The Nascent Chinks in the Armor of Power
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
August 24, 2010

There are nascent chinks in the armor of power.  Concealed beneath the dignified bravado and unrivaled self assurance of the powerful person’s public personality, concealed even from their self-acknowledged nefarious private person, there is an Achilles Heel which is a form of insanity and nearsightedness.  The peril of this insanity is that is unable to recognize the strength, ruthlessness, and obsessive ambition of their potential successors.  For these, too, are clever charmers devoid of conscience.  Like crafty lionesses on the alert, ready to close in when they detect the first signs of vulnerability, they devise their devious plans to stealthily move in for the kill.  The ruthlessness of the kill by their rivals will likely eclipse the degree to which the sovereign has demeaned them.  Perhaps an even worse flaw of those whose secret creed is power for power’s sake is their belief in their omnipotence.  They become drunk with the license to which ‘kings of the hill’ are prone and eventually they far overextend the reach of their control and overestimate the strength and abilities required to achieve their greedy and grandiose ambitions.  

The ‘wounded’ king is unwilling to relinquish what everyone knows he has lost.  Nevertheless, to maintain his power, when the jackals are closing in, he must and usually does resort to flamboyant displays of retaliation, boisterous protestations, recrimination of his betrayers, attempts at dirty political counterattacks, character assassination of suspected enemies, economic warfare, or even brutal force.  Witnessing these grotesque theatricals, fear tends to grip his followers like the jungle’s surrounding scavengers.  His assassins are not similarly moved as their Alpha male victor begins his metaphorical victory dance as though on the vanquished king’s grave.  He enjoins his co-conspirators to share in the dance.  However, among the king’s people, those who were his overt loyal supporters, there is initially fear, which this quickly turns into resentful distrust, and then quickly metamorphoses into sabotage and then outright rebellion as the weakened sovereign is seen to capitulate.  Their loyalty is sheepishly transferred to the gloating usurper as he, with great fanfare, ascends the throne.  Now begins the sad and sordid cycle as the new king enters the stage with a repeat performance of drunken megalomania.  And so, as with the nascent chinks in the king’s armor, the historically demonstrated nascent chinks in civilization, whether with governments or corporations, as well as in the nascent chinks in the very nature of humankind, continues on.