Playing The Government’s Game: When It Comes To Violence, We All Lose
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”
- John Lennon
Yes, the government is corrupt.
Yes, the system is broken. By broken, I mean it’s “dysfunctional, gridlocked, and, in general, incapable of doing what needs to be done.”
Yes, the government is out of control and overreaching on almost every front.
Yes, the government’s excesses—pork barrel spending, endless wars, etc.—are pushing the nation to a breaking point.
Yes, many Americans are afraid. Who wouldn’t be afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government?
Yes, the citizenry has little protection against standing armies (domestic and military), invasive surveillance, marauding SWAT teams, an overwhelming government arsenal of assault vehicles and firepower, and a barrage of laws that criminalize everything from vegetable gardens to lemonade stands.
Yes, in the eyes of the American surveillance state, “we the people” are little more than suspects and criminals to be monitored, policed, prosecuted and imprisoned. As former law professor John Baker, who has studied the growing problem of overcriminalization, noted, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.”
Yes, the United States of America is not the democracy that is purports to be, but rather an oligarchy ruled by a wealthy corporate elite.
Yes, politics is a sham. Average Americans have largely lost all of the conventional markers of influencing government, whether through elections, petition, or protest, have no way to impact their government, no way to be heard, and no assurance that their concerns are truly being represented.
Yes, the Obama administration’s efforts to identify, target and punish “domestic extremists” through the use of surveillance, corporate spies, global police and the Strong Cities network sends a troubling message to all Americans that any opposition to the government—no matter how benign—will be viewed with suspicion and will likely be treated with hostility.
Yes, we have reached a tipping point. The freedoms we once enjoyed are increasingly being eroded: speech, assembly, association, privacy, etc.
Yes, something needs to be done about the government’s long train of abuses, power grabs, erosion of private property, and overt acts of tyranny.
Yes, many Americans, increasingly dissatisfied with the government and its heavy-handed tactics, are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.”
No, violence is not the answer.
A handful of armed protesters are not going to fix what’s broken in the government by forcing a showdown with government agents. In fact, this kind of scenario plays right into the government’s hands by provoking a violent confrontation that allows government officials to sanctimoniously justify their use of surveillance, military weaponry and tactics, and laws criminalizing guns and hate speech in order to target anyone who even vaguely resembles an “anti-government extremist.”
Take the latest spectacle in Oregon, for example.
Armed activists led by brothers Ryan and Ammon Bundy have occupied a federal wildlife refuge. The Bundys (infamous for their 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights on federal land in Nevada) are protesting the government’s prosecution of two ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, who have been sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly setting back fires on government-owned land in Oregon. (Mind you, the government owns more than half the land in Oregon.)
Few conflicts are ever black and white, and this situation involving the Bundys, the Hammonds and the BLM is no exception. Yet the issue is not whether the Hammonds are arsonists as the government claims, or whether the Bundys are anti-government extremists as the government claims, or even whether ranchers should have their access to government-owned lands regulated as the BLM claims.
No, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the larger question at play here is who owns—or controls—the government: is it “we the people” or private corporations?
Are American citizens shareholders of the government’s vast repositories, or are we merely serfs and tenant farmers in bondage to corporate overlords? Do we have a say in how the government is run, or are we merely on the receiving end of the government’s dictates? What recourse do we have if we don’t approve of the government’s actions?
Almost every struggle between the citizenry and the government is, at its core, about whether we are masters or slaves in this constantly evolving relationship with the government.
- Do parents have a right to allow their children to play outside alone, or must they abide by the government’s dictates about how to raise their families?
- Do homeowners have a right to manage their private property as they see fit, whether it’s with solar panels, vegetable gardens or rain barrels, or must they first seek the permission of the government?
- Do activists have a right to freely associate with one another, assemble in public, and voice their opinions publicly or privately, or must they be constrained by what the government and its corporate partners deem to be appropriate?
- Do residents of a community have to obey whatever a police officer says, lawful or not, or do Americans have a right to resist an unlawful order without getting shot or arrested?
It doesn’t matter what the issue is - whether it’s a rancher standing his ground over grazing rights, a minister jailed for holding a Bible study in his own home, or a community outraged over police shootings of unarmed citizens - these are the building blocks of a political powder keg.
Much like the heated protests that arose after the police shootings in Ferguson and Baltimore, there’s a subtext to the Oregon incident that must not be ignored, and it is simply this: America is a pressure cooker with no steam valve, and things are about to blow.
This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.
As psychologist Erich Fromm recognized in his insightful book, On Civil Disobedience: “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary). He acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle.”
Let me say it again: an armed occupation of a government property only plays right into the government’s hands and increases its power over the citizenry. Yet it speaks to a growing tension over how to bring about meaningful change when dealing with a government that refuses to listen to its citizens.
This is what happens when people get desperate, when citizens lose hope, and when lawful, nonviolent alternatives appear pointless.
Whether the parties involved are blameless or not, whether they’re using the wrong tactics or not, whether their agendas are selfless or not, this is the face of a nation undergoing a nervous breakdown on all fronts.
Now all that remains is a spark, and it need not be a very big one, to set the whole powder keg aflame.
The government has been anticipating and preparing for such an explosion for years. For example, in 2008, a U.S. Army War College report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order”—all related to dissent and protests over America’s economic and political disarray. Consequently, predicted the report, the “widespread civil violence would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”
In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.
Incredibly, both reports use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably.
That same year, the DHS launched Operation Vigilant Eagle, which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” These reports indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist. Under such a definition, John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams—all of whom protested and passionately spoke out against government practices with which they disagreed—would be prime targets.
Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Obama has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist. Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the UN’s Strong Cities Network with its globalized police forces, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.
Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.
Hopefully you’re getting the picture, which is how easy it is for the government to identify, label and target individuals as “extremist.”
All that we have been subjected to in recent years—living under the shadow of NSA spying; motorists strip searched and anally probed on the side of the road; innocent Americans spied upon while going about their daily business in schools and stores; homeowners having their doors kicked in by militarized SWAT teams serving routine warrants—illustrates how the government deals with people it views as potential “extremists”: with heavy-handed tactics designed to intimidate the populace into submission and discourage anyone from stepping out of line or challenging the status quo.
What we’re grappling with is a double standard in what the government metes out to the citizenry, and how the citizenry is supposed to treat the government.
SWAT teams can crash through our doors without impunity, but if we dare to defend ourselves against unknown government assailants, we’ll be shot or jailed.
Government agents can confiscate our homes, impound our cars and seize our bank accounts on the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing, but we’ll face jail time and fines for refusing to pay taxes in support of government programs with which we might disagree.
Government spies can listen in on our phone calls, read our emails and text messages, track our movements, photograph our license plates, and even enter our biometric information into DNA databases, but those who dare to film potential police misconduct will likely get roughed up by the police, arrested, and charged with violating various and sundry crimes.
This phenomenon is what philosopher Abraham Kaplan referred to as the law of the instrument, which essentially says that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the scenario that has been playing out in recent years, we the citizenry have become the nails to be hammered by the government’s battalion of laws and law enforcers: its police officers, technicians, bureaucrats, spies, snitches, inspectors, accountants, etc.
This is exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution feared: that laws and law enforcers would be used as tools by a despotic government to wage war against the citizenry.
That is exactly what we are witnessing today: a war against the American citizenry.
Is it any wonder then that Americans are starting to resist?
(43 votes)
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EXCELLENT!
No.
The vampire squid taught me all I needed to know about how to avoid any taxes.
How are you cats avoiding taxes - working flea market stands and renting?
#rancherlivesmatter?
How about #AllAmericansMatter?
There are no solutions ... most of the libertarian rebels are at least dimly aware that any new set or rules, any new government, will be overrun with the same old bullshit, the same old greedy, power-hungry mongrels taking charge and bleeding everyone else, sooner or later.
There is not going to be an organized armed insurrection ... far too many individuals have not even learned how to speak or write basic english.... nobody at all knows how to give a good speech and rally people around him to promote positive change ....no one follows orders or knows at all how to work together for a common goal ...
But what there IS going to be is "A Long Day';s Journey Into Night" ... breakdown of basic morals, basic cooperative behavior of any kind, into a seething, angry mess of individual trouble-makers ... nothing but suicide bombers for as far as the eye can see, each vying with all of the others to get his moment in the limelight, his moment where everyone pays attentiion to his brief spark and consummation by fire ... and the whole society devolves into madness, mud, destruction and death ....
There is not going to be an organized armed insurrection
Everything in its time. Whatever is needed, will happen when it is supposed to.
The ball is in the slavemasters' court, and they don't like it.
I suspect you to be the worst kind of troll. I reject your premise as it has no basis in fact. The scenario is yours alone, you have a right to your opinion. You must not be as informed as you think, if only because of the host of variables at play that you ignore.
I believe Americans are able to right the ship of state, with or without your help.
An old black man once told me when I was very young, around 14 (63 now), "There is a revolution comin' and right soon. With which side will you choose to fight?"
Like General George Armstrong Custer, I believe Mr. Whitehead has significantly under estimated the opposition (armed protesters). When SHTF a politicians life won't be worth two cents.
The federal government is a killing machine with billions spent to streamline the effectiveness of weapons and surveillance. They kill without remorse, efficiently.
Truly honest Patriots (Extremists for the indoctrinated) kill for a clear purpose (Defense) and act out of the respect for and protection of our Constitution, the LAW of the LAND and life. The majority accept the Constitution as such and resent any individual who would subvert or destroy it. Patriots have a passion today for truth and true equality and as such are woefully underestimated by TPTB.
This will not play out in any way we can predict.
The violence has come from the violent government.
The fire was the BLM trying to burn ranchers out.
Hammond set a backfire to protect his home, out buildings and livestock.
Many of the cattle were themselves burned as the BLM went around setting fires.
They were burning the much needed feed the cattle eat.
They said they didn't have the resources to put the fire out that had gotten out of control, yet they had 8 tanker trucks sitting next to the road with agents sitting around drinking coffee.
This is much worse than the load-mouth uninformed public is aware of.
They have put 100 ranchers out of business in this manner, including flooding their land by releasing massive amounts of water from the lake.
This fascist government needs to be burned to the ground and it will.
Tried to buy cigarettes at a Chevron statement and they would not sell to me because I didn't have my ID.
I am 61 yrs old, do you think I look 17?
So I said to the clerk, "Chevron how many kids were killed in the oil wars for Chevron. How much damage to the environment has Chevron spewed daily? By the way, let me see your ID, you don't look old enough to be selling cigs. This is about show me your papers."
CNN wanted to know what it would take to have the protesters go home.
It's too late to go home you fascist enablers.
Note to migrants: Don't come here, we are entering a civil war/revolution. This place is not safe for you, there are no safe spaces here now.
Thats the difference I believe people like you who are actually experiencing the unjustness... Real Americans!.. We know our government is destroying water supplies and doing damage all over the entire country at this point. OUR GOVERNMENT IS A DISEASE...
Dec 15, 2015 a former US Marine Schuyler Barbeau was arrested who was Cliven Bundy's bodyguard.
A FBI informant was trying to buy a gun from him and wanted to see it.
He was staying at an animal rescue ranch and the FBI busted in searched the whole property, broke down doors
and found an AR15 which had a barrel just under 16 inches. They looked for explosives and found none.The rancher said the FBI terrorized them
and the guy was very polite and peaceful. This was a message to the patriots sent by the fascist government.
When you google this almost all the articles send you to the Southern Poverty Law website.
go figure...
If too few people buy stuff from corporations, either because they don't want to or can't afford to, will corporations be profitable? Can failed economics, founded on fiat money and property redistribution, print profits? The masters of the universe need to tell the sheeple because we don't have the sense to ask the questions much less understand the answers.
If we would just take a stand and eliminate all liberals, we would not have these problems. We would be problem-free if everyone was a Republican. Isn't there some way we can make this happen? Do we really need more than one political party?
You have to break it to fix it, like a potter
If viloence is not the answer then why is .gov so hot on taking away our gun rights? I think this is ultimately the ONLY thing they are afraid of and respect, the power of the people to forcefully resist their predation.
All I have heard for 7 years is "Obama is going to take our guns!" Grow up. It has not happened, it will not happen. Find a new tune.
Excellent article, and I agree that direct confrontation with the government--whether non-violent as the Occupy Movement, MLK, or Jill Stein, or violent as the Shay Rebellion--is counterproductive and suicidal. But there is another form of limited violence that CAN set us all three:
"One day in the not-too-distant future, dissidents might choose to fight back against the criminal syndicate that rules most of the world now. On that day, everything would depend on the strategy they choose. To avert slavery, perpetual war, obscene income inequalities, moral and spiritual decay, brazen corruption, environmental degradation, and perhaps even human extinction, they might contemplate copying the syndicate’s own effective strategy of bullying, blackmailing, and killing influential opponents. The present article provides a brief historical sketch of that strategy."
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/06/17/the-al-sabbah-brigade/
In the meantime, I'm crossing my fingers that the Oregon standoff doesn't end in a massacre.
The "government" literally sets fire to the country, and people have no say. If you have no right of redress it's just a matter of time before the State, and its "government", destroys itself.
Lots of self styled freedom-movement-leaders keep exhorting people not to be violent, because they say that will give the Statists what they want. First, is that even a remote possibility, the idea of armed resistence and open attacks on "the government" at this early stage? Second, why do they think the State will survive an attack against the people when it does inevitably lash out?
There are far too many people steeped in this 1960's style activism who think they are leading some version of a modern hippie movement. Given that much of the useless protest and so-called counterculture was a creation of the State in the first place, a sort of brush fire to stop a real fire in its own right, why follow that model and play a part in the State's plans? Why stir the pot and tell everyone to keep calm?
Let them fail. Be ready with your alternative when they do. We can live without "banks", and in fact must do so to be free.
Every time a "bank" fails, an angel gets its wings.
Violence is not the problem. Initiating violence is the problem.
Yes. But the thing is, in a broad and ongoing way, violence has long since been initiated by the state.
We can argue over whether many given actions are wise - or winnable - but with rare exception will anyone be able to honestly argue the fact that the state initiated force.
They ARE force.
Times have sure changed
http://www.infowars.com/eric-holder-involved-in-armed-takeover-of-rotc-b...