mandate of heaven

The Mandate of Heaven

    Hi. God here. Generally, I eschew hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, preferring to chat only with my special favorites, the ones who appreciate my true vengeful nature, but I just had to make an exception today. That's because my good buddy, Pat Robertson, reminded me of the old Mandate of Heaven days in China.
    Yeah, those were the days, all right. I had almost forgotten, although, of course, I can't forget anything, can I? I realize that not everybody is as learned as Pat, and that they therefore may not understand how that Mandate thing worked. The Chinese called it "Tien Ming." Don't you just love Chinese? I think it's the best language I ever invented. (English, of course, is my native tongue. I didn't invent that.)
    But I digress. Here's the way it worked. I designated one person to be the absolute monarch of China. He had the power of life, death, and taxation over his subjects. After all, that's what being an absolute monarch means. How, you may ask, did everyone know who possessed the Mandate of Heaven? That was easy. He was the eldest son of the last person who possessed the Mandate of Heaven. But what about the first Mandatee, I hear you ask? And how about all those changes of dynasty, all that Han-Tang-Ming-Qing stuff you hear about? Ah, true enough! Sometimes I moved the Mandate from one dynasty to another. And how did everyone know when that happened? The answer is simplicity itself. The new holder of the Mandate beat the crap out of the old holder. Or rather, the new holder's army beat the crap out of the old holder's army, and both of them beat the crap out of everyone who was caught in the middle, notably the peasantry, which was only the entire population of the country. Obviously, my bestowal of the Mandate determined the winner. (Or perhaps it was the other way around.) So war is the way I speak to the world. Everyone should be clear about this. Some of you may ask if this means that the Communist Party of China now holds the Mandate of Heaven, and to you, I say, "Shut the fuck up."
    But to bring this forward to the present day ... Does George Bush hold the Mandate of Heaven? My buddy Pat told you so, so it must be true. I told you that I usually only speak to my special friends. These are the people who know what I want: absolute theocratic monarchy, one-party rule, holy war, the dominance of men over women, no gay marriage, no abortions, and so on. You can always tell who my favorites are by the positions they espouse. But I will tantalize you a little bit. This is what I told Pat: "George has the Mandate of Heaven for the United States of America." I'm not letting slip who has the Global Mandate. Maybe it is George. But it might also be my servant Osama. Or could it be Ali Khamenei of Iran? Or could it be someone else? I'm not telling, but I'm looking forward to a rousing war to settle the question, just like in the old days. Don't worry! You'll know who I've picked. He'll be the last one standing.

The "Mandate of Heaven" did, in fact, work as described here (absent any actual divine intervention). Claiming for George W. Bush an analogous divine authorization is one of the most fatuous, irresponsible, anti-democratic assertions to come out of the recent fatuous, irresponsible, anti-democratic presidential campaign. And yes, it does reveal the kind of government favored by the Republican leadership.