10 Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny
Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.— George Orwell
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all
of the politically expedient things that are being said—about
militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption—while the
government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright
tyranny.
Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to
view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite
President Obama’s warning that the nation needs to do some “soul searching”
about issues such as race, poverty and the strained relationship
between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police
killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him “manhandling, arresting and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party.”
Americans’ private communications and data are still being sucked up by
government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo pill
intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change.
As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic,
points out, “The theater we’ve just witnessed allows decision makers to
boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while
spies understand that what’s actually transpired is hardly major change.”
Taxpayer dollars are still being squandered on roads to nowhere, endless
wars that do not make us safer, and bloated government agencies that
should have been shut down long ago. A good example is the
Transportation Security Administration, which, despite its $7 billion annual budget, has shown itself to be bumbling and ineffective.
And military drills are still being carried out on American soil
under the pretext of training soldiers for urban warfare overseas.
Southeastern Michigan, the site of one of the many military training
drills taking place across the country this summer, has had Black Hawk helicopters buzzing its skies and soldiers dressed for combat doing night combat drills in abandoned buildings around the state.
In other words, freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from
every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural,
educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us,
freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too
often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety,
security, bread, and circuses.
