Illinois ex- Governor Blagojevich

Amended 19 February 2020.

As you will see I wrote this quite a time ago – 10yrs to be exact – but the dear ex-governor has now had his prison sentence commuted by President Trump. I’m staggered. But there we are – a good example of “draining the swamp”?

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Okay!  “The governor of Illinois has been arrested on charges of conspiring to sell Barack Obama's recently vacated US Senate seat.

The news that Illinois Governor Blagojevich was taken into custody complicates the matter of filling the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were also accused to trying to "induce purge of newspaper editorial writers," critical of him at the Tribune Company, the US attorney's office said in a statement.

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement...” (From ‘The Australian’ web site 10 December 2008).

I know that politics is often considered a ‘dirty’ game and I am no great respecter of politicians, of any persuasion. Just because they hold the positions they do does not mean that I respect them – they have to earn my respect. They can say what they like, it is what they do that counts and which may, or may not, earn my respect.

In this case I am just amazed at the audacity of someone like the governor. Does he (or did he) believe that as governor he is (was) above the law? He is just a man of straw – not worthy of the office of governor. He is just a common felon and a con-man to boot. He fooled the electorate of Illinois into electing him. But what staggers me more than anything is the lack of moral understanding; the lack of the appreciation of values and  that any conception of ethics seems to be totally wanting from his psyche, from his understanding as to what it is to be a human being. Maybe he now has an appreciation of the law of cause and effect!

As governor he is obviously not short of money. He has one of only fifty such positions, so he is already in somewhat rarefied atmosphere in American politics – he is head honcho in the state - he has authority, he has power. Very obviously that was not enough.

He must believe that his sole reason for existence is to make money – and the more the better. Now I am the last person to say that having a desire to make money is wrong, because I like money as much as the next person, but not at any cost. Does this bloke actually LIKE himself? When he looks at himself in his bathroom mirror in the morning when he shaves, what does he see? Can he honestly say to himself, if positions were reversed, “ I would like to be governed by me?”

What also alarms me is the is the possible answer to the question, “Is this what unbridled capitalism breeds?” Laws, no matter how tightly enforced will never cover all human failings. There has to be self regulation (self discipline) there has to be trust; there has to be respect not only for yourself but for others. Laws are essential but unless they are applied and followed from the bottom up (and not just enforced from the top down) anarchy will prevail and the ‘rule of law’ will not be worth the paper it’s printed on. 

I am going to watch this one with great interest. I hope and trust that my respect for politicians generally is not reduced any further and that he gets what he deserves.

And this is something wrote a few days later - also in 2008:-

The latest on the Illinois Governor case is that the Illinois House of Representatives has voted to begin an impeachment inquiry into Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of trying to sell the US Senate seat vacated by president-elect Barack Obama.

The inquiry, approved 113-0, will be placed in the hands of a special committee. 

If it determines that impeachment is warranted, the House would vote on whether to impeach, to be followed by a trial in the state senate.

If convicted at trial the governor could be forced from office.

It seems that no one wants to be seen to ‘like’ this bloke any more!!

Time passes by.

For many reasons, I suppose, I have always been fascinated by the theories and concepts of what actually constitutes “Life”, that essence, that vivifying factor that is present when something is “alive”, but is absent when that same something is now “dead”. 

The thing is – nobody knows!! 

In a book of short stories, “Like the flowing river”, by Paulo Coelho, there is a thought provoking passage, in fact two – from different stories – that I will quote as they appeal to my ideas about Life (with a capital “L”).

In the first quote Coelho was in a forested area on the French side of the Pyrenees, practicing his archery, when a French Colonel, exercising with his troops in the area, recognizes Coelho and admits that he too is a writer – about life matters. Once this Colonel asked children in various schools to write down anything they would like to know about life.

He summarized what the children wanted to know:-

Where do we go after we die?

Why are we afraid of foreigners?

Do Martians and extraterrestrial beings really exist?

Why do accidents happen even to people who believe in God?

What does God mean?

Why are we born if we all die in the end?

How many stars are there in the sky?

Who invented war and happiness?

Does God listen to people who don’t believe in the same (Catholic) God?

Why are there poor people and ill people?

Why did God create mosquitoes and flies?

Why isn’t our guardian angel next to us when we are sad?

Why do we love some people and hate others?

Who named the different colours?

If God is in Heaven and my mother is there too because she died, how come He’s alive? 

All, to my mind, very valid questions! 

Those questions lead me easily to my next quote, also by Coelho, which is actually an abbreviated summary of a passage from Chapter II of the Hindu scripture, the “Bhagavad Gita”:-

“Man is not born, nor does he die. Having come into existence, he will never cease to be, because he is eternal and permanent.

Just as a man discards old clothes and puts on new clothes, so the soul discards the old body and puts on a new one.

But the soul is indestructible, swords cannot pierce it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, the wind cannot dry it. It is beyond the power of all these things.

Since man is always indestructible, he is always victorious (even in his defeats), and that is why he should not mourn.” 

It’s easy to see that I am not a Christian!! Though I do, I think, have a profound belief in a Higher Power. This brings me comfort. 

Now I don’t mourn, but I do grieve. I know that time has passed by – four years actually – since Magucha died, so the grief is not quite so “sharp”. But it is still there as it will always be. I miss her companionship. I miss her as a friend. I also know, deep down, that the essence – her soul, if you like – is out there somewhere. I will never believe that Magucha’s intelligence, her love, her humour, her compassion, have just disappeared into nothing.

So, together with what in written in the Bhagavad Gita, and what others have written, I like to think that life is eternal. That there is a never-ending cycle of birth and death.

To support this here are the first two verses of a poem, “A Creed”, by John Masefield:- 

I hold that when a person dies
      His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
      Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;
      This hand, this hand that holds the pen,
Has many a hundred times been dust
      And turned, as dust, to dust again;
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.