What would it take to overthrow the U.S. government? The question may seem academic, but all governments fail. The U.S. government will too, for the usual reasons: its ever increasing size, rapacity, and attempts to control all aspects of life; the corresponding shrinkage of its constituents’ liberty; imperial overreach; welfare-state bread and circuses; debt; spreading poverty; crony capitalism, rampant corruption; widening income disparities, and oligarchic arrogance. As clearly odious as the government is, shouldn’t we do all we can to move it towards its inevitable rendezvous with failure?
Set aside the notion that the salvation of this creaky and corrupt monstrosity might come from the monstrosity itself. The recently passed Cromnibus (Continuing Resolution + omnibus—further corrosion of the once stately and beautiful English language into a leprous gargoyle) should lay to final rest the pitiably naive dream of Republican partisans that their “revolutionary” November victory would work anything revolutionary in Washington, or any kind of change at all. The first rule for honest people in our nation’s capital (if there are any): run like hell from anything hailed as a “bipartisan success,” and double-fast when The Wall Street Journal is doing the hailing, in a front page headline no less. The Republicans gave the Democrats a year’s more spending on their beloved, bloated beast, and did not mount a funding challenge to either Obama’s immigration policy (that’s supposed to come in two months) or Obamacare.
Hidden within the 1600-plus pages bill that nobody but the lobbyists read were the usual pork, earmarks, subsidies, phony cuts (in Washington, if a program is scheduled to grow 10 percent, and that is reduced to 8 percent, they call it a cut), and a Christmas present for the banks: loosening a requirement that they transfer some of their trading activities to affiliates not covered by federal deposit insurance. Naturally the Republicans, swearing fealty to global interventionism and never-ending war, bumped up the military budget—shiny new toys for the generals and admirals and a jobs program for defense contractors back home. With apologies to Ambrose Bierce, here’s a Devil’s Dictionary definition of “bipartisanship”: spending for all!
So forget revolution arising from the current political system. And don’t think that—taking a page from the first American revolution—rebellion will be led by wealthy and successful merchants and lawyers. Those original revolutionaries pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor; current plutocrats are terrified by a declining share price, pressure from a regulatory agency, a class action lawsuit, or unfavorable press. Many of them have a big, crony capitalistic stake in government; they’re not going to be in the vanguard to overthrow it.
Some, mostly on the left, look to a revolution that foments up from the oppressed and downtrodden. The welfare state has taken the sting out of the good old-fashioned economic oppression that was to fuel Karl Marx’s revolutions. Nowadays, beneficiaries would only revolt if the checks stopped. The focus has shifted to “white privilege” and “minority oppression.”
The left had hopes that recent killings by white police officers of unarmed blacks would spark a nationwide outbreak of demonstrations and upheaval, but the unrest has fallen well short of that. The problem with such upheaval, from a revolutionary point of view, is that it usually degenerates into mindless violence, looting, and vandalism, the perpetrators destroying their own neighborhoods and businesses. An effective revolution must have planning and organization absent in the usual race riot, and a goal more transcendent than the acquisition of a free big screen TV.
Looking the other direction on the political spectrum, one finds planning and organization among the groups that foresee continuing deterioration and either the imposition of a police state or degeneration into chaos. While some of these groups may be planning revolution, for the most part strategies are defensive and reactive. If a police state is the way the US goes, the admirably defiant sentiment is: not without a fight, they’ll pry my cold, lifeless fingers from my firearm! Potential chaos, on the other hand, has prompted extensive preparatory measures: stockpiling food, precious metals, medical supplies, and weapons; acquisition of autonomous power-generation capabilities; survival and guerrilla warfare training, and building small communities of the like-minded. Many of these efforts are well-coordinated, led by former members of the military. They scare the hell out of the US government and much of the intelligentsia.
Unfortunately, a police state would have a massive advantage in firepower and would not hesitate to use tyrannical tactics, including taking full advantage of already existing surveillance capabilities. Chaos would be less problematic for the cause of freedom. Secessionist enclaves could be carved out and defended by people committed to the founding principles of liberty and limited government, although there would be more devil in the details of working out actual arrangements than many envision. (It took the founders over a year to devise the Constitution and get it ratified.)
The “revolutionary” undercurrent flowing through American culture—both fictional literature and drama and nonfictional books and internet articles—focuses on dystopian and apocalyptic scenarios characterized by conflict and violence. However, there are millions of people who work in the private sector, pay their bills, mortgages, and taxes, and buy goods and services that power the U.S. economy and make it the world’s largest export market as well. While they may no longer be Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority,” they are still the economic backbone of this country. The undercurrent ignores those millions of people and their economic leverage, which, if properly applied, could hit our government at its weakest point: its dependence on its citizenry and the capital markets for funding.
The government has no autonomous ability to pay for itself, and almost everything it does runs at a loss. Magnifying that weakness: it has over $18 trillion in debt and over $115 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Those unfunded liabilities represent only the domestic, welfare-state commitments it will never be able to fulfill, and do not include the extensive foreign commitments made pursuant to its policy of global intervention.
It is a matter of some urgency that the payers apply their leverage while they still have it. Simply put, they need to bankrupt the government before the government bankrupts them. On present course it will go broke, perhaps sooner than most people expect. In its desperate rapacity, it will seize every stream of income and asset it can get its kleptocratic hands on. It is incumbent on those with streams of income and assets to launch a preemptive strike or lose everything, which would surely usher in that dystopian apocalypse.
For years government economic policy has promoted borrowing and discouraged saving. The first step of a well-coordinated, long-term effort would be to give the government what it wants. Everyone to whom the government and its banking arm (Or is it the banks and their government arm? See “Bankers Nirvana,” SLL, 11/8/14) will extend credit should borrow money, as much as they can. They should also gradually (so as not to precipitate a financial crash too early) withdraw their “evil” savings from banks, money market and mutual funds, and other financial intermediaries. The money borrowed and withdrawn will help fund preparation for what’s to come.
Banks are highly leveraged and operate on thin margins. Any concerted refusal for an extended period of time by millions of customers to pay their debts, including mortgages, would force them to start writing down the value of those debts, their assets. For most banks those debts are their primary asset, and they are a multiple of their equity. A typical bank that had to completely write off 20 percent of its loans, or write down all of its loans by 20 percent, would see its equity wiped out (if loans are five times equity, a conservative assumption).
For those with compunctions about not paying their debts, recall how much compunction the banks and the government had about reaching into taxpayer pockets when banks’ speculative, highly leveraged business models fell apart in 2008. How much compunction have they demonstrated since as the central bank has promulgated a microscopic rate regime to artificially lower the banks’ cost of funding, while eliminating the return on honest savings? The banking system is just as speculative and leveraged now as it was in 2008, and even more concentrated. Global debt is over 40 percent higher.
When the next crisis arrives, regardless of Dodd-Frank and whether or not some bank activities are or are not “covered” by FDIC insurance, the government will attempt to bail out the banks. Don’t think it will be any different this inevitable next time; they’ll reach into taxpayer pockets once again, because that will be the only money available. The government has much more debt now, as does the Fed, which makes a big increase in debt problematic, and the Fed is already at the zero bound of administered interest rates, which gives it no room to configure monetary policy for the banks’ benefit.
Count on a new wrinkle: “bail ins.” When people deposit money in a bank, they become unsecured creditors of the bank, and that is all. If the bank goes bust, they stand in line with the bank’s other unsecured creditors. There is the FDIC’s deposit insurance, but if enough banks go bust, the FDIC fund will too. Cyprus was the template for bail ins, which is the euphemism for depositor haircuts (or, more correctly, scalps), which is the euphemism for depositors getting stuck with banks’ losses. After Cyprus, bail ins have become an acceptable option, quietly mentioned in banking, central banking, and government circles here and in Europe. No amount of money printing and government debt will save the financial system when banks fail en masse, and depositors will lose some or all of their deposits, whether it’s called a bail in or by its real name—theft.
So the choice is quite simple: screw or be screwed…again. The best defense is a strong offense, but to go on the offensive requires collective action among those who pay the government’s bills. Solitary non-payers face a credit cut-off and asset repossession. Millions of non-payers are a movement, and it would take years to jump through all the legal hoops, especially foreclosure proceedings, necessary to bring them to account. Some banks are still working through the last financial crisis.
While certainly disruptive, this movement, to reach its full effectiveness, would also have to involve a tax protest. Because of tax withholding, that may be more problematic. Major corporations are not going to stop sending in what they’ve withheld from employees’ paychecks. However, a substantial number of individuals refusing to pay estimated taxes and smaller businesspeople (who employ half the nation’s workforce) refusing to collect withholding would be enough for the government, and more importantly, capital markets, to take notice. Anything that called into doubt the capital markets’ bedrock assumption that U.S. debt was backed by the government’s priority claim on the nation’s private-sector production would send interest rates substantially higher, increasing the government’s debt burden.
What are the chances of getting millions of Americans to, as Lady Macbeth put it, screw their courage to the sticking place? Probably small. However, if one accepts the premise that the government-banking complex’s current course will inevitably render it insolvent, leading to a voracious and indiscriminate expropriation of wealth and savings, then this plan is strategically optimal. It relies on the remaining and still substantial American salt-of-the-earth—productive individuals in the private sector—while excluding the quisling wealthy, crony capitalists, welfare state teat-suckers, and random degenerates. Utilizing the salt’s potent leverage—its economic power—this plan seizes the initiative before the inevitable financial crises eliminates that leverage. It strikes a sharp blow against the complex’s weakest point—its accumulated debt and funding vulnerability—a blow against which it has little effective defense.
Execution of the plan will not prevent the dystopian apocalypse. The plan will hasten that outcome. However, preparations for it will in part be funded with the money that has been withdrawn from the financial system or has been borrowed but not repaid. (The paper claims thus extracted should be converted to real money—precious metals—during the preparation phase, before the government and banks completely devalue their own paper.) Note the irony: the government-banking complex will be providing funds for a revolt against it. By denying the complex funds, this plan shifts the odds between the post-collapse police state or chaotic anarchy outcomes in favor of the latter. Police states are expensive to maintain and retard the economic activity on which they are parasitically dependent. Historically, they have had to beg, borrow, and steal to maintain themselves, and the plan would exacerbate the financial difficulties for an American police state.
There are still millions of fundamentally decent, hard-working, tax-paying Americans who have watched as a deterioration that cannot be hidden has unfolded. Pick a proxy—national debt, the poverty rate, people on food stamps, growth of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, the savings rate—they all portend impending disaster. There is widespread revulsion, frustration, and foreboding, and a mounting sense of helplessness: what can we do? Voting, which theoretically gives the electorate power to change things, has changed nothing. The two parties alternate doling out the spoils expropriated by a corrupt government.
Nothing in the world can stop the arrival of the day of reckoning—actions have consequences that debt and fiat money can perhaps forestall, but never prevent. The longer they “work” the worse the eventual consequences. On present course the government will go bankrupt. The one option for those of us who have provided so much of its ill-gotten and ill-spent loot—and received so little in return—is to seize the initiative, strike at its weakest point, extract a small percentage of what has been taken, hasten the inevitable crash, and then rebuild America into the great nation it once was.
It will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to persuade sufficient numbers to take that initiative, but in passivity lies ruin. By the time that ruin is obvious to all, it will be far too late. This plan has been sketched in broad strokes and will benefit from collaborative discussion and refinement from a variety of sources. It is an overall strategy and many details must be filled in. However, the only defense against what is surely to come is a strong offense, before our capacity to launch an offensive is stolen from us.
A REVOLUTIONARY NOVEL
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
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A tax revolt does not happen under current circumstances, a “revolt” by the “law abiding tax payers” by definition cannot be proactive, it must and will be reactive. People will pay the feral gov. as long as they are able, voluntarily or involuntarily. When there is no more to pay, there is no more. Americans are individuals and properly prepared individuals will have a chance, and when enough individuals are prepared as groups then the chances improve. The action occurs After the collapse, and when that happens is above my pay grade as a serf.
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I can’t help but think of Ann Barnhardt as I contemplate this essay. She is braver than anyone I know. Even the one I know the most intimately. Myself.
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Great ideas, both the default on borrowed money and tax protest have been beaten around the web for a few years, but the trouble is in the implementation which suffers from the “You go first” syndrome. Only person I know of that is wholly and publicly in a full “withdrawal of consent” mode is Ann Barnhardt. She’s just now at the stage of getting her accounts frozen. She’s tried to get people to disconnect from the cable companies as a means of withholding revenue from the parties directly responsible for our cultural rot to no avail.
I have come to the conclusion that we may as well watch and wait. Collapse is a long, slow process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
The FeralGov is SO big now and SO overstretched that when they’ve stolen the last drop of 401K money and still thirst for more is when it will begin to collapse. Bail-ins and 401K theft from what remains of the middle class, will ensure the widespread cooperation of that group to more radical avenues of protest.
I, too, am but a serf, and this is just my opinion. We all agree “it’s” bad. We just can’t agree on solutions. I’m happy I’m not a central banker. I sleep well.
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“The left had hopes that recent killings by white police officers of unarmed blacks would spark a nationwide outbreak of demonstrations and upheaval, but the unrest has fallen well short of that. The problem with such upheaval, from a revolutionary point of view, is that it usually degenerates into mindless violence, looting, and vandalism, the perpetrators destroying their own neighborhoods and businesses.” That is what became the vehicle for the Russian revolution. The violence and burning spread so quickly that it rapidly overwhelmed the authorities ability to control it. However, I don’t believe that if it came to that, the left would be in control. I believe that if the vehicle were to appear that our side would end up driving the bus. Great article BTW
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“Cypress”
Cyprus.
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Thank you very much for pointing out my error. Quality control slipped up. Fortunately, it’s easy to edit out one’s mistakes on this platform.
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One of the best-written essays I’ve read. From the premise, the structure of sentences to the composition and organization of paragraphs, this is evidence of a trained mind at the peak of its powers.
It is my hope that this will go viral, and that “the salt” will embrace the paradox.
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Except that I misspelled Cyprus, but thanks for the comment. I hope it goes viral, too. It’s time for revolution.
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I’ve cut cable to the extent I am able without having a full out mutiny on my hands on the home front. Internet has to come from somewhere in order to read these great articles. So, I stream quite a bit and local ota. Even that is crap today. I’ve been of the impression that in order to prepare in this day and age of living paycheck to paycheck, personal debt is inevitable. And if all goes to hell tomorrow, good luck squeezing blood out of this turnip. At that point I guess debtors prison will be out of the question, especially if those running the asylum aren’t getting paid. I’ve been putting off taking that car loan out due to job uncertainty in this soft economy, but I’ll give it some serious thought and convince the wife a bug-out vehicle is in our future. It’s for the collective dontcha know.
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What you counsel is sound, but given the make-up of our society these days, the system will fail before enough people are willing to do what is necessary. I imagine .gov will hit middle class savings and 401Ks all at once (although 401Ks will likely be “nationalized” first), knowing what would happen if it were done piecemeal. Since most people are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices involved in preparing – as has been said, won’t even cut cable – it will end up being “too little, too late”.
I would further suggest that .gov is taking legislators – especially the newly elected – aside and telling them that things are going to get bad soon, so they must fall in line with the rest of Congress (Dems and traitorous RINOs like Boehner, McCain, Graham, etc.) in order to forestall chaos and collapse. Of course, their agenda is predicated upon that very chaos and collapse, perhaps unbeknownst to the gullible newbies. Hey, it worked in 2008, when “too big to fail” was the rallying cry. This, quite obviously, is one of the reasons there has been such a strong push on disarming the citizenry.
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The hell with gold, I buy fresh grown grain by the thousand lbs and store it in hidden caches on private farms in southern Idaho. I buy solar panels by the pallet and late model 4 wheel dr SUVs, air cooled four stroke honda dirt bikes, freeze dried food, water purification systems, this doesn’t even account for the fire arms and ammo. The most important is my library of books. I can extract any and all herbals, identify wild plant food, make clothing, make shoes, weld, build anything, make bows from wood or PVC pipe, etc,etc,etc
I am getting my money out of the system and converting it into tangible assets. I don’t want gold or silver I want things that are useful in everyday life, hand tools, and the knowledge the make or build anything in need. I can barter my skills more than all the gold in the world.
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The great thing about PM’s is that they almost don’t decay. Silver corrodes a little in salt water, gold and platinum are non-reactive.
Motorcycles, fuel, clothing, spices, drugs are all significantly worse than they were 10 years before storage, even with expensive best-case storage regimes.
There will be trade and there will be manufacturing before during and after the collapse. Not as much, and not as well distributed, which will mean that middlemen will develop to make getting what you need possible, and these middlemen will not include Amazon Prime free shipping.
*****We currently enjoy the lowest-cost infrastructure for moving goods around the world that will or has ever existed.*****
The new middlemen will demand a bunch of money over current pricing for the trouble of getting a 5 oz package from San Diego (perhaps with National Stock Number still attached to nuclear-war-proof packaging) to your inland Northern rural location IN TWO MONTHS. There will be no Flat Rate Box from USPS, but perhaps a silver quarter will send a letter via the same shipping warlord who delivered your needed item.
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Although I don’t have your resources, I agree with your ideas, with one exception. Having _some_ precious metals on hand will 1) enable you to bridge the times when some form of specie is still preferred , and 2) possibly be useful when you have nothing the other trader wants to accept in barter. I’m buying mostly tangible goods, but some PMs too.
Additionally, without fuel – which can only be stabilized for a few years, at best – those SUVs and Hondas won’t be very useful. Unless you are able to connect with a refinery somewhere (Washington State still has one, IIRC) that hasn’t been burned to the ground by Greenies/ecofreaks.
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A.J. Porth, father of the modern tax protest movement, in 1956 refused to withhold from his employees’ paychecks. This started it all. The only way to shut down the government is to stop feeding it your hard-earned money. Risky? You bet. “Freedom is expensive, but compared to slavery it is a bargain.” Red Beckman, Montana rancher and co-author with Bill Benson of “The Law Than Never Was.”
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There is nothing funnier than the look on a cable or dish salesman when I tell him that we use an antenna.
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There is nothing funnier than the look on a cable or dish salesman’s face when I tell him that we use an antenna.
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Reblogged this on a12iggymom's Blog.
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What a great article apropos for today.
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Our Government is corrupted and broken beyond repair. However, rather than hastening the demise, we can restore the Republic using Constitutional Amendment Repeal and Repair (CARR) to restore a government OF the people not ABOVE the people. http://www.TheSocietyProject.org
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We have a government now which does what it wants, ignoring the Constitution. A Constitutional Convention would only give this government the means to “legally” amend the Constitution as they see fit. It would take away what little strength there is to our complaint that they are ignoring and over-riding the Constitution.
Matt Bracken painted a very believable scenario where such a convention would be taken over by the Acorn/Occupy/welfare-entitlement crowd, funded and fed by the whole Soros/Obama/Progressive machine. A convention would simply play into their hands right now.
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The New People’s Revolutions in the USA, EU nations, etc. occur and win
May 4, 2015 Tatsmaki (Japan)
☆ In Baltimore near to the US capital Washington DC, the people’s Uprising (Alex Jones “Infowars.com site) is going on. Following that, uprisings have spread to NY, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Houston, etc. The counterattack against armed repression by Obama neo-Nazi regime is continuing.
At the same time, according to a space information from the Creators of the Space blocks control world, Yellowstone Super volcano overreaching 3 States causes a large eruption, and the worldwide largest invasive terrorist nation USA empire is annihilated.
In such a process, according to the Space info, the New American People’s Revolution occurs and wins. Obama being the US puppet President of the dictator-ruler Rockefeller and his boss Rockefeller fall victims to the revolution process
☆According to the Space info, France, Germany and Britain withdraw from the EU. And EU collapses. As a result, NATO collapses too. Though the US ・ EU imperialist alliance overthrew the Ukrainian government by invasive terrorist riot, realized the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev and is promoting colonization of Ukraine, but their strategy for WW3 against Russia suffers the heavy blows and breaks down..
At the same time on the other hand, in Spain and Greece where economic bankrupt happened, the New People’s Revolutions are near and win. It brings on the world financial crisis. Thus, in France, Germany, Italy, etc. New People’s Revolutions occur and win.
☆The New People’s Revolutions occur and win in China where the poor of 700 M. people and peoples of 160 M. under the extreme poverty suffer exploitation and oppression under the capitalist high-growth general course, and in Russia too where the capitalist system is bringing on distress to the poor of 18 M. people. In Japan also, adapting to the worldwide main stream of Earth revolution, the new People’s revolution occurs and wins.
☆Do struggle for the new Earth society of everything gratuitous services of all areas of human life by the Earth revolution, following the orders by the Creators.
Don’t leave the new people’s revolution halfway like so-called socialism of Marxism demands. Their socialism was a form of reformism within the framework of capitalist system’s plutocratic slave rule, because socialism is the State capitalism of whole one rule
More：http://tatsmaki.blogspot.jp (English version)
http://tatsmaki.blog.ru (Russian version)
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It must happen spontaneously – no organization. Therefore it cannot be predicted. It must work like a market trend or bubble. The meme is there…good Nicklaas
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I have often thought simply leave the workforce, this will cut off the supply of tax $$. But you can only do this when you are secure that you will not be foreclosed and have food/clean water available. All the gov has to do is poison the water more than they already have and we are done. Communes would be the answer, but who can you trust? Picking a leader and following that leader is risky, This ‘leader’ will let the power go to their head and we are back to serfdom again. It is a vicious circle…. read Corbett Report “WW1 Conspiracy”. This will open your eyes to ‘what could have been’.
I really don’t know where we go from here. Too many generations of ‘get it at all costs’.
Good luck to all.
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the entity referred to as the u. s. govt has the seeds of its own destruction woven into its platform: spend/print/hyperinflate.
the fall will be financial/economic in its ORIGIN and will proceed from there to the complete realignment of people, based on political beliefs, and excluding others not of the same mindset.
this land will be home to at least two, if not more, countries under separate leadership with borders and separate economies.
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I couldn’t agree with you more.
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Not gonna be a pretty thing. For me and mine, I’d prefer to take the secession process down to the county level, and bring the electoral college process with it. Sending an elector from the county to the state Senate would make me a lot of sense. Given that voting is a privilege, rather like operating a motor vehicle, rather than an enumerated right, the popular vote is going to have to be looked at as one of the factors that have allowed the
‘gimmedat’ and the corrupticrat to thrive in our current national setting.
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a true revolt might work, but riots are not a revolution.
if the sh*t hit the fan the military would end the riots with martial law — constitution is null and void, this election has proven that.
and what everyone forgets — sheep don’t do revolutions.
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