Lately I’ve found that I’m doing some of my best writing on Twitter, but since it’s an ephemeral medium I’m going to start reposting especially good tweet threads here. On Saturday, while we were watching the mass protests against Trump’s executive order preventing people from a number of predominantly-Muslim countries from entering the US even if they had green cards, I tweeted the following; the second paragraph was tweeted later in response to people who kept erroneously referring to the protests, and the actions of lawyers rushing out to help detainees pro bono, as “democracy” when in fact it was (the republican form of) democracy that created and empowered the very system which these people were fighting.
If I were the sort of person who found comfort in being right, I’d be very smug now that millions are waking up to the danger of giving more than a tiny amount of power to “leaders”. But since I’m NOT that kind of person, I’m just shaking my head. I’m not a seer or a brilliant analyst of mob psychology; I just understand that ALL humans are too flawed to be given power over others except in very limited circumstances & subject to revocation of that power by EACH individual subject to it. In other words, no person is morally bound to obey “authorities” merely because he or she happens to be physically located within imaginary lines on a map which those “authorities” claim belong to them. Donald Trump’s moral authority, or the moral authority of ANY politician, is exactly as legitimate as the moral authority of a tiger pissing on trees to mark its territory. In other words, one should be mindful that there’s a dangerous and irrational animal in the area which believes it has the “right” to do anything it wants to those within that territory, but that animal’s behavior doesn’t represent “justice” or a “social contract” or “divine right” or anything else but the predictable behavior of a violent animal with no understanding of what right & wrong actually mean. “Authorities”, like tigers, are best avoided unless they’re locked up in cages where they can’t maim others due to some whim, urge or emotion. What they are NOT to be given is any kind of obedience or deference except what’s minimally necessary to get away safely if one happens to run into one. And the same cautions apply whether it’s a Bengal tiger or a Siberian one, whether it has white, black or orange coloring behind the stripes, whether it’s male or female, or whether it’s actually a lion, leopard or jaguar instead of a tiger. And replacing one tiger with another one won’t change anything except what that particular individual tiger might be most enraged by.
Individuals acting toward some shared goal, without a formal structure enforced by violence, is not “democracy”; it’s anarchy. Grasp that. Those who think “anarchy” is evil need to look at these protests & lawyers voluntarily helping immigrants. THAT IS ANARCHY. So the next time some ass tells you about how we “need” government to prevent anarchy, remember these protests; the truth is, we need anarchy to protect us from government.
I thought the”tiger” in the time might have referred to this quote from JFK’ s inaugural address:
But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
Once again, this explains the problems I have with both sides of the political spectrum. May I remind the alt-right that Jeff Sessions supports censoring the Internet, which is also backed by Al Franken and Dianne Feinstein. In addition, Many “liberals”/progressives ignore that Bernie Sanders is as immigration restrictionist as Tom Tancredo.
Trump is reducing government, for real. And travel from certain countries is being restricted to block the entry of operatives from sinister governments. The protests and legal action opposing this are in turn being organized by a government faction. In other words, it’s government all the way down, because once people accept taxation the better part of the life-force of humanity is directed into government.
An accquaintance of mine once said of pervasive government monitoring “that the innocent have nothing to fear” to which I replied “Only while the governnent is a benign one. If that’s not the case, you have tyranny, empowering itself on the back of unthinking obedience.”
Wether that’s the tyranny of the One, of a multitude, of the Majority, or of Law or of Government or any combination thereof, one (the individual) cannot permit tyranny to go unchecked. It is your personal responsibility. It is thus *everyone’s* responsibility.
Nobody gets a pass on that obligation, or any form of governance can become just another robber tribe, any official a brutal tyrant.
The last time too many people as individuals abdicated that responsibility, 495 million people died before humanity got the balance back.
Expensive, horrific and destructive lessons must not be ignored.
I think it was Heinlein who said that “the phrase ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’ should strike fear into the hearts of the innocent everywhere.”
Well said. Anarchy with civilized people sharing enlightened values does work very well and is in fact the best system known. A carefully monitored administration that is limited in power to the lowest level possible can serve an useful additional role as coordination and management instance, but that is it.
Unfortunately not all people are civilized and some desperately want that power over others, while many others desperately want some strong person in power telling them what to do and think. Look at Turkey for an example where the latter craving is currently fueling a catastrophe. In the US things are not nearly that uniform or bad. (They are bad enough though.)
I do however have no idea how to prevent the wannabe “masters” and the willing “slaves” from building their dystopia whenever a chance presents itself. I don’t think education can do it. The mix of human personality types present in this world just seems too strongly disposed to this problematic model.
Finally, a sober presentation of why this keeps happening and will keep on happening for as long as humans roam the earth.
“I do however have no idea how to prevent the wannabe “masters” and the willing “slaves” from building their dystopia whenever a chance presents itself.”
I do. Ironically, it requires ruthless violence against those ‘wannabe “masters”‘ whenever they even mention a desire to have power, and basically placing their heads on pikes to warn any who might come after them. Either that or the wannabe masters must be enslaved to keep them from enslaving the rest.
Unfortunately, that is anathema to most people who simply wish to find a little bit of piece in the world. Sure, people might fantasize about it, but It takes a lot to be able to look at someone and end their life, even if it’s because you know that by letting them live you and how many others would suffer for it. Further, killing gets easier the more you do it, so would you be able to flip the switch off once all the wannabes are gone? That’s assuming you’ve accurately identified the wannabes in the first place.
Killing also exhausts you the longer you have to do it, making it easier for any wannabe who might survive to placate you into standing down and you still end up with a dystopia.
I think this is another Heinlein quote, but I’m paraphrasing “Left, right, conservative, liberal, all these labels are meaningless. People fit into one of two groups: those who want to control others and those who do not.”
Sounds like Heinlein, but he is missing the critical 3rd group: Those that want to be controlled, that want to have some “strong leader” in power to tell them what to think and how to live. Without this pretty large group, the wannabe leaders would have nothing to lead.