Anyone who lives off a tip jar is never going to make the list of the 10 most decadent dictators in the world.
But part of what motivated this post was a project I’m currently helping out in. It is to tell the story of the community organizers who helped turned the tide against Marcos while holding off the Communist Party with their other hand. They never made any money out of it; and will probably never get any fame. Of course, they never did it for the money or fame anyway.
I remembered the “Band of Brothers” book; one of the most fascinating things about the Steven Ambrose book is that it is about a bunch of ordinary guys who did extraordinary things and gained nothing but the memory. They went on to become cab drivers, farmers, drunks, prosecutors and whatever else. Were it not for Ambrose, they would probably have remained unknown. The deeds were by the men of the 101st Abn. But we owe the TV miniseries and book to an author. Virtue rarely authors its own autobiography.
If I were to give financial advice to somebody who was planning on living dangerously, it would be that the hero business paid very poorly. Barack Obama understood that immediately when he was a community organizer in Chicago. That’s why he shifted to Harvard Law School. If had stayed on in community organizing it would be very unlikely that he could buy the mansion he now lives in. Of course, it doesn’t follow that anyone who becomes a lawyer winds up being a bad guy and there’s nothing wrong with getting rich. But while it seems fairly straightforward to get rich building a better mousetrap, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s ever easy to get rich being a professional do-gooder. Possibly. But it’s far easier, I think, to get rich by pretending to be a professional do-gooder. There are saints in the world, but they are few. Much more common are those who put on saintly airs for the sake of worldly bank accounts.
On several occasions I’ve mentioned that, while visiting Mindanao, I was struck by how little the average “Muslim rebel” was motivated by the Koran. Currency was always much the preferred reading matter. Nor can I forget how someone I knew was horribly killed by “revolutionaries” probably to protect the exposure of their drug business. And yet time and again these people would be interviewed by the media. They would describe themselves as revolutionaries or holy men and spout the most apalling nonsense. You felt like turning to someone and shouting, “it’s lies! All lies!” But no one would believe you if you did.
I have written in several posts that once, while talking to a high-ranking cadre of the Communist Party, I offered a proof of the existence of God. Curious, the party leader offered to listen. My proof went like this. “If I can prove the Devil exists, then God must exist, otherwise the world would already be ruled by the Devil.” He nodded in assent. “But the Devil exists because Hell necessarily exists to put people like you in it.” He was not amused.
