The State Of The Nation: A Dictatorship Without Tears
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” - Aldous Huxley
There’s a man who contacts me several times a week to disagree with my assessments of the American police state. According to this self-avowed Pollyanna who is tired of hearing “bad news,” the country is doing just fine, the government’s intentions are honorable, anyone in authority should be blindly obeyed, those individuals who are being arrested, shot and imprisoned must have done something to deserve such treatment, and if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t care whether the government is spying on you.
In other words, this man trusts the government with his life, his loved ones and his property, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same should move elsewhere.
It’s tempting to write this man off as dangerously deluded, treacherously naïve, and clueless to the point of civic incompetence. However, he is not alone in his goose-stepping, comfort-loving, TV-watching, insulated-from-reality devotion to the alternate universe constructed for us by the Corporate State with its government propaganda, pseudo-patriotism and contrived political divisions.
While only 1 in 5 Americans claim to trust the government to do what is right, the majority of the people are not quite ready to ditch the American experiment in liberty. Or at least they’re not quite ready to ditch the government with which they have been saddled.
As The Washington Post concludes, “Americans hate government, but they like what it does.” Indeed, kvetching aside, Americans want the government to keep providing institutionalized comforts such as Social Security, public schools, and unemployment benefits, fighting alleged terrorists and illegal immigrants, defending the nation from domestic and foreign threats, and maintaining the national infrastructure. And it doesn’t matter that the government has shown itself to be corrupt, abusive, hostile to citizens who disagree, wasteful and unconcerned about the plight of the average American.
For the moment, Americans are continuing to play by the government’s rules. Indeed, Americans may not approve the jobs being done by their elected leaders, and they may have little to no access to those same representatives, but they remain committed to the political process, so much so that they are working themselves into a frenzy over the upcoming presidential election, with contributions to the various candidates nearing $500 million.
Yet as Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House shows, no matter how much hope and change were promised, what we’ve ended up with is not only more of the same, but something worse: an invasive, authoritarian surveillance state armed and ready to eliminate any opposition.
The state of our nation under Obama has become more bureaucratic, more debt-ridden, more violent, more militarized, more fascist, more lawless, more invasive, more corrupt, more untrustworthy, more mired in war, and more unresponsive to the wishes and needs of the electorate. Most of all, the government, already diabolical and manipulative to the nth degree, has mastered the art of “do what I say and not what I do” hypocrisy.
For example, the government’s arsenal is growing. While the Obama administration is working to limit the public’s access to guns by pushing for greater gun control, it’s doing little to scale back on the federal government’s growing arsenal of firepower and militarized equipment.
In fact, it’s not just the Department of Defense that’s in the business of waging war. Government agencies focused largely on domestic matters continue to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to purchase SWAT and military-style equipment such as body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent nearly $2 million on riot helmets, defender shields, body armor, a “milo return fire cannon system,” armored mobile shields, Kevlar blankets, tactical gear and equipment for crowd control. The Food and Drug Administration purchased “ballistic vests and carriers.” The Environmental Protection Agency shelled out $200,000 for body armor. And the Smithsonian Institution procured $28,000 worth of body armor for its “zoo police and security officers.”
The national debt is growing. In fact, it’s almost doubled during Obama’s time in office to nearly $20 trillion. Much of this debt is owed to foreign countries such as China, which have come to exert an undue degree of influence on various aspects of the American economy.
Meanwhile, almost half of Americans are struggling to save for emergencies and retirement, 43% can’t afford to go more than one month without a paycheck, and 24% have less than $250 in their bank accounts preceding payday.
On any given night, over half a million people in the U.S. are homeless, and half of them are elderly. In fact, studies indicate that the homeless are aging faster than the general population in the U.S.
While the U.S. spends more on education than almost any other country, American schools rank 28th in the world, below much poorer countries such as the Czech Republic and Vietnam.
The American police state’s payroll is expanding. Despite the fact that violent crime is at a 40-year-low, there are more than 1.1 million persons employed on a full-time basis by state and local law enforcement in this country. That doesn’t include the more than 120,000 full-time officers on the federal payroll.
While crime is falling, the number of laws creating new crimes is growing at an alarming rate. Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. This adds up to more than 4,500 federal criminal laws and an even greater number of state laws.
The prison population is growing at an alarming rate. Owing largely to overcriminalization, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled since 1980 to 2.4 million, which breaks down to more than one out of every 100 American adults behind bars. According to The Washington Post, it costs $21,000 a year to keep someone in a minimum-security federal prison and $33,000 a year for a maximum-security federal prison. Those costs are expected to increase 30 percent by 2020. Translation: while the American taxpayer will be forced to shell out more money for its growing prison population, the private prison industry will be making a hefty profit.
The nation’s infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating. An estimated $1.7 trillion will be needed by 2020 to improve surface transportation, but with vital funds being siphoned off by the military industrial complex, there’s little relief in sight.
The expense of those endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion. That does not include the cost of military occupations and exercises elsewhere around the globe. Unfortunately, that’s money that is not being invested in America, nor is it being used to improve the lives of Americans.
Government incompetence, corruption and lack of accountability continue to result in the loss of vast amounts of money and weapons. A Reuters investigation revealed $8.5 trillion in “taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for.” Then there was the $500 million in Pentagon weapons, aircraft and equipment (small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies) that the U.S. military somehow lost track of.
Rounding out the bad news, many Americans know little to nothing about their rights and the government. Only 31% can name all three branches of the U.S. government, while one in three says that the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to own your own home, while one in four thinks that it guarantees “equal pay for equal work.” One in 10 Americans (12%) says the Bill of Rights includes the right to own a pet.
If this brief catalogue of our national woes proves anything at all, it is that the American experiment in liberty has failed, and as political economist Lawrence Hunter warns, it is only a matter of time before people realize it. Writing for Forbes, Hunter notes:
The greatest fear of America’s Founding Fathers has been realized: The U.S. Constitution has been unable to thwart the corrosive dynamics of majority-rule democracy, which in turn has mangled the Constitution beyond recognition. The real conclusion of the American Experiment is that democracy ultimately undermines liberty and leads to tyranny and oppression by elected leaders and judges, their cronies and unelected bureaucrats. All of this is done in the name of “the people” and the “general welfare,” of course. But in fact, democracy oppresses the very demos in whose name it operates, benefiting string-pullers within the Establishment and rewarding the political constituencies they manage by paying off special interests with everyone else’s money forcibly extracted through taxation. The Founding Fathers (especially Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and James Monroe), as well as outside observers of the American Experiment such as Alexis de Tocqueville all feared democracy and dreaded this outcome. But, they let hope and faith in their ingenious constitutional engineering overcome their fear of the democratic state, only to discover they had replaced one tyranny with another.
So are there any real, workable solutions to the emerging American police state?
A second American Revolution will not work. In the first revolution, the colonists were able to dispatch the military occupation and take over the running of the country. However, the Orwellian state is here and it is so pervasive that government agents are watching, curtailing and putting down any resistance before it can get started.
A violent overthrow of the government will not work. Government agents are armed to the teeth and will easily blow away any insurgency when and if necessary.
Politics will not help things along. As history has made clear, the new boss is invariably the same as or worse than the old boss—all controlled by a monied, oligarchic elite.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there is only one feasible solution left to us short of fleeing the country for parts unknown: grassroots activism that strives to reform the government locally and trickles up.
Unfortunately, such a solution requires activism, engagement, vigilance, sacrifice, individualism, community-building, nullification and a communal willingness to reject the federal government’s handouts and, when needed, respond with what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as “militant nonviolent resistance.”
That means forgoing Monday night football in order to actively voice your concerns at city council meetings, turning off the television and spending an hour reading your local newspaper (if you still have one that reports local news) from front to back, showing your displeasure by picketing in front of government offices, risking your reputation by speaking up and disagreeing with the majority when necessary, refusing to meekly accept whatever the government dictates, reminding government officials—including law enforcement—that they work for you, and working together with your neighbors to present a united front against an overreaching government.
Unfortunately, we now live in a ubiquitous Orwellian society with all the trappings of Huxley’s A Brave New World. We have become a society of watchers rather than activists who are distracted by even the clumsiest government attempts at sleight-of-hand.
There are too many Americans who are reasonably content with the status quo and too few Americans willing to tolerate the discomfort of a smaller, more manageable government and a way of life that is less convenient, less entertaining, and less comfortable.
It well may be that Huxley was right, and that the final revolution is behind us. Certainly, most Americans seem to have learned to love their prison walls and take comfort in a dictatorship without tears.
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I just came here to post the best cover of Comfortably Numb ever done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj7pDNDuoJ0
It is obviously a humanity problem, History amplifies our failures.
Blog is written without ANY consideration for the slow, steady political division and polarization that has occurred within the US over 40+ years. That's the problem. The OTHER problem is the Federal government is becoming increasingly lawless and heavy handed despite the knowledge of the growing ideologic divide. There is no alternative to division and conflict. Disagree that a revolution is unwinnable, once all the stakeholders see the guts of their loved ones splattered across the pavement somewhere.
Both caused by the same factor, the Israeli-Neocons who control MSM and have made it a COINTELPRO operation causing political discord.
And their tactics of pursuing power, WTC 93, OKC, 9/11 false flags mean they will hang if the American people allow peace and contemplation. So there can be no peace, no idependent investigations of all of these criminal, treasonous events.
There are many other causes of everything, of course. But these tactics leave smoking guns everywhere, and many people aware of the criminal bastards running our government. Many people with inside info, all afraid of what has happened to colleagues who were made examples of for talking out of school So many political murders.
And MSM's putting opinion into people's minds via MSM 'news reporting' are so blatent, I do not understand how it can be ignored. You never see anything like abortion or Common Core discussed in any rational way, it is always made as contentious as possible and left as schism, not understanding of the other pov.
But we can't do anything about that but turn off the TV and radio.
9/11 is their weak pointt, it is fresh in everyone's mind and the evidence is particularly solid science and engineering, serious people. OKC next, I just watched this, very solid people. Even Alex Jones is low key and ultra rational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpNIMSDwvOw
And once it becomes a political issue, they lose. And that unravels all of the Israeli-Neocon dominance of our society via their MSM and academia and ...
I am sure they will think of it as witchhunt, but genuine witches and provable wichiness, in this modern case.
Number of executive orders by each President. Obama is the lowest since Ford.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php
The number of executive orders is irrelevant; what is important is the overreach of those orders.
And you've conducted a historical survey?
It's not that democracy has failed, but rather that the United States was stolen and is a corporation that follows commercial or admiralty law rather than common law. Those elected officials, even at the local level don't work on your behalf but instead for the corporation. That's why they have no problem subverting constitutional law. The banksters print money into existence and create taxes, statutes and acts to steal your freedom and any currency you have left. Unfortunately, time doesn't allow for a non-violent remedy. It's going to have to be bloody.
The issue is this, but also deeper and more durable than that. The ideologic divide is wide and widening, independent of the lawless corpocrisy that Washington DC has become.
You are so right. I talk to a big Lib and they think I am genuinely crazy and vice-versa. And yet we were born in the same country, speak the same language, same socio-economic background, had the same relative education, our parents were similar, yet we are politically 180 degrees apart. I don't really understand what happened.
This is why I really do hope for a catastrophic collapse.
"Wrong" thinkers will die.
Sure, plenty of "correct" ones will too, but far more of them will see the other side of the collapse.
The soil needs to be replenished with the blood of patriots, so the potatoes will grow.
He didn't suggest democracy failed. Indeed, it is the opposite...democracy went the way of the founder's worst fears...it is their effort to PROTECT AGAINST DEMOCRACY that failed.
Whitehead, IMO, is ultimately wrong in his conclusions though. "Trickle up" activism? That's idiotic. In fact, adopting that approach will do nothing but enable the current oppressors to maintain power for a good long time. He also places far to much faith in the might of the gov. machine to put down rebellion. Yes, they have big guns...so what? They'll get to use them...once. Then the laws of human nature combine with raw numbers.
Usually I like reading Rutherford stuff, but Whitehead really pissed me off at the end here.
fukushima will kill everyone
Let's hope so.
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Sorry Mr. Whitehead, but…
If you can't convince a sizeable enough chunk of the idiocracy to vote for something besides more free shit, and the lie of security and comfort, we're lost.
But as we head into the largest retirement of people and wealth transfer ever seen, with those people dying off and selling all their property in the next 10 years, producing the greatest deflation the world has ever seen, coupled with astro-@#$%ing-nomical debt, approaching 30 trillion, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid broke by 2020, coupled with the rising unemployment due to automation, 3D printing, VR, and AI, all at the tipping point of 2024, we're good'n truly ka-@#$%ed.
Then, after it burns down, and lessons are learned, we'll start all over again, again.
•?•
V-V
After one generation after this collapse, everything will be forgotten and it will repeat all over again.
Another Granny hater. Note he mentions SS and unemployment, both somewhat a insurance paid by businesses and citizens but no mention of Section 8 housing or EBT and how about the biggies everyone forgets... Earned Income and child care reimbursement.
At least the former groups pay into some kind of a fund but the latter suck it out without paying a nickel,,, especially Earned Income. Have a couple kiddies, keep your income to a certain level and thousands of dollars are yours for the taking at tax time. I know of a waitress that buys a different car every other year.
Yea John,,, Granny is collecting her $600 a month after paying into the fund working some shit yob all her life and now she's too old to work and Her Son is collecting unemployment because your buddy corporations shipped all the production jobs "over there".
The rest, well they're needy,,,
they're parasites. eliminate them.
"institutionalized comforts such as Social Security, public schools, "
Retirement Social Security is NOT a "comfort". It is a forced retirement-savings plan. I did the numbers, and I figure I will just about get out of it what I paid into it, if I live long enough. No "return on investment" for all the money the government "invested on my behalf" all those years, but I guess I can live with the deal, as long as the government doesn't give the "investment" to Wall Streeters, who will promptly steal it.
Public schools are NOT a "comfort". The only alternative to public schools is church schools, and that is precisely why Thomas Jefferson created the University of Virginia, a public school. With church schools, you have the corporatiists who control the churches also controlling the schools, and therefore you get less science, less history, less everything. Their own kids, of course, will also go to church schools, but those will be the elite schools. I see that the USA is gradually working its way to that anyway, but with church schools instead of public schools, the USA would be completely there, instantly and irrevocably.
I disagree with Whitehead on the point, that it ain't going to happen. Oh, yes it will! Who caught Alex Jones' interview with Loius Farrakhan on Infowars? Un-fucking-believable. Now, you've got the leader of The Islam Nation supporting Donald Trump! The video, is six minutes long. I never, ever, in my entire life, thought I'd actually agree with Farrakhan, but he calls it all out, everything. He calls both the Repubs and the Dems, prostitutes, selling their wares to the rich and powerful. It was like wow...
more people are starting to see the divide and conquer the ZioElite have put on us
he sees it all too well. he aint no dummy
Damn right. Farrakhan has been talking about this forever.
That microscope I bought for my daughter(and myself) and all of the accoutrements are on the way. It is not a set but rather what I wanted. It is advanced beyond high school. I have a university degree in sciences(paid for). This will be my version of home schooling. The first live slide I prepare will be tapwater. You might be surprised at what is in your water.
I get to do the parent/teacher conference this time. I know that the teacher is in her mid to late 20's and pregnant. Well, this should be interesting but my daughter very well at school largely because both my Russian wife and I make sure of that. Our daughter speaks Russian and I insisted on that beiong the case and so does our son. I know what my resposibilities are. I taught my daughter, she is 11, how to change sparkplugs out of a Harley Evolution engine. She is going to need a little more help with things like that but she understand the concept.
It was -18 F here this morning and guess what? Any car battery that was weak failed. Who do you think they called? It is just amazing how many people are not prepared. I swear to you all that these were the same people who were bitching about me smoking on my balcony just a few months ago. So NOW you need help after you fucked with me for no good reason. Now I am supposed to be the guy who helps out? Is this how it works. Most of them were women and I asked, "Where is the husband?". Some women don't have a husband so you have to help them out. It turns out that no one has jumper cables. In Minnesoata in the winter?
The question came over and over again, "Can you help me?". Of course I can but the question is do I really want to? Why should I? I just witnessed another guy fucking around with his car and he had the car running at least but it is pretty clear his fuel line is frozen because it won't idle and this is a newer car. I didn't say a word. That guy is pissed. Well, how about this? Maybe you pay attention to your car BEFORE weather like this settles in? Think ahead. This is a microcosm of America today. This guy here is going to pay for it because male to male he does not want to admit he is an idiot.
So it goes.
I taught a couple years. The first thing I noticed was that the kids who had parents who attended open-house and PTA meetings were the same kids who did well - who, if I may, demonstrated perserverance. I concluded that it's all about parenting.
When I had neighbors like yours, what I did was help as many as I could, while saying nothing. Some of those people didn't get over their laziness, but fewer of them complained after I had helped them.
One thing I think I have learned over the years is that people who actually step up and help are always in short supply, and although some who receive help will quickly forget it, others will long remember it, and some of THOSE even end up stepping up themselves.
I ALWAYS remember when anyone steps up and helps me. It's one of the things that awes me and makes me hope the species survives.
P.S. I chew the nicotine gum now. I think tobacco is a wonderful herb. But the delivery system - smoking - does less-than-wonderful things to me.
Take your kid out of school.
We did, from 7th grade on. He went on with language tutors, music, dance, soccer and I gave him a lot of books, historical novels and SciFi for the most part. He spent his time on Youtube (solid science and math and history everywhere and tools and industrial processes) and playing games. Games like Minecraft where he used Redstone to build computer components, 7 seg displays and decoders. Had to download college EE texts to learn how to do that.
Then doing experiments and then writing essays just because he wanted to. And spreadsheets because I made him work through deciding what car would be good for him in an organized way. He knows far more about far more things than his friends who went through HS, and they all know it. Knows much less about civics, ... but that requires reading a book
And now at 19 he manages production in a startup, 6 people work for him. No college yet, but owns a 3D printer with a plan to make it pay for itself in the next few months.
School is not useless, but it certainly has bad effects on kids. School is a prison-industry experience. They don't need it, they learn just fine entirely on their own.
Revolution will work, folks.
Professor Emeritus Karl Marx said it would.
die, die, die, America.
Do as I say not as I do, a social policy rendered in 2. Just like the economic policy and until they are merged back together so real outcomes prevail the world and nations will continue to suffer.
The real train wreck has to happen before you can get over it currently deferred in all areas.
<-- Live and let others die (America)
'we now live in a ubiquitous Orwellian society with all the trappings of Huxley’s A Brave New World'
Brave New world == Make Believe == Now
Where there is life, there is hope.
Words are hard to find.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM4Tb9mkqTo
Excellent article.
Mind you What comes out of the US today and on what it is based.
Faced: An American cannot even FACE IT
In Eu countries you get every night movies with fbi and cia as the good guys chasing the bad and corrupt or evil. If you have seen one you have seen them all. Every night 7 days a week eu people and children are being subconsciously brainwashed and manipulated.
It works like Fluoride you have in the drinkingwater. Levels of fluoride are not allowed to be mentioned in the media. Fluoride works like a miracle...for them. Levels of fluoride in an american are much higher then a german wwII Period.
Then are vaccinations. Even schools have to check if your boy or girl has had the number of vaccination in their body. Excluded from the school if not had 24 vaccins ..24 . What is in these vaccins cannot be revealed to the Public.
If you check all these vaccines have purpose of : take 'medication' pills for the rest of their lives. Disturb hormonal balances in a body. Have a numbed- cannot face reality consciousness. When i was in NY last i brought his kids to school. A mother saying do not forget to take your medication hey later. 12 years on pills for the rest of his life and with him other kids as well in the same class.
Wonder why he is drugged and doped from the age of 0 . Meaning the first vaccinations go in a few hours after birth as if a child does not know how to live. Result pills addictions for the rest of their lives. Sheep minded- hard to teach - impressed by bling and bright colours.
Every vaccin has one goal further need for pills /medication. So i cannot blame this kid for being unaware -not interested- numb. This is your future generation created at this moment. They follow any order They obey anyone who is the self proclamed good guy fbi cia army goverment.
He fights anywhere when is 18 to be shot and made to believe to serve his country. He is only serving and died for the laughing Corporate Multinationals few. Serving your country flows in as fluoride with every sip of water. Even a discovery channel serie 'educates' a viewer in serving usa country as highest value in life.
Having this in place now they can on the flip/downside of the coin start any war . And play dirty in every country sovereign or not in the world. Korea- Vietnam- Afghanistan- Lybia- Iraque- Syria- Iran(tried) Ukrain and many to follow. USA : the economic hitman- The dollar hitman.
Their massive military industry Pharmaceuticals Financial Banking Fed Wall Street so corrupt and fraudulous not many a american can face it.
See the relation between pills vacccins fluoride> outcome not an american can face the fraud corruption. It is overwhelming - too much to handle. And they Know this result and its effects it has in human minds on his concsciuosness of course. Now Pfizer and Merck Goverm Officials Fbi go after Ceo of small companies who sell natural products and natural minerals or have a natural treatment.
Dollar dominance -Oil Gold Silver all traded in $ is secured. They use ISIS Turkey to destroy countries Syria Iraque Lybia. Iran is tried as well as Egypt . They go at them again.
So Vaccins pills Fluoride excessive food overweight is what the Corporate fascistic American Multinationals want and get. Mentioned CAPTAGON from Pfizer . Used to drug any ISIS fighter Make him feel all powerful high and so behead anyone even his own mother.
What a victory for an american Corporate. How to have a isis fighter behead his own mother.
American Com. did it. If they can do this they do a lot more you are not allowed to read.
See: How - at what age they have to start - what methods they use.
How they exclude anyone from schools or society if he does not agree. How did ISrael and USa create ISIS . Simple if you know you can do it as well.
Why endless power - money dollar dominance Debts being Non-Taxed & Non-Violable of course. Worlddominance by force suppression killing anyone war after war. Well thought of prepared by an small Elite group. Put in practice by a larger group of numbed US citizens.
Laws are for the plebs like you and me, not them.
Aldous Huxley quote: "“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”"
It's not at all clear to me if vast numbers of people even need a "pharmacological method" to make them enjoy their servitude. Millions of people seem to enjoy it and beg for more, notably those on the political Left and those in politics who purport to represent "the people" and freedom etc but in fact privately support ever more authoritarian .gov. That includes hoardes of people working in alphabet agencies of the State.
As I've previously said, the new fascism that is engulfing western countries where .govs distance themselves from the wishes of their citizens is probably something that we will have to endure to breaking point before people wake up and bring an end to it thru a breakdown in civil society.
Why? Because it is the nature of human psyche not to rise up against the enemy until he's knocking at the door.
Go long on manufacturers of rope and piano wire.
smacker, the support for a more authoritarian state is not from the political Left only. in fact, it's most of the times generated by a common, coordinated or not effort from both the typical Left and Right
a typical non-coordinated but nevertheless common effort by both Far Left and Far Right is having Communists and Fascists battling for the streets, as it was in Germany before Hitler rose to power
the end-result is the center, the moderates, giving up and asking for order and safety before all other usual demands, and this results then in a very authoritarian state
the authoritarian state is really just this: a damned result of extremism. a failure of the center
think about it when you follow your (quite common) ideology that "as long as it is not Left, it must be good"
the non-authoritarian state is only possible through moderation, and it's enemies are radicals, fundamentalists and extremists of all stripes and persuations
and "no state" as such is only even barely imaginable in the absence of violent extremism, otherwise it's simply a kind of war, which then results again in an authoritarian... peace, i.e. further oppression
Complete bullshit. The center held. The center printed the country into the Stone Age. Hitler rose in the ashes.
the center disappeared. by polarization. which is nothing else then "choose between this evil or that evil"
if you are a American that does not know anything else then a polar, limited political choice you might be somewhat excused for your position
"Indeed, Americans may not approve the jobs being done by their elected leaders, and they may have little to no access to those same representatives, but they remain committed to the political process, so much so that they are working themselves into a frenzy over the upcoming presidential election "
more choices between one, and only one, and the alternative, and only one alternative, with the result of one having power... "supported" by perhaps 51%, though half of it grudgingly
where is the center in such choices?
if in an hypothetical village of 100 people there are five factions of 20 each, the War faction, the Peace faction, the Undecided faction, the Business faction and the Moderate faction and you have this kind of electoral system, then you end up with a choice between the Business faction's leader and the War faction's leader
and then you might find the village at War.... for business reasons
if you elect a council of five in the same village... you get a different political result, just by changing the electoral system
ancient Romans elected in pairs. the first and the second elected, with each a veto on the other. that's an example of politics of the center
I don't agree with your thesis and when you say:
"[...] it's most of the times generated by a common, coordinated or not effort from both the typical Left and Right"
...you will possibly have noted that I was referring to the fake people on the Right when I wrote:
"[...] and those in politics who purport to represent "the people" and freedom etc but in fact privately support ever more authoritarian .gov."
The Americans call them "RINOs", in Britain I call them "slimeballs" - David Cameron is one of them. Despite all his glorious speeches pre-2012 election about rolling back The Big State of HRH Tony Blair intended to fool people into thinking he was a "Classic Liberal", he has in fact continued and expanded it, especially in the areas of surveillance and immigration under The Witch Theresa May who is anything but a true Conservative. Truth is that the UK Conservative Party has moved incrementally to the Left in recent years.
that's an old impasse we have here
I see the British Tories as a valid example of British conservativism, and the British Labour as a valid example of British socialism
you are looking for Classic Liberalism, and you won't find much of it in both of them. you will find some of it in the Torys... when it is about economic liberty... only
look into wikipedia, the article about the Conservative Party (UK)
on the right, you'll find the ideology of the party: 1) conservativism; 2) economic liberalism; 3) British unionism; soft euroscepticism
the article is imho completely correct, something you can't expect anymore in those days. Conservativism is not Classical Liberalism
under a Tory government, your wealth, your work, your business enjoys freedom. you, as a person, aren't that
------
the pillars of conservativism are usually seen as:
Conformity. Tradition. Social norms. Family values. Social order. Patriotism. Social hierarchy. Private property. Protectionism. in some cases Statutory Law
note: most of them are in a slight opposition to Classical Liberalism, particularly in the "natural" authoritarianism that Patriotism and social hierarchy imply
There's no impasse ...
I don't generally disagree with your comments but Cameron attempted to give the impression of leaning towards "classic liberalism" in his pre-2012 speechs. I note that all those speeches were deleted from the Tory website several years ago. I wonder why.
Since then - and even more so since re-election in May/2015 - he has shed his camouflage and exposed himself for what he really is: just another authoritarian statist like HRH Tony Blair. Economically, he and Osborne are corporatists in hock to the banking fraternity. Not surprising given their family histories and circle of friends I guess.
smacker, a conservative like Cameron attempting to give the impression of leaning towards classical liberalism is nevertheless exactly that, with emphasis on conservative, attempting, impression, leaning
+1 for "I note that all those speeches were deleted from the Tory website several years ago. I wonder why"
They don't need a drug to yoke the masses. Patriotism is just as powerful. Give people a good reason to go to war and they'll take it and love it. For some reason, Americans love war, and I'm not talking just about the zio elite. The majority of Americans, if given half a reason, will gladly march to war. It's a very powerful drug.
The American love of war is probably not as strong as you might think but it stems from the belief that American fire-power is invincible. That leads to the belief that America can get away with pushing its weight around and answerable to no one.
Vietnam and Iraq & Afghanistan have been reality checks...
We see standard behaviour of an Empire, especially one in decline.
Look at what happened when Obama said we were going to war with Syria. The collective outcry was deafening!
The Roman Empire lasted 300 years after its point of greatest/peak power. I suspect the US will last at least half that long before a total/final disintegration. But, an American Renaissance is also a possibility. It has happened in other countries and in other periods. Things looked quite bleak when Carter was president. Reagan led a new american renaissance in the early eighties. likewise, the right new leader could easily spark such a recovery (perhaps Trump?). The contrarian in me says that it is more than likely, that given the level of doom and gloom within the rank and file citizenry, America may one day rise up from the Obama ashes and live again. God, I hope so.
information didn't flow at speed of nano-seconds during roman empire descent.
Are you kidding? What this country is seeing took much longer than the 7 years Obama has been in office. The left/right dichotomy is false.
Empires are like financial markets: they never collapse in a straight line, dead cat bounces are a regular feature. You might see a dead cat bounce as a "renaissance", but the decline reasserted its primacy after a while. Time will tell.
"While crime is falling, the number of laws creating new crimes is growing at an alarming rate. Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. This adds up to more than 4,500 federal criminal laws and an even greater number of state laws.
The prison population is growing at an alarming rate. Owing largely to overcriminalization, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled since 1980 to 2.4 million, which breaks down to more than one out of every 100 American adults behind bars. According to The Washington Post, it costs $21,000 a year to keep someone in a minimum-security federal prison and $33,000 a year for a maximum-security federal prison. Those costs are expected to increase 30 percent by 2020. Translation: while the American taxpayer will be forced to shell out more money for its growing prison population, the private prison industry will be making a hefty profit."
crime is not falling... in the media representation of crime
in fact, if you switch on the media, you'll find it searching for more and more exotic crimes. those measured and chosen for their horrific effects, their "against nature" appeal, typical of statistically underrepresented or even "one-in-a-million-cases" crimes
they generate disgust. fear. revulsion. and addiction to more representations of violence. it's a business already at the stage of media characterization
then enters the private prison business. problem with private business, it searches naturally for profits and expansion
the whole idea of having prisons as a private business without expecting it to be ruthlessly efficient in it's search for more business and more profits is... insane
the private economy is still the best way to have prosperity, particularly of the private kind. but a public good like security, a "common bad" like crime... aren't the best things to put in the hands of the private economy. if you find this "statist", fine, but then explain the better alternative
fact is that the American prison system is truly exceptional in numbers and system, and is shy of comparisons with the rest of the world. and it's being exported, first through security arrangements, and then further
The forest and the tree!
A hegemonic mindset built on "exceptionalism" mantra of a young (200 yr old country) that invented continental and then global capitalism; assuming the sun would never set on its hubristic domination.
Guess what...
History rhymes.
As for democracy being the "corrosive" illusion as de Tocqueville wrote; it is debatable; as with the urge to become Caesar's son in the age where "universal sufferage" makes Oligarchical Caesar smile the Mona Lisa smile and say in angelic Machiavellism : Its for the general good! -- all bets are off as reality is hidden behind an official lie.
de Tocqueville quote : "In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end."