Question Authority!

 J. B. Shurk has written an article at the American Thinker today that shows that the Power of the Powerless Is Real. The main advantage that the tyrants have is that they are few in number and therefore can formulate a united front. The disadvantage for us is that we are many and it is hard to get us all on the same page. Which points to the fact that citizenry can not participate in the lies of the tyrant. Of course, first we have to realize that tyranny is comming...no, has come.

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight. It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu. It has been a nightmare decades in the making. The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance. Free speech is treated as dangerous. Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship. Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement. Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State. Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them. The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends. Religious expression is outlawed. Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed. Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing." Coercion has replaced consent. Victimhood has replaced virtue. Conformity has replaced individuality. "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking. "Social justice" has replaced real justice. And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot. The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost. That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here. It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots. It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work. And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here, but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

So, remember the disadvantage of the citizens? It is that we are many individuals. But interestingly, the despots are terrified of us, which points to the fact that they are not as strong as they want us to believe.

Western governments are terrified of their people today. They are terrified of what their people believe, or else they wouldn't feel compelled to criminalize thoughts as "hateful." They are scared to death of what their people might say to each other, or else they wouldn't engage in mass surveillance and blatant censorship. They are fearful of free and fair elections, or else they wouldn't work so hard to manipulate and undermine them. And they are absolutely petrified of a future where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies free their citizens from the consolidated control imposed by central banks and spendthrift treasuries. If discouraged and demoralized Westerners doubt that they have more power right now than their governments could ever possess, then take a hard look at the obscene lengths to which those governments have gone in order to maintain and preserve their jurisdiction. Embracing tyranny under the sickening pretense of "preserving democracy" betrays just how weak these governments have become!

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Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice! It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan. What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system. And therein lies the key to our salvation.

Question the lies, and you question the system. Push back against the State's monopoly over truth, and you cripple the State's legitimacy. Celebrate individuality, and you fracture the mental prison of groupthink. Live "in truth," and you erode the control of State dogma. When people realize that they individually strengthen the State by submitting to its lies, people then understand that the whole artifice of the system survives purely through their individual consent. At that point, it becomes obvious that the small number of people at the top of the system are not really in control at all. It is the large population — psychologically abused and tormented by their government — that wield power when they choose. Once the powerless have this epiphany, they alone control their destiny.

I remember the 1960s, when the slogan of the Left was "Question Authority!" Maybe we should adopt the slogan for ourselves.