The War On Individualism

Oligarchy And The War On Individualism

by Ethan Indigo Smith

    “Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” ~ Serenity Prayer

All the social systems controlled by the figurative 1% and opposed by the 99%, all the institutions that any compassionate person would liken to fascist or feudal, all have been instigated, implemented and reinforced by people. I know that I alone cannot change such systems; this is guaranteed by the combined oligarchical complex of government, corporate, financial and military, all formed in a steep pyramid system with “the 1%” (those in control) atop and “the 99%” (those under control) below.

But it is perfectly obvious that if a system is simply the creation of people, then people can change that system – with serenity, courage and wisdom. And since the systems in question operate at the progressive expense of our physical environment and personal freedoms, it is no longer a question of whether people can force such change, but when.

Anyone who says that people cannot change things, that we are powerless to the control systems that already exists, does not realize they are in a system that began as imagination, an idea, which came about through influence. With new, better ideas, people can change those outdated systems that other people once created; even those that have become long-standing traditions, or pose as such.

War On Individualism

The best business strategies utilize knowledge of trends, if a stock is going up and has been going up, chances are it will continue to go up for a time. In the same way trends can be used to gain an understanding of history and current events. If something has occurred and is occurring and nothing is being done to change it, chances are it will continue to occur, perhaps more frequently so.

One such growing trend is the investment into a police state. Increasingly the United States is becoming a police state where institutions are allowed to figuratively and literally put the boot down. The aim of the game is social control, not governance. The police in the United States support the institutional ties between the state, corporate and military collective and are often used as cogs in a system of enforcement for revenue, rather than enforcement for the purposes of upholding human rights – as they were intended.

Individual police no doubt vary in their ethics, but right now, one can accurately say police across the United States do not support the rights of individuals – our rights are no longer what informs their orders. This is clear when observing the national trend of the horrendous treatment of people (the 99%) who practice their First Amendment rights to gather and demand redress of legitimate grievances. The result of last year’s demonstrations in Ferguson a recent example.

It is clear to anyone with a sense of history who has been observing trends that the increasing brutality of the police state state is a financially-driven institutional movement, while Occupy Wall Street is dichotomously a morally-driven individual movement. Currently, the police are forcefully executing the will of a self-serving oligarchy at every turn, while individuals resisting the unlawful encroachment of such government agencies are forced to defend our rights twice — first by defending ourselves against our so-called protectors in order to exercise our rights (protected by the First Amendment) to communicate and protest in the first place, and second, then insisting our original grievance is redressed.

In an increasingly militaristic oligarchy, it seems the real terrorists sometimes have uniforms on.

The War On Drugs

It is arguable that the mechanics of the Orwellian world being implemented around us is predominantly funded through the prohibition of narcotics. Whole swaths of police forces are funded solely by the money found in narcotics operations – literally feeding off of prohibition and addiction. Indeed the “War On Drugs” is big business – a billion dollar industry. Countless companies make money through the prison system, such as food distribution companies, as does government, and the police who so diligently strive to meet their arrest quotas. But most glaringly, the questionably-connected private corporations that are paid per incarceration to operate prison facilities that are sub-standard by global standards.

Monetizing and industrializing the lives of people held prisoner is akin to terrorism. And given the co-operative ties that are evident between government agencies (like the CIA) and the illegal drug trade, this is especially true of prisoners of the government’s never-ending, and highly profitable, “War On Drugs” program.

According to journalist Victor Thorn:

One of the big questions asked by naïve media talking heads is: Where does all of this heroin come from? The answer is the same as it was a decade ago following a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led invasion of Afghanistan: 75%-80% of the world’s heroin is exported from Afghanistan. In spite of the fact that the U.S. military controls a great deal of that mountainous country, production levels hit record highs last year.

You do the math. And the seemingly endless “War On Drugs” has led to an unparalleled culture of incarceration in the United States. Journalist Maya Schenwar describes the scope of the problem:

An estimated 2.4 million people [are incarcerated] at any moment in “1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories.”  That’s about one of every 100 Americans , more than 60% of whom are people of color. Add in another almost five million on probation or in some way under the supervision of the criminal justice system and you’ve reached about seven million, the equivalent of the population of Serbia or Paraguay.

Not surprisingly, that’s also the largest prison population on Earth… On any day of your choice, the United States, with 5% of the world’s population, has close to 25% of the people imprisoned on this planet. That population, by the way, has risen by 700% since 1970, a tidal movement for incarceration that only in recent years has shown small signs of finally ebbing. In short, state by state or as a country, the U.S. leaves the rest of the world in the dust. (USA! USA!)

As this trend has proven, making narcotics ‘illegal’ does not eliminate drug use, or cure addiction, it only stimulates a very dark corner of the economy. As other cultures have demonstrated, illicit drugs are a bigger health risk to a prohibitionist society than one that deals openly and constructively with issues of addiction and regards the alteration of consciousness (whether casually or addictively) as a personal and spiritual concern instead of a social and criminal one. The possession and use of mind-altering substances is of itself a victimless “crime”; it is only through substance prohibition, by the same governments that ultimately profits from prohibition, that crime becomes an inherent part of the story. Thus, the “War On Drugs” can only be considered a money-making venture conducted by a creeping militaristic government.

The War On Kids

Creating a police state is an unwanted and unsustainable violation of human rights, as protected by the First Amendment of the Bill Of Rights. But how did we get here? By progressive indoctrination; a steady process of normalizing that which was once considered abhorrent.

It is arguable that most all prominent institutions today, including media and the public education system, help to shape the mindset that accepts a prescribed life as a cog in someone else’s industry; one that accepts a corporate prison system, aimless “wars on” everything, and a police state that does not respect the spirit of the First Amendment.

The documentary “The War on Kids” examines the increased policing of children in public schools which is, incidentally, concurrent with decreasing quality of education and genuine student engagement.

Today, the United States education system has become so corrupted from its original purpose that most schools in the average neighborhood now resemble prisons. In school kids are taught how to behave in an oligarchy; wear a uniform, compete for grades, submit to authority, and value the rational over the creative. The kids must change to fit the syllabus, not the other way around. Their heads are crammed full of false history, false measures of success, and unnatural social expectations, all at an emotionally vulnerable time of their lives. And they learn to live in an Orwellian world, with body scanners, video security, standardized testing (what child is “standard”?) and an instilled behavioral conformity, reinforced by the virtues of competition, punishment and ostracism.

Regardless of your perspective, this continuing trend is clearly counterproductive to the development of a child’s individuality, sense of security, inherently peaceful nature, and trust in their natural impulses. No child development expert in their right mind would prescribe such treatment to children. And yet as a society we continue this system of instilled conformity, which is crafted to train (and failing that, medicate) children into an inherited preconception of “social normality” – one that facilitates our society’s collective march toward industrialized totalitarianism.

Zero tolerance for divergence = zero common sense + zero liberty.

More on this at the link below:

zengardner.com