The Individual Mind

Mr. Snowden, considered an enemy of the state by some, is a hero, patriot and statesmen for others of us. His whistleblowing from inside the US Surveillance Apparatus revealed illegal, unconstitutional and immoral secret activities by the US government against its own citizens. As a result, he lives in exile in Russia, although he has attempted to negotiate a return to the US to stand a fair and open public trial with a jury of his peers. The US government has refused that offer, intends to prosecute him as a foreign spy through secret courts associated with the Espionage Act, and has only committed itself to not torturing him.

In this hour-long interview with Edward Snowden, he encourages citizens to not place their trust in politics or politicians, but to work with fellow citizens to demand transparency, to encourage the development of technologies and businesses that augment privacies and freedom, to learn to protect themselves, to distrust secretive government and corporate entities that indiscriminately collect our information for their own ends. He speaks of the qualities that are considered to have made America a great place to live – of citizenship, of voluntary interactions, of tolerance for others’ ideas and speech, of the protection of the natural rights of humans in their quest for progress and innovation as opposed to the promotion of a system of all-encompassing rules and laws that create an authoritarian rigidity of control, stagnation and intolerance.

Throughout the recent years of endless political speeches by a sea of barely distinguishable, philosophically malleable, self-serving public figures, Mr. Snowden’s remarks and insights stand out as singularly informative and inspirational. He is, thankfully, not an elected official. Quite the contrary. He is a leader, a thinker, a disruptor and an innovator. To have a thousand more like him!

NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 08: People watch voting results at Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center November 8, 2016 in New York City. Clinton is running against Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Images North America 681261599 621808502

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t vote for either (or any) of them – for reasons economic, philosophic, and moral. None could enunciate a consistent philosophy of civil liberties and personal freedoms, of privacy, of respect for the individual, of peace, of a cessation of foreign invasions and bombing and death and refugee formation  and arming rebels and provocative international tensions with global nuclear powers, of a way out of ever-increasing national debt that threatens the sustainability of the nation and the promises made to citizens, of a fair playing field for businesses against crony capitalist corporations, of monetary policy which stabilizes the currency and denies special advantage to the banksters at the expense of savers and the middle class, of an end to the destructive and failed Drug War,… of many issues across the politico-economic spectrum.

What politicians and their ilk realized millennia ago is that they don’t need to answer these types of questions. They don’t need to be philosophically consistent or plan for the future or make the world a better place. To serve their interests, their income, and their power lust they only need to pick a few issues that alarm the public, that isolate out single-issue voters to their side, that drive the people to the polls out of anxiety and fear. Those issues may be gay rights or abortion or gun control or taxes or pornography or drug legalities or any number of social services or health care or immigration or national security, etc, etc, etc. While a politician may occasionally happen upon a reasonable position or two on any such issues, being generally unprincipled persons, it is unlikely that their overall platforms will be consistent or meaningful. Additionally, while government is the great fiction whereby we all live at the expense of each other (thank you, Mr. Bastiat), the game is set up as zero-sum, a fixed pie, as necessarily having a winner and loser, typically a reluctant payor and an undeserving recipient. The very purpose of politics is to divide, to fragment, to classify, to create oppositions –  and based upon those divisions and enmities, to wrest control in order to derive benefits at the expense of others. Thus, government powers grow: taxes, mandates, regulations, prohibitions, fines, incarcerations, licensing, permissions. The tool gets stronger and bigger and more encompassing until he who wields it has powers to wreak havoc, to threaten, to intimidate and to control.

Today, a few days after this recent presidential election, I have friends and family divided to Left and Right (whatever that is supposed to mean). Some are elated that their few important issues will be supported by the winner, and some are genuinely fearful that issues of extreme importance to them will be addressed in ways that could alter their lives. Few are able to recognize the perceived threats that the candidates posed to others of differing belief systems, lifestyles, world views or concerns. In an era so self-professed, or at least supposedly inclined towards, diversity and inclusion, there has not likely been a less inclusive environment in my lifetime than what exists immediately following voters’ results just 72 hours ago. But that lack of diversity and the resultant tensions are not an accident. They are an unspoken, but undeniable and purposeful, result of the very machinery of politics and government. Classifications, identity politics, religion, nationality, race, gender and sexuality are the core distinctions which are used as wedges by the astute and cunning political class. Mixed with an ever-increasingly powerful government, with its double-edged sword which swings according to the elected partisan in current power, there must be losers, victims, aggrieved and oppressed. Government is a game of fear, of self-defense, of retaliation, of threat by force. It has always been so. The shock is not that this is the reality, but that in our age of information and communication, that people remain oblivious to being made pawns in the game which is reliant on their validation, authorization, participation and voluntary subjugation.

I am sorry and sad that people that I care about are hurt and that people close to me may be fractured by these issues in the drive to protect that which they consider very important. They are not wrong. They are just different from one another. They have unique interests, beliefs, drives and views. And the American system does not allow for difference. The system of democracy is designed to force the 49% into the construct decided upon by the 51%, and that construct becomes more tentacled and invasive with time. Metastatic. It increasingly gains control over every aspect of life: work, family, profession, recreation, property.

Most will believe that the answer to their current plight is to have elected “the other guy,” then everything would be better,… although not for the citizen against whom the pendulum has now swung and whose most important interests are now at risk. At what point do we realize that the paradigm presented is flawed? That the beliefs and systems inculcated in us from childhood are neither inspired nor correct? That creating bigger and stronger controls puts everyone at risk? That a government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to deny you it (thank you, Mr. Jefferson)? That perhaps very little should be left in the purview of the pseudo-enlightened class and the controlling bodies that they direct? That there can be no such thing as “the public interest” because those interests are infinitely diverse? That perhaps it should be no business of government who marries whom or how one makes a living or spends one’s income or what one puts in one’s own body? That a government and its elected officials that are powerful enough to scare you may just be too powerful altogether? If you create a government large and intrusive enough to force your preferences upon others, what do you think happens when you lose control of it? Or when a tyrant or sociopath or imbecile gains control of it? (Which has actually been the case for decades, in the opinion of some). How many question the very design of a system which mandates obedience and reverence towards a few select individuals, as if they were divinely appointed kings or demi-gods? How many confuse government with society? Political boundaries with communities? Politicians with statesmen? Ideologies with ideas? Demagoguery with leadership by example? How many refuse to be either master or slave? How many recognize the benefits of voluntary interaction to mutual benefit, absent coercions, threat or fraud?

I am sorry that so many hurt, are angry or feel extreme anxiety with the recent relative majority’s choice. I did not vote a Master for you. I do not desire to control you or take from you, yet there are many that do desire those controls and expropriated loot. The way forward is unlikely to be found in the failures of the past. If we desire freedom, prosperity and respect, we must be willing to grant the same universally. We must deny the agitators and dividers our emotional energy. We must remove from the public and legal spheres those things that do not belong there, e.g. marriage licenses, ingestibles, beliefs, commerce, perhaps the education of our children,…. We must recognize the failures of our systems, refuse to endorse them, withhold our validation of them, supplant them with community and society and family rather than majority-appointed managers and controllers. Ultimately, it is not red versus blue, but rather the manipulative state and its actors versus you. In our societies and associations we find inclusion, and we work for common goals to mutual benefit. In politics and government, participation is either an offensive move for gain or a defensive maneuver to protect self and property. As you consider issues in relation to moral and philosophic consistency, you, too, may find yourself unable to validate those which maneuver to get themselves put on ballots to become your leaders and directors – not for your benefit, but for theirs. What happens when the majority rejects the sociopaths, the emotional manipulators and the snake oil salesmen? It can’t be any worse than what you’re experiencing now. Some of the political disruption and unrest this political cycle is likely an ember of this societal awakening and recognition that the individual is a host for parasitic forces beyond his control. I don’t care if you’re queer, black, Mexican, a privileged white boy, or even a lawyer. Take the blue pill with me, let’s turn our backs on the dysfunction, and travel down the road together.

Great article on the highly “educated,” yet extremely vision-limited, pseudo-intellectual class of idiots which collude to rule the world, impose their ideology and views on the vast majority of regular humanity, and have no insight into the endless harm done through the consequences of their poorly-founded interventionism. “What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking ‘clerks’ and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.”

Referencing a zerohedge article from this morning. Democracy has been hi-jacked by Gov and its political forces. Co-opted for its own well-being. Turned on its head, from a method of public representation to one of citizen control. “Democratic politics is a vital power ritual for the government. It makes the government all-important, all-relevant, all-preoccupying; this is especially so during election season. Each side’s enemy candidate is demonized as an existential menace who can only be warded off by throwing all support behind your party’s candidate. ‘Candidate X is not perfect, but we must stop Candidate Y!’ If your candidate wins power, you become doubly loyal to the regime to keep the enemy herds down. If your candidate loses, you become doubly determined to help your tribe regain its grip on the levers of power. Dismantling the machine is the last thing on your mind. Using democratic politics to foment civil strife is how the government divides and more fully conquers its subjects.”

From a CNN report some months ago, but increasingly relevant in a terror war that has no end – perhaps of purposeful design. Decades and decades of filling the Middle East with US weapons, of funding and arming and training fly-by-night “rebel groups,” of shifting alliances, of inept handling of weapons caches, of propping up and funding the puppet-regime-of-the-moment until the winds shift and that puppet becomes public enemy number one and therefore assassinated,…. THIS is how societies are destabilized and destroyed, how the crazy groups in them become so heavily armed and powerful, how millions of refugees are created, how civil wars are fueled, how the US/Western foreign policy of resource extraction and global domination has led the world to the brink of total war. This is what you’ve been voting for, sending to office, supporting with your tax dollars. You, destroyer of worlds.

James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter with the NY Times (despite their many efforts to suppress his work), has written an enlightening, although in no way surprising, account of the mismanagement, greed and idiocy involved in the War Machine of your Gov and the Police/Surveillance State at home promoted to advance it. From many $billions in misspent and lost money through “private” contractors, cargo planes worth of cash, arming and training of untraceable rebel group activity to the obstruction, persecution and prosecution of those that attempt to correct these crimes, misadventures and moral reprehensions, Risen’s work is eye opening. It landed him in years of gov lawsuits as his sources were sought,… in your Land of the Free, and with your Free Speech, and your Freedom of the Press, and your Representative Government, and all of those non-existent mythologies.

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 14: New York Times reporter James Risen (C), RootsAction.org co-founder Norman Solomon (L) and national security attorney Jesselyn Radack, who has NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a client, participate in a news conference where he and other journalists and journalism advocates talked about the Justice Department’s pursuit of Risen’s confidential sources at the National Press Club August 14, 2014 in Washington, DC. Risen could face jail or punshing fines for not revealing his source of classified information for his 2006 book that detailed the CIA’s efforts against Iran’s nuclear program. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

*press excerpt from Huffington Post

You are in a toxic, destructive relationship. Mature, thoughtful adults set boundaries according to their self-worth, self-image and moral code. They do not permit toxic, psychologically harmful people to control their lives or divert them from their goals. Unfortunately, you are in a co-dependent relationship with others that feed off of your income, use you, distract your attention from meaningful endeavors with their childish behavior, exhibit extreme narcissism by consuming everything for themselves while giving no thought to you. They daily bring negativity into your life. Healthy relationships and interaction are voluntary and mutually beneficial, but yours is one-sided, coercive, threatening, parasitic and destructive. Are you that weak and self-loathing that you cannot set the boundary, choose to not participate in the toxicity and harm, and move on? Yet, you’ll show up once again, like the battered spouse, to cast a vote here shortly, and you will be responsible for continuing the cycle, with far greater consequences than emotional or physical abuse.

*h/t to buzzle.com for the graphic

My assertion: Your Gov is the most destructive force on the planet. None can destroy, destabilize, distort and kill with such efficiency and so little accountability. Vote harder. (… or recognize Gov as the illegitimate and immoral authority that purports to represent you, work for the interests of mankind and bring about peace, while only empowering and enriching a select few of corporate and government collusionists at your expense and with your unquestioning support and validation. Who’s worse? The criminal, or he who supports the criminal and his actions which give the criminal a reach and dominion that he otherwise could not achieve?)

Please read an excellent article by Daniel Kovalik who teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, posted in Global Research, The United States: A “Destroyer Of Nations.” The opening: “The stark truth is that the U.S. really has no intentions of helping to build strong states in the Middle East or elsewhere. Rather, as we see time and again – e.g., in Yugoslavia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ukraine – the goal of U.S. foreign policy, whether stated or not, is increasingly and more aggressively the destruction and balkanization of independent states. However, it is important to recognize that this goal is not new.”

Take 5 minutes to get a glimpse into what “money” is. Or more importantly, perhaps what it is not. It is not anything tangible, tradeable, saveable, transferable. “Money” has become mere numbers on a computer screen. Hundreds of trillions of these numbers have been piled onto each other, have been lent out and bet upon for more trillions, re-invested, insured against, “saved,” then more loans are extended on the idea that the many layers upon which the underlying “money” that was lent are real and that there are “assets” of some sort backing the loans, until there are innumerable layers of expectations of value resting on a minuscule amount of physical assets,…. What are the dangers? When will the monetary bubble pop? When a significant number of people and entities demand their “money,” who will actually have claim to a physical item of value, title to a property, rights to a valued service? Who will end up with nothing? What will those societal and global repercussions be?

The video is from The Money Project.

I know you can’t find these without a labeled map, and you have no idea what’s going on there, yet you fully support your taxpayer-funded exploits in these regions. Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey…. US bombs, interventions, election meddling, toppling of leaders, funding and arming of one set of currently-in-favor rebels (terrorists) to do clandestine US Gov bidding in these lands and many, many others. All of these are within easy reach of Russia. And your Gov would have you believe that Russia is the aggressor, that Putin is crazy. What would your response be if Russia were doing all of the above in the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada? If every land around you was being manipulated, occupied, destabilized? Your exploits create debt, death, destruction, destabilization, refugees, and angry terrorists that want to harm you for all of the aforementioned. And you’re not even embarrassed.