We wrapped up another book of the Bible last week and I made an inquiry to my midweek Bible Study students, which book would they like to study next. My goal is to avoid redoing a book the church has done in recent years, so we can over time study the entirety of Scripture within the Church. In my decade of ministry I have tried to keep from repeating studies, although I am running out of new books to teach and preach from. There are only 66 options available so eventually a guy will run out of novel material.
I have taught lessons from Esther on multiple occasions. This week, while preparing chapter one for discussion, I was struck by something I do not think I have focused attention towards before. Usually when I think of Esther I am thinking about how God used the Persians to free Judah from Babylonian captivity and then God used a woman and her uncle to save these people who had not returned to Israel yet from certain death. Esther probably belongs in the middle of Nehemiah as far its proper timeline position to flesh out some of the events happening in Persia while the remnant that already returned is rebuilding the temple and Jerusalem, but that is another story for another time.
All that being said, what do we see in Chapter One? We see a king, ruling over 127 provinces from India to Cush, which is a huge empire, throwing a five month party of great food and wine. His officials, staff, military officers, provincial leaders, and nobles are all invited to this party. This is a large number of people to host and wine and dine. It wuold be insanely expensive to do this. Imagine all they could consume over five months. Now imagine the wealth of this huge kingdom being sent back to Susa on a near continual basis to supply this party. The king consolidates the wealth of his enture kingdom into his own hands and then throws a party to give it back as favors to his laborers who make it happen.
No king can consume the vast wealth of so many people. So this wealth becomes a tool. You bring in the provincial leaders who are tasked with collecting the wealth and sending it your way, then you wine and dine them so they feel the benefit of their labor and get lavish praise for impoverishing those they govern, while enriching a bunch of bureacrats in the capital. This keeps them in line and happy and keeps those wagon trails rolling the wealth to the capitol.
You host the army and the officers and you lavish food and drink on them. You throw them a huge party because they are the tip of the spear, leaving family and friends to gain territory and keep the territories scared enough to send their wealth away instead of rebelling. It is a good idea to lavish them with food and wine to keep them from deciding to overthrow you. This makes perfect sense and rewards them for their efforts. It reminds me of my time in the Army when dudes were so happy to get another duffel bag of kit with each deployment. Guys would line up for more sets of sun glasses, another half dozen pairs of boots, and another set of body armor. Dudes loved the kit, even if it meant they had more boots than they could wear in 50 years of duty. Receiving a couple thousand bucks worth of kit was enough to keep most dudes happy and willing to go again. It blew my mind watching it unfold in real time.
Nobles love to be praised and party. Oligarch's love to be wined and dined and showed how important they are. They love seeing wealth spent frivilously and wearing expensive clothes and perfumes and this keeps them in support of the king who shows them this praise. They love to see the wealth flowing into the kingdom and receive it because of their name and allegiance. This is how kings keep their position. They suck the resources of the frontier dry and bring it to the middle where they reside. Then they take all those resources and dish them out to the people who keep it flowing.
Ignoring Queen Vashti's refusal to parade in front of these folks right now, we see how kings and government's maintain their status, power, and control. This is the hidden background of this story we seldom discuss, because it might make us reflect on their behavior of our own country, military, oligarch's and even convention.
I asked my students what they thought about this and how kings gain and stay in power? They immediately pointed out how Washington DC is a party town and the people in govt are regularly partying up there and enjoying the fruits of their access to the wealth of the frontier of the empire. Sometimes they even go on boondoggles to the frontier and receive huge bounties for just being nobles and endless praise for leaving their home for a two week boondoggle. It is comical when you break it down and think about how it all works and how little us little people have any say in any of it.
The central government brings in all this money and the Fed prints all these bucks and then the gov't uses that money to buy governors, judges, corporations, and the military to maintain its position, because none of the normal or regular people get invited to these giant parties. The frontier loses its wealth, but gets dribbles of attention returned that keeps it from dying and from thriving because it hopes at some point it might stop being a slave state and become a more mercantile state.
As a side bar, I was reading about how much opium is being produced in Afghanistan this week. The Taliban has nearly eradicated opium production again. After twenty years of occupation, where opium production and export only grew on a yearly basis under US Control of Afghanistan. The Taliban ended the production of Opium in a year. Then I was thinking about how much money was not flowing into banks and intelligence agencies and oligarch pockets with the ending of this illicit trade and military junket and I began thinking, what sprung after Biden finally ended the two decade Opium harvest in Afghanistan.
Then I started thinking about the US empire and how the king has to keep feeding the blood sucking ticks within the Beltway and university class of nobles who keep the empire going. The gravy train of Iraq is mostly over. It still trickles in some money, but nothing like it was. Afghanistan's gravy train stopped rolling. Syria for the most part has ended, although the people there would certainly argue this point.
Do I think those banks and agencies and members of the MIC are going to be happy with reduced profits stemming from a lack of hot wars? No, I do not think they would be happy with small internal growth stemming from creating products that have real and genuine purpose. The MIC wants soul crushing profits that come with hot wars and drugs running. This made me think, there is no way these corporations and oligarchs are just going to stop making money by the boatload. So what happened within a few short months after Afghanistan shut down?
Ukraine kicked off! All those same companies and banks that made huge profits sellings arms and drugs and laundering the money had a new field to do the same. These same companies could use Ukraine and keep the train rolling. So how do kings and presidents keep the gravy train rolling and keep themselves in power? They loot the provinces and then wine and dine the leaders and give away all that collected loot for favors. King Ahasuerus shows us how criminal and evil government is and yet people still root for their domestic and local government as it loots, kills, and depopulates other places and showers their bounty on the home field.