No, the Pope does not have a salary.
Not even sure the guy has a bank account.
Clearly we're not speaking of any general case here; merely pointing out that there are more dimensions to the question of power than your over-simplified, carnal model encompasses.

Encourage anger, encourage truth: I would not accuse you of viewing this discussion honestly.

It's one thing to play the "Beatitudes card" on an individual basis; I certainly try such with some of the knuckleheads here on /., for example.
And I'll buy off that there is a thread of truth to your point: one must ensure that, in going to war, one does not become the enemy.
However, as a counter-argument, all of the concern trolling winds up giving aid an comfort to a soul-less foe carried out on a general level. Read the rest of Zombie's posts. He's deep in the enemy territory of California, reporting some wild, wild stuff.

As the opposite of anything you say tends to toward truth, your remark weighs in somewhere around a complement.

I'm forever struggling to figure out just where things are in the Finder. It may just be a training thing, but I'm forever saving a file off the web, and then getting destroyed trying to locate the thing. Explorer poisoning.

Maybe.

Meanwhile, it will get you all riled up and distracted from not having a job and from paying more for your "affordable" health care, if you can even find a doctor in your town anymore.

Free market principles? How about plain old freedom?

Contrary to some economists' arguments, free market originated from freedom. We didn't become a capitalist country, because it was an efficient way to run economy. We've developed the free markets, because we were free — one's only obligations were those, that were spelled out in the contracts one entered into voluntarily (plus family relations and patriotism).

Sadly, those freedoms have been chipped at for over 100 years now... Today we must feed all the hungry (without subjecting them even to the "indignity" of the Pauper's Oath — forget about disenfranchising), we must pay for other people's education. And shelter. And healthcare. And telephone service...

Freedom, you say?..

New Jersey legislature has been in Democratic hands forever — they'll find the rhetorics. We have this pseudo-Conservative Governor today, which makes for occasional fireworks, but it is legislature, that writes these laws. And the Governor will sign it — because he does not care enough to put up a fight.

Most Americans are indolent. Cut 'em off, I say.

Thanks, Bob. Also, I never exactly claimed the work as my own prior to the update, though I admitted authorship in the comments.

Being a gear head is so American, it probably makes you a raaaaacist.

Just not true, sir. There are plenty of people who hold power without having wealth. A conspicuous, though by no means sole, example would be the Pope. You're just too stuck in your hormonal ruts to understand non-fleshly dimensions of power.

Can you characterize the distortion, because, subjectively, it's all clarity.

It's hard to tell why you confuse a love of wisdom with fear.