A fellow blogger said something very kind the other day. After noting that he was trying to stay offline to avoid “outrage fatigue,” he mentioned that he saw me as somebody who could descend to into that state, then pull myself back up and “return to humanity from perfectly natural, periodic sorties of indignation and disgust.”
It was kind. I think he’s that sort of person, too. But I wish it weren’t true. I wish I never, ever had to go into that place, only to drag my butt (and my brain) back out of it, time and again. I wish he didn’t, either.
But you know how it is. Because you’ve been there, too. You pursue your dreams. You carve out some peaceful little world for yourself, vowing to leave politicians, bureaucrats, the Stasi, and the puppycide brigade behind. Then, no matter how hard you close your eyes, how hard you turn your head away, no matter how often you hug the kids or play with the dog, no matter how much you determine just to cherish your own good life … they strike again. They. FBI. CIA. NSA. DEA. IRS. Congress. The Nazgul. Or maybe just some local Napoleon who loves his power or “the rules” just a little too much. And down you go. Into the depths.
Not just once but again and again. Because, as my correspondent also pointed out the powers that be are relentless. And multifarious in the outrages they can inflict.
You’re just recuperating from the Snowden revelations. When you get hit with Obamacare. And while you don’t mind the 17% government “shutdown” that accompanies it and you’re encouraged, perhaps, by the growing disgust and contempt of the American (and indeed, the world) public toward Our Glorious Government, you wonder if people will ever get the real, core message. Or will they, in their various forms of disgust, instead clamor for things like government-administered medicine and government-financed campaigns?
And that’s just the last couple of months. What’s worse is not knowing what’ll come tomorrow. Or not knowing what’s already upon us that simply hasn’t come out of the shadows yet.
Yeah, you know all that. Been down that road before and will be down that road again.
—–
The absolute worst thing, though (aside from whatever real world horrors might come our way as a result of all this of course), is feeling small. Feeling helpless. As if there’s not one real, solid thing you can do about all this. Maybe I’d better only speak for myself here, because I just know somebody’s going to post a comment about how they never, ever, ever for a moment let outside events bother them. But I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.
How do you stop Obamacare or the national debt (but I repeat myself)? How do you combat the Stasi when you don’t even know all they’re up to?
You know what it feels like to me, sometimes — this onrush of ruination? It feels like being a peasant in Europe in 1348, hearing rumors about this deadly new sickness rampaging upwards from the south, destroying all in its path. For the moment, you really don’t have it so bad. But this plague is coming, black, noisome, hellish, creeping inexorably in your direction. You know it. The stories get darker — and more real and more close to home — every day. And there’s nothing you can do to protect you and yours from the deadly invader.
You feel insignificant. Impotent.
That’s the worst.
Another thing it feels like, or so I imagine, is being dragged underwater by a force so big you can’t even comprehend it.
—–
Although there are millions of individual choices, inwardly there are only two ways to go from here, two different states.
You can sink into the mood and drown in it.
Or you can kick like an SOB until you rise and break the surface again, willing yourself to overcome even when all the odds are against you. (Some may choose to let go and float to the surface rather than kick, but the destination is the same).
Drowners may become depressed and inert. They may decide they care more about whether Miley Cyrus hates Sinead O’Connor than whether the NSA is recording their phone calls, more about what the Seahawks or the Blackhawks are doing than about what the Federal Reserve is doing to the value of their savings. Or they may try to impose order on a chaotic universe by concocting vast, but internally satisfying narratives, about how everything is the fault of lizard-brained aliens, the Jews, or the Illuminati. Then they spend their whole lives spinning in conspiratorial circles, believing they’re accomplishing something important while not achieving a worthwhile thing. Anything to feel in control again.
Then there are the kickers. Where they end up is another thing altogether. A thing for another day. But the kickers have a chance to save themselves. To save more than themselves. To save freedom?
Problem is, though, that even the kickers usually feel like drowners before they throw off the downward-pulling force and get a good paddle going. When outrages drive us into the depths, for some time, long or short, it all feels like drowning — in rage, in sorrow, in despair, in depression.
And at that moment, even if you’ve been there before and gotten out, you don’t know whether, this time, you might just drown in the awfulness, rather than gathering the strength and determination to breathe good air again.
—–
I envy those of you who say you never feel this way. I really do. I’d like to be in your head.
On one hand, helplessness in the face of outrageous fortune is a tyrant’s best friend. “Why bother? There’s nothing I can do about it” is the perfect attitude for the humble subject of a police state.
On the other, for some, the feeling of smallness and helplessness is the opposite. It’s a powerful motivator. It feeds determination. They. Will not. Get. Me. Down. Not in the long run. I will not let anybody do this — to me, to mine, to freedom.
And once again, though I probably sound negative at this point, that’s absolutely not where I’m going with this. Very much the contrary. More than ever, we can look around and seeing other people kick. Some will make it back to clean air. Some won’t. But all around us, people are rising — each individual on his own, but amazingly in synch.
And the forces pulling us down are weakening.
You have perfectly described what goes through my mind and soul. Over. And. Over. All I can offer is Amen…and RESIST.
Nailed it on the head, Claire. Your analogy made me think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73lYJC3b-Xk
To make this personal for a bit (I apologize in advance): A friend and I were discussing this very thing yesterday (while making mini-cheesecakes and preparing for a kids’ Halloween party; it was a good day in spite of War and Pestilence).
My friend has just turned 60 and is beginning to feel a few aches, and with weakness where she has always been strong and active. Older than she, I have already faced that realization, and have also acquired sensitivity to or intolerance of a number of foods that I used to eat with abandon.
In coping with these problems, we discovered an analogy in history: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” So we do what we can to lessen the pain and hold off the reactions, but will endure what we must on any given day in order to keep life as normal for us as possible.
Government is the Unnatural (in my case, as is caffeine, additives, sugar and carbs, so I MUST eat healthy to feel well), whereas free market anarchism is the Whole Foods of health – so it determines the parameters by which I cope.
But _feeling small_ is not the same as _being_ small. If a society is made up of individuals, then the reason “all around us, people are rising — each individual on his own, but amazingly in synch” is because so many people, in seeing TEOTGoodLifeAWKI, have started to define their own parameters.
Government will fall before the next society rises. I suspect those individual parameters could gel into a better society. For posterity’s sake, we can only hope.
Spot on post, thanks.
“Outrage Fatigue.” Good one. I can relate.
“I used to be amazed, now I’m amused…”
I think that I’m almost to the point of laughing at them. (Hopefully not maniacal laughter…)
It amuses me that many of the perps think they are pulling the wool over our eyes with the shite they shovel at us.
I made up my mind not to be dragged down emotionally. I still get bogged down intellectually. That’s where laughter comes in. As life grows more difficult for the average joe, the evildoers are becoming more transparent to the masses. I laugh because one of these days, the wind’s gonna shift.
I like the black death analogy, but I would imagine most of those peasants, being well indoctrinated by the church, would of simply shrugged their shoulders said something about God’s will and continued peasanting.
As much as I like tilting windmills I have learned I can not save the world. I learned a couple of years back I could not even save a best friend hell-bent on destruction. I can however save myself and make a good effort to save my family and like minded friends. The network of like minded friends is expanding, which gives me hope. We are all committed to resisting what is coming in ways that befits each of us. When the badness has to reduce resistance one person at a time it slows down and will slowly begin to eat itself. I believe there are enough of “us” out there to make a difference when the time comes.
Todays events and what is coming, seen and unseen, is like knowing a flood is on the way. Nothing you can do about it except watch the water rise and try to get out of its way and save everything you can. Eventually the flood recedes, residue gets cleaned up and life moves on.
Every day I get to choose, should I be happy or should I be miserable. Pretty stupid of me to choose miserable. Still, there are some days when I wallow but many, many more days when I breath happy.
I feel like that a lot. Small. Drowning. But on the other hand I kinda enjoy breaking “laws”, and I get more opportunities for that every day. Sure, I’d rather not be in a position where it was so easy to find “laws” that need breaking, but here we are. Might as well embrace the outlawry.
Claire, I read your blog here daily specifically because you’re able to do that – You’re able to somehow alternate between uplifting and enraging, while remaining more readable and more “human” than a lot of other bloggers (and writers in genera) come across as. And that helps me avoid the fatigue myself. So, thank you. 🙂
Alternatively….
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
Tao 16, Mitchell Translation
See, Claire, you went and did it again. 🙂
And a hearty thumbs-up on quoting the Tao Te Ching, Lawhobbit. That would be a damn fine thing to re-engage with right about now.
It’s abuse. Anyone who’s survived personal abuse situations can spot those wielding it coming at them from a mile away. It looks/sounds familiar. It also allows us to dodge and cope with the new attacks, as well. We’ve done it before.
So when the outrage fatigue hits, all we can do is remind ourselves we are survivors. And act accordingly.
“On the other, for some, the feeling of smallness and helplessness is the opposite. It’s a powerful motivator. It feeds determination. They. Will not. Get. Me. Down. Not in the long run. I will not let anybody do this — to me, to mine, to freedom.”
OH YES!!
I feel smaller and smaller, the older I get and see the approach of the end, no matter what else happens, but probably soon if the goons some. Outrage fatigue strikes almost every day. I do what I can and get back up.
I can give that smallness some perspecitve, to make it more bearable, just by going out to look across the seemingly endless grasslands, or up to the bright blue sky. I AM small, but I am not alone.
Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor who?
What’s wrong with small? Viruses are not the size of elephants, yet they kill far more people per year (if you want a “dead body” metric). Small is better when it comes to kidney stones (I’ve heard). And nobody attempts to carry concealed a 105mm howitzer, despite its fight-stopping effectiveness.
Small is simply another aspect of being. My time in relation to the birth and death of the universe is tiny. My weight in regard to that which is all only SEEMS to be statistically significant. I am naught but a tiny speck – if that much – in the Whole Of Reality.
So? *I* define me, I do not define myself in relationship/regard to others, nor do I particularly concern “me” with how others wish to define me. That’s the nature of individualism vs. hiveism. Your normal hive dweller ONLY sees himself in relation to all the others – thus it’s important for him to wear the right clothes, drive the right car, have the right job, and in all other ways conform to the dictates of the hive. Even your typical hipster, claiming to be “his own man,” still dresses and acts in accordance with the rules of The Other. The Collective. The Borg. Making a sham and a mockery of his alleged individualism…..
And as for “powerless,” again, consider the humble virus. It doesn’t exert power – it simply “is.” Now, granted, what it is can be pretty darned nasty … and that is a cautionary tale for TPTB in its own right…. 😉
I don’t have anything philosophical to offer, but I can say I don’t know how you tolerate swimming in this stuff. I know you occasionally take breaks out of necessity. I do it, too, but mine are longer and my immersion in the subject isn’t nearly as time consuming. I started to say it isn’t nearly as intense, but it’s pretty damned painful. A quick look at the Drudge Report seems to indicate a deal has been made, Obama gets pretty much what he wants, and Boehner gets a standing ovation from Republicans.
Regarding how this stuff comes at you, a little over a month ago I was talking with a like-minded friend at a local dog park. There was also a man whom I had never seen before in the conversation. He looked about 60-65, lean, and in good physical shape. He made a smug excuse for some statement in one of Obama’s (or whoever wrote it) books and a slightly demeaning remark to my friend. He also stated he had been in the navy and had been part of a group that ferried SEALs around. When I remarked “brown water navy,” he just gave me a blank look. He later stated that while he would be shooting from behind a tree, the SEALs would just stand out in the open and that he couldn’t do that. I let him go on and didn’t really contest anything. Obviously he never had the military experience he claimed. I sensed no insecurity, so I have no reason to attribute his false remarks to false bravado. With hindsight, I should have told him he was following Saul Alinsky’s method perfectly to see his response. His behavior seems so consistent with planned propagandizing that one has to wonder how many of these people there are and how often they tend to get together to plan and give each other feedback. It was truly sinister behavior.
Actually, I think O’Connor’s original letter was excellent and worthy of attention in our deteriorating society. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/03/sinead-o-connor-open-letter-miley-cyrus Of course the advice wasn’t heeded.
Thanks jc2k. I really, really needed that.
I must be an optimist. These things bother me less and less, the older I get.
[As much as I like tilting windmills I have learned I can not save the world. I learned a couple of years back I could not even save a best friend hell-bent on destruction.]
That was me in spades. I can’t believe all the effort and psychic energy I used to spend on whatever the “end of the world du jour” was, when I was younger. Thanks Lawhobbit for that Tao post; it more describes my mindset these days.
The smaller I feel in face of reality, the more easily I accept where I am. I no longer have a recipe for saving the world. I no longer care (much) if people won’t accept my “impeccable” logic for living. It’s their life, not mine.
This is not to say I’m turning into a passive blob. It’s also true that the older I get the more mentally prepared for war I am. Whether the Revolution comes or not is nothing in my control; but if the attack comes on me or mine personally, I am ready for it and will respond appropriately.
I don’t buy the future libertopia that some people (e.g. Molyneux) are selling. I think human life will always be a struggle. There will always be predators and parasites; we just have to learn to deal with them. The world goes in cycles, rather than being some kind of monotonic function.
Oh, one other thing. I don’t think the Black Death is such a good analogy because no one back then knew the cause, knew the connection between germs and lice and rats. So being stricken was perfectly arbitrary and avoided by begging a dispensation from uncaring gods. Except people figured out that didn’t work either, so gave up all hope.
We know and understand what is going on. The lust for power is nothing strange to us. Short-sighted stupidity and the bureaucratic imperative are very understandable as the examples are all around us. Whether one becomes a victim still has an element of arbitrariness about it, but at least we are not in complete darkness. And most of us, having the sense to arm ourselves, are not completely hopeless either.
If you think being small means you can’t make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.
I sometimes feel like I’m drowning too. At those times, I have to do something about it, even if it’s just study my seed catalogs and plan a bigger garden. I wouldn’t call it “determination”, it’s just the way I’m wired. Stress makes me look for things I can do.
One thing I’ve been doing lately is taking scenarios out of the news, and trying to figure out ways to win against them. For example, the scenario I was mulling over today is:
You and 3 friends need to fight an MRAP. You have an hour to plan and prepare, but you can only use whatever tools or supplies you have on hand right now. (No running to an imaginary missile stockpile!)
How would you win that fight?
San Antonio news tonight reported that the NSA is gathering people’s contacts in Yahoo, Google, etc. The official excuse was “fight terrorism.”
EVEN THE TALKING HEADS were like, “Really? My contact list will help them fight terrorism?”
[You and 3 friends need to fight an MRAP. You have an hour to plan and prepare, but you can only use whatever tools or supplies you have on hand right now.]
Get off the road.
If getting off the road and avoiding the MRAP isn’t an option, and a fight is inevitable as I believe the OP meant it, then my choice would initially be Molotov cocktails, with firearms to use against its occupants when they bailed.
For the govt. monitors, this is a hypothetical response to a hypothetical situation.
Trick question. You don’t fight an MRAP, your game is against its occupants and their hierarchy. 😉
Dear Ms. Claire,
Yes you are not alone, that is not a bad thing.
What is unfortunate, and we all must find a little piece in each of us to donate to another there by transforming the body, or the plurality of us, is that the unfortunate part by thinking each of us is alone with no kindred spirits to bind with, our will and power as plurality is diminished, where effectively, no matter our love of life and Liberty, we will remain, alone.
Redress is a long road. It took a long time to get here where we are.
I believe it will take far less time if a plurality becomes a conscious cultural entity. That is the nature of a rule of law republic. Where this nascent power of the will of the people can without reservation, create a sea change just by it’s collective sense of self worth.
In thinking essentially as you about this isolation and becoming fed up with the frustrations you so adequately express here, I got to thinking and put my thoughts down a couple of weeks past.
I’m a simple coal miner, my education is about that of 7th grade. I hope that after much thought and my best attempt at reason, what I have composed can help you as your thoughts and kindness has helped me when I have felt forlorn about our world. It is long winded, but maybe by sharing it with you it could assuage some of your concerns and relieve you of a bit of your worries.
God bless you please.
Kind regards,
Doug
Let’s Win!
***
plurality…
Confucius said “If you want to make a stand help others make a stand”
Got to thinking the other day about the spying lying criminals controlling my…MY government.
Certainly not for the first time, pondering the insidious nature of it all.
I see the scope of the lawless disregard for The Rule of Law, along with the contempt, disdain, and thievery, committed upon the common man, expanding exponentially by the day by the very nature of corruption of the elites lust to retain absolute power.
This constitutes a system of rule that is in simplest terms illegitimate. Legitimacy, and lack there of is something very critical for both the elites and the plurality of the people. I think the elites understand this absolutely and impose their will freely through and due to the power of appearance of legitimacy. The plurality is beginning to grasp the gravity of this system of tyranny. But it is an infancy of understanding, a dawning of the inherent violations of their primal Liberty. A gut feeling something very wrong is going down. Least of which is the illegitimacy of our government and the “laws” foisted upon us outside the scope of the rule of law the Constitution sanctions, and the agenda to d-legitimize the will of the people. Especially in regards to the plurality of the people whom constitute the law abiding moral productive portion of Americans.
If so, indeed, a gestalt among the people is required if redress and restoration is to flower and bear fruit. It very well may be it takes only a nudge at the right time, in a fashion that dovetails with culture and the moral compass in held in common. But even more important, is the awareness that one, as an American, is not alone in concern and redress of concerns. Of how a commonality exists, that it is shared by a plurality, and that commonality is manifold.
Culture is key.
The crux of this is a game changer.
Andrew Breitbart said “culture is upstream of politics” … Sarah Palin explained “it’s not selling out, it’s infiltrating and influencing.”
I say it is giving these thieves of Liberty their own medicine and outflanking them.
It seems a profound truth.
The imposition of hideous intrusive controls upon people, and the all encompassing spying, is the tyrants finger in the wind, For I believe they are very afraid of the will of the people. This will is all that stands in their path to absolute rule. It is also, the only true threat and legitimate bulwark to their tyranny.
It is not a stretch of imagination as evidence abounds this is of paramount concern for the statists, and something that must be preempted always, detected early, watched, and outflanked, even crushed by all means through monopoly of violence when required. And with every step all the closer to the tipping point this republic is to becoming a fascist state.
On the leviathan’s domestic spying, to quote the late Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano:
When you talk, you teach. When you listen, you learn.
Aah yes, it is not Edward Snowden who Betrayed Us…
That betrayal permeates and destroys the fabric of our lives.
Something came to me that there is a way to use the nature of this odious culture of sociopaths and crooks against itself.
It seemed like a grand epiphany to have. That here is this cloistered system of elites, whom have evolved themselves into a total separate social system beholden to none others, separate and above any construct of civility, culture, morality, faith, or social contract as lived by a plurality of America.
Here is the thing, all this spying, and the monopoly of violence of the state, the social engineering, co-opting the media, control of energy, food & water, thought control and controlling our very bodies, our means of defense of our loved ones, property, our wealth, insidious intrusions which encompasses every facet of the sphere of our lives, that rob us blind, destruction of families and self sufficiency, expressed in such simple eloquent verse at our declaration of founding, ‘…has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.’
I contend it is so, due to the natural threat posed to the elites, of resistance in people to such tyranny, is the penultimate fear for the elites.
Place to the side for a moment if you will the egregious nature of these trespasses upon us, the outrage over the acts corruption, the lies and dissimulation’s of our “representatives”, of tyranny of the state and it’s actors, because there under it all lies the reason of the day for it’s imposition upon the plurality. And make no mistake, it is indeed the plurality of Americans who are the target and greatest threat to extra-constitutional power that exists. Period.
Everything else is hogwash.
No foreign or domestic threat exists that is as dangerous to the domestic enemies of our Liberty than we who believe in Liberty. We are the only existential threat outside the inner sanctums and hierarchy of their power.
We are seen as this… because it is the raw unadulterated truth of our sovereign power.
The truth it is the will of we the people that rules us.
And the moment we the people begin to come to terms with this power we hold in our hands, the tyrants are done. They cease to have power. The fig leaf of legitimacy is ripped from their body politic, all is exposed by default and the sovereign will and primal nature of our rights as freemen ascends over all. As it should rightfully and lawfully.
I suspect if my reasoning is lucid and my understanding valid, what motivates this culture of tyranny today aside from greed and avarice, is they are very very afraid of the plurality that comes in from the cold and coalesces into a grass roots entity where people become united. A plurality of commonality in cause and effect. Again, this is that existential threat to the state, it’s power, those who are the state.
They are afraid of us because of the potential of what we can do to them for what they have done to us.
I favor the analogy of why these tyrants are desperate to outlaw the AR-15, and why they have created the narrative of this rifle being an “assault weapon”. They are afraid it is going to be used to assault them. Rightfully so. If this kind of redress was ever earned, these traitors and criminals have earned it in spades.
I hope they are very afraid. I hope it this fear which haunts their dreams and is whispered in conspiratorial tones amongst this den of traitors crooks and two bit tyrants. I hope the chocolate emperor and his ilk fear our wrath and drives them to mistake and ruin. I hope they become blinded in their hubris, and they continue to underestimate the plurality and the inherent power it possesses. I hope it resides constantly in the back of their minds, a niggering doubt, causes their reptilian blood run cold. I hope it is the seed of their demise. I hope it grows till it becomes the root of their self destruction. Then all it takes is one push from the outside and it all comes crashing down
I hope too we are better than resorting to bloodshed if means exist to resist tyranny by other methods first.
The prospect of millions of serfs armed with this excellent rifle, empowered by their sense of lawful sovereignty has to be a bone chilling concept to the ruling class and it’s Nomenklaturer.
For sure by all accounts it is a potential army of armed civilians the size of which has no equal in history. Armed with the finest battle rifles and gear man has devised. What self respecting tyrant would not fear this and be haunted with failure to disarm such a citizenry born into Liberty to begin with?
And that is as it should be, how it was intended, lawfully, legitimately, but even more important, as a natural born right of legitimacy, to cling to our arms, our faith, our way of life, free from intrusion and penalty for being freemen.
Tyrants don’t become tyrants, apparatchiks, and their freeshit legions don’t feed at the expense of the productive plurality, without explicit understanding and consideration of whom their enemies are. Their own ilk would eat them alive if not for this essential criminal elitist survival skill set.
The escalating violence of the state, like the potential of violent widespread resistance to tyranny, is fraught with great disaster for America. I’m not proposing armed redress and resistance to tyranny should not be considered, quite the contrary. In the face of escalation of monopoly of violence of the leviathan, it is a reality the plurality must be prepared for. For it is heritege, our legacy as freemen, essential to preserving our freedoms and Liberty, it is our ultimate legitimate sovereign duty to resort to arms when all other forms of redress of tyranny are extinguished.
Our arms represent our ultimate final power over our Liberty and destiny. They not even need be used in anger or defiance to tyranny to effect the course of Liberty. It is the threat they imply where the greatest power lays. Combined with an aroused plurality enjoined together in common cause in lawful civil revolt, no statist power possible, without use of violence and mass political detention, within these United States, is capable of withstanding this force. That right there must become common knowledge to a plurality of Americans, where it is embraced, discussed, formulated into our fabric of culture, accepted as truth. Truth where the common good and health of all we cherish comes before any power or it’s tyrants.
Before we take up and wield the might of the pen, or the wrath of our arms, remember well there is a far greater weapon. The very might that we are always, and always will be, free men.
Never for a moment doubt, that it is both the source of our greatest strength as men, as a people.
Never forget.
This very idea is the crux at the heart of the existential threat to tyranny.
It is what must be destroy first to destroy everything else about us.
It is the greatest most feared assault weapon in the arsenal of Liberty we posses.
It is orange revolution, peaceful civil revolt. That the path to sovereignty lies. That must first be taken. It is culture upstream of all that is wrong with republican form of representative government as we know it today. The understanding and denouncing by the plurality of the illegitimacy of the sate, that the course of our culture must take by all and any means before resort to armed redress. This has the potential to restore the vigor of our sovereign dignity, the dignity of Liberty. It is the lynchpin of freedom, the fulcrum of dislodging tyranny. It is suited well to the culture, social contract, and moral bearings of the plurality. It proves the truth of how our founders accomplished the 5000 year leap. How a system of representative government would function long as a moral people lived within it. Inseparable from representative form of government is the art and social contract of representing our selves first and foremost. It refreshes a people, lifts them, strengthens their character, nourishes moral fiber, lends credence to faith and something better and larger than just our self.
An old school Army Ranger and Green Beret poster put it succinctly, “Your Mind Is Your Primary Weapon”.
Their motto is DE OPPRESSO LIBER
To free from oppression,
Rightfully so.
It is civil peaceful redress that attacks the lie of the tyrant, exposes the agenda, strips them of the cloak of power, utilized both tactically and strategically, it exposes the truth. it outflanks the lies, the narrative, it infiltrates into their rear and disrupts their strategy. Reveals just how weak they are.
The truth has a way of shining revealing light where the darkness of lies and false narratives is employed to hide those truths to begin with.
It is then without resorting to violence and totalitarianism, the tyrants manipulations cease to have control of the plurality of people. The truth of their “legitimacy” becomes apparent as a figment of their minds, the legitimacy of the sovereign and their primal Liberty ascends all artificial fabrications and lies, nullifying every pretense of their tyranny and power corruption afforded them.
There in lies power that can not be denied, power that accepts no quarter nor gives it, power that empowers the plurality with the sense of place and time. Power that has always resided naturally in the hands of we the people. It is time to forge anew this personal, and by extension, plurality of power, born of our Liberty we each posses as naturally as the air we breath.
But that is the question of the day.
How does a nebulous plurality become a conscious viable plurality.
How do folks identify each-other as such, how does a nebulous fractured worried alarmed concerned groundswell of citizenry coalesce into a grassroots movement, an essentially leaderless resistance that grows through common cause and culture?
It becomes Legion.
It begins small.
A kernel of movement.
It begins to spread just like it has a life of it’s own.
A threshold is crossed.
It becomes a cascade preference.
So, what social thing connects everyone?
Our phones.
What is singularly unique about what we do with our mobile phones.
Something we all use for it’s expediency and utilitarian results.
A common thread that connects to most everyone in the sphere of your life.
Something it is a sure bet the spying bastards track totally.
What is culture, and does both to provide connection between millions and used cunningly gives the finger to the leviathan.
Texting!
A huge social and cultural resource waiting to be tapped.
Keypad partisan warfare.
Waging 4th gen warfare wastes no edge it can garner.
It infiltrates everywhere. It is “underground” exemplified.
It does not require total victory to win, it only requires the knowledge it holds it own to win.
It wins when it is waged with just cause, when it is perceived as legitimate.
It wins with winning over hearts and minds, the blessing of the countryside.
What would happen if say 25 people organized, and using their phones, sent a text that most everyone in their sphere of family and fiends could grasp. And that text was simple, a catchy phrase or play on words, that not only touched on lives, but ridiculed the tyrants, underlying in this reverse alynskism, is implied doubt and disrespect to the illegitimate power of the state, a veritable giving the state the bird. A text where it is passed on at an ever increasing social circle. Most importantly something that connects people at the same time. Giving folks the knowledge they are not alone and have allies.
No need to be sly or secretive. Put it right out there. You want the bastards spying and collecting the message. Make them react, get them out of their comfort zone, make them have to play at your game. Plant the seeds of doubt and fear in them. Let them figure out the ruse is up and folks are on to them.
It bypasses every statist construct of narrative, agitprop, media control, and system of lies.
Just saying…
***
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.-Sarah Palin
Of course, there is a risk, but only from a tyrannical and oppressive government bent on the absolute destruction of a free society. -TL Davis
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.” – Frederick Douglass
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
— Ayn Rand
We do not belong to the government. Just as we once did not belong to King George III of Great Britain, for Americans are not subjects of monarchs, parliaments, congresses, Presidents, Governors, Mayors, Kings, Queens…the who lot of them. -unknown
It is not ours to restore the power of the Constitution. It is ours to show them the wrath of America without the protections the Constitution offers them.
Let them restore it to find refuge from us.
– TL Davis
watched Obama 10/18 spout his rhetoric NOW I FEEL SMALL. However I have always believed in the one true statement. THIS TOO SHALL PASS
Thank you for that, Claire.
Bob
III
Libertarians are few in number, volountaryists fewer still.
but, how many are true believers in the current paradigm?
and how many are just grubby little prags, going along to get along?
I suspect we might outnumber their true believers, all we need is for our paradigm to be the winner when the current one becomes so obviously untenable that the prags drop it.
Classical liberalism has won out once before. Unfortunately it was still a statist creed, and from limited governments do mighty leviathans grow.
As has already been said, you nailed it, Claire. I’m glad to find out I’m not so alone after all.
I’d like to add only one thing to some brilliant folllow-ups posted here, a paraphrase of Pat’s response to include some of the others:
*Feeling* powerless is not the same as *being* powerless.
As you’ve written, Claire and others, if we can but look around and sort the wheat from the chaff in the media, we can see individuals bucking the tide. If we can keep our heads above water until the tide reverses, we win.
Keith: if you dislike “grubby little prags,” you may have come to the wrong planet. They’ll always be the majority and they’re reliably self-focused over the short term. Change is wrought when the entrenched order can’t hold onto the prags.
Generally: Room 101: not only is it everywhere, it’s *recursive.*
Most of us were “grubby little prags” before we took the final step to full-blown voluntaryism. It’s unrealistic to expect unanimity of opinion in humans, or to think they can jettison a lifetime of propaganda in an instant.
Ellendra- the simple way to defeat ANY armored vehicle, be it an MRAP or an M-1 Tank is to blind it. Use a highly accurate rifle, preferably 2 or 3 so that the team has multiple positions to fire from, shoot out the targets vision blocks. I am sure that .308 will crack it enough to make it useless to the driver/TC. Once blinded, the vehicle is useless and WILL retreat. IF a team of 2 is close enough, they can now simply use molotov’s to remove the crew from the vehicle.
In tai chi, the way to overcome a huge opponent who believes in his own strength and power… is to open your mind to the opponent; watching and listening, be present… and when the opponent makes the offensive move – either step out of the way or use that strength, to amplify and redirect the energy, to neutralize it.