Photo by Tamara Gore on Unsplash
I oppose all violence but it may be impossible to save people who are this stupid.
The proper objective is to prevent evil actions and to enact benevolent ones.
But ordinary people everywhere are angry, and anger makes them stupid. In a similar way, greed and power lust makes the privileged elites stupid.
We’d all better get smart — and quick.
As a species, we are facing — or more accurately, refusing to face a series of ongoing crises. And we are running out of time.
Instead, the elites — who already own and control nearly everything — are fighting a war against everyone else. They want everything. Every goddam thing.
That’s their fatal flaw — unbounded greed and overreach. For them, there is no such thing as “enough.”
So, instead of enjoying lives of unearned and undeserved luxury and leisure, they ruthlessly attack the “have nots.”
There will be consequences.
Their Worst Behavior and Our Best
Struggling people do not and will not keep their problems to themselves. They never do.
Oh, they can be controlled for a time, perhaps even a long time.
But not forever. Events inevitably reach a breaking point. The American people, and perhaps people everywhere, are reaching that point. Everything will change because everything must change. It is literally impossible for us to continue as we have been.
We The People can make this better—a whole lot better—or oppose the elites in a stupid way that makes it worse for everybody. We can—if we lose our good sense—be nearly as bad as our foes.
It would be understandable. But it would be a mistake.
So far, we don’t have copycats for the CEO shooter. Yeah, we have real gripes about the health insurance industry. It is cruel and outright evil to maximize profits by denying people what they need to live. It’s institutional murder.
But with the elites being so evil, so excessively cruel, so…well, criminally insane…They are making it very difficult for us reasonable people to keep a lid on it.
Focusing On Community, Love and The Good
Our objective must not be to punish evil. We can and will dis-empower evil—quickly. There is a way to do this, a well-worn path to victory on that front. That’s nonviolent noncooperation. I (and others) have written about that extensively elsewhere.
We have begun the nonviolent dis-empowerment of the criminal American regime. And our actions will inspire people in other oppressed nations. Indeed, those other nations have more recent experience in People Power than we do. That good instinct of self-respect and using the power we have just needs to be re-ignited.
Americans are now in the streets, in growing numbers. We are vocal and visible. We are exposing evil, filming it, posting it for all to see. The explosion of cruelty by the regime? That’s desperation. They are losing and they know it and they are very, very afraid.
They should be. But we shouldn’t go in for the kill. We must be better and smarter. We must remove and displace evil, but not go on a binge of violent revenge. We must keep an eye on the prize—a world we want to live in.
We want to create THAT. We want everyone to enjoy living in this new world. This is all doable. We’ve lacked the vision and initiative to create this new world—until now. But this disaster of totalitarianism also created an opportunity. It forced us to wake up.
So, here we are: on the precipice of doom but also, if we choose wisely, on the edge of a wonderful new world of our own creation.
Let’s not be vengeful. Let’s not shoot people. Let’s not merely tear down the old, bad world. We can focus on the goodness we will create to replace the current nightmare.
What do we need? No obedience to elites giving orders. We ignore them. On their own, without our active cooperation, they are impotent old men. We needn’t fear or fight them. Some simple shunning will send them on their way.
They will be free to change, to join the land of the living and caring. They can—if they are able to waken from their narcissistic fever dream—join us. I know it’s hard to forgive and forget. We won’t forget because remembering is necessary to prevent the return of evil. And we may not even forgive. But we can move past all that.
I know how hard it is. I feel the anger myself. Anger is a very seductive emotion, especially when it’s justified. But it’s dangerous. We must be mindful of the big picture.
Imagine the world we could have, the world our children would inherit. It wouldn’t be lives of endless, futile labor. It wouldn’t be characterized by worry and fear. We wouldn’t always be exhausted. We wouldn’t be controlled like children with overbearing, and often cruel, parents.
Instead, we’d live like sensible, morally-grounded and free adults. We would be led by our brains and hearts and consciences. We’d be fully aware of the nature of life—that time is limited and how we live each day is what matters.
We wouldn’t live in countries, which are warring camps of flags surrounded by soldiers. That insanity would be over. We’d live in neighborhoods and communities. We wouldn’t be isolated, staring at our phones and ignoring the world that surrounds us.
We’d talk with each other, see the world as we walk through it. All the things we steal a few moments to enjoy today—playing catch with our children, taking a walk in Nature, sharing stories with friends—these would be our lives.
No cubicles and factories and commutes. We’d do some productive things, but only the sensible ones. We’d produce only what’s needed because we wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice our time (which is all that life is) doing useless work producing crap so that lazy fools can make money at our expense. We will remember those days (which is THESE days) as a distant nightmare.
As communities, we will produce food and medicine and other truly valuable things, the things of life. We will do this together, joyfully. We won’t do it the most efficient way, because so-called efficiency was destroying our Earth. We will do it cooperatively and sensibly and in a way that respects and preserves our biosphere.
The variety of ways that we will produce food (and other things) will be inherently more resilient. Because when you do everything one way, for efficiency and profit, it’s a way that damages the planet and—with a single disruption—causes widespread deprivation and suffering.
When you do important things multiple ways, a disruption of energy or food creates a problem but not a crisis.
We are all working too hard, exhausting ourselves and living with crushing stress FOR NOTHING. Only because “that’s the way we do things.”
We must not be played by the elites—we must not obey them, OR destroy everything by opposing them in a foolish vengeful way.
Let’s look to each other. Let’s look ahead. Let’s do what we need to do today—use nonviolent noncooperation to disempower evil. But also, to build the closest thing to paradise that we can create.
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