Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”—George Orwell
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all of the politically expedient things that are being said—about militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption—while the government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright tyranny.
Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite President Obama’s warning that the nation needs to do some “soul searching” about issues such as race, poverty and the strained relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him “manhandling, arresting and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party.”
Americans’ private communications and data are still being sucked up by government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change. As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic, points out, “The theater we’ve just witnessed allows decision makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while spies understand that what’s actually transpired is hardly major change.”
Taxpayer dollars are still being squandered on roads to nowhere, endless wars that do not make us safer, and bloated government agencies that should have been shut down long ago. A good example is the Transportation Security Administration, which, despite its $7 billion annual budget, has shown itself to be bumbling and ineffective.
And military drills are still being carried out on American soil under the pretext of training soldiers for urban warfare overseas. Southeastern Michigan, the site of one of the many military training drills taking place across the country this summer, has had Black Hawk helicopters buzzing its skies and soldiers dressed for combat doing night combat drills in abandoned buildings around the state.
In other words, freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.
This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine. That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance. As we have seen with the erection of the electronic concentration camp, there is virtually no escaping the invisible prison surrounding us. Once upon a time, one could run and hide or duck into a cave, but that is no longer feasible as caves are quite scarce, and those running the camp have their eyes watching everything.
Moreover, we are presented with the illusion that we act of our own volition when most of the time we are being watched, prodded, and controlled. “The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative,” Aldous Huxley stated. “The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible.”
In fact, with the merger of the Internet and the corporate state, unless you are alert and aware, it will be increasingly difficult to discern the difference between freedom and enslavement. With the methods of mind manipulation available to the corporate state, the very nature of democratic government has been changed. Again, as Aldous Huxley writes:
[T]he quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of nonviolent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial . . . Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
To many, the situation seems hopeless. But is it?
From the day you’re born until the day you die, the choices you exercise are very limited. You don’t choose to be born or choose what sex you are or who your parents are or where you live. When you are a child, you are told what to do, and when you enter school, you sit plastered to a desk and are taught what others demand you should know. Yes, the indoctrinating process begins on day one.
Then there are the rules, the endless rules. If you say the wrong word, write the wrong story or wear the wrong clothes, you can get thrown out of school or even arrested. You live where you are told and eat what others think you should eat. As you grow older, this list expands into employment, marriage and so on. In other words, your so-called reality is socially constructed. It is predetermined for you, and if you step out of line and disagree with what the current society deems proper, you will be ostracized. If you speak your mind to the governing authorities, you might find yourself behind bars.
The point is that in order to develop a compliant citizenry, people must be forced to live in a mental matrix of words, ideas, ideologies, and teachings that are designed to make us conform. “As the Matrix in the movie was used to facilitate the exploitation of humans,” writes author Henry H. Lindner, “so the current ideological Matrix was created for, and serves to exploit us, turning us into unthinking workers and consumers—slaves of the ruling elite who themselves are trapped in the Matrix.” In fact, “few of us are able to escape the Matrix. We do not even know it exists.”
For there to be any hope of real change, you’ll have to change how you think about yourself, your fellow human beings, freedom, society, and the government. This means freeing your mind, realizing the truth, and unlearning all the myths you have been indoctrinated with since the day you were able to comprehend language.
The following principles, taken from my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, may help any budding freedom fighters in the struggle to liberate themselves and our society.
First, we must come to grips with the reality that the present system does not foster freedom. It denies freedom and must be altered. “Our authoritarian system is based on cruelty and control—it increasingly drives natural love and feelings from our society and produces violence and greed,” Lindner recognizes. “Our society is deteriorating morally and intellectually. This system cannot be reformed.”
To start with, we must recognize that the government’s primary purpose is maintaining power and control. It’s an oligarchy composed of corporate giants wedded to government officials who benefit from the relationship. In other words, it is motivated by greed and exists to perpetuate itself. As George Orwell writes:
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. . . .. The object of power is power.
Second, voting is practically worthless. “In principle, it is a great privilege,” Aldous Huxley recognized. “In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty.”
We live in a secretive surveillance state that has virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. As Jordan Michael Smith, writing for the Boston Globe, concludes about the American government:
There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
How many times have the various politicians, when running for office, lied about all they were going to do to bring hope and change to America? Once they get elected, what do they do? They do whatever the corporate powers want. Yes, the old boss is the same as the new boss. The maxim: power follows money.
Moreover, voting is a way to keep the citizenry pacified. However, many Americans intuitively recognize that something is wrong with the way the electoral process works and have withdrawn from the process. That’s why the government places so much emphasis on the reassurance ritual of voting. It provides the illusion of participation.
Third, question everything. Don’t assume anything government does is for the good of the citizenry. Again, that is not the purpose of modern government. It exists to perpetuate a regime. Remember the words of James Madison, considered the father of the U.S. Constitution: “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” Power corrupts. And as the maxim goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Fourth, materialism is a death knell to freedom. While it may be true that Americans are better off than citizens of other nations—we have jobs, food, entertainment, shopping malls, etc.—these are the trappings meant to anesthetize and distract us.
Like the dodo, any “bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded,” Huxley warned. “Same thing is true of human beings. If bread is supplied regularly and capaciously three times a day, many of them will be perfectly content to live by bread alone—or at least by bread and circuses alone.” Free as a bird, some say, but only if you’re willing to free your mind and sacrifice all for a dangerous concept—freedom.
In other words, the hope is that the cry of “‘give me television and hamburgers, but don’t bother me with the responsibilities of liberty,’ may give place, under altered circumstances, to the cry of ‘give me liberty or give me death.’” This is indeed dangerous freedom.
Fifth, there is little hope for any true resistance if you are mindlessly connected to the electronic concentration camp. Remember, what you’re being electronically fed by those in power is meant to pacify, distract, and control you. You can avoid mind manipulations to a large degree by greatly limiting your reliance on electronic devices—cell phones, laptops, televisions, and so on.
Sixth, an armed revolt will not work. Although we may have returned to a 1776 situation where we need to take drastic actions to restore freedom, this is not colonial America with its muskets and people’s armies. Local police departments have enough militarized firepower to do away with even a large-scale armed revolt. Even attempting to repel a SWAT team raid on your home is futile. You’ll get blown away.
Seventh, be wise and realize that there is power in numbers. Networks, coalitions, and movements can accomplish much—especially if their objectives are focused and practical—and they are very much feared by government authorities. That’s why the government is armed to the teeth and prepared to put down even small nonviolent protests.
Eighth, act locally but think nationally. The greatest impact can be had at local governing bodies such as city councils. Join together with friends and neighbors and start a Civil Liberties Oversight Committee. Regularly attend council meetings and demand that government corruption be brought under control and that police activities be brought under the scrutiny of local governing bodies and, thus, the citizenry.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, police were involved in 39 shootings dating back to 2010. After a 2014 police shooting of an unarmed homeless man camped out in a public park, residents engaged in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to disrupt the normal functioning of the city government and demand that the police department be brought under control. Community activists actually went so far as to storm a city council meeting and announce that they would be performing a citizens’ arrest of the police chief, charging him with “harboring fugitives from justice at the Albuquerque police department” and “crimes against humanity.”
In Davis County, California, in August 2014, after a public uproar over the growing militarization of local police, council members ordered the police to find a way of getting rid of the department’s newly acquired MRAP tank. One man at the council meeting was quoted as saying: “I would like to say I do not suggest you take this vehicle and send it out of Davis, I demand it.”
Ninth, local towns, cities and states can nullify or say “no” to federal laws that violate the rights and freedoms of the citizenry. In fact, several states have passed laws stating that they will not comply with the National Defense Authorization Act which allows for the military to indefinitely detain (imprison) American citizens. Again, when and if you see such federal laws passed, gather your coalition of citizens and demand that your local town council nullify such laws. If enough towns and cities across the country would speak truth to power in this way, we might see some positive movement from the federal governmental machine.
Tenth, understand what freedom is all about. “Who were the first persons to get the unusual idea that being free was not only a value to be cherished but the most important thing that someone can possess?” asks Professor Orlando Patterson. “The answer in a word: slaves.”
Freedom arose from the hearts and minds of those who realized that they were slaves. It became a primary passion of those who were victims of slavery.
Some Americans are beginning to realize that they are slaves and that if they don’t act soon, they will find themselves imprisoned in the electronic concentration camp indefinitely. Mind you, there may not be any chains hanging from the dungeon walls, but it is a prison nonetheless, and we are, without a doubt, inmates serving life sentences.
The sixth:armed revolt will not work.
Then he said the object of power is power. Those who have it never voluntarily give it up .Then he says the system or government can never be reformed. There’s a government behind the elected representatives. Then our minds are constantly being molded by the media outlets to do what the government wills.He goes on and on .Back to armed revolt. He says most police departments have enough fire power to put down even a large challenge to their authority.The powers that be have us out gunned , out resourced , over powered at every turn. His only solution is for us to organize and challenge a monster we can never defeat .It’s only knows power and violence.Somewhere along the way I lost hope that this guy had any real solutions to anything.
He’s full of it if he thinks Americans are outgunned. A half a billion guns in the hands of American is waaaaaay more than the police etc.have.
Oh….ask the DEA etc how the raid on the Branch Dividians went…..if I remember they got the shit shot out of them.
@Buckhed, most of the ATF (not DEA) people shot (if not all of those shot) were shot by their own people.
My problem with Whitehead’s column is that he forgets that we’re legally dependent upon the cops showing up to control people who COULD be but are not yet violent.
A gang of youths start tearing up your property. If you call the cops and they (wisely) say, hey, we’re not going to get lynched for doing our job so you’re on your own, and you go out and someone gets shot, you’re screwed.
The near future promises to be very, very challenging in ways we do not yet appreciate.
You can defend yourself against deadly force, but there’s a gray area before that in lots of encounters that the cops can legally deal with (like it or not) and we CAN’T.
Realize there is nothing you can do. Ever. About anything. There is no power in numbers unless it is ona topic those Iin charge dont actually care about. THEY are smarter, wealthier , better armed, better prepped, and more connected than you or I will ever be, and have been at this game for hundreds if not thousands of years. It is possible to win the lottery, though not very likely, it happens all the time for people. Trillions to one. Your odds of success winning the lottery far outstrip your odds of ever accomplishing anything in terms of reigning in the government. They are willing to kill members of their own club at the drop of a hat to protect their game. Normal people are nowhere near ruthless enough to even play their game. Your effort is better spent with family, and drinking with friends. Trying to change the world is no longer possible, thanks mainly to technology of different stripes. Dont bother fooling yourself into thinking you can hide from it, change it, or ignore it. Take the blue pill. The red pill leads to nothing but anger and sorrow, and a penchant for jousting windmills. -lt. Stenhouse
@Buckhed: it was the ATF, not DEA, and it went badly for them. And the “Branch Davidians” were hardly organized or capable. Of course later on it also went very badly for the “Branch Davidians” as well.
Yep it was the ATF…not the DEA…my bad .
DC…I’ve never read that most of the ATF folks were shot by their own people .
As to protecting your property…well if you lived in S.C. you wouldn’t have to retreat. We have a very strong castle doctrine…no retreat is needed . A friend of a friend had his fathers house broken into a week after he passed away. He had a feeling that the folks would return . So he waited in the house one night. Sure enough they returned. He killed the first guy in the house and the 2nd guy on the walkway . He was cleared in the 1st shooting and the grand jury didn’t charge him in the 2nd shooting saying he had a right to protect his property .
It was not well publicized that ATF agents were (I think ALL) shot by other ATF agents because it would have been even harder to obtain even an indirect conviction for the surviving Davidians (who were convicted of lesser charges, not that losing their families in a government-run extermination program wasn’t “punishment” enough.)
The “biker war” that recently occurred in TX looks in all likelihood like all of the dead and wounded were shot by cops with AR15’s.
Like I have often written, the trick now is to NOT be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
______________________________________________
As for the larger issue, the world goes by itself. If the river is doomed to cascade over a waterfall there’s not one damn thing an ant riding on a leaf in the stream can do about it. The best one can hope to do is work to identify the safest part of the current, paddle the leaf toward it and hope that ones analysis was correct.
Taking an active role in managing your position on the stream may or may not pay off, there may be nothing you can do to avoid the falls, but I prefer the active approach (for all its frustrations) to being a pinball in a pinball machine.
@Itstenhouse,
Blue Pill? Never. Living in the illusion is for slaves and pets. Men live in the real world, even if doing so is punishing. Men confront reality, slaves and pets live in an illusory bubble dependent upon the system.
I may be that ant on a leaf in the river, but I’ve my eyes open. I call a spade, a spade. I may very well be on the leaf that is smashed on the rocks below the falls, but three things I know:
1. I was born.
2. I am alive.
3. I will die.
What matters to me is HOW I LIVE. Do I strive to understand HOW I should live, and strive to actually LIVE that way? If I get another year out of this life, or another 50 years, all that matters is whether I lived the way I deemed was right. If this life is it, if there’s no adventure to follow, so what? Love, honor and family are ALL that matter.
No blue pill for me. I’ll see what’s coming and hope to sidestep the worst. If the price of that is a lifetime of struggle, so be it.
Men live in the real world . HA. You dont even know what real is. You havent got the clearance.
I haven’t got the clearance?
Oh ho ho ho. I’m well aware of endless “secret,” compartmentalized kids of idiocy being run on tax dollars. All of it walled off from the endless “others,” every participant secure in his delusion that if not for HIS EFFORTS the planet would fall off its axis and crash into the sun.
We are surrounded by well-educated officials of Omnipotent Importance, whose badge and Government ID informs all who see them that they are in the presence of Greatness!!!!!
Itstenhouse, pull your head out of the sand (or elsewhere) and READ something that might (thought I doubt it) provide you a little perspective.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
Th e hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
Th e lone and level sands stretch far away.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)
From airplanes spreading who-knows-what over our heads in chemtrails to nuclear power plants for which no money or plans exist to decommission now that nearly all of them are operating beyond their designed lifespans, we are ruled by scorpions in whose nature it is to poison and murder themselves as well as us…for they are scorpions.
Do I need security clearance to know what must come from a toxic sludge of criminal secrecy, brigandage and political knavery whose poster child, Hillary Clinton, is so repugnant that Satan himself surely fears being replaced when her miserable existence on this plane ends?
I truly wonder if you, Itstenhouse, have the tiniest, foggiest notion how much actual rot and toxic waste (literal and metaphorical) now spews from the anus of Uncle Sam.
Take what you know of, and multiply it by 10,000. Marvel that humans still walk the planet, given the curse under which we now live.
I am an atheist in the non-evangelical mode. But I surely do wish there to be a God, a Christian God, to take all of you with your “clearances” and put you in hell for eternity, where you all belong.
Western Civilization is dying.
I sincerely question whether humanity will actually survive its collapse, because the demons elected and appointed to rule mankind today are the kind of people who’d rather destroy themselves and everyone else on Planet Earth rather than give up their power.
All of Man’s innovation and technology now sits in the hands of truly demonic individuals, who are surrounded by dog-men who are so obedient that they make Hitler’s SS (who were reportedly ordered to raise and kill pet dogs during training to insure obedience—-of the MEN!) look like hippies.
If ordered to destroy the USA and every man, woman and child in North America, I believe there are thousands of men (and now women, yay!) in the military who would snap to attention and absolutely carry out the order. We are ruled by demons.
So Itsenhouse, take your “clearance” and shove it so far up your ass that it explodes out the top of your skull. It’s people with “clearance” whose fingerprints will be on what destroys the people I love, should that day arrive in the future. It is people with “clearance” who may now, as I type this, be poisoning the air or the sea or the land, or developing biowarfare agents so horrible and satanic, that they put in motion a trend that destroys every human on the face of Earth.
When the time comes that the last H. sapiens dies, it won’t be because the sun went nova or because an asteroid hit the planet. It will be because our toxic sludge rulers will have ordered something that “went wrong” and the ensuing plague or nuclear holocaust, the one THEY NEVER IMAGINED could occur, wipes out every human being.
But thank heaven, someone had “clearance.”
I recommend Butler Shaffer’s “Wizards of Ozymandias.”
It’s available as a book, but also a 300 page PDF.
https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Ozymandias.pdf
DC says:
What matters to me is HOW I LIVE. Do I strive to understand HOW I should live, and strive to actually LIVE that way? If I get another year out of this life, or another 50 years, all that matters is whether I lived the way I deemed was right. If this life is it, if there’s no adventure to follow, so what? Love, honor and family are ALL that matter.
Right! There are many like lstenhouse who seem to believe our rulers are not only ruthless and powerful, but prescient and superhuman as well. No…they are very much human and it is my belief that they are miserable. To be pitied as much as feared and not to be envied at all.
People should as themselves this question: would you change places with Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Bankfein? I would not.
The people to be envied are those who truly live life well, as independently and as much on their own terms as possible. Those who love truly. Those who give freely of themselves. These are the people who are making the most of this one chance at sentience.
I have thought about what it must be like to be a soldier coming home to? Jobs? In the end i feel many will be the people that will end up changing things. Train a person than yank the rug out from under him,What do you get. I can feel a change coming.
I really didn’t like Bush much. But Obama? A total idiot. At least i could see it and knew what was coming,What to expect.
@D.C. WELL! I guess you told him!
Great troll-removal skills you have.
Dc, you a funny man. You know yet refuse to accept that which you know. Take my first post to heart, for it is truth.
nice post, ltstenhouse. you’re only the six millionth motherfucker to come here with “the truth”. grace us with more of your bullshit, maybe 60,000 will visit tomorrow.
Listen House , I do my best to bless TBP with my truth and grace. Someone(I won’t name names)usually tells me to fuck off and DIE.At least that hasn’t happened to you yet. Stick around.
You funny too westcoast. I get paid to troll you. Dont encourage me, I might stick around. But as long as the good folks in pennsylvania keep paying my salary, I’ll be lurking.
Mr. Whitehead, God bless him, does not understand the dynamics of a true breakdown situation. In the event of widespread armed resistance by the core American population, i.e., white people, the police would be not only helpless but very disinclined to take violent action to carry out the orders of a political class most of them despise. The record of U.S. police departments in controlling disorganized, low IQ gangs is not impressive. Faced with angry, intelligent, heavily armed middle class Americans, many of them veterans, the police will do the prudent thing. The U.S. military would disintegrate if Washington tried to use it against the American people; a few vile traitors might try to do something but they would not last long. This kind of situation will not happen, however, unless there is a total breakdown of the financial system that drives the people to desperation. As long as their bellies and gas tanks are full nothing will happen.
Well, Listenhouse, I DO have the clearances and you have no idea what you are talking about. The idea that there is some all powerful “They” out there is nonsense. Sure, there are people, groups, institutions and entities with power, money and all the rest. To suggest that the current situation will go on forever and that “They” can simply snuff out mass anger and desperation is ridiculous. Things are shifting all over the world right now and if you think nothing is going to change here, you need to get a dose of reality. Radical change can happen quickly and with almost no warning. I will check back with you in a year or two. By then I will be living comfortably in Paraguay.
Seriously?
Want to take back your Republic?
FIRST take back your “Lawful Money” out of the Control & Hands of the Banksters!
Then stop doing business and trade with Corporations, since they only exist to suck the Profits out of your Local Economy to funnel them back to WALL STREET & the paychecks of grossly overpaid CEOs!
FIAT Credit, Currency (ie DEBT) is the TOOL of the Banksters to enslave Peons & Serfs.
Commonsense Citizens GRASP the value and Liberty attached to Silver Dimes, Quarter Dollars, Half Dollars and Dollars!
Using & getting paid in same, not only MASSIVELY reduces/eliminates the Annual tithing to the Phederal Reserve via the I.R.S., it also massively reduces other B.S. Taxes such as the “Sales” Tax!
Use Lawful Money U.S. Gold or Silver Coin Dollars to sell or purchase your next automobile.
Imagine what significant effect such has on any B.S. “Sales Tax”; Registration Fees, etc., etc..
Use Lawful Money U.S. Gold or Silver Coin Dollars to sell, or purchase your next home.
What does anyone imagine such effect would have on anyone’s presumed imaginary FIAT (ie paper) “Capital Gains” liability or subsequent Property Tax Assessment.
Regardless of any Bankster A**smoke blown up anyone’s six, “Market Value” (ie in Fiat IOUs) is NOT the Official Metric / Unit of Account in these United States as the ” made in Pursuance thereof” STATUTORY “Laws of the United States”, ergo, “supreme Law of the Land”, EXPLICITLY Expresses OTHERWISE!
“Ignorance of the Law: EXCUSES NO ONE / is NO EXCUSE”
Wake the Hell Up & Stop Feeding the BEAST!
Or simply STARVE and cluelessly relinquish the lives of your children and grandchildren into the hands of the blood sucking, fiat counterfeiting Banksters!
Cheers,
S. Rex
Southern sage….Its Lieutenant Stenhouse. Not listenhouse. Look me up. I’ll be here in a year, two years, ten years, wont matter. You think we dont know how to turn the mob? You must be joking.