"...by the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. You may find you can get away with virtual presidents, virtual prime ministers, virtual everything." --U.S. President Bill Clinton 1998
"...we had created a doom machine"
But who runs these "doom machines?" And why?
In The Constant Gardener, in particular, it was quite extraordinary to go to Basel, to get among the young pharmaceutical executives in a private way, promise them that I would never tell-divulge their names, and listen to them pouring out their rage against the work they were doing, at the people who were making them do it. But they were still taking the penny, and they were still doing what they were doing. They were still contributing to the invention of diseases. --British Novelist John le Carré, Democracy Now!, November 25, 2010So, it's often like this - - -
"U.S. Defense Sec. McNamara: "I was part of a mechanism..."
So governments are themselves such doom machines, ones over which we have even less control than we have over corporations. If you don't like a particular corporation, stop buying and paying for "its" products. If that's not enough, organize a boycott, etc. As Sam Walton pointed out,
"There is only one boss--the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." --Sam WaltonWhen there is constant inexorable FREE market competition (which, thanks to governments, we often don't have), businesses are very very sensitive to their customers.
What's the equivalent control over government doom machines? If we don't stop financing them with our tax money, there are only things like this - - -
What can be done?
And, if that doesn't work, as U.S. PresideNT John F. Kennedy observed, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." RELATED:
What You Mean "We" Pale-face
UNCOMMON SENSE: Why Goliath is the Underdog #001
FREE-TRADE: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
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7 comments:
I have lived my political life as an outsider since 1980 when I quit the Libertarian Party. I no longer believed the state was reformable or redeemable. I believed it was the symptom of social decay, of personal decadence, of renouncement of personal responsibility in favor of being ruled by those who promised "to protect & serve".
I refused to be part of self-subjugation, self-sacrifice by forfeit of my sovereignty. I wanted to self-govern. I wanted rights, not empty promises and betrayal by those in whom the majority concentrated all political power. I hoped the public would wake up and stop their denial of what they had done to themselves and all freethinkers who saw the destructiveness of the worldwide political paradigm. And they are, thanks to the internet. But will it be soon enough? Or will a new "dark age" obliterate the "age of enlightenment"?
Since our technology has outpaced our political growth our species is in danger of self-destructing. Can a new paradigm of non-violent politics, of a voluntary social system, be adopted before self-annihilation? Can reason replace force? Can people learn from their past failures with violence to trust their fellows to be free to choose? Or is authoritarianism to remain our means to every end...until the end?
The answer is a lot simpler than most folks think. But also difficult. Large groups are nearly always eventually taken over by psychopaths.
Here's the BIG picture - - -
What Went Wrong With The Worldwide Socialist Revolutions
Anonymous:
I have read your analysis over & over, thinking about how it applies to a solution to authoritarianism. I cannot see it. I see small groups, e.g., the Amish, prospering, but not always. Some Amish communities are failing badly. It might be claimed a family or person can just secede, but that doesn't solve the problem for the rest, and it doesn't even solve it for the secessionist if there is nowhere else to go.
The problem is groupthink, a collectivist mindset, no independent thought, and even if there were no destructive belief held by them it is still an inhuman social condition. It will not end well. It is a psychologically impaired society. How does it get well? Or, failing a group change, how do a few break free and realize their potential?
Why is it so easy to sell superstition but not freethought? One destroys, the other creates.
Well, voluntaryist, it's not EXACTLY "group think" but that's close enough. Here are a couple of things that might help - - -
"The white world puts all the power at the top, Nerburn. ... When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think."
"In your churches there is someone at the top. In your schools, too. In your government. In your business. There is always someone at the top and that person has the right to say whether you are good or bad. They own you.
... "When you came among us, you couldn't understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. ... Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too. Even though you hated your cages you believed in them. ...
"Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn't look out, they would make us live in a world of cages, too. --Lakota elder Dan, Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002, pg.157
AND there's this antidote - - -
What You Mean ‘We,’ Paleface?
Is the worldwide political system sustainable?
By "system" I mean the worldwide political paradigm: accepting the use of initiated violence as moral/necessary. It is neither. But this worldwide superstition persists since the dawn of civilization except in a few native American cultures. A few tribes did not force majority vote on all. One could openly dissent and not be bound by group policy. Not so in most cultures. Every law, however irrational, brutal, or immoral is forced on all, in theory, and mainly with the support of the masses. That is unsustainable, as we see in the slow crumbling of all civilizations by social decay (Roman Empire took 900 years).
Don't get distracted by the symptoms. If you want permanent change seek the root cause of social disintegration, i.e., the politics of violent social interactions. It is not seen in the private sector because it's not tolerated. It's considered immoral, antisocial. But in the public sector, a person is considered a "citizen" to be ruled by initiation of violence. The "innocent until proven guilty" is an illusion promoted by rulers. A citizen can be shot to death at the whim of a ruler. There are only two societal divisions, ruled/rulers, citizens (civilians) and govt. authorities.
Good questions and observations, Voluntarist!
Gonna try for a short answer but no guarantees - - -
First, it's not just a few tribes that didn't do coercive democracy but virtually all of them until they got taken over by what some folks now label "psychopaths." Our small-group ancestors simply wouldn't put up with being told what to do.
You can see what happens when "we" begin to allow larger groups to be imagined into existence and taken seriously here:
What Went Wrong With The Worldwide Socialist Revolutions - LewRockwell
And as far as referring to politicians as "Psychopaths," well - - -
The Startling Accuracy of Referring to Politicians as 'Psychopaths' - The Atlantic
lrw
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