State of Mind

A bottle burst in the street and they both sprung up fast.  Her eyes screamed terror as he leapt from bed with a wooden bat in hand.  There was hesitation to even look, but he slowly made a space in the shut blinds.

“There’s nothing,” he said with moonlight sneaking in and hitting his face.

She could see he had not been sleeping either.  The stories people told on the ham radio of what was happening in other cities had them mad with thought.  Eventually, the tanks would arrive, and more than bottles would break.  

It Came As It Went

“Equal at last,” she said aloud, closing her eyes.

The law had passed that granted the rights of this group be no greater and no less than that group.  Together, they were free.  The euphoria that had swept the country swirled through her bedroom as she dreamed of the future.

Then she heard the crash.  Footsteps.  Pounding.  Yelling.  She looked out her window and saw police forcing her handcuffed neighbor into a car.  Another officer followed with a pile of books and a hard drive. 

Closing the blinds, she said in silence, “...at long last.”

Turn It Off

I was at a Wilco show a few weeks ago and noticed something about the audience: they were very energetic, very young, and very happy to be there.  I don’t know why this struck me on this particular night.  It’s not abnormal to find a bunch of people at a rock show having a good time, but there was a special feeling to this crowd.  While I was watching this sea of people ten to fifteen years younger than me dance and live it up, it projected a whole lot of positive thought about the future.  Now, I don’t know what sort of ideology this crowd carried as they are growing up in a time of almost complete authoritarian control and it is hard to see beyond the propaganda, but all this positive energy that kept Wilco on stage for 2 ½ hours gave me a bit of hope that this crowd wouldn’t be growing up with anger guiding the way.  To really achieve an enlightened shift in mindset I believe there is something very important they all need to do.  Turn off the TV.

Television, radio, and print are cesspools of establishment ideas, and it isn’t just entertainment personalities, it is political leaders too.  These ideas and these people are hate-catalysts, and they are exactly what the young need to move away from.  This is not a screed about left media, or right media, it is about all media that coddles the establishment line of thought.  That just happens to be pretty much everything you’re going to find on television these days and the only way to escape is to turn it off.

I really have no idea what popular viewing is, but it does not matter because while the voices may be different, from Jon Stewart to Sean Hannity, the message is the same.  They always protect the state, no matter how wrong or how far it goes.  It may seem at times that Jon Stewart is going after politicians for various social issues, but in the end he makes so light of most of the corruption that he helps his audience look past it.  He is an enabler, because while making sometimes poignant jokes about one group, the very serious civil rights issues and drone-murder atrocities fall way in the background to the point where his audience comfortably gets to forget what the Democrats are really doing.  How else could you explain how the anti-war left has failed so miserably in holding these people’s feet to the fire?  After 6 years of a Democratic Senate, 4 years of the Presidency, and 2 of those with the House, the wars are worse then ever and expanding.  This is why the left media is as dangerous and ugly as the right, and why we must recognize the whole shebang as state media.  Acquiescence to authoritarian power is what they aim for.  It is the same reason why they frame the argument for gay marriage as a right we must have bestowed upon us, not one that should be given back.  It is always about the creation of new laws, not the repeal of old ones.  Our rights were always there.  It is the state that has taken them. 

The conversation is always framed towards the benefit of power, never in rejection of it; people who are much older and come from a different era, one that was enveloped by conformity and propaganda, frame it for the young.  The “trust in government” cycle has been going on for much too long and it is time to break it.  The people appearing on your television are deep in it, whether they believe that American empire must shape the world, or they believe it belongs in every aspect of our lives, what they don’t believe in is solutions.  They believe that your life belongs in the hands of a higher authority, and that your volition does not move beyond voting for one of two ideologies.  Beyond the parties and their push in one direction, you barely exist.

But your life belongs to you and only you.  You must take control of yourself.  It’s like we have been thrown into a padded room wearing a tightly fitting straitjacket.  The walls surrounding us are covered in words and phrases that don’t amount to more than talking points and empty rhetoric.  These are the crazy ideas of bureaucrats and managers that believe they can control your life better than you can with programs that box humans with different needs into a one-track life.  Even with all this distraction, there still exists a door in this room and it is left unlocked.  There is an escape.  You just have to somehow turn that knob.  Maybe it’s a little harder because your hands are not free, but in real life, it’s even easier to get the process going of leaving behind the noise.  It starts with clicking the power button on a remote control. 

Is there still hope for my own relatively young generation?  I’m not sure.  Most seem to continue to fall in line.  They watch the old media and listen to the same old voices that protect their ears from hearing the serious violations of human and civil rights by their government.  They still seem to believe in leaders who wear their corruption on their sleeves ( It’s funny, you always hear that politicians should have to wear patches like NASCAR drivers to show who owns them.  But they really don’t have to, do they? We already know they are corrupted and vote for them anyway.  If anybody should wear the patches, it is us, because we really have no clue just how owned we are.).  The people I grew up with still believe that the authority they like should also have authority over their neighbor’s life, even when your neighbor does not agree at all.  We have yet to turn it off. 

I used Jon Stewart as an example of a protector of the establishment earlier, mostly because he is seen as a guy who is there for us.  But he isn’t alone.

Lawrence O’Donnell – Born 1951

Glen Beck – Born 1964

Rush Limbaugh – Born 1951

Chris Matthews – Born 1945

Stephen Colbert – Born 1964

Keith Olbermann – Born 1959

Bill O/Reilly – Born 1949

Sean Hannity – Born 1961

The youngest person I could find on this list was Rachel Maddow who was born in 1973.  Of course I haven’t had cable news on in quite a while so I’m not sure if these folks are even the main personalities anymore.  It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t, the fact is that they are on TV because and other parts of establishment media because they are going to play nice.  Whichever side they represent, they protect our authoritarian government.

What I’m not trying to say is that because these people are older they are wrong.  Each individual is wise in their own way, and every one of them is going to understand and convey truths that cannot be denied.  They are wrong because they are part of ideological teams that they cannot see beyond.  They promote the vision of their team, and ultimately that vision is state power.  For their generations, freedom is an afterthought.  You would think after years and years of failure to move liberty forward in any way, they would see that the authoritarian power structure that they promote would no longer be the solution, it would only be the problem.  Forcing the individual to be a part of the collective would be the problem.  Forcing free and naturally working markets to be ordered and controlled would be the problem.  Forcing other areas of the world to Westernize through coercion and violence, instead of promoting our way with peace and freedom using the tools of the information age, is the problem.  These people on television are wrong and they remain on television because they are wrong.  They create an unquestioned reality for viewers to soak in.  They create the angry divide.  They create hatred in our society and enable state power to work off that hatred.  And they probably don’t even see it because they’ve been in the thick of it for so long.

So turn it off.  Find out what reality is.  Find out who people really are.  Understand your natural human rights.  Live beyond the state.  Live as an individual who wants others to be able to live in their own way.  Leave the loony bin behind.  Turn it off.

Government in 2016

With the illusion of choice being set out before us, I thought it would be a good time to muster up some mystical energy and foretell future events.  Now I’ve never actually done this before, so one or two things may be wrong within this list, but I really don’t think I’ll be too far off.  If history tells us anything about tomorrow, it’s that the future is a closed book collecting dust on the shelf, we’ve read it all before, every time closing it without having learned a damn thing.

Of course these predictions are for either boss from either gang taking the reigns of the protectionist scheme called government. 

• The economy will continue to be a centrally controlled system in the hands of a few men.  If Executive Order #13603 is enacted, most of private industry will be nationalized, meaning control of various industries will be handed off to officials within the President’s administration.

• The natural rights you were born with will continue to be controlled through the following:
• The Patriot Act  
• The NDAA, in which the Presdient claims the power to throw you in a cell indefinitely without trial or charges.
• Executive Order #13603, which not only claims state-ownership of private industry, but ultimate ownership of your life through conscription.
• The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act , which denies free speech wherever the Secret Service decides.

• Government will still claim ownership of a certain percentage of your property, which was earned through your labor.  Therefore government claims ownership of your labor.  

• Children will continue to be born slaves to the debt of previous generations.

• Plans for Predator Drones flying over American skies will still be in place, though they will be re-branded “Patriot Drones” and they will be providing “Freedom Surveillance.”

• The Federal government will still be murdering innocent civilians (sometimes Americans) with killer robots called Reaper Drones, yet when new terrorists come about with bombs strapped to their chests, our freedoms, yours and mine (and theirs, if they too weren’t so controlled to realize it), will be blamed for why they want to kill us.

• Public-Private partnerships, or corporatism, or fascism; such as Trapwire  and Monsanto, or legislation such as the Affordable Care Act will continue to thrive.

• Still more natural rights will be under attack as the TSA moves from airports, to subways, to the roads.

• Plants that grow naturally out of the ground will continue to be illegal, while drugs that are created in laboratories which not only have horrific side-effects, but also kill people, will continue to be legal.

• The wealth you earn will still be redistributed to foreign dictators who will continue using it for purchasing weapons from American companies (yet more corporatism) so that they can continue to uphold a totalitarian state.

• Men and Women in government that have sworn to protect the Constitution will continue to go to trial and be ostracized when they do so because they weren’t instead protecting secret government powers.

• Elected officials will continue to be liars, cheats, thieves, and murderers.  They will continue to legislate to the highest bidder on all matters healthcare, military, and energy.  They will continue creating hundreds of thousands of new laws every year to further control the masses.

• No matter what these elected officials do, no matter how awful, you will continue to vote for them.  As you continue to choose this authority over your life, and as your life continues to be ruled by these select few, your life will continue to not be your own.

• Finally, no matter how many die, whether through sanctions or bullets, the actions of your government will continue to be justified with the rhetoric of democracy.  These people will continue to die for the better good.  War will continue to be peace. 

You don’t have to stop voting, but you better realize that there is no lesser of two evils.  Voting should be understood as a moral issue.  If you understand that everything stated above (amongst many other things) will continue to happen no matter who is elected, and you accept that, then by all means go out and vote.  As the executive office grows stronger, maybe you will feel more comfortable that it is your guy who gets to be judge, jury, and executioner.  I won’t.  When the government that takes charge of my life decides to murder a 16-year-old American boy in Yemen, understand that it doesn’t matter who is in charge.  These powers never retract.  They only grow stronger, and sooner or later, it won’t be in Yemen that executioner is working.  It will be in your backyard.  

Free Everyone

Is it a great stretch for the individual to try to understand and love all people of the world, strangers that should really have no effect on their lives?  This isn’t to say that we must love everyone in the same way that we love our family, but in a way that we respect each individual’s personal freedom enough not to infringe upon it.  This can be as simple as not trashing your neighbor’s yard, or as complicated as finding the correct response to the violence of criminal extremists in which you don’t hold an entire people responsible.  While culture may be greatly different in the world’s various regions, the want for living as a free person is not.

Your love for the world is the love of freedom, and freedom can only extend to all by example.  Might does not make right in a free world for the simple fact that it exemplifies force as the answer, and that the user of the force is justified. 

The only true freedom that can exist is that of the individual, for each individual is born a free and natural person.  Eventually a compulsory system of social order comes into their life and the collective mind is born.  The rights of the collective are a crime against the individual, because when rights are created for groups, other groups must enforce them.  A hierarchy of authority is then created, and eventually that authority will come to have the ultimate rights and the ultimate justification.  An unnatural system that is created to control, coerce, and fool the individual into believing that their life belongs to the collective is no example to show the rest of the world.  There can be no peace amongst people when association is violent and managed. 

The people of this world will find no great love for each other’s freedom if their minds are shackled to authority.  They will not be able to grow out of their own prejudices and extreme ideologies when violence and control are the example.  Truth and liberty does not come with a gun to the head.

For the world to be free, understanding of individual liberty has to come first.  We must understand that community should be natural.  Help is a voluntary gesture from each individual.  Some will not help, but most will, because as humans our first reaction to others is empathy.  When we hear stories we try to relate to them, if we can’t, we try to understand them through learning.  We are adults who can make our own decisions and work towards the paths we want.  We won’t always win in these pursuits, but the example isn’t winning, the example is being free. 

The majority of this world is born without chains, but it doesn’t take long for the state to start placing them around our necks, and sooner or later we come to accept this unnatural social order and our very own hands then tighten the chains. 

Love yourself.  Respect yourself.  Free yourself.  The world may follow.