I've been meaning to write this one for many months now. I'm constantly referencing the Children's Table of Politics in my other posts with no post to link back to. This is that post.
Looking back at my notes, @caitlynjohnstone wrote a post on Medium on June 10th that framed the issue quite deftly:
For ages the Democratic Party and its allies have been actively manipulating leftwardly-inclined Americans away from issues which might inconvenience the powerful — issues like economic justice, anti-imperialism, slashing the military budget, ending government surveillance and police militarization, and actually getting money out of politics. Instead they’ve been encouraged to only care about issues which establishment power structures don’t care about — issues like abortion, misogyny, LGBT rights, gun control, and racism.
The powerful do not care if you have an abortion. They do not care how many bullets your gun can hold, they do not care if two guys get married or what gender pronouns you use, and they do not care if everyone is a racist or if no one is. They care about maintaining and expanding their ability to exert control over other people. If they can use prejudice or the threat of revoking rights to advance those agendas then they will certainly use them, but beyond that, they do not care.
For this reason, many who see the abusive nature of the oligarchic empire have come to look upon these issues a bit disdainfully, seeing social justice issues as a power-serving distraction from the actual issues they don’t want us pushing for like dismantling the war machine, ending plutocracy and making sure everyone has what they need. This is a major part of why, when racism suddenly became the number one hot topic in the news for days on end amid protests against police brutality, many anti-establishment types viewed it with suspicion.
Couldn't have said it better.
I've always found myself on the far-left extreme of the political spectrum most of the time. However, there were certain topics that my friends and family would defend vehemently that I knew to be totally bogus. The biggest one by far is gun control and Second Amendment rights.
No one goes on a shooting spree simply because they have access to a gun. To simplify the problem down a solution of, "Oh, wow! He should have never been able to gain access to a gun in the first place!" is insanely reductive and nonsensical. The concept that we should take away rights from 99.99% of people on the off chance that 0.001% of those people abuse their rights is a clear precursor to totalitarianism.
I say these things as someone who's never even owned a gun. Maybe if I actually had any kind of disposable income I'd get one. Maybe not. I've always been more of a lightsaber laser kid. Energy weapons are cool.
Fun Fact:
LucasArts tried to sue a Chinese company (Wicked Lasers) back in the day because their customers were calling the lasers "Light Sabers". When they inevitably lost because lasers are an actually real technology Wicked Lasers decided to rub it in their faces by publically calling all their lasers Light Sabers and even designing them to look more like the ones from the movies.
Back to the topic at hand.
The amount of metal anguish one would have to go through on a day to day basis to inevitably throw away their own life while taking out as many others as possible is hard to imagine. Liberals backtracking on the situation and asking how this person was ever able to obtain a gun in the first place is offensive. Even more offensive is the current solution of taking these people and then throwing them in a torture chamber in order to "set an example". Well, guess what? No one cares about the examples that have been set when they are already in a mind-state to go on a shooting rampage. Negative reinforcement is not a very effective means of control in many of these situations.
Speaking of backtracking on heinous situations to "pinpoint" where it all went wrong, I'm suddenly reminded of Steem's Soft Fork 22. No one was outraged until we were attacked by the exchanges. Backtracking from the moment of outrage to one of many actions that provoked the entire situation is a fool's errand.
The funny thing here is that the Second Amendment has been rendered completely obsolete by the Military Industrial Complex. The entire point of this legislature was to give citizens the means to protect themselves should the government turn against them. Yeah, well, guess what? Your little pea shooter isn't going to do jack shit against an Abrams Tank or a B52 bomber. Not to mention the endless psyops and knowledge of what pushes communities over the edge (thanks Facebook). Modern warfare against populations often has nothing to do with traditional weapons. The digital age brings the #informationwar with it.
Scene starts at 2:52
This scene from the first season of Fargo really jacked me up and turned me full manic for a bit. I couldn't find the full scene by itself so I found it in this compilation video. Essentially, the "bad guy" mafia assassin (Lorne Malvo) sets up this guy to be gunned down by police. The police rule it an "obvious suicide". Cool.
On the night of October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire upon the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, he fired more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his 32nd floor suites in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, killing 58 people and wounding 413, with the ensuing panic bringing the injury total to 869. About an hour later, Paddock was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive remains officially undetermined.
My point here is that we have no idea if the information we are getting is correct or not. A huge mass shooting tied up with a bow and no one to question because the suspect killed himself? Neat. I fully considered superimposing Trump's face onto that scene of Fargo when I first heard about the Vegas shooting. Anyone could set up a mass shooting like this and get away with it. Apparently all you need is a fall guy that committed "suicide".
Of course I'm not saying it went down that way, I'm simply saying there's no way to know for sure. Information has been weaponized farther than most ever thought possible.
Second Amendment.
If the point of the second amendment is to allow the people to defend themselves against corrupt governments, I would go so far as to say that there should straight up be ninja assassin schools in America that anyone is allowed to train in. That is how radical my politics are. When you're at the top and make all the rules, the only possible justice is vigilante justice. As insane as all this sounds, I'd say that it's actually far more sensible than the system we're living in today where there are people running around that answer to no one behind a veil of secrecy and we can't even get the biggest corporations to pay their taxes.
Politicians are designed to be bribed.
This is another thing that I find highly disturbing. Everyone complains about politicians being paid too much. I'd make the argument that they aren't being paid enough. When the power you wield dwarfs the amount of money you make, your job has been effectively corrupted into serving the highest bidder.
I say again, it is the job of politicians to convert their power into money for their own gain.
This is the unspoken agreement between government and the super-rich.
It doesn't matter who is president.
My girlfriend was absolutely distraught for weeks when Trump was elected.
This was my take on the situation:
Dave Chappelle & Chris Rock laughing at white people for being shocked & outraged about the Trump election.
Too real.
A reality TV star wins the presidency and he's somehow the reason for all this country's problems? What an incredibly obvious but somehow amazingly effective scapegoat! ... Almost better than COVID itself.
Conclusion
The elite doesn't care about:
- Gun control
- Human rights
- Racism
- Sexism
- Pronouns
- Equality
- Healthcare
- Abortion
- "Freedom"
- Taxes
- Immigration
- Climate
- Yada yada yada
If we find ourselves feverishly debating any of these topics, we'll inevitably find we sit at the children's table, scoffed at and mocked by those who make the actual decisions of this world.
The only topics that actually matter are money and power, which are intimately linked with each other in addition to warfare, the military industrial complex, absolute control, and financial servitude... while trickling down into every other aspect of our existence on this plane.
Money
If we have money, we have power. If we have money, we can pay for healthcare. We can stay in our home-country or move wherever we want. We command a level of authority that automatically demands respect and equality. We can pay for the the things that we want and sculpt the world in the image that we want it to be.
Money is a magical abstract concept. I remember when I was a kid it baffled me. Worthless pieces of paper traded for anything you could possibly want? How? Turns out the answer is more complicated than the human mind can even begin to comprehend. Finance is much more baffling than it appears on the surface.
It's clearly more important to band together based on our similarities rather than allow ourselves to be divided and conquered by our differences.
Easier said than done.