1984: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Mon May 2 02:37:47 PDT 2022


> USA not in Kansas anymore,
> Liberty purged from all its living places.
> Wake up, it's time to create those places again.


The Illusion Of Freedom: We're Only As Free As The Government Allows

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_illusion_of_freedom_were_only_as_free_as_the_government_allows

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/supreme_court_allows_police_to_use_warrantless_real_time_cell_phone_data_to_sweep_americans_into_massive_digital_data_dragnet
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/supreme_court_sees_nothing_wrong_with_prolonged_warrantless_spying_of_ones_home_by_police_using_hidden_cameras
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/the_right_to_political_expression_under_fire_protesters_fined_3000_under_florida_citys_ban_on_indecent_political_speech_on_signs_clothing



    “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re
privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of
temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know
that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later,
the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t
care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or
your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing.
Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

    - George Carlin

We’re in a national state of denial.

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game
with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to
think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a
free people.

Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared
inclined to favor a high school football coach’s right to pray on the
field after a game, the high court let stand a lower court ruling that
allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements
through their personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a
massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those
who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a death row
inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands on him in the
execution chamber, it refused to stop police from using hidden cameras
to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities
outside their home over an extended period of time.

For those who have been paying attention, there’s a curious pattern
emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant of those who want
to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that doesn’t
challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on
a football field or in an execution chamber.

On the other hand, dare to disagree with the government about its war
crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police brutality, and you’ll
find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded an extremist.

The U.S. government is particularly intolerant of speech that reveals
the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and
encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many
injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest
victim of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in
the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the
Espionage Act for daring to access and disclose military documents
that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as
reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of
civilian deaths.

Even political protests are fair game for prosecution. In Florida, two
protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming
stating “F—k Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that
violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other
graphic displays.

The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but don’t mess with the
U.S. government.

In this way, the government, having appointed itself a Supreme and
Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious
freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the
Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize
the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government
surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property
subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to
due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading
your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every
other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would
be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families,
our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away
at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for
ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just
laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy
where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our
very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and
corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump
principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its
way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry
greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above
the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms,
and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re
slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real
control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful
commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new
citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and
automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of
thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and
utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do
everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think,
what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate
with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police
state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it
what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal
responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome
obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a
society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic
instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation,
militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary
detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are
mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated
like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every
direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural,
educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us,
freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too
often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety,
security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic
violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the
large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and
pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches
and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party
bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to
“government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is
unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set
itself beyond the reach of the law.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption
and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard
for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego
trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial
presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by
legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested,
distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing
to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the
Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and
grown drunk on power.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who
stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government
are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches
of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive
branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a
judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards
government entities and corporations.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms,
our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the
citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule
of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little
else.

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked
the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in
which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful,
and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government
agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict
mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the
government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the
government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen
because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is
a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day,
aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art
of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place
and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate
gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are
money and power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the
American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair
Diaries, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the
American people.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what
awaits us at the end.


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