Nice rant. It's frustrating to think you're sovereign, yet live in a cage, isn't it? Rhetoric can't disguise the fact that though you thump your chest and declare your sovereignty, the State owns you.
I've thought about your last sentence for quite a while. It had been nagging me for years, a small fly buzzing in my ears "it doesn't matter, you are a slave. Your chains you may rattle, but they are chains nonetheless".
Then an epiphany hit me about a year ago. I noticed that when I acted in my normal affairs with others, I stopped giving the State any thought at all. I noticed that I "obey" the laws that reflect my natural inclination and ignore those that do not, as a matter of course. Not out of protest, like I used to in my "yoot", but out of apathetic disregard to the "new world's" authority.
I also noticed that I seem to have become an alien in a Bizarro world. I really, in all actuality and truth, feel no connection to most of the people in this nation whatsoever. My soul mates, those with whom I would have fit in, well most of them died a century ago. I almost feel like I and only a small handful of people from the Real America are wandering around the world of the Puppetmaster, unaffected by "his" directions, rants, or orders. I may protest certain horrible actions, from time to time, but I really do it out of habit more than anything else. Its a very strange feeling, this seperation.
Kind of like living in a dream world, with shadows of men. I just no longer see their validity, and quite frankly, could care less if they all disappeared tomorrow. Other than a few economic artifacts, their presence in my life is a cipher, a zero, a null variable. I do not wish any of these zero sums harm, I just simply do not recognize their existance nor do I heed their claimed "authority".
I'm not sure how this relates to the article, too much, but its a statement I think fits in with the intent of the article. Has anybody else noticed this in about the last 10-15 years? Or am I not explaining it correctly (which is quite possible, since it is such a bizarre concept).
I think it's in part a purely American phenomenon. In other cultures, "I" takes a back seat to "We", when it comes to defining personal identity, and the responsibilities of the individual towards the interests of the group as a whole. Not so here. No wonder so many Americans feel themselves to be so lonely.
I could go on, but you get my drift. As Walter Williams says, it's time to part company.
You mean the feeling you are living amongst worms, not men. Pod people. Those who have come to love thier captors? Those who feel the world would come unhinged if we didnt have 42 pages of regulations for the transport and storage of lettuce?
Those conditioned to a feeling of helplessness. Those who curl up into a ball and nurse themselves with trinkets and hedonism to quell the hunger, the vacancy of their soul?
Those who are 'free enough'? Those who don't care if they themselves and their children live a life without meaning in a society without self-determination. To live like a farm animal, a thing to be managed...
People forget what makes tyranny so frightening, so different from 'intense oppression' -- inherent in tyranny is the idea of acceptance, of forgetting you are a slave, forgetting what freedom is, forgetting why you care about it.
Heaven forbid we burn down the barn, the animals might have to contend with the responsibility of being men again.
Worms. Bloodsucking worms.
It is not what has happened on the level of government in the past 10-15 years that is so alarming, it is what has happened to the souls of men.