No Philosophy, Part 5

As I write this, Americans are in the middle of a debate on whether or not the central government should drop bombs on a civilization that is thousands of miles away so that fractions of the terrorist group that it claims to have been fighting for the last twelve years can gain control of the aforementioned civilization’s government.  Got that?

When this is the debate in a supposed advanced culture, something has gone awry.  When this scenario played out just ten years ago in Iraq, and the outcome was the destruction of a people and we have learned nothing from that, something has gone amiss.  When murdering people is proposed as a path to peace, you know that the world you live in has been depleted of good philosophy.

This cry for war is not about protecting people, it is fully about strategy for attacking Iran and closing in on Russia and China.  It is about paychecks being passed from the weapons industry to the elitists in government.  It is about creating new mythology.  It is about upholding control and writing news laws in which to control with.  It is about getting minds off of the awful economy, and into a state of fear and nationalism.  It is about World War III, whether you want to think that or not.

The world is on an awful path and we have got to change before it is too late.  Each of us individually has got to stop this lack of imagination that feeds this monster into gaining control over everything.  This is your future and it is tied down by the weight of an unforgiving organization filled with sociopathic liars, murderers, and thieves.  This is your life, and you’ve got to take of the fucking chains.

NO PHILOSOPHY, PART 5

How I Learned to Hate Slavery

Slavery is a big, ugly word with the weight of history attached to it, and I promise you, I do not use it lightly.  When I say that we are stuck in a state of slavery, I’m talking mentally.  I don’t compare this to the physical and mental enslavement that was happening in America for too long and which continued long after the Civil war within the prison system.  I don’t compare it to the brutal and demoralizing modern slavery within the sex trade that exists right now the world over.  The enslavement of the human race is one of submission of the self to an unjustified authority.  The slavery we live is a hopeless seduction of myths and legends that are schooled into us from a young age.  You will believe that a powerful federal government must exist to protect us.  You will believe that rights come from that organization through documentation that was signed by a few men.  You will believe that society as we know it would fall apart without the social contract, a non-existent document that nobody has signed or seen yet somehow is said to mold our economy and social structure.  You will believe that it is a feasible set-up for a few hundred men and women to control millions, and in some cases billions.  You will believe that the ruling class and the elites are something that exists outside of government, and is not actually government itself.

The one area where our mental captivity is darker than the physical slavery is that most of us don’t know it is happening.  Slaves held in physical captivity against their will knew that they were slaves.  They knew that somebody owned them and that they were held through force and violence.  Our captivity is just part of life.  It is what it is.  We live in a world where prosperity is judged by the level of taxation a government levies.  Some think a little more is good for everyone, some think a little less is good for everyone, but not enough realize that zero taxation of income is ideal.  Wealth is judged by how much material stuff is in your living room, not by your ability to earn, save, and create a safety net for yourself and your family.  Safety is having strangers listen to your phone calls, read your emails, frisk your body, and police your streets.  Freedom is spread throughout the world by the bullet.  In an unfree society, leaders have been replaced by rulers, not people to emulate, but messiahs to worship.  We not only have the task of taking our lives back, but we also have to take our language back.

I don’t think I will ever talk a single person into understanding the philosophy of liberty.  I will never argue anybody into taking the path of the individual and leaving collectivism behind.  Maybe I can introduce an idea or two here and there, but liberty is just too personal a path.  You have to not only accept and understand ugly truths about the world, but you have to accept them about yourself and your past.  That’s the real hurdle.  Letting go of and changing ideas that have been secure in your own mind for so long is a sometimes drudging experience and will last a lifetime.  It’s a battle that has you at odds constantly with what you have been told since you were young.  There are of course small fights that are easy to win, which for myself was understanding the abusive public school structure, and then there are tougher fights.  The biggest battle for me was wrapping my head around how a free world will work without the coercive, monopolistic system of government shaping it.  Most times though, this is only due to a basic lack of imagination.  There are so many solutions to every problem, not just the one we are lad to believe in.  Imagine the world being able to open up to those options once the central government is dissolved.  Progress is not as difficult as we think, you just have to get the one thing that forces us into the past out of the way.

All I can promise is that once you mentally tear yourself out of the world of total government, you will not only see life in a new way, but you will feel much more optimistic.  Your life will no longer be filled with the slog of politics and scandals.  Most answers to the issues of the day will be easily understandable once force is taken out of the equation.  You can move on to philosophy, the market, and freedom within your own existence.  Once the monopoly no longer has a hold over you, maybe then you can take those first steps into a future that wasn’t supposed to be.  That’s the first sign that the individual is winning.  Taking over your own life.


The individual can only free him or herself.  Your mind is yours.  You own it.  It belongs to you.  You must start using it.
Are all of these ideas utopian?  Sure, but even just the ideas that come with liberty, freedom, and peace are better than the reality of being a slave.

No Philosophy, Part 4

What happens in 2106?  What happens after we are tormented through the most expensive advertising campaign in history?  What happens when we have another Clinton or Bush sitting on the throne?  What happens when another generation puts all their hopes and needs into one man or woman, yet again, and the democratic system completely fails yet again?

Absolutely nothing happens.  We go on, split down the middle, having the same arguments while war and corporatism reign supreme over our lives.  We go on with our public schooled minds thinking something different is happening when in reality, it is the same damn thing.  The advertisers and sycophants will try to maintain the illusion, and mostly it will work.  People will believe that their representative, their president, their team is doing the best possible job, and when they force others to abide by their law, there is nothing wrong with that because they just want the best for everyone.

Life, for another four years, will not progress.  We will just wait for that next opportunity to herd into boxes and vote within the monopolistic system of the state.  And we will do this again and again, hopelessly in wait for the one true master who will finally change everything.  And we will do this forever while our neighbors die in debt or in war.  Instead of being the rock between the gears, we will continue to be the oil.

NO PHILOSOPHY, PART 4

STOP

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” - Mario Savio


I love this quote.  I’ve heard this quote so many times in my life and every single time I do it retains deep meaning, but it is the meaning of a different time.  1964 was almost fifty years ago and life has greatly changed.  We can no longer throw ourselves on the gears and wheels because we are the machinery that runs the damn thing.  We are the automatons that march into booths and vote for the teams we’ve been programmed to root for.  Speaking from my own experience, most times we don’t put much weight behind our own team’s belief system, they are just part of the package, and they make sense as long as you stay within that world.  Finding our own truth suffers.

America has become a country of two ways that are really only one because they both expand the monster we call government with only insignificant details being different.  While that monster grows and grows we get more and more lost in the fray until our own individual autonomy is torn completely away.  Progress is not boxing yourself into a system without choices.  Progress is not government monopoly.  Progress is not democracy.  Democracy is just another system of collectivism and control that lets a small majority get away with taking liberty from a minority.  It is authoritarian.  It is the mob.  It should be done away with.

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama, a man whom like all politicians, I knew little to nothing about.  We don’t know these people, but we get wrapped up in their policies, and their speeches, and their plans.  We like them because they present themselves as part of the do-something crowd and not the do-nothings.  They stand before cheering fans, who wave flags of worship in all their unquestioning, screaming, orgasmic glory.  And we want to be part of that, the promise of the bright future to be brought about by a great man.  Like me, I suspect that these people have no philosophy and their opinions and ideas have been marketed to them.  But underneath, I know there is something festering, something waiting to break.  Their individualism is just beneath the surface waiting to escape the forever hammering down bludgeon of the state.

I don’t know Obama.  I don’t know McCain.  I don’t know Clinton, Romney, Bush, or any of the others, and certainly these names will be meaningless to me in another decade or so unless one of their brethren decides to get elected as their right to the royal chair in the oval office no matter how worthless a human being they are.  Even though the awful policies of the aforementioned politicians will still effect the future, the statist stooges in the media will forever try to maintain the image of their captains, and only blame those who currently hold power (or the market) even if they have only been there for a few months.  Point in case, when Obamacare really takes hold, you can be assured the free market will take the blame once all the awful policies make our lives worse off, and then the new president will just have to do something.  Often times, the something they do is not what they promised and against their supposed political ideology, but it’s okay because they didn’t do nothing.  That is the gist of life in America.  That’s how we got Obamacare in the first place.

Somehow, even with all the baggage, these people on our TV screens become the answer, the way to a more fruitful American life, even though years after they leave office the government they supposedly changed is still indistinguishable from anything concerning Republican ideology or Democrat ideology.  It’s just government.  It’s a creature of habit, consumption, and ultimately destruction.  But we still believe them, those who wield a mighty pen that can change the rules of the world we live in.  Those who can create rights out of thin air.  These people that have the power to imagine up wars and then make them possible.  They have the might to keep us safe, if safe means keeping us in danger to assure that we need them to keep us safe.  They have the wisdom to do what is right and only what is best for us, if by “us” it is meant even just a minority of those that voted for them.

I have no problem admitting that I had a corrupted mind.  I believed that these men we elect president were more than just words.  I had no understanding of what this gangster organization we call government was.  I’d almost be thankful for the election of Barack Obama as it taught me a most important lesson, but I can’t be thankful because of all the suffering and death that are the result of electing yet another president.  These fools stand on their stage and give the world a circus while awful decisions are made behind closed doors, and all of us who choose to be on teams protect this imagery from breaking down and showing truth.  We never want that curtain to open behind our man on the stage because it will only show a body count.  We lie to ourselves.  We lie to our family and friends.  We lie because they lie and all their people lie, and the deceit becomes so thick that we can’t pull ourselves out, it just pulls us under so deep that the struggle to be free almost isn’t worth it.  It hurts.  The allegiance to our abusive idolatry cannot be broken.

When I finally realized that the crimes of the Bush administration were still happening, my protective instincts of the man I voted into power finally began to wane.  When I saw that all the agitation against corporatism and the wars was numbed by a people who thought that their votes had changed life in America, I finally began to understand that the president is only a mouthpiece for something deeper and uglier.  His words and image are only there to protect empire.  He exists for the audience to believe the opposite of reality is actually happening.  Truth is treason.  War is peace.  Tyranny is freedom.

Our beliefs are deep.  Even after disappointment, we go out every four years and do it again without ever realizing the scam.  I almost don’t understand how people can continue to do this all their life, but then I realize I did it again, one last time.  Throughout the four years of the Obama administration I started to read many libertarian and anarchist authors.  I began listening to podcasts.  I started reading the days news on their websites.  Eventually I saw that we really have been indoctrinated to live in a world that is not based in critical thinking.  I was waking up, slowly, and I can pinpoint my foray into this world being guided by Ron Paul, who for me was the final politician.

While I again began to put my faith into one individual, I felt it was different this time.  This person had a philosophy with the voting record in Congress to prove it.  He had ideas way outside of the mainstream and wasn’t afraid to say them, even in the face of total opposition.  He spoke a word that I never previously understood and only saw as a political tool.  When Ron Paul spoke of liberty, he meant it in it’s most true form.

Though I changed my Independent status as a voter and became a Republican for a 6 month time period in order to attend all of the Nevada Republican conventions to get Ron Paul the nomination, it was at this same time my ideas and understanding of life were becoming more and more firmly rooted in anarchy.  Quite the paradox.  Even as I was cheering during the last convention at the fact that we had elected almost all Ron Paul delegates to go to the Republican National Convention, I wasn’t even sure anymore if I’d be voting for a president.  Of course that decision was made pretty easy for me in the end when Paul didn’t receive the nomination.  Even though there was a ton of RNC corruption involved, he still never had the numbers.  I sometimes wonder whether I would have voted for a Ron Paul president if it were possible.  I hope not, if only because that decision would have brought me back into the statist game.  I am endlessly thankful though, because the path to liberty is the eventual path to anarchy, and this Texas politician was a huge influence.

All that doesn’t matter anymore though.  I’ve separated myself from that world of democracy.  I have no connection with any pre-packaged ideology, politician, or political system of control.  I don’t know what the answers are.  I take every issue one at a time, and sometimes my thinking on them goes in a direction that may be considered left, or may be considered right, but all-in-all I look for the most free answers that don’t bring aggression into the mix.

I have no interest in being one of the wheels or gears of the state.  In regards to the machine, I have stopped myself and chosen to opt out in any way possible.  It has to end somewhere.  It may be a slow process, but one at a time, we’ve got to stop paying attention to them and start living with autonomy.  The absolute best way forward, the absolute best way to shut it down, the absolute best way to dissolve the central government is to simply stop.

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.

The Splendors of the War Criminal

YOU ARE NOT FASCIST, BUT YOUR COUNTRY IS:
The Splendors of the War Criminal
 
The remedy to power is to simply withdraw that consent. – Murray Rothbard

For the second time in less than a decade Americans have gone out to the polls and reelected a war criminal.  2012 was very much 2004, years in which the people of a country could not see past their own boxed in ideologies and decided to go and vote when in reality there was no actual choice to be had.  They should have stayed home.  In these two years, not only were criminals given the reward of more power, but they were given consent to take even more rights away than they did in their first four years.  The worst picture painted on election night is right after this consent is given.  We see masses of people celebrating their very own natural human rights being legislated and executive ordered away; tearful, wondrous celebrations of their very own indefinite detention.  So while 60 million voted one way, we were sadly just over 2 million votes away from a different regime with very much the same views of authoritarian power. 

Over 100 million Americans chose abuse over enlightenment.

It is a terrible position for people to be put into.  Essentially we have a choice between a man who promises to murder thousands, and the other who speaks the rhetoric of peace while actually murdering thousands.  How did we get to this point?  The illusion of choice has become strong within our society, an illusion that has us believing there are two teams in existence within this political structure, and that one is more evil or less evil when they are both evil all the same.  Those who choose to vote are celebrated while the individuals who choose to opt-out are derided for their conscious decision.  Even those who do vote, but do so for a third party in protest of the corporatist party, are considered fools for wasting their vote.  Patriotism is reserved for those who choose to reelect war criminals.  The bright minds of the future are those who are bribed with their own money. 

The opt-outers of the abusive federal system, in which there were at least 100 million, aren’t even considered.

Revolution will never come by casting a vote.  Men who gain enough money and advertising to head the corporatist state have clearly been bought.  They have made promises to nefarious people and they have lied to millions.  It is not a problem for them to have blood on their hands or to take in billions of dollars through force and act as if they have the know-how in which to distribute it.  These are not men with great courage.  They are men who simply have the guns and know where to point them.  Yet we still find so many people believing their promises when we should all know by now that they are just slick advertisements or flat-out lies. 

No voter can truly be blamed.  This picture of the powers that be is never painted for us because both figureheads of the one-sided coin have their very own television station.  Each station worships their own celebrity and each paints their celebrity’s equal as the evil version of themselves.  The voters no longer have access to watchful eyes that report truth (if they ever did), only promoters and handlers that shape, clean, and shine their restoration project until the rust has been scraped from the surface.  Because of this power worship, the election process has become a long-winded, never-ending reality show, and the voting class doesn’t quite understand that at the end of the game it is their own heads on the line.  The casting of ballots has become a foolish task in which we acquiesce our rights to a man who simply seeks power.  Voting is a reminder to the elected leader that “yes, they can.”

Yes, they can take away your rights.

Yes, they can take your labor and your property.

Yes, they can murder whom they want.

Yes, they can waltz into any country they please and join in on the oppression that already exists there.

The worst part of the continuation of this self-abuse is that you cede ownership of your life and will.  They own it now.  Yes, they do.

You are the splendors of the war criminal.  

You Are Not Fascist, But Your Country Is: Introduction

Some would say the use of the word fascism is an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.  If we feel comfortable calling our system of government crony capitalism, or corporatism, then I see no reason why we can’t call it fascism.  It is straight to the point, but at the same time I can see where it is misleading, so this series of essays will be about figuring out how to define fascism in our current context.  I’m not referring to Europe in the 30’s and 40’s, but America now.  I’m not going to use the lists that authors have compiled as tenants for what they think makes a fascist society.  I don’t have to.  While this country may hit a lot of the benchmarks, I believe that we are suffering through a uniquely American fascism.  One in which we maybe don’t realize is happening, but we actually embrace.  It’s the old boiling frog scenario, and the heat has been on a slow rise in temperature for a very long time, though the times are changing and many of us are just now starting to realize we better jump from the pot before it’s too late.

If this country isn’t suffering through a long bout of fascism, then what is our system?  I know, it’s a Republic, or a Democratic Republic, right?  Sure, and on its surface The 4^th of July is about independence.  But of course we know that is nonsense.  Just as much as our country is not free, that day of nationalistic fervor can only really celebrate the past, America’s heyday of independence.  But how do they connect it to the present in any substantial way?  They’ve slowly reframed it as a day of celebrating militarism.  Though most likely, we no longer know many of the soldiers who go overseas.  We no longer see the pictures from their wars.  We barely know their stories.  We hardly grasp that their suffering has nothing to do with independence.  So if it isn’t about independence now, what was all this pain about in the past?  Even beyond the last American century, how long did independence really last?

Instead of a day of blind nationalism where we celebrate what they tell us to, I think it’s time for a day of questioning where we can all put our collectivism that has been built over the years to good use.  We can get together and openly question policies set forth by the government.  These won’t be Republican questions or Democratic questions, because as an institution, the government doesn’t exist within in those ideologies, it is now one beast whose figurehead sometimes changes, but beyond that the song remains the same.  

For this day of national questioning instead of being mesmerized by the booming fireworks, we can ask why we have such expansive militarism in so many countries all over the world and whether you feel comfortable spending $1,000,000,000,000 on it every year.  Instead of singing the empty words of patriotic songs, we could try to understand what these words mean and how they actually relate to the America we are living in.  We can look at the words that our authoritarian leaders use and understand that sometimes independence actually means dependence.  Instead of saluting Old Glory, we could look at all those stars and stripes and try to understand what actually holds us together like a bundle of sticks.  Is it that social contract that none of us has ever seen or signed?  Is it the Constitution?  Maybe it is just fear.

What is it about keeping this bundle so tightly wound that is more important than freedom?  In this convoluted yet archaic system that we have allowed to be built around us, where does the individual truly stand anymore?  Who are the Americans beyond the management and beyond the central planning?  Can we still be the masters of our own lives?

This is the first of what I hope to be many essays on the crumbling road that America has decided to traverse.  This isn’t about George Bush.  It’s not about Obama or Romney.  These men are just personalities that every now and then hand off the reigns to one another for something that is bigger than they can ever be.  There is nothing organic happening between them and us.  Government is a power-sucking machine and the people outside of it are just grease grinding through its gears making sure that it continues to run.  This is why it is us who have to dry up these old ideas of empire and fascism.  This deeply entrenched system must not continue to move through our lives as if it were the natural progression of humanity.  Force and control on such a massive scale are not naturally occurring concepts; they must be taught and embedded within us.  It is time we stop learning from the wrong people, those who would have you believe that liberty is a virtue to be granted by a higher authority.

It is my hope that with these essays I can help convince a few people to open their eyes when our fearless rulers want them closed.  I hope that you feel the need to speak, when they want you to shut up.  It is time to look directly into the soul of what we have become, and not weep in pain, but speak in the clear and sure voice of a free thinker. 

Let the individual emerge and show the path to the future.