This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 20th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
One of the tragic flaws of the human race is that the mass of people are wholly unable to see the big picture, which gives a powerful advantage to people and institutions wise enough and patient enough to invest their energies in a long game. While many people can recognize the immediate problems with some new, bad law (which is to say most of them, since virtually all the necessary laws were made long ago), they are completely unable to grasp how it fits in to the big picture. The purpose of government is to concentrate power in the hands of a few, and the purpose of getting involved in government is to be one of that few. And while the ways in which different politicians conceive of exercising and expanding that power may vary somewhat by individual and party, together all of these actions add up like countless threads in one vast fabric of tyranny.
Bureaucracy (the form of government firmly established in the US and UK) is essentially government by nobody; no matter who holds power at any given time, the whole amounts to a colossal, blind, amorphous entity whose only purpose is to grow and increase its grip on everything in its reach, especially people. One of its most potent mechanisms to accomplish this is what I call universal criminality, which is the establishment of…
…so many complex, broad, vague, mutually contradictory and intrusive laws that every single person is in violation of at least some of them at any given time. Then when any “authority” from the chief executive down to the lowliest cop wants to teach one of the peons a lesson, all he has to do is find a law to charge him with and the machine then proceeds to grind him up psychologically, financially, politically and often physically.
The machine sometimes even acts (seemingly) by itself due to the processes which were previously established; this can be seen whenever there is some awful prosecution that nobody is willing to take credit for, and officials stand around using words like “unfortunate” and excusing their inaction with tautologies like “the law is the law”. But to a large degree, they really are being honest about their inability to rescue a victim from the gears: it took hordes and generations to build this great Moloch, and it would take the concerted efforts of many thousands to dismantle it. Once a law or policy has been created for use against one group, the precedent it sets is gradually increased to affect others the original instigators never intended or even considered; single-minded fanatics with agendas like “decency” or “women’s empowerment” or “the children” never, ever understand that the weapons they demand for their “champion” today will not disintegrate with his regime, but will be inherited by his successors in years to come, and that the noose which fits the necks of “conservatives” will suit equally well to hang “liberals” (and vice-versa).
Over the last few centuries, would-be rulers slowly came to realize that sex laws were especially useful for establishing absolute control; before that such laws were largely concerned with maintaining public order and the purity of bloodlines. But since virtually everyone has sexual impulses, and many if not most people commit some sort of sexual indiscretion from time to time, sex laws are among the most effective methods of establishing universal criminality (which probably accounts for their increasing popularity over the last few decades). If all men can be vilified as “rapists”, “potential rapists” or supporters of “rape culture”, it’s easy to keep them under control; women, however, are a little more complicated. While underage women are effectively neutralized by classifying them as passive, asexual “children”, and any adult woman with a public or social life is vulnerable to accusations of “prostitution”, adult women with very private, monogamous sex lives are harder to target.
Fortunately for the control freaks, Nature burdened women with a built-in and highly exploitable weakness, namely pregnancy: the typical woman who has any sex at all will eventually end up pregnant, at which point she becomes uniquely vulnerable to state control via the child. While in pre-industrial times dependent children were basically classed as the property of their parents, in the past century they have been increasingly defined as the property of the state; a mother is therefore classified as the custodian of state property, and it’s a small matter to control her by threatening to take that property away. Because this is such a powerful tool of control, the state has worked diligently to maximize its period of absolute ownership by defining all legal minors as “children”, then pushing the upper age limit up and the lower age limit down to the period before birth, an historically-unprecedented power grab made possible by modern technology and expanding legal precedent. And so we get abominations like this:
The Tennessee…legislature gave final approval…to a bill that allows women to be charged with assault if they have a pregnancy complication after using illegal drugs…Farah Diaz-Tello…with National Advocates for Pregnant Women [said]…“The law…in no way limits the prosecution to misdemeanor assault, nor does it limit the prosecution to women who are illegally taking narcotics”…In other words, any woman who gives birth to a baby with health problems, or who loses a pregnancy at any stage, could be subject to criminal investigation, “because criminal investigation is the only way to rule out an unlawful act”…The most severe crime a pregnant woman could…be charged with under the new law is aggravated assault, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison…
Women in Mississippi, Indiana, Alabama, Utah, Louisiana, Texas and El Salvador have already been charged under similar laws; women in Wisconsin, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, DC, England and Brazil have been subjected to shocking human rights abuses using similar logic; and politicians in New South Wales and Queensland have demanded similar control over pregnant women’s lives. Nor does the nightmare end at birth:
Prosecutors successfully argued that a grieving mother was in fact a killer…[because] prescription painkillers [supposedly] tainted her breast milk and caused her infant’s death. Her sentence for this tragic accident…is 20 years in prison. Stephanie Green…was injured in a debilitating car accident…[and] also suffered from fibromyalgia…[so] she took doctor-prescribed morphine…At six weeks old, her daughter, Alexis…stopped breathing…it was determined that the baby had morphine in her system…there is little scientific evidence that morphine can gather in breast milk to toxic levels…Prosecutors [claimed] she “worked the system” to get her pain pills, did not keep all of her doctors in the loop, and should have known better…
Of course, birth control can prevent a woman’s coming into possession of state property to start with, so naturally many of those in power want to control access to it or at least hide information about it, but really that’s just gilding the lily; the majority of women do eventually want children, bringing them (and the fathers of those children) firmly under state control. Those who don’t want children usually still have sex lives, and everybody has to eat; once politicians realized the public would accept the morally-absurd concept of consensual crime, the achievement of universal criminality was just a matter of time.
Many governments particularly like broad laws that can criminalize the the majority, if not all of the population, its easy then to selectively enforce those laws to deal with those sections of society that are inclined to disobedience.
“mass of people are wholly unable to see the big picture”.
I’m never entirely sure if they are naturally incapable or if its a state that’s induced (biased media).
Have been looking at MBTI recently, I wonder if this is a problem with specific types over others?
Yes, I think it’s part of the problem. I have to confess I never believed in psychological shit and when they initially tested me in the Navy – i thought the MTBI was bullshit. However …
I have always tested as an INTP and all the characteristics pretty much nail me … the lack of trust for government, rigid hierarchies and politics, etc.
I think anyone who has traits that tend to push them toward making up their minds based on FEELINGS – are particularly vulnerable to the government trap.
I think it’s natural. Humans are a tribal animal, like the other apes. We tend to crave authority and kowtow to strong leaders. Individualists who neither crave to be led nor to tell others what to do are a small minority.
“I was just thinking about something I heard once. About monkey tribes. Monkeys create very organized tribes, with a leader at the top. But, once every few years without fail… …a heretic monkey will appear in the tribe. A heretic monkey? This heretic will leave his tribe and try to join another. The monkeys of this new tribe will try to keep it out… …literally beating it until it`s bloody. ” — Irresponsible Captain Tylor
I’m ISTJ most of the time, though occasionally an N creeps in.
Myers-Briggs is based on Jungian theories of extroversion and introversion: theories, ideas etc, but their empirical basis has long been questioned. And mom and daughter invented the MBTI in the kitchen, if not quite on the back of a fag*-pack, then something close to it.
it’s hard to know just how accurate it really is, but its easy enough to administer and has a lot of following among business who are trying to determine if a job applicant is suitable.
*fag is UK slang for cigarette.
The US Navy was “invented” in a revolutionary pub … and it kicks ass!
The more outrageously random, and unjust the prosecution, the bigger silencing effect it has on the population.
I don’t know why people don’t understand this. Gridlock is a GOOD THING – it’s what the founders intended. It’s why there are two houses of Congress – plus a Chief Executive and they all have to sign off on a new law … except in the case of a veto by the POTUS – and then Congress must have an extraordinarily large number of votes to override him. Crybaby John Boehner – always goes to the White House to see what kind of deal he can strike with the Emperor. Fuck that – the way it’s supposed to work is Boehner is supposed to pass legislation and pass it to the Senate – if they don’t like it – tough titty little kitty. Back to the drawing board.
Anybody notice that the only things the Republicans and Democrats can agree on are STUPID liberty killing laws? Oh yeah – they’re great at hiking taxes and passing new laws to regulate the internet – but the minority of laws that DO make sense – they never agree on. One in particular is cutting government spending – they’ll never agree to cut it … because none of ’em want to – including the ones who SAY they do.
I swear to GOD man – don’t take this the wrong way – I don’t want people to get killed. But if someone blew up the IRS building in the middle of the night one night when everyone was out of the building – I would cheer whoever it was that did it. Same for BATF. If that idiot in North Korea ever gets a nuke that he can sling across the Pacific at us – may it please land on Washington, DC? Rather than any other place – I mean, if he’s gonna launch one anyway?
I’m way past ready to upgrade! Hoooah! 😀
I’ve joked to a few friends of mine that, if Al Qaeda REALLY wants to acquire a nuclear weapon to detonate in the continental U.S., they should just start a Kickstarter project to raise the funds and promise that, once they acquire the nuke, they’ll detonate it in Washington DC while the Congress and the President/VP are there.
As a Stretch Goal, they could promise to do it while the head of the TSA, ATF, NSA or IRS are addressing Congress.
“I swear to GOD man – don’t take this the wrong way – I don’t want people to get killed. But if someone blew up the IRS building in the middle of the night one night when everyone was out of the building – I would cheer whoever it was that did it. ”
I can certainly understand the visceral thrill and satisfaction that would come from that. But how long would it last? Unless the reason for the IRS’s existence is removed as well, it would just be a matter of time until the new, bigger and better (and more heavily guarded) IRS building gets erected because the government wants to show “we won’t let them defeat US!” And in the meantime, just imagine the crackdown that would likely occur.
I think your disclaimer is also important. I don’t want people to get killed either, and that’s why I cannot get behind people who talk about starting a revolution and ‘burning the system down’. Would I be wrong in thinking that one of the goals of the libertarian movement is to protect the innocent from death and destruction to allow their practice of liberty? If so, how would starting a revolution that is more likely than not going to spiral out of control work to that end?
Believe me, I do not like “the system” as it stands now. However, I’d like to see it dismantled, carefully, methodically and irrevocably, instead of blown up. Something akin to F.W. De Klerk brokering the end of apartheid in South Africa or Gorbachev managing the collapse of the USSR. In my opinion, it might just take a strong personality to get the ball rolling. Perhaps someone campaigning for President as the next hip, cool Obama who upon entering the Oval Office reveals that he’s actually going to govern as a Ron Paul (for lack of a better name).
In the 1988 remake of the Blob, the Blob was created by the government for use as a biological weapon.
Reblogged this on Sable Aradia, Priestess & Witch and commented:
Food for thought.
[…] Property of the State. […]
If it is a nameless, faceless, unresponsive bureaucracy, ask yourself a question: why is it that way, and how did it get that way?
“The fault, my dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
We have grown lazy, inattentive, and unwilling to take the time and effort to change the way government does things, especially since 9/11. Protecting us is no reason for government to pull back into its little hidey-hole and keep everything secret. In fact, it is a clarion call for them to become more open than ever before. Republics, as Madison pointed out, fall not to external forces, but to inner decay. And, I would add, the first sign of this decay is an increase in a government’s secretiveness.
To quote Teddy Roosevelt, “We are the government; you and I.” If it becomes unresponsive we have a right to not only change it, but a duty.
This however does not mean a violent overthrow of the government. The Revolution of 1800, which swept the Federalists out of Power and put Jefferson’r Democratic-Republicans in, was a peaceful revolution, give or take a couple of fistfights, and one or two riots.
We need the same sort of Revolution today: Not Aux barricades! but get out the vote. We need to put anti-establishment types in the seats of Power, not billionaires like the Koch Bros. et al.