Tag Archives: Tyranny

We’re All in This Together: A Case for Not Giving Up on the American Dream, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on February 15, 2020 | 1 comment

Here is an optimistic conclusion wrapped around a bunch of disheartening facts. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”—Benjamin Franklin

Listen: we don’t have to agree about everything.

We don’t even have to agree about most things.

We don’t have to love each other. We don’t even have to like each other. And we certainly don’t need to think alike or dress alike or worship alike or vote alike or love alike. But if this experiment in freedom is to succeed—and there are some days the outlook is decidedly grim—then we’ve got to find some way of relating to one another that is not toxic or partisan or hateful or so self-righteous that we’re doomed to failure before we even start.

America has been a warring nation—a military empire intent on occupation and conquest—for so long that perhaps we, the citizens of this warring nation, have forgotten what it means to live in peace, with the world and one another.

We’d better get back to the fundamentals of what it means to be human beings who can get along if we want to have any hope of restoring some semblance of sanity, civility and decency to what is progressively being turned into a foul-mouthed, hot-headed free-for-all bar fight by politicians for whom this is all one big, elaborate game designed to increase their powers and fatten their bank accounts.

Maybe Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, was right: maybe all we really need to know about “how to live and what to do and how to be” is as simple as remembering the basic life lessons we were taught as children.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Imperialism, Law, Politics, Privacy, Society, Surveillance

Tagged ,

All Government Is Evil, by Gary D. Barnett

Posted on January 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

Good government is an oxymoron. From Gary D. Barnett at lewrockwell.com:

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.” 
~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The weak-minded cattle called the general population accept government as their god, observe all of its bogus laws, support its worldwide murders, use it to steal from their neighbors, worship its hired killers even while in so-called religious houses on Sunday, vote in fraudulent elections meant to give power to those who rule over them, and call these elected criminals representatives while ignoring their nefarious deeds; never taking responsibility for the evil they commit in the name of that same population. This is today’s America, and this is the result of a national religion that worships the State.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, Morality

Tagged

Ten self-evident truths that We the People have spontaneously come to realize… that will END all government as we know it, by Mike Adams

Posted on December 16, 2019 | 1 comment

Now that’s a hopeful headline. From Mike Adams at naturalnews.com:

We have a lot to thank Trump for, but among the most important is the idea that Trump has caused the corrupt, fraudulent, lying specter of “Big Government” to fully reveal itself for what it truly is.

Does anyone trust the FBI after reading the shocking findings of the Horowitz (IG) report? Not on your life.

Does anyone believe the Democrats are pursuing legitimate “impeachment” based on legitimate “high crimes?” Not a chance.

Does any rational person think that high-level lawmakers and bureaucrats aren’t on the take, receiving kickbacks from billions in foreign aid?

It’s quite stunning, actually, how the mass awakening has accelerated over the last three years as Trump has succeeded as President. In their desperate attempt to destroy Trump, the deep state swamp creatures and corrupt, lawless Democrats have been forced to reveal the truth about their corruption, fraud and malicious abuse of power.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Insurrection, Investigations

Tagged , ,

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Jim Quinn

Posted on November 12, 2019 | 2 comments

Jim Quinn uses Robert Heinlein’s masterpiece as his point of departure for an extended analysis of our totally screwed up world. From Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

“Secrecy begets tyranny.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Image result for secrecy begets tyranny

“Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

When I read quotes by men like H.L. Mencken and Robert Heinlein, I realize I’m not really a stranger in a strange land, even though I feel that way most of the time. These cynical, critical thinking, libertarian minded gentlemen understood government tended towards corruption and tyranny, the populace tended towards ignorance and distraction, and reality eventually teaches a harsh lesson to fools, knaves and dumbasses.

Sometimes we think the current day worldly circumstances are new and original, when human nature, politicians, and governments never really change. When Mencken and Heinlein were writing and providing social commentary during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, they observed the same fallacies, foolishness, lack of self-responsibility, government malfeasance, and inability of the majority to think critically, that are rampant in society today.

2 Comments

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Government, Politics, Society, Surveillance

Tagged , , ,

D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on May 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here are the ABCs of tyranny, from John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Professor Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better.

Week after week, the script changes (Donald Trump’s Tweets, Congress’ hearings on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, the military’s endless war drums, the ever-widening field of candidates for the 2020 presidential race, etc.) with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle.

All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Insurrection, Intelligence, Law, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged ,

Washington Has Destroyed Western Liberty: The Era of Tyranny Has Begun, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on April 27, 2019 | 1 comment

The gloves are off: you can be put in prison for revealing things Washington and other Western governments do not want revealed. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

A fish rots from the head. In the Western world rot is accelerating. The rot in Washington is swiftly spreading to state and local governments and abroad to the Empire’s vassal governments.

Washington’s attack on journalism represented by the illegal arrest of Julian Assange has now spread to France. The US government’s policy of sanctions against sovereign countries that do not follow Washington’s orders has spread to the state of New York, where the governor has threatened sanctions against financial institutions that do business with the National Rifle Association.

In France the vassal president Macron has ordered three journalists — who revealed that Macron’s government knowingly and intentionally sold arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to be used for the slaughter of women and children in Yemen — to report for police questioning. The report proves that Macron’s government deliberately lied when it said it was unaware that French weapons were to be used for attack rather than defense use in violation of the Arms Trade Treaty of 2014. The journalists are under investigation by the French gestapo for “compromising national defense secrets.”

In other words, when the French government lies, it is a violation of national defense secrets to report it.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Governments, Horseshit, Media

Tagged ,

The Prosecution Of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on April 22, 2019 | 1 comment

Julian Assange is being persecuted now to quell any and all future efforts to expose governments’ many wrongdoings. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Julian Assange’s mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as “the UK’s Guantanamo Bay“.

And yet we’re asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.

Actually, none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only. The Obama administration declined to prosecute him after WikiLeaks’ publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn’t have any more evidence at its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The “crime” Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard journalistic practices that investigative journalists engage in all the time, including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing journalism, and there are an abundance of reasons to believe that he will be hit with far more serious charges once extradited to US soil. They’re not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and a five-year maximum sentence.

But if you zoom out even further, in the grand scheme of things this barely even has anything to do with Assange. Sure, he has of course been a thorn in the side of those who operate the transnational western power alliance, and given the choice they would of course prefer him to be locked up or dead than free and alive. But that’s not what the corrupt influencers who are strangling our world are shooting for here. They are making a grab for something much, much bigger. Assange just happens to be a stepping stone along the way.

Continue reading→

 

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Governments

Tagged , ,

The New American Nightmare, by Doug Casey

Posted on February 17, 2019 | 1 comment

Americans have to come to terms with the fact that they are living in a country run by sociopaths. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.

Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.

Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.

For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, Investing, Taxes

Tagged ,

Another False Dilemma, by Joel Bowman

Posted on November 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

Our choice is more government or some terrible catastrophe will befall us all. We’re never presented with any third choices. From Joel Bowman at internationalman.com:

Of the myriad rhetorical tools employed in public discourse today, dangerous few are more insidious than the false dilemma. Simply put, the false dilemma is a sly trick of exclusion whereby a speaker (always generously) offers his or her audience the apparently favorable choice between two unfortunately poor options.

Little surprise then that, as the election season circus rolls across the country, this Weapon of Dialectic Destruction (WDD) finds itself a favorite of slick politicians working to curry favor with an increasingly ovine voter mass.

“On which horn do you wish to be gored?” they inquire, sharpening their bestial tines.

Known variously as the either-or fallacy, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses or, more colloquially, plain ol’ black and white thinking, the false dilemma is both deceptive and destructive. First, because it lures unsuspecting listeners into a misguided belief that their choices are limited to those offered by the speaker and, second, because it attacks the creative process by which new ideas come to “market,” slamming the door closed on alternative possibilities.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Education, Government, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged , ,

How People Become Easily Controlled By Tyrants, by Brandon Smith

Posted on September 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

A tyrant always owes his position to the help of many sheep people. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

The question often arises in liberty movement circles as to how we get to the point of full blown tyranny within a society.  There are numerous factors that determine this outcome, but through all the various totalitarian systems in history there are common denominators – elements that must be there for tyrants to prevail.  When we can identify these common elements in an objective manner, we make it far more difficult for despotic structures to stand.

This is a very complex issue, but I’ll break it down as best as I’m able…

The Psychology Of The Tyrant

To come to terms with how tyrants control society, we must first examine how the mind of a tyrant operates, because these people do not in most cases think the way average human beings think.  It is one of the few cases in which I would encourage people to “otherize” another group. Tyrants are psychologically abnormal to such an extreme that is is difficult to classify them as human. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Government, Insurrection, Politics, Psychology

Tagged ,