We HAVE to hate the government. Our beloved Oligarchs demand it.

[TygrBright]

The handbasket has finally reached the bottom of the slope, and at the rate it was traveling it was a foregone conclusion it would smash to pieces and leave us dazed and wounded in the wreckage.

But there is always another basket and another slope. Of course, it's all the evil government's fault, right?

Government is the root of all evil.

All government is corrupt and deadly.

Government is the problem, not the solution.

Government is the vampire that saps your lifeblood, steals YOUR hard-earned money, tramples your God-given rights.

Government is under the control of the Forces of Darkness; there is nothing we can do but hate it.

All of these are variations on the thought patterns that diligently serve our beloved Oligarchs. Because as long as people regard government as the problem, not the solution, so fucked up, so powerful that all we can do is hate it, they keep control and they keep winning. They can hide behind the shield of "our fucked-up government" while they loot our pocketbooks, seize our homes, decimate our communities, and watch us die in misery from poverty and lack of health care. It's all the government's fault, don'cha know.

The whole "government of, by, and for the People" thing has been a disaster for them from the start. They've used their money, their influence, the bully pulpit of propaganda that their billions can buy, to convince us that government, not their greedy exploitation, is at the root of all we dislike, from long lines at the DMV to jobs following cheap labor to health care costs spiraling out of control and out of our reach.

Any time we make the slightest move to reclaim OUR government, to protect OUR lives and rights, for OUR communities and OUR well-being, they buy a frenzy of ranting heads and sock puppets to convince us that any such attempt will land us right in the Gulag with Marxo-Stalino-Socialist apparatchiks sucking our blood and raping our children.

They want government, make no mistake. But the government they want is incompetent, impotent, submissive, schizophrenic, inept, corrupt, and stupid.

They've gotten what they wanted, because too many of us allowed them to convince us that government, in and of itself, is always evil, always a threat to liberty, always at risk of becoming a tyranny.

Well, we have a tyranny now, but it's not our government. Government is currently a toothless, paper tiger, split between complicit sycophants and helots of the Oligarchs, with only a few honest voices left. The tyranny we groan under now isn't government. It is our beloved Oligarchs, their enablers, and our own delusion. Because as long as we believe government is inherently evil, inherently the problem, we will not see it for what it is: a tool.

In every sense of the word. Currently, government is a tool in the slangy, perjorative, double-entendre sense of the word.

Our beloved Oligarchs forbid that we see government as a tool in any other sense of the word.

Government is not a tool to maintain the infrastructure we all depend on. Government is not a tool to level the playing field and ensure that the small, weak, and powerless have an equal chance at economic success. Government is not a tool to prevent those with massive wealth from exploiting and undermining the very rules established to promote justice. Government is not a tool to afford everyone a life with dignity and a chance at achieving happiness. Government is not a tool to ensure that communities serve all of their members, rather than the top one percent. Government cannot do any of that. It can only take your guns away, kill your babies, enable the Antichrist, and lock you in concentration camps. Only by keeping government weak and impotent can we stay "free."

Poor, but "free."

Homeless, but "free."

Sick, but "free."

Unemployed, but "free."

Badly educated, but "free."

Desperate, but "free."

Deluded, but "free."

So hate the government. Our beloved Oligarchs know what they're doing. Believe them.

Above all, don't see government as a tool for positive change.

Don't see government as something that we need to demand control of.

Don't see government as a way to address the structural roots of inequity, economic dysfunction, and human misery.

Don't see government as something we need to retake control of.

Don't see government as something worth making a noise for.

Don't see government as something worth being uncomfortable for.

Don't see government as something worth taking a risk for.

Don't see government as something worth going to jail, getting beaten, or dying for.

We finished all that stuff in 1779. To achieve as little government as possible, according to our Oligarchs. So we could stay "free," remember?

Government is the enemy.

bitterly,
Bright

[bulloney]

1. Americans are good at attacking the symptoms but not the root causes of the problem.

Why has government been so bad? Money and its abuse.

Who have been the abusers? Rich individuals and corporations.

But, do people vent their anger and frustration at the rich and powerful corporations? No. They clamor for the elimination of government, thinking the aforementioned wealthy and corporations will take care of them in its absence, oblivious to the fact that the rich and powerful created the mess in the first place.

[Demeter]

2. Since the Oligarchs ARE the Government

They can have their wish come true---we hate the Government of the Corporations, by the Corporations for the Corporations, and we ARE going to take it down.

[Uncle Joe]

3. That's the essence of their game plan,

separate the people from "We the Peoples'" Government allowing both to be damaged and weakened, making way for the oligarch, corporate supremacists to rule the roost.

Thanks for the thread, TygrBright.

[bemildred]

4. The government in this country is supposed to be the people.

When you attack the government as such, you attack the people.

Before the American and the French Revolutions, the government was the rich, and its job was to keep them rich, and that is what the people who savage the government want to go back to.

[Lorien]

5. Well said bemildred. nt

[Jim_Shorts]

6. But, but, but corporations are people, just heard GE is Romney's new running mate

David Michael Green (The Grubby Species):

The most disheartening thing about the American political condition is the degree to which people don’t get what has happened to them, and still continues to happen, destroying the body politic. It’s as if you were staring at an x-ray of a giant tumor in your belly, and nevertheless still sat there in befuddled consternation, wondering what the hell was making you feel so ill. It’s as if you then thought to yourself, “Oh, what the hell, I guess I’ll just drink a keg or two of this here Tumor Growth Potion.

[n2doc]

7. Get with the program- They're "Job Creators" not Oligarchs!

And second only to THE Creator in the pantheon of Republican Gods. Sometimes even first, depending on what they demand before tossing a trinket our way.

[blkmusclmachine]

8. Time for more people to get out from behind their keyboards and hit the streets:

Right now Main Street has no influence in DC, beyond whatever best serves the TBTF's selfish interests.

[bluestateboomer]

9. K&R!

[LeftishBrit]

10. k&r

[Mosaic]

11. Never forget the Oligarch's media

In its relentless brainwashing of the sheeple. All media is monopolized, that is a fact you can check for yourself on Google.

Great rant by the way.

[saras]

12. The attack on government is projection. It's SELF-government that the Right hates...

They are, after all, the ones who believe that humans are irredeemably evil, and need harsh laws to control their behavior. They believe that their own senses and intuitions lead them wrong all the time, and must constantly be opposed. Their idea of opposition to the life of sense and intuition includes "whipping the devil out of" children until they die.

So, in Freudian terms, they have superegos that hate everything about their vitality. And they're intellectually convinced this hate is justified. OF COURSE they viscerally hate their superegos in response. And OF COURSE they project this hatred outwards. This also explains the virulent anti-intellectualism, the fact that life and vitality of any sort seems to disturb them, and their seeming drive for self-destruction.