Did you ever think now much power there is in the ability to pay people? For the moment you hold their very soul in your hands. You can make them grovel, or stand tall. You can make them feel grateful, or like wage slaves. You can make them feel proud…or venal and desperate and dirty.

I thought of this the other day when I was at a reading and sold several copies of my new books, ORPHANS and UNDER SATURN’S SUN. People listened to me read part of a chapter, and then they opened their wallets and actually GAVE ME MONEY. Amazing! I have a day job where I make money, and I’m proud to think I earn it, but this felt so immediate and visceral I couldn’t believe it. Something I dreamed up had resulted in cold, hard cash. Something I’d have done for free had actually, amazingly paid off.

I still can’t believe it’s true.

I was also thinking about all the people who accept money to do jobs they might never volunteer to do for free. Jobs like locking up little children, or separating families, or shooting unarmed civilians. True, there are probably some psychopaths who’d gladly do all those things and more, but the average person probably wouldn’t go to work for ICE or in our federal prisons or as a combat soldier for a hobby.

No, they’d have been in need of a good paying job, and looking around, have decided the federal government was their best employment bet.

They’d sign up, and probably do their best. They might not even worry about their morality until their boots were on the ground. I like to think that now, at least, some ICE agents are appalled by what they’ve done, but I’m still not so sure that’s the case. Probably, like most people, they rationalize their actions in terms of themselves and their families. Terrorizing immigrants at least puts food on the table.

In the same way, lobbyists for fossil fuel companies and pundits whose mandate is to spew falsehoods and poison, politicians who’ve worked their way up to positions of power and all their secretaries and assistants and advisers and media consultants, probably all work to convince themselves that what they’re doing isn’t that bad. They’re utilizing their hard-earned skills (and probably paying off their student debt). They’re part of the “system”…without ever questioning what that system is.

So I don’t really blame Kristi Noem (except for that whole shooting-the-dog thing), or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for dismantling our health care, or Pam Bondi for being the most embarrassing Attorney General since John Mitchell, or Pete Hegseth for being in over his head. I’m guessing all of them had needs that could only be met by someone else’s validation: by someone else giving them a title and money and fame and a “place in history,” and when that delicious morsel was held up over their heads, they did what all starving animals do. They jumped and slavered and fought and begged and piddled on the floor to get it.

You can’t blame starving animals for starving. You can’t blame people too much for taking jobs that pay well and require, well…just a little moral myopia. You can’t blame powerful people for loving the feeling of power the way an addict loves his rush, and doing everything to hold onto it.

No, I blame the people writing the checks. I blame the people who hold other people’s lives in their hands and deliberately make them sell their souls, and who do it because they can. And because it’s fun. There really aren’t that many people in the world with that much power. Men (and it’s usually men) who are truly free to do whatever they want. They don’t have to ask permission. They don’t have to wait for anyone else to hire them.

They’ve already risen as high as they possibly can, so they’re totally free to make their own moral choices. And that’s what makes the choices they DO make so instructive.

Do they choose to act responsibly, or impetuously? Do they choose to think through their actions, or just wing it? Remember, NOBODY is holding a gun to their heads. Whatever they do, they’ll still be President…or Prime Minister…or Supreme Leader…or the richest man in the world. They act simply because they decide to act.

And therein lies the abyss. Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act. When you have all the power in the world you truly have no excuse for behaving badly.

You’re just bad.

XXX,

Adrienne V. Parks