Bring On The Atomizers For No Reason Whatsoever

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL - Jonathan Swift

Supposedly, I am a sovereign individual.  I don't know how that happened. I can't remember not being somewhat dependent on abstractions like money, or the rent, or bills, or expenses, inflation, social ostracism for failure to agree with, and of course, a mandate: 

You are sovereign, but not autonomous.  How does that work?  Apparently, in order to shift the blame from themselves, those who really rule the country want to put all the responsibility for a growing plethora of failures in justice, in equality, in simple humanity on those too powerless to challenge them--and all in the name of this big flag-waved excuse: 

"Liberty".  

Such an odd word.  We take for granted what liberty within the definitional interpretation of the political even means.  Generally, liberty means the state of being unrestricted by outside forms of force or coercion: Liberty points to the state of what Locke and others described as the realm of the noble savage: at liberty to pursue property, to be happy, to live one's life.  But in today's politicized interpretation, more often than not, "liberty" is the battle-cry of some of the more reactionary figures of America 2025, men arrogant enough to demand few to no restrictions in one realm and one realm only: 

Commerce.  

That's it.  We're all in a state of liberty.  Is that correct enough?  Just look at your pocketbook, or your wallet, or your bank account.  See how much liberty you have?  Isn't it amazing to be practically drained of liberty only weeks before Christmas?  

Some of the more adamantly doctrinaire instrumentalizers of "liberty" insist that private activities are personal ones.  And if the liberty of one's private activities, as homo faber, has been restricted in any form or fashion, one's "personal liberties" have been negated.  

Really?  I often barely have a penny to piss on, but insofar as "personal liberties", I'm closer to that center than all those disobedient paranoids who want the rest of us to believe we are all enslaved by "a big bad government" to the point that none of us are allowed to make any money.  

Which is a lie.  An excuse.  A worthless and pathetic con job. 

No, the vast majority of American citizens are not being prevented of that kind of dollarwise personal liberty by "a big bad government".  Nope.  The "big bad government" has nothing to do with how much the ever-paranoid and selfish to a fault "entrepreneurs" who pinch pennies in terms of their duty to those who have aided in their enrichment but are lavish in how they feed their license.  And too much of how those people roll has to do with redefining words like liberty in order to suit their own designs.  

License? Isn't that the little squarish plastic card that allows people to drive or helps to identify us?  In a way, license is "the big OK".  Do what you want.  Do it however you want.  See?  You've got the imprimatur of, well, what is giving you full on liberty to oppose, repress, suppress, oppress and then blame those with less power than you?  

Selfishness kills democracy.  

This concept is difficult to put into a short essay.  How does one define one's selfishness in terms of that selfishness's relation to all others in proximity to that selfishness?  Say you're a homeowner.  You've built a lavish home for yourself, your wife, your children.  You're happy there.  And it's all inside the home.   Your needs are fulfilled, your ability to take action on liberty is unsullied and unrestricted.  

Fine.  Then why is it you allow the world around you to go to the devil.  It's as if the devil will never arrive on your doorstep.  While you sit in your lavishness, that demon is creeping closer and closer until yes, it is at your doorstep all right.  And what do you do?  

Exercise insularity.  Yes, you withdraw into a place of safety.  Maybe you use your economic power to push your political representatives to blame someone else for the issue of a demon at your door.  Maybe you use your economic power to make that demon more uncomfortable.  Maybe you reject the idea of a demon waiting just beyond your private borderlines altogether.  

Insularity.  That's different from solitude.  Insularity bears requirements in its suitcase.  Because you and your instrumentalized "liberty" are so special, you and your instrumentalized "liberty" need protection from any and all demons.  What then to do?  Why not pick out some scapegoats.  Scapegoats make great targets for those who seek to deny responsibility for their own insularity and the decision to give themselves a near-divine status.  

Here.  Have some scapegoats: 

The government.  Liberals.  Blacks.  Undocumented individuals and families.  Administrative and regulatory agencies.  Muslims.  Poor people. The police.  The military.  Foreign interests such as China. Or Cuba. Or Venezuela. Or those who would forbid you from your excesses.  

See?  Pick one. You're special.  You need protection from....which one on the list?  How about your desire for protection from all of them? 

Perhaps, in your illusions and delusion, you're above all that.  You have great power.  You don't give one holy crap about the widening wealth gap and its consequent and subsequent power gap.  If you've got all the power, just as how you penny-pinch to keep "the mob" under control, you've decided that your ability to swing a deal or make a fortune entitles you to being a hog of power.  

Oh yeah.  You've got it all.  Those who don't? It's their problem, not yours. Still, cleverly, slowly, the demon gets closer and closer to your front door.  Maybe your back door too.  At the windows, on the roof, possibly even from beneath your foundations.  

You have a home.  You don't appreciate the noise of partying neighbors or the beeping of a dumpster truck outside, and especially the homeless people spotted nearby.  You're special.  You deserve protection from "enemies" or "threats" or "the other people".  

Nary one thought in your head you may be part of the problem.  Odd--is it not?--many people do not see themselves as so special that they deserve all the "personal liberties".  No.  Some of the wealthiest citizens see the intrinsic nature of their fortunate luck and its reliance on all around them--and thus choose...choose...to address the issues and travails of those around them.  

There.  That is the political.  

An important caveat: Instrumentalizing one's choice to help those who need a little boost, in other words, using that ability to choose to assist, renders that aid meaningless.  After all, if one's supposed benevolence is directed toward only those who support one's misdefined "personal liberty"--that's narcissistic, part of the problem, no solution.  

What does freedom mean to those disallowed from it?  If one does not go along to get along, why are those not entitled to freedom?   So.  Someone powerful has a stance.  He or she wishes to support that stance.  He or she may be "all aboard" in terms of charitability, but toward those who happen do disagree with that stance?  Nope.  No reciprocity allowed.  Don't adore the powerful actor's control issues?  You don't deserve freedom, i.e. the ability to act upon one's liberty.  

Liberty: bought and sold.  Like a consumer chotsky.  

Oh, but we do not need dissident or dissonant voices!  Be positive.  Agree with us--or else.  

Selfishness is infantile in that regard--or better, that disregard.  

We must school our children to be docile employees in order to boost our status.  We must privatize the right to an education in order to separate the poor from the wealthy, the poor having little to no resources to educate their children.  We must privatize the schools in order to cash-in on that, and also, to cash-in on the fulfilled demands the federal government pay us in our holy self-interest.  

Infantile.  Selfishness.  In what chicken coop were such "advocates" raised?

At this time, here in the U.S., 2025, I cannot help but note that the U.S. House of Representatives, peopled by an estimated 50 percent millionaires, is now conspiring to deprive the poor of the ACA, or Obamacare.  Medical expenses are high, of course they are.  Because of the too-high means to solution, many poor people are apparently to be cut away from their human right to be healthy.  And I cannot ask myself, What good is freedom of speech if one's ability to remain healthy has been repudiated by millionaires who may not understand how precarious life is for poor people who happen to fall ill.  

Classy, right?  So classy to appeal to one's love for privatized healthcare insurance companies by crushing what one sees as competition to those.  The value judgment isn't on those private companies; it's on those who celebrate absolute fealty to them to the point that high costs will kill, maim, and ruin countless lives due to the simple fact those lives aren't fraught with big money.  

Then, in a priggish and piggish retort designed to cover their fat asses, the same opponents of the ACA will decry the Liberals and Progressives and then pretend that it is they, the "conservatives" [read: rightist], are allied with the poor they actively work to ruin.  

Hypocrisy, selfishness, "personal liberties".  

Or take the issue of the same Representatives remaining fearful and silent as a complete goof in the White House treads over the law, over justice, over simple ethics, over moderation, over decency, and even flaunts his supposed ability to do so.  What's up with that game?  

Hypocrisy, selfishness, "personal liberties".  

Why so?  Because those Reps will be able to comfort themselves with the excuse of "we are only doing our jobs" in accordance to those who elected them: "don't bother with those who didn't financially support our campaigns; don't bother with those who disagree with our agendas."  

Not freedom.  More like unfreedom.  One status caste remains free; but only so long as those of "lower status" are not free to remain free.  

Where are those who see through the rotten cloth with which the hypocrites and the selfish wrap themselves like emperors?  

Where?  Where are those?  Why are voices of sanity left out?  Scapegoat: socialist, Liberal, Progressive, Democrat, homeless, Mexican, Muslim, etcetera.  

Battle cry?  "Natural rights!" Exactly, all the Neanderthals are exercising natural rights by force and by fraud.  Even the Australopithecus is self-interested.  Liberty is readily available in the savage world of blood, tooth and claw.  

Hypocrisy means that "liberty" is all about its framework we call freedom.  Or the Constitution.  

Just call all the scapegoats "bad hombres" or "leftist lunatics".  See? Problem solved.  

John Locke, one of the philosophical architects of the modern day concept of a democratic republic, suggested that if the people are faced with an unresponsive legislature, the people should overthrow that legislature, violently if need be.   While I wouldn't go so far as to advocate violence.  I would go so far as to register a warning to those selfish, hypocritical, and fear-based Representatives:  

The torches and pitchforks are coming for you.  The demons at your door are getting stronger every single time you try to put down those you've decided are not special at all.  

Who's the judge?  Who has the final say to who is and who isn't "special"?  Such a numb concept in many ways.  How about common sense?  Is that under new management as well?  

This weekend, Los Angeles law enforcement broke up a plot to bomb a number of "logistics centers" and commercial operations.  I've been watching the news about the Turtle Island Liberation Front and its more radical cousin, The Order of the Black Lotus, and while all of us acknowledge that violence is not the key to alleviating a variety of ills generated by status orders and by selfishness to the point of excising numerous individuals, what seems to be missing is any in-depth study or commentary as to why such anti-commercial mentalities begin in the minds of the dissatisfied.  Nope.  None of that.  

Root causes.  That seems always a subject to deny.   The homeless communities across the United States?  Why are the root causes--lack of good paying jobs, lack of access, lack of an ability to afford too-high rental rates--never addressed by our Representatives and especially by those who manipulate them from behind the scenes?  

What are the root causes of a planned terrorist attack?  What coerced those men and women to begin believing that violence is necessary?  What does such a terrorist plot mean within the greater schemes of oppression, repression, suppression, and the OCD dysfunction of needing more, and more, the endless need for more?  

Australopithecus, speak.  

"Don't coerce us; we're at liberty to coerce you.  Out of existence if you get uppity."  

When I heard about the reported nature of this Turtle Island Liberation Front, when I learned its bent is to strike back at commercialism's instrumentalized denial of climate change and dangers to the ability of the planet to ensure life for all of us, my mind turned immediately to Donald J. Trump's decision that, nope, climate change is "fake news!" and that the real problem is that climate change is a communist plot.  

That goof projects so much.  He thinks "climate" means "the weather", and if "the weather" is fine, "the climate" is perfectly healthy.  

Shortsightedness is called myopia for a reason.  Nothing supports myopia more than an inability to read.  But if all facts are "fake news", the narcissism behind the myopia, and vice versa, "wins".  Everyone on the planet loses, and thus, to the malignant narcissist, those who "disobey" with the narcissistic self image have been put into their places.  

Superficiality and, for reasons unknown, corrupt business activities are kissin' cousins.  

See only so far, thus justify your repudiation of facts you find "difficult" or "disagreeable".  And sadly, Real Estate Agent And Culture Decider 47 is only a symptom of a broader dysfunction: most of our more powerful political figures are basically inside the same plastic garbage bag of not wanting to see what on-the-ground experience among America's poor has to show them.  

Insularity: It's scary to see unhealthy people who can barely feed themselves.  Scapegoat them!  Right?  

Not right as in correct; right as in right and wrong.  Don't look.  If you don't look, whatever it is no longer exists.  And just to make certain, ensure that nobody who points out your myopic superficiality speaks to that as a serious question to ask.  

Atomization.  This is the suggested course: separate all potentially disobedient citizens into their own little, individual shells.  That way, alongside condemnations of "collectivity", you've got a disarmed public.  Sure.  Many may own weapons, but if "the mob" is deliberately divided against itself, who "wins"? 

Superficiality, embodied.  Hypocrites.  False patriots.   Indeed, "All Americans are sovereign individuals who have a right to take by force or by fraud, but only as long as they are separated from all others."  

Sure.  Then terrorists come along with powerful pipe bombs as a reminder of the Good Ship Lollipop's inability to reason.  After all, if one is excessively powerful, why bother to think?  You don't have to think.  All you need to do with your life is accumulate.  

So this: "I am against you, and you against I, and we are against others, and others are against us, and we are all unified in disunity, ain't it great?"

Great for whom?  

So much prattle about iffy economic theories.  No conversation at all about how a too-powerful economization of the political is distorting the health of a democratic republic.  Nope.  Not that.  That might fuel dissent.  As if dissent isn't rising.  

Face it: dissent is rising.