"We" the People

From the latest president, all the way back to the Constitution, the ubiquitous “we” is felt within the language of government, but what is the meaning of this word?  It is all encompassing in both uses, meaning all that reside within the plot of land known as the United States of America, but it is more far reaching in its modern use.  Where the founding collective of the USA was, ideally, more concerned with “we” as individuals and with “we” being born with certain rights (unless of course you were black, a woman, or a child), the current “we” is a one-size-fits-all democracy where a program that may be good for my neighbor had better be good for me, because I really don’t have a choice.  And that is the problem with the modern conception of ‘we”, where in reality I have choices and you have a choices born out of our own free will to decide for ourselves, lumped together as “we”, choice becomes rather dwindling. 

            It’s not “us” who lumps one another into the backwards simplicity of programs that treat the individuals of this land mass as though “we” were basically the same people living basically the same lives, it’s “them.”  And there is a definite collective of  “them” who rate “us” as second-class citizens that can have our individual lives molded into one.  When a person goes to the grocery store, they know whether they want an apple or an orange, but the choice in today’s market extends far beyond that and one can choose a kiwi, a pineapple, a banana, a grapefruit, and so on.  If our food can be marketed toward the individual, then why would this choice not exist with everything?  Why are the complicated systems and differences of “we” the individuals instead lumped together as a single, simple unit with no defining character?

            “We” as one mass of people don’t seem like a force for good.  This collective of America has failed in that it only seeks power and control over masses of people.  There could be no other way for government.  The empowered individual would have no use for the crimes of the collective in his or her life.  Can a collective that claims to support freedom take over other collectives and occupy their land?  The collective “we” uses words such as justice, yet hand out money to the richest and support those that don’t wish to support themselves.  The collective of America steals the labor of working adults, throws their neighbors into cages, and assures that the worst of the worst keep their grip on power and money.  Doing the wrong thing gets you a pat on the back.  “They” will tell you that “we” are exceptional, but that mythology is only floated to keep “them” above the law.  It keeps “them” knocking down doors, burning people alive, and dropping bombs on innocents.  Categorizing a mass of 350 million people as one, as “we”, keeps their power centralized and keeps “us” asking permission for freedom.

            “We” as individuals bring about a very different story.  How do you interact everyday with the people around you?  When you buy groceries, you pull the money out of your wallet and place it in the hands of the person who has been assigned to collect it.  What you don’t do is place a gun to their temple and threaten to murder them unless they give you the food for free.  You don’t threaten to lock them in a cage for twenty years because they didn’t hand over a certain percentage of the store’s goods for nothing simply because you say so.  This is the voluntary world of the individual, where the majority are good people that don’t use aggression to get their way.  Compromise, not force, is used to place food on your dinner table.  The majority of individual’s wants nothing but the best for everyone, but can only know how to get the best for themselves.  Working for you is usually categorized as selfishness, but the individual can only know his or her self, and therefore can only know their needs.  That doesn’t mean their needs don’t involve helping others, but that charity or business can only be legitimate when it’s voluntary.  In the ‘we” as a collective, a person can only be helped by others being harmed, but when “we” are individuals and “we” choose to open our hands then “we” are deciding to help two individuals:  the one you extend your free open hand to, and yourself.  There is a moral benefit for the individual when helping somebody who needs it.  There is absolutely no moral benefit in your labor being forced from you and given freely away by the decision of another.

            “We” as a collective is a bedtime story.  It is a creation.  It is a narrative.  The

“we” of the collective is owned and operated by the politician.  “We” are seen as cattle, herded left and right, with the only outcome of all our woes and all that is fought for being a couple of politician’s names remembered or a couple of fat paychecks being handed out.  It is a lifetime of money being showered upon a person if they made the correct, corrupt decisions for their career while in government.  The “we” of the politician is the “we” of division.  The separation of party or team is a separation not made of many ideas or even simple philosophy; it is the separation of set packages made up of mandates and force.  It is the “we” of one way or the other.  The “we” of the politician is one of segregation.  It is the “we” of separate rights between blacks, gays, woman, etc., and never the rights of the individual.  “We” are on nation, united, unless of course we’re not. 

There is no law in the world of the collective “we.”  Constitutions are just words on paper to throw around so that by the time they hit the ears of the collective, they have lost all meaning.  There are no rules here, only rulers with special powers.  The “we” is “them,” not “us.”  The law is their protection because it is there for them to manipulate.  The real divide that exists is not between you and your neighbor; it is between them and us, rulers and ruled.  They are not here to free you.  They are not here to protect you.  They are not here to save you.  They are here to protect the narrative.  As long as they do, the bad ending that comes with every story they create will mean absolutely nothing, because the narrative has already been set in place. 

“We” will always win no matter how much we actually lose.

Theirs and Ours

Theirs and Ours

On the morning of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings I logged onto Facebook where I saw many friends from Connecticut posting their condolences to the people of Newtown.  I had no idea what happened and thought maybe there was a terrible accident because of snow.  When I went to the Connecticut Post and saw that another school shooting had occurred it felt all the more devastating because it was a town that I grew up next to.  

            I haven’t stepped foot in Newtown in almost five years, and the last time I did I was experiencing a tragedy of my own.  I’ve been regionally disconnected from the area for well over ten years now, but still, my stomach sunk deeper than it had any other time one of these miserable incidents took place.  It’s been a long time since Newtown last passed through my mind, and thinking on it now I never realized the impact it had on my life.  My first job was in Newtown.  It was at Stop and Shop.  I worked there for three years going from carriage-pusher, to cashier, and eventually to working the night stock after graduating high school.  It seemed everyone I worked with on that night crew was much older and had some serious life issues.  That job was a big push for me to pursue a life I wanted, not one I was stuck with.  Newtown is where I bought most of my comic books at a little store by the railroad tracks.  It was called Cave Comics and I can’t tell you how much I loved visiting that place.  There was something mystical built up in my mind about it; maybe the name, or the location (not being in a city area or the mall), the creaky wood floors, the owner’s dog loafing around, or maybe the wall-to-wall comics.  Yeah, it was probably the wall-to-wall comics.  Then there was Edmond Town Hall, the place I saw more movies than anywhere.  It was a second-run movie theater made out of an old town hall (hence the name) that cost two bucks to get in.  I hear they tried to raise the price once and there was outrage by the people of Newtown.  The first time I went to a theater by myself while my parents went out to dinner was at Edmond Town Hall.  I remember going to see Critters 2.  That’s pretty awesome.

Work, comics, and movies.  If this little town didn’t help construct who I am today, I don’t know what did.  And I never thought about that.  I never thought about how many times I traveled the roads to get through Newtown so that I could travel to places like New Milford or Danbury to see friends, or live music at Tuxedo Junction, or drink the many beers of Hat City.  Newtown, Connecticut is also where my older sister eternally sleeps.  The last image I have in my mind of this town is leaving a cemetery in a trail of cars and watching as a much-loved woman waited in her bed to become part of the earth.  

A tragedy made me think of these things.  It made me think of a formative time in my life long gone.  And not so long after thinking these things, even with all these good memories, I came to the conclusion that I don’t know these children that were killed and my only connection to them was a region of the world and the fact that we are human.  My regional connection was closer than most, but even if I was from Georgia or maybe Oregon, I would still claim a regional connection because we were all Americans, and my empathy for the family and friends of those poor people would still hold a place of deep meditation inside. 

Newtown is a place within the trees.  It’s one of those places in Connecticut where it seems like you can only see the sky from an open parking lot, that same sky that children all over the world look at.  Children of different races.  Children of different regions.  Children with parents of different political identities or religions.  But children and human beings nonetheless.

There are towns like Newtown where children are murdered all the time.  They have open skies all around, and in those skies are foreign crafts that fly and spy and kill.  They not only kill people that the American government claims are bad (without any transparency), but they also kill children.  Lots and lots of children.  More than were killed in Newtown or any other school shooting.  And it isn’t just one devastating day, it’s over and over again, for years and years, with no end in sight.  Rather than feeling empathy here in America for these foreign children that are not of our religion, political views, or color, we simply look the other way.  We keep up the charade that it has to be done for our freedoms.  Not only do we reelect the people who commit these crimes, we make excuses for their criminal actions.  We say better theirs than ours…ours.

Shouldn’t the value of a child’s life go beyond the borders of nationalism? 

At a time of great innovation in the world where we can learn anything we want about whomever and wherever for practically nothing, it amazes me how backwards and closed-minded we still are.  People seem to still trust getting information from old institutions that would rather report from state press releases than report the truth of the world.  Emotional reporting that draws us in to the image of a president wiping away invisible tears over children he’s using for political gains.  How did we become wired to not question this action when we should be outraged by his hypocrisy?  We applaud their showmanship like a Michael Bay explosion rather than peeling the layers of their script to expose the crocodile beneath their tears.  It’s a fool’s hope to think that the same creeps that have their grip on the world just want to protect us. 

There is a false privilege in being American.  It stems from the historical privilege of the Europeans and the white race.  Because certain people took ownership of the world before anyone else it didn’t matter who died outside of their region.  And it doesn’t matter now.  It doesn’t matter how young they are, and it doesn’t matter how unconnected to the crime they are being murdered for, because they are not ours.  They are not American.  Whether by bullet, by mass bombing, by drone, or by sanctions, this American government has been involved in the deaths of well over one million people in the last twenty years, and we only ask for more.  Every time a 9/11 or a Sandy Hook happens and we let them lead the conversation and then follow with cries of more control, we acquiesce our natural rights of life and liberty. Every time someone protects taxation they protect violence, because taxation will never be voluntary.  Every time a person votes, they assert their position that they own their neighbors life because their politicians are the right ones to legislate for their well-being. 

Nothing in this world gives me a more sinking or desperate feeling than a scared American.  The irrationality of collectivism that sweeps over this country in times of crisis is much more frightening than any terrorist threat could ever be.  American tyranny and American fascism doesn’t just go away; it grows, it festers, and it imbeds into the culture.

My heart goes out to the families of Sandy Hook.  I hope they can find their place in the world again.  It’s a tough thing when you lose such a huge part of your future.  Most of us know that feeling even if it isn’t a child.  Just as much though, I often think of what it must be like to live in a small village in the Middle East and have fear and stress come over me as a drone passes overhead.  And just as much, I feel for the folks who are going to be hit directly with punishment because of a disturbed young man’s crime.  We don’t know what the new laws will be, but they will definitely inhibit one group’s liberty because another group wants it.  The individual is stomped on once again for the collective.  Of course there will be no actual control of guns.  Criminals will always get them, and the rest will be centralized into the hands of government, the most violent gang in the history of the world.  Once again the monopoly holds strong and the real problems will never be sought out.  There will be no answers.  There will just be stronger prohibition once the next shooting occurs, and the organization we need the most control over will continue to have more control over us.

Newtown is a place from my past.  The few memories I shared could never paint a full picture, but you get an idea of the kind of town it is.  The occupations and police states of the Middle East are constant and in motion.  Most of us are only subjected to one version of that story, and project outright anger and hatred when one tries to present another.  America is a certain kind of place in our history books, but in reality it never was what it was.  The ideal of what it can be is still there, though day by day that is lost more and more.  I’ll be in that little town in Connecticut again someday sitting amongst the peaceful trees and talking to my sister, but the chaos of Sandy Hook will always be prevalent no matter how far back in my mind I try to push it.  That connection can no longer be severed, just like the world cannot be separated from America, and America can no longer be separated from the state. 

Liberty begins within the home, and if the individual loses the right to protect their family, their friends, and their own lives, then all liberty is lost.  What we do overseas, we do out of sight for now.  It always comes home.  In fact the technology, the surveillance, the weapons, and the destruction of civil rights already have.  We only wait for the violence.  Because the state is mayhem.  The state is confusion.  The state cannot change, and will not change.  It will forever be tyranny.  The only change we can ever gain is in the mind of the individual.  The state just needs to go away.

Women are now equal...

Only in a backwards fantasyland like America could it be considered progress that women can now suit up and be murdered in foreign occupations for the interests of the corporatist elite.  Here I am thinking that ending wars and the slaughter of helpless people would be progress.  I guess I just don't understand that equality only works with a good dosage of American privilege, because I'll tell you what, all those non-American women dying in our police states overseas certainly aren't free of anything.