STRUMMER KNEW
You have the right not to be killed — even by police or bureaucrats (who have replaced the old aristocrats). Aristocrats beheaded citizens and were up front, recognizable but bureaucrats kill you with regulations and double-speak — or they sic the mob on you. And the cops? They are tools of the State, and asked by us — the governed — to do work that we are unwilling to do, and incapable of doing even if the will existed. The CHOP proved that: it’s all a happy-go-lucky street party and sit-in until someone gets a little greedy and collective discussion or upturned palms don’t change their minds or convince them to contribute to, rather than steal from the ever-optimistic collective. The greedy (or misunderstood) went down hard and sadly, predictably, human nature exposed itself to millions of viewers.
You have the right to food money — but do you imagine that the monthly allowance provided by UBI will come without strings attached? Do you naively believe the government or issuing body won’t want to tell you what to do or how to live once they start funding your existence? You know, a little investigation, humiliation ... and regulation. If you hold your hand out for the handout you sign a contract with devilish providers whose goal may be control rather than subsistence or survival.
Whenever actions occur I try to consider who might profit. Sometimes I act for others ahead of myself but mostly I recognize that altruism is driven by profit — if only to signal virtue — so when I see the protesting these days I am skeptical. They say this glorious, hopeful assembly manifests in the name of making a better society ... rather, in the name of tearing apart the negative aspects of current society, but I don’t see a lot of “making” going on, or any functional plans being suggested for what should happen after the fact. I dig the energy and intensity and also fear there is no forethought, or endurance.
In fact, the cynical part me figures that “defund the police” will actually result in more, and more powerful policing. And it will be an easy thing to make you ask for that outcome. I, Bureaucrat, simply tell my police — and the 'Crats do believe the police exist to serve them, and enforce their policies — to operate at 50%, to show up sometimes, and to intervene some of those sometimes. Once opportunists and criminals realize there is no organized enforcement and no penalties, their predatory nature will do the rest. Just look at soaring crime rates in NYC right now ... murder and exploitation. I don't consider social workers a solution, and neither do the any of the so-called leaders.
Soon the citizens will be begging those leaders for more cops, and harder, willing to pay anything for them to restore order, and to regain access to the State-operated tools of enforcement. They will accept the enactment of some new laws, the downside of which will be to infringe on everyone’s liberty not just that of opportunists and criminals.
I believe in the good character of a few of my fellow men, fellow humans, but I believe more strongly in the tendency to avarice and power expressed as cruelty, as pocket-lining, and greed. I believe too many accept that money and possessions and property will make them happy and too few think that education — by which I mean the process of gaining knowledge and understanding — and accomplishment or experience will produce the same condition of (sustainable) happiness. And it appears some of the mob folk believe that you NOT having it is nearly as good as them having it. Or that if they can’t have it no one should.
You have the right to free speech — unless, of course, you say something contrary to the thesis (if you could call it that) and rule of the mob. The 0s and 1s that provide great opportunity have shaped us psychologically to the point that ours is a binary world wherein we are either-or, with or against. We may no longer hold a middling or undecided position, and to question an idea or a trend, to ask what happens after what happens next places our necks on the block with the mob holding a blade overhead.
But don’t worry, the long term result of Cancel Culture will be the creation of a new culture, made up of the cancelled, of the thinking and thoughtful, of those who were willing to speak their minds rather than allowing the mob to suppress their ideas or their speech ... we will grow from the ashes of the mob's ruthless, and ruined Orwellian experiment.
Re-reading what I have just written suggests I may not be so cynical after all — but don’t you dare call me hopeful. Because between today and that better tomorrow will come a lot of anger and bloodshed and sorrow.
The freedoms our forefathers carved from old dictatorial governance allowed their sons and daughters to make a place and a society that we also have the freedom — and the right — to destroy. I hope we are intelligent and empathetic enough to imagine, and to create something better but the realist within suggests otherwise.
With a tip of the hat to one of the 20th century's heroes, thank you Joe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlqSSWXbcOw
