I am sure that some people might feel offended by my use of the word “sheeple,” in referring to the obedient masses who support the government’s abuses and foreign aggressions, and I apologize to those who are offended. There is the view that calling some people “sheeple” is a way to dismiss them with contempt. But I am not contemptuous of ignorant followers of the State and supporters of its aggressions. I try to be sympathetic. I really do want to convince people to choose freedom rather than being serfs of the State.
But these days I am so cynical that I just feel this compulsion to refer to the “sheeple,” perhaps because there seem to be many more of them now than there ever was in my many years of life thus far. But I am contemptuous of government bureaucrats, because they are very dangerous people. Throughout history, more violence and aggressions have been committed and harm and deaths caused by government bureaucrats than by private individuals or groups. Government bureaucrats are deserving of our contempt.
Yesterday I linked to Arthur Silber’s post on the Afghanis’ reactions not just to Koran burnings but to the U.S. military’s continuing violence against them and the media’s covering up of the Afghanis’ real reasons for retaliations.
Silber also mentioned the controversy of the burning of the American flag as a matter of protest. Some people are offended by that. Many people are authoritarians and worship the federal government. To them, the flag represents “freedom,” “democracy,” “moral values,” etc, which is all a storybook fantasy. To others, the American flag may represent the illicit acts that our government has been committing against foreigners for decades, for a century, and what the U.S. government has been doing to us, its own people, as well.
To many people — believe it or not — the flag represents the government’s intrusions and encroachments on our freedom and our lives, via the Patriot Act, the IRS, FBI, NDAA, FCC, FTC, SEC, ADD, ADHD, DDT, CBS, MSNBC, and all the damage they have done to Americans. To many people, that damage and that tyranny are what the flag represents. Many people understand that truth and do not live in an irrational, idealistic fantasy world.
But to others, they are as offended by someone burning the American flag as the Afghanis are offended by a Koran being burned. However, being narcissists, these American exceptionalists can’t see that. Out of pure selfishness, millions of Americans are just clueless to how things are experienced by others. Hence, my cynicism.
And the other day I linked to my March 2010 article on how these U.S. elections are mere rearranging of deck chairs, which they are. Failure to understand the nature of centralization of power and compulsory monopoly of “authority” and control over others, and continuing to set up useless elections to further kick the can down the road will make the final crash and collapse just harder to live through.
Central planning is a flawed concept, practically and morally. Practically, it is impossible [.pdf] for anyone in charge to centrally plan any aspect of daily life of a large population, such as 300 million Americans currently suffering under Leviathan’s dictatorial grasp, and covering a territory as vast as the thousands of square miles of the United States of America. This does not and cannot work in any area of life, including retirement planning and management, health care, education, agriculture, charity, administration of justice, and especially “national security.”
Central planners lack the information throughout a vast territory and covering such a huge population that is necessary to plan those various aspects of life. In contrast, the more local control there is, and most importantly right down to each individual, the more efficient and practical such management and planning is, and the more in control over their own private lives each individual and each family is, and the less potential of abuse against the people by monopolist bureaucrats. Abuse of power is inherent in a system of monopoly and centralization.
Morally, in each individual is the inherent right of ownership of one’s own life, labor and honestly acquired property, and this right can’t be compromised by a community without the use of aggression, and aggression needs to be forbidden if a society wants to remain civilized. It is uncivilized to sacrifice the individual for the sake of serving the needs of the collective.
“But we need a central government for national security reasons,” say many people. Sorry, history shows that we really don’t. The system is set up so that only a few people are given the power and control over the protection of 300 million people from foreign aggression. This power is a monopoly that is compulsory on the inhabitants of the territory to use for that monopoly’s “protection” services.
The problem with the protection monopoly is that there are no competitors allowed to get in on the business of territorial protection. It is the pressures of that kind of competition that hold people accountable. Monopolists are not accountable. That is an awesome power. What we have seen, especially throughout the past century the more the central government has expanded in size and power, is those monopolists provoking foreigners and starting conflicts as a means of justifying always-expanding military budgets, and to pay off the military contractors who contribute heavily to politicians’ campaigns. Same thing with the banks.
For example, in the early 1990s, as the Cold War came to a crashing halt, there was no real need for a huge military budget, and in fact for any U.S. government provision of other countries‘ security. The budget should have been shrunk a great deal. But what did President George H.W. Bush do? He started his war against Iraq in 1990-91, and that caused a whole bunch of new problems, and then sanctions and no-fly zones that further provoked not just Iraqis but others in surrounding countries. Competing protection agencies in a market of free and open competition could not have been able to do what Bush did, or otherwise they would have been thrown in jail.
So, unfortunately, most Americans worship the centralized bureaucracy like some sort of god, and they obediently rally to the defense of their leaders, their rulers, and the people trust what their rulers are telling them, regardless of all the past lies that the people know all about, from World Wars I and II to Vietnam and Tonkin to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now on to Iran. There are so many Americans now who can’t imagine the possibility of their government bureaucrats actually lying to them or actually causing conflicts to get their support of unnecessary wars, such as with Iran. As Jacob Hornberger pointed out, many Americans will unthinkingly support their government, right or wrong.
Thanks to this addiction that so many people have to sitting in front of this “television machine,” as Mrs. Huntington would call it, the people are hypnotized by the monotonic buzzing sounds coming out of the mouths of mainstream newscasters and pundits as they propagandize for the worshiped rulers.
And also thanks to government schools. Yes, many people went to “private” schools, but given all the government requirements, mandates and government-formulated curricula that private schools must follow by law, most people are still educated, and indoctrinated, in government-controlled schools.
The hypnotized and propagandized people really believe their rulers in the rationalizations to start wars against other countries who never attacked us and who were of no threat to us. Because of the pathological narcissism that has grown so severely throughout America in the past 50 or 60 years, people see their government’s aggressions against foreigners as “defending our freedoms,” and not as the foreigners themselves see such aggressions: invasions, occupations, crimes against their people and their families, homes, businesses and property. “How dare those foreigners try to fight to defend themselves against our government’s aggressions!” To the narcissistic sheeple Americans (sorry), our government’s illicit aggressions onto foreign lands are “defense.” (The sheeple may change their minds when the drones and the assassinations will ultimately target them, and for political reasons, and to instill even more fear into the population, as our rights diminish more and more each day.)
And Iran is next for no good reason as well, which will cause further complications and destruction of the Middle East and Asia, and further bankrupting America as well. That is what the central planning monopolists in Washington will do, as they did to Iraq and Afghanistan and many other countries, as they also destroy the United States of America. And the sheeple will obediently support them.
“But Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map!” Not exactly. But the same gullible American doormats who fear a bunch of extremists “wiping Israel off the map” have no problem with wiping Iran off the map. Israelis good, Iranians bad. You see, in so many people’s fusion of their own identities with that of their centralized authority government, they are their government, that great institution of all that is good (despite its massive criminality over the past century), and they see the millions of Iranians, the civilians, as being their government and being responsible for the extremism and fanaticism of their rulers and their ayatollahs, and thus the Iranians deserve to be annihilated. On all these talk shows on the radio, I can’t believe the amount of collectivist thinking that gives people that superiority in numbers and in their merged identity with their all-powerful government. And the contempt so many people show toward these foreigners, the targets of one’s government’s aggressions.
Based on ignorance and a naive believing of what the manipulative central planners tell them, the obedient masses have contempt for their counterparts on those overseas territories who are themselves prisoners of their own governments’ aggressions. But while the people wallow in their ignorance and obedience and submission to the fools in charge in Washington, the real contempt being felt and expressed is by the rulers toward you, the people. But you can’t see that, because you’re too busy staring at a television machine getting hypnotized and drugged up on the State stenographers’ propaganda. So, the sheeple are in denial of their central planners’ contempt toward them. Central planners hold all the people in contempt, even their own supporters and campaign contributors to those whackjobs in charge. The rulers have contempt for Occupy Wall Street protesters, Tea Party protesters, antiwar activists and pacifists, everyone.
Americans need to break out of that psychological prison, because the more they think collectively and never question the State and its actions and never challenge its assertions, the more of a prison the people are letting the State keep them in, not just psychologically but physically as well. As I have written, we live in a police state now, and its getting worse by the day, and so many millions of Americans are so accepting of it. They should not, then, judge the Iranian government’s ill treatment of Iranians.
Before supporting more invasions of more countries overseas, and supporting the jailing of flag-burners and persecution of protesters against your government, you might want to take a more realistic view against who your real enemy is.
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