When police discover a lifeless body, the first move is to ascertain the cause of death. If naturally caused, no more police work proceeds from that point forward beyond a report. If, however, investigators determine the situation to be a crime scene, casting the now-dead person as a murder victim, the question becomes, “Who did it?” Assuming the answer isn’t clear, police usually move to the question, “What relationships did this person have?” and, “Out of those relationships, who might have the motive to so something like this?” If a spouse goes missing, suspect #1 is typically… you guessed it… the other spouse. Why? Because of something called high-value insurance policies. Insurance policies have historically served as motives for one spouse to kill the other (we live in a fallen world after all). If, for example, the husband can make the murder look like an accidental death, or a farce disappearance, then he could make off with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
Motive
The concept of motive is helpful because it allows investigators to ask targeted questions in a way that doesn’t necessarily assume guilt. Through the question of motive, authorities can narrow the gaggle of possible suspects from what might have been 50 to just 5. However, before we seek to apply motive to anything other than true crime, we need to formally understand it.
Motive comes from the Latin movere, or “to move.” In scholastic literature, motive might be referred to as the moving cause. “What explains or causes the motion of this or that thing?” would be the question. Legally, motive answers the question of what might have caused a suspect to act in a particular way. Simply put, motive is the reason a suspect may have committed the crime in question.
Applying Motive
Motive doesn’t solve all the questions equitable justice demands. It does, however, narrow the gambit, and it narrows the gambit precisely because it allows police to quickly ascertain suspects who most likely committed this or that crime. A multimillionaire is most likely not stealing the chocolate bars from the snack stand; but the 9-year-old with a sweet tooth most likely is.
For months I’ve been asking the question, “Why don’t Americans, especially discerning Christians, apply the principle of motive to their government?” According to Aristotle, monarchies are naturally self-preservative. But this could apply to any central authority, no matter the species, with any sort of motive to perpetuate its own existence. Why, then, do we not look at the federal government with the same skeptical eye as we would a husband with a murdered wife who just happens to have a $1 million life-insurance policy annexed to her name?
The federal government has, in point of fact, much more motive for wrong-doing than does the husband whose wife has bookoos in insurance money. We’re talking about a government whose management not only has personal wealth at stake, but also the prospect of global dominance, personal glory, and generational legacy. People do not understand the way in which the ruling class thinks. Most Americans think it’s cool when they can afford a new car. They dream of winning millions in the lottery, and the houses and sportscars they’d buy with it, or perhaps the family members they’d help out. But, most of us belong to a class in which those things are totally unrealistic, or at best distant hopes. This is not so for the current Aristocracy. They already have all of the glitz and glam. And even if their personal net wealth isn’t listed on the Forbes list, the friends, allowances, and the “kick-back” incentives they receive would cause the local millionaire to salivate.
What everyone needs to understand about the current ruling class is that many of them have a distant, historical and deeply entrenched pedigree. We think of them as idiots, and a truer adjective may not apply. However, these people have been raised in a culture similar to that of a royal child in England. They’ve most likely never known even a single middle-class person beyond who they’ve employed. They were raised with maids, nannies, and butlers. And if this is not the case, at some point, they’ve been brought into a context that is entirely cordoned off from “normal” America. And should anyone become confused, this applies to both Democrat and Republican politicians; to the Clintons just as to the Bushes.
The higher these people climb, be it in the governmental or subsidized corporate realms (if we can even make that distinction anymore), the more motive they accumulate for doing something incomprehensibly wicked. But the societal dissonance on this point is astounding. The average American can discern who most likely knocked off the helpless young lady on “Forensic Files” by looking at the motives and evidence of each suspect. But, for some reason, when it comes to an institution that moves billions of dollars worth of gold, green backs, and real assets on the daily, the American people lose this ability.
A Healthy Skepticism of Centralized Government
Because the federal government has so much motive (and often distributes that motive to lesser powers), we would do well to maintain a posture of constant skepticism toward it. The federal government should never be trusted at face value.
Ever.
If this sounds like a bold claim, perhaps you’ve failed to consider the vast amounts of motive. Unless there is evidence, unless there is some way by which a person might test their word, there is no good reason to trust them (again, given their motive). The federal government, in the minds of the American people, should always be guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty. “Why is that?” you ask. Because of motive. Forget the power and the money; what about the scandal? The flight manifest of Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet revealed some pretty powerful motive for at least one of the most powerful political families on the globe. And we all know how covered in scandal that (Clinton) family is!
Therefore, we shouldn’t allow the cat to run away with the tuna so quickly.
There is some serious motive in the current situation. Vaccines, mandates, lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc., must be understood in light of motive, namely, the motive of those at the highest levels forcing the issue. Are we really so willfully ignorant so as to not think there is money changing hands between Washington and Merc, Moderna, and Phizer? No doubt, a real virus exists. No doubt, it has made a certain demographic vulnerable to pneumonia. No question this pneumonia has resulted in the death of thousands of people. However, remember (1) this virus was undoubtedly created by a foreign superpower in the Wuhan lab; (2) evidence has shown the lion share of current mandated measures make little to no difference in terms of the spread of the virus; and (3) the mandated measures continue to exist, and there is little sign they will be relegated to the history books anytime soon. The only question remaining is: Why? What is the motive? The answer to that question would keep a person occupied for a very long time.
It is time to start treating the American government not as a naturally honest entity, but as a suspect with the highest level of motive there ever was. It is time to start treating the American government as a criminal.