The Decadent Worker

LANGUAGE IS THEFT Terrorism: An explicative used by the tiger when scolding the house cat for killing mice. — Ho Chi Zen

“Kerry,” Brother-in-law once said, “one good way to construct the government of the philosopher-king would be to arrange it so that whoever was king didn’t know it, and in such a way that he would be used for decision-making purposes while standing in line at the store and places like that.”

So incomprehensible a notion seemed academic to me, but I saw no reason to say as much. A stupid idea, anyhow, this philosopher-king jazz, because even if a dictator managed to rule benevolently, what was to guarantee an equally kind and wise successor. That objection I expressed. Slim and Gary both answering, “Yes,” and looking smug, as if they had thought about that one and solved it.

As for our unwitting philosopher-king, Slim contributed something now about that idea: “As one good way to do it. Not the only way.”

“Sure,” I said, eyeing them both with a mixture of skepticism and boredom, “that sounds like one good way to have a philosopher-king.”… (pp. 51-52)

Once Brother-in-law also asked me if I didn’t agree that the philosopher-king should also be someone who could keep “state secrets.”

I routinely concurred.

E. Howard Hunt writes in Undercover that he once received a cable signed jointly by Richard Bissell and Tracy Barnes summoning him to headquarters. “Bissell had succeeded Frank Wisner as chief of the Clandestine Services, and after hospitalization brought on by overwork Wisner had been assigned to the relatively relaxed post of London chief of station. As a special aide to Allen Dulles, Bissell had created the concept of the U-2 aircraft, then managed that successful program. I had held several perfunctionary meetings with Bissell during consultation periods in Washington and a lengthier one during a Latin American chiefs of station in Lima, Peru.

“As principal assistant to Bissell, Tracy Barnes told me, I was needed for a new project, much like the one on which I had worked for him in overthrowing Jacobo Arbens. My job, Tracy told me, would be essentially the same as my earlier one — chief of political action for a project recommended by the National Security Council and just approved by President Eisenhower: to assist Cuban exiles in overthrowing Castro. Representative Cuban leaders were grouping in Florida and New York, and my responsibility would be to organize them into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, once Castro was disposed of, form a provisional government in Cuba….”

Such an assignment may have given Hunt the opportunity to experiment with unusual forms of government. (p. 52)

…when Gary spoke of his “philosopher-king” it evoked in my imagination visions of an old man in trunks on a blanket with his legs crossed, surrounded by an orderly circle of Devil’s advocates of restrained and gentle nature — the image of a Hindu holy picture, quite distant from everything ugly except unavoidably relevant tales of human perfidity. (53) The Dreadlock Recollections (c) 1984

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