Four
Good Ways to Turn the Tables on Tyranny
by
Rev. Paul J. Bern
In
the wake of America's latest tragic example of how our voting system
simply does not work, many of us are left scratching our heads
asking, “What kind of democracy is this?” Well, simply put, it
isn’t a democracy at all. It’s a tyrannical oligarchy of the
worst kind; one that’s disguised as a democracy and hidden behind
the smoke and mirrors of political propaganda. Just because
governmental decrees are no longer issued by royal fiat but are
instead issued by lobbying and propaganda, doesn’t make it any less
tyrannical. It is nothing more than inverted totalitarianism. And it
is our responsibility, if we would be proactive citizens, to stop
this totalitarianism in its tracks. The 99% – that's us – must
turn the tables on the top 1% or we will simply not survive as a
species on this planet. That's how serious the American people's
predicament has become! It’s as simple as that. Our strategy should
be not only to confront the American empire, but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. How? With our art,
our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance,
our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories.
Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to
believe. “Resistance to tyrants”, Thomas Jefferson once said, “is
obedience to God”. I think even the atheists would agree with that
one, or at least up to a point. Here are four ways that I believe we
can turn the tables on the tyrannical plutocracy that our government
has descended into.
1.)
Mock Plutocracy Warren Buffett once said, “There’s class
warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s
making war, and we’re winning.” Wake up to the fact that the
plutocrats have created their own economic apartheid. Money is the
illusory carrot being dangled between you and the truth. The way the
current oligarchy maintains its vice-grip on power is by making the
people believe that it’s all okay because greed is good, and making
money is very important, allegedly because with enough money comes
the freedom to do what you want – like buying the rules made by
government and funding lobbyists who significantly contribute to the
laws that Congress writes and passes. While the world goes through
the motions of getting poorer and poorer the moneyed elite are
getting richer and richer, to the extent that it is costing people
their lives. We must be able to muster the courage to put our foot
down and draw a line in the sand. A people's declaration of emergency
is needed. Mass civil unrest is clearly called for in this situation
in which we find ourselves, and the summer of 2016 is only halfway
done!
One
way to put our foot down is to mock the plutocratic entities that
have a monopoly on power and to ridicule the cult of personality.
Shame is a very powerful psychological motivator. The sooner we make
them realize that they have to be morally responsible with their
power, the sooner we will be able to bring balance to the world. And
the way we make them realize it is through the stultifying effect of
shame. Like Confucius said, “In a country well governed, poverty is
something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is
something to be ashamed of.” And have no illusions, countries the
world over are badly governed. Through a healthy mockery of their
power we will forcefully get power over the entrenched powers that
be, and turn the tables on the power dynamic.
2.)
Defy the Police State No longer do police act in the capacity of
peace officers. Now they are simply hired thugs of a government that
no longer has the best interest of the people at heart. A primary
purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots
of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally
buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those
with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the
real world. Like George Orwell said, “The capitalist society is a
police society where the number one goal is the protection of upper
class property.” While the governments of the world have been taken
over by corporate interests, bankers and special interest groups, our
country have been turned into a police state, with the rest of the
world soon to follow. Systems of control vainly attempt to keep
everything the way it is, inefficient with a controlled obsolescence,
so that “We the People” keep buying things we don’t need so
that the rich can keep auctioning elections and buying laws to keep
the poor suppressed.
Like
Stefan Molyneux said back in 2014, “To efficiently control the
human farm, you need a majority of broken, self-attacking, insecure,
shallow, vain and ambitious sheep, forever consumed by
inconsequential things like weight, how good our abs and those of
celebrities are – and a minority of volatile, angry and dominant
sheepdogs, which you can dress up in either a green (military) or a
blue (police) costume and use to threaten and manage the herd.”
Black-booted police state beware, your fascist violence is no match
for our creative freedom, and your worship of financial gain is no
match for the Son of God in whom we place our trust. The so called
“herd” is methodically being populated with wolves in sheep's
clothing, and we will bite if we’re cornered. We can turn the
tables on the police state by mocking it like Pussy Riot mocked
Putin, and like Anonymous mocks power.
“History
does not repeat itself,” wrote Mark Twain, “but it does rhyme.”
And we’re here to bring an updated healthy rhyme to your outdated
dissonant rhythms. Your watchdog heart and brainwashed brains don’t
stand a chance against our compassionate hearts and open minds. Your
days are numbered. Civil disobedience has always been a game-changer
and the game is about to change. You might as well just toss those
badges in the trash for all they’ll be worth. Better yet, join us.
The thin blue line is an illusion at best.
3.)
Ridicule the NDAA “The NDAA (National Defense Authorization
Act) is not about protecting us. It is about protecting the state
from us. That is why no one in the executive or legislative branch is
going to restore our rights. The new version of the NDAA, like the
old ones, provides our masters with the legal shackles to make our
resistance impossible. And that is their intention.” – Chris
Hedges, Pulitzer prize-winning author and writer
When
Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany he was quoted back in 1934 as
saying, “What good fortune for governments that the people do not
think.” Don’t be an unthinking citizen easily influenced by the
likes of Hitler. Become a self-aware proactive citizen instead. Like
Frederick Douglas wrote, “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a
slave.” Indeed, the more we know, the more capable we are of
remaining free men and women. As it stands, The National Defense
Authorization Act is the most diabolically authoritarian law to ever
come down the governmental chute. It’s anti-freedom in the name of
security, the most deceptive kind of law. The NDAA is a greater
threat to our national liberty than the terrorism from which it
claims to protect us from! It unconstitutionally impinges on legally
guaranteed First Amendment rights and lacks sufficient protections to
meet the requirements of due process. Simply put, it is an instrument
for the government to restrain the people. The constitution used to
be an instrument for the people to constrain the government, but with
legislation like the NDAA and the Patriot Act, the instrument of the
Constitution is useless and no longer holds true.
It’s
past time that we, the American people, get out there to protest and
litigate against the NDAA (could I please get a few attorneys to help
out with this?). We must ridicule it. We must scorn it to the 'nth'
degree. Blaspheme it in the face of the president if need be. Inform
people about how corrupt it really is. People will remain ignorant as
long as we allow them to be. Let’s not allow them to be; not only
for the sake of their freedom but for our own, as well as for the
freedom of our children and our children’s children. People are
born to be free. Ridiculing acts like the NDAA, and attempting to
abolish them, are ways of safeguarding such freedoms.
4.)
Challenge the Mass Surveillance State Beginning with the adoption
of the Patriot Act in 2001 (The government’s backbone-less,
scared-stupid response to 9-11), the floodgates opened for covert
government surveillance not only for the NSA, FBI, CIA and Homeland
Security but for hundreds of municipal and state governments – a
green light to infiltrate and spy on millions of American citizens
without cause! Now FISA is a dead horse that’s been beaten beyond
recognition, because it has been morphed into a vehicle of covert
means shielded from effective oversight through countless amendments
by the Bush and Obama administrations. And now congress itself is
hung-up on the fear-mongering tactics of the War on Terror.
It is now up to us,
“We the People”, to challenge this surveillance state, unless we
inadvertently become what George Orwell warned us against in his
novel, “1984”. Leaking information has become the civil
disobedience of our age. The late historian and activist Howard Zinn
described the act of civil disobedience as “the deliberate,
discriminate violation of law for a vital social purpose… Such acts
become not only justifiable but necessary when a fundamental human
right is at stake and when legal channels are inadequate for securing
that right.” Even Thomas Jefferson realized it, writing, “If a
law is unjust, a man is not only correct to disobey it, he is
obligated to do so.” Snowden, Manning, Assange, Jeremy Hammond, the
late journalist Gary Webb, and the late Aaron Swartz have all
continued the tradition of civil disobedience by revealing the
details of global mass surveillance programs. It’s time to change
the tune. It’s time to interrupt their corrupt dance. It’s time
to challenge the powers that be. Nothing short of the survival of the
human race is at stake. If we are going to proclaim ourselves
Christians, then we have a responsibility to oppose that which is
corrupt, unjust, unfair and which poses a clear and present threat.
Evil must at all times be resisted with good. Not through some
imaginary fist-fight between good and evil, all that is just so much
Hollywood 'BS'. I'm talking about resisting evil in the Spiritual
realm through prayer, faith, love and good works whenever possible.
Passive resistance works as well in the Spiritual world as it does in
the physical, so use it whenever possible. “The prayers of good and
sincere men and women”, wrote the apostle James, “are powerful
and effective”. If you're not praying for this country, and for God
to show you a way to fight back without killing cops from a sniper's
nest, right now would be a very good time to start. Let's take back
our country, and let's do it peacefully if at all possible. Oh yes we
can!!!
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