revived and exaggerated in Republics.

It’s funny you should say all that! That pretty much sums up the last few elections. The system dynamics of the Imperial Republic mangle men of honor and women of substance. It is an all-out war between one particular Trickster and a hive of Knaves.

The Trickster is no man of honor, but he symbolizes half the country’s disgust with the Knaves, who form an iron triangle of elites: rich interests, national security apparatchiks, and corporate media. There ain’t a drop of honor among them. Greatness and capability evade the wolf and the spaniel alike. Despite every anti-democratic thing the knaves have thrown at the Trickster, he represents the Geist of half a people who’re sick of guilt, manipulation, and control. (The other half are zombies who must also be herded.)

It is strange that reverence for truth, that manliness and genuine loyalty, and scorn of littleness and unfair advantage, and genuine faith and godliness and large-heartedness should diminish, among statesmen and people, as civilization advances, and freedom becomes more general, and universal suffrage implies universal worth and fitness! 

Maybe we should slow down on the whiskey. I realize you don’t have to worry about such things there in that Grand Lodge in the Sky. But you’ll get me in trouble by mere association. I mean, these days, they shame you in the town square for decade-old peccadillos and try to end your career.

Because we’re here with our cigars in wingback leather chairs, I can tell you that matters have not improved much by giving more votes to more people. But it has less to do with who gets to vote than it does with the general absurdity of democracy as a system. Just as the powerful vote themselves emoluments, the people vote themselves “entitlements.” And when everybody’s on the federal tab, they don’t worry about collections. We’ll tax our grandchildren. Nobody votes for character, thrift, or courage.

But on universal suffrage, you’re not wrong: Letting women vote is like letting children “help” make dinner. Everything takes twice as long, and nothing is good. But letting men vote is like inviting chimps to drive delivery trucks. Nothing gets anywhere, and eventually, everything gets wrecked. They should call it universal suffering.

Society worships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most obsequiously when in actual solid wealth they are the veriest paupers. 

You would weep if you could see the personal debt levels of Americans today. You would wail if you could see the public debt of the federal government.

Fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deceit in national affairs are the signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis. To bully the weak and crouch to the strong is the policy of nations governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for office are re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dispenser of patronage, chiefly to the most unworthy; and men are bribed with offices instead of money, to the greater ruin of the Commonwealth.

Once we had had the second of two Great Wars around the world, America became an empire. 15-20 percent of the national budget now goes to weapons makers and warmogers. But more than 50 percent goes to healthcare, welfare and “entitlements.” It’s the warfare/welfare machine. The Daddy party has historically voted for the warfare business. The Mommy party has historically voted for the welfare business. Both are used to buy voter’s and special interest allegiances.

The Divine in human nature disappears, and interest, greed, and selfishness takes it place. That is a sad and true allegory which represents the companions of Ulysses changed by the enchantments of Circe into swine.

The Divine in human nature disappeared long ago—probably when humans became as gods. First with the Atom Bomb and then with the Moon Landing, there was a race to see who could kill God first and become Him. After that they’d sacrificed their community and church to politics and policy. All that was left was empty amusements and partisan warfare.

When the thirst for wealth becomes general, it will be sought for as well dishonestly as honestly; by frauds and overreachings, by the knaveries of trade, the heartlessness of greedy speculation, by gambling in stocks and commodities that soon demoralizes a whole community. Men will speculate upon the needs of their neighbors and the distresses of their country. Bubbles that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up by cunning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistants and instrument.

I’ll tell you about 2008 some time. But we’re due for another, something far worse. Some call it the Mother of All Bubbles.

Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the earth-quakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, the crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, prey on the savings of self-denial, and trouble with their depredations the first nourishment of infancy and the last sands of life, and fill with inmates the churchyards and lunatic asylums.

You’re a seer, Albert. If we ever talk like this again, I’ll ask you about the esoteric practices that gave you such prescience. Anyway, my hope is that once the bubble explodes and their house of cards collapses, we’ll rediscover the divine in each other again. Not any will to be Vishnu, destroyer of worlds, but instead the sparks of generosity and generativity that make civilizations flower—where the young can be hardworking but happy, and the old can be worldly and wise. And everyone will understands they have to kill the despots.

And democracy? That is for homeowners associations.

Do you like the Drinking with Dead Men trope? Lemme know in the comments. If you do, lemme know who you think would be an interesting drinking buddy. If not, that’s good feedback too.