\u201cIt is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free\u2014to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act. . . . To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n John W. Whitehead says don\u2019t give up on America, fight for her return to a land of liberty. — PCR<\/p>\n By John W. Whitehead<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We\u2019re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies\u2026<\/p>\n \u201c[America] sure used to be [the greatest country in the world ]\u2026 We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world\u2019s greatest artists AND the world\u2019s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn\u2019t belittle it. It didn\u2019t make us feel inferior. We didn\u2019t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn\u2019t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed\u2026 by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.\u201d \u2015 Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom (Episode 1)<\/p>\n Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence.<\/p>\n We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after \u201caccidental\u201d encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We\u2019ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered \u201cConstitution-free zones.\u201d We\u2019ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals\u2014we the taxpayers\u2014whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been arrested for all manner of \u201ccrimes\u201d that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government mindset that renders us guilty before we\u2019ve even been charged, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teams that got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we live in a democracy, that elections make a difference, that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be told, we live in an oligarchy, politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state, whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that matters in politics\u2014green.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations and track our whereabouts. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children\u2019s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights, held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged with a crime, and left to molder in jail until such a time as the government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation\u2019s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Department of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook \u201clikes\u201d for the State Department, and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been treated like guinea pigs, targeted by the government and social media for psychological experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We\u2019ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We\u2019ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men\u2019s \u201cshaking off\u201d motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking marijuana plants, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had our cities used for military training drills, with Black Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other \u201csoft target\u201d locations.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that police dogs\u2019 noses are sufficient cause to carry out warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to \u201cfollow the law,\u201d that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.<\/p>\n Are you depressed yet? You should be.<\/p>\n More than depressed, however, you should be outraged at what has been done to our country.<\/p>\n I\u2019m outraged at what has been done to our freedoms.<\/p>\n We are no less prisoners than those who are incarcerated behind prison walls.<\/p>\n As Aldous Huxley recognized in his foreword to A Brave New World Revisited: \u201cIt is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free\u2014to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act. . . . To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n The prison we inhabit may not be as bleak as the soul-destroying gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, but that\u2019s just a matter of aesthetics.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen, stop waiting for someone to rescue you, and stage a breakout.<\/p>\n Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people\u2019s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.<\/p>\n Appearances to the contrary, this country does not belong exclusively to the corporations or the special interest groups or the oligarchs or the war profiteers or any particular religious, racial or economic demographic. As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are fast approaching the point at which we will have nothing left to lose.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t wait for things to get that bad before you find your voice and your conscience.<\/p>\n As Solzhenitsyn\u2019s character reflects in The Gulag Archipelago: Take your stand now\u2014using every nonviolent means at your disposal\u2014while you still can.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t wait to reflect back on missed opportunities to push back against tyranny.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t wait until you\u2019re the last one standing.<\/p>\n Time is running out.<\/p>\n ___ \u201cIt is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free\u2014to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, … Continue reading \u2014 Aldous Huxley<\/h3>\n
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\nI\u2019m Not Breaking Up with America, and Neither Should You<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
\nThis country belongs to all of us: each and every one of us\u2014\u201cwe the people\u201d\u2014but most especially, this country belongs to those of us who love freedom enough to stand and fight for it.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHow we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if \u2026 during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?\u2026 The cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If\u2026if\u2026We didn\u2019t love freedom enough. And even more \u2013 we had no awareness of the real situation\u2026. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/im_not_breaking_up_with_america_this_valentines_day_and_neither_should_you<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"