IN SHORT:
UPRIGHT: Balanced, compassionate, discerning, diplomatic. Charisma at the service of political values. Creative political arrangements.
REVERSED: Self-forgiveness through realignment of values, inner feelings, moodiness, emotionally manipulative.
KEEP SCROLLING DOWN FOR IN DEPTH EXPLANATION
“Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.”
-Quoted in: V. Thomas (2009) The God Dilemma: To Believe Or Not to Believe,.
IN DEPTH:
The King of Cups walks amidst a bustling Stockholm protest. He proudly wears a placard that reads ‘FOR A FREE SPAIN’, and gleefully engages passerby’s in discourse and debate. He is well-versed in domestic and international policy… and he seems to have and answer for everything. His wife sweetly locks arms with him. Behind them, a cop looks on surveying the scene. An ominous glove swings out from just behind him, and it is here that our modest every-man shows his stately ranks. Beer-in-hand, the incoherent stranger begins hurling accusations. The King of Cups has strong reflexes, he whips his head around and replies, “I’m sorry that you’re are hurting in this way. I will do my very best to see that you get the help you need.” and then just keeps walking. It’s a strange and disarming exchange. The King of Cups understands this is the cost of power.
He flirts with conflict, and controversy. Not in a contrarian way—instead in the ardent defense of socialist solutions to capitalist problems. As prime minister this King of cups has embarked on massive redistributive programmes that expanded affordable housing, provision for the disadvantaged, improvements on the state public amenities, and expansions in worker-power in the work-place. He knows you can’t do these things without making some people very angry. He moves gracefully through the chaotic situations, he is bold and skilled at debate, diplomacy, and rolling with the punches.The King of cups knows power is a skill, a skill that he has been gifted with.
Our King of Cups is based on Olof Palme a Swedish statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. He was leader of Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986. A longtime protégé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, he became Prime Minister of Sweden in 1969. He ended 40 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democratic Party, when he failed to form a government in the 1976 election. He was dealt a second defeat in 1979, but he returned as Prime Minister after electoral victories in 1982 and 1985, and served until his assassination.
Palme was a foundational figure of Scandinavian Socialist domestic policies, and a committed advocate of international non-alignment towards the superpowers, and numerous liberation movements following decolonization. He is a policy-poster-boy for the glory of a socialist well-fare state. Often described as “revolutionary reformist”, he preferred to the title of ‘progressive’.
“For us, democracy is a question of human dignity. This includes the political liberties, the right to freely express our views, the right to criticize and to influence opinion. It embraces the right to health and work, to education and social security.”
-from Nancy I. Lieber, Institute for Democratic Socialism (U.S.) (1982) Eurosocialism and America: political economy for the 1980s. p. 222.
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