Every day, I watch the world. I don’t watch it pass me by like some do. Instead, I look at trends, whether it’s technology, society, cultural, political — you name it.
It’s part of my job as a writer, largely because I write about so many topics that I have to have my hand in just about everything. As such, I get to play with the crystal ball more than most and see what’s coming down the road for us.
I’ve talked about the crystal ball in the past. But sometimes, a look into the past itself is extremely helpful, as we as a civilization like to loop around and repeat the same things over and over again, even mistakes.
For example, let’s look at the current political arena where some zealots are busy taking away our rights. Many of you probably didn’t notice that this is happening. And that’s because those in power don’t want you to.
A little quote from a political pro will let you in on how this is designed to play out:
“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”
Ring a bell? Some will say it’s happening all around us. Tiny little freedoms are being taken away at every turn. Now, I’m not here to take a political stance on any of it. That’s not my job. Rather, my job is to be an early warning system, well, a warning system at least, because we’re all a little late to the party – the powers that be have been hard at work usurping our precious freedoms at every turn.
Why are they doing this? Another good quote for you.
“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell, or an extremely wretched life as paradise.”
Don’t think for a moment that this is not a coordinated and concerted effort on the part of the political parties who rule the roost. They pander to us, pretending to want to meet our needs and keeping us safe from our foes of the day, they rally us behind the flag, calling those who preach peace unpatriotic, and use our fears to distract us from their ongoing power grabs.
Fear is a powerful tool of those who want to seize our freedoms. It keeps the common man from thinking about anything else. Rather than be on guard against the enemies from within, they are focused only on those enemies on the outside, those who may not even be our true enemy.
In the process, they continue to speak their mistruths to new generations, hoping that they will come to believe in the causes they espouse.
A shrewd politician once outlined this very process:
“When an opponent says: ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.’”
This has happened time and time again in our history by the way. Study the Temperance movement in the early 1900s when whole generations were taught about the evils of alcohol in schools, then went on to vote for Prohibition.
It happens all the time on Facebook too. People post and repost the lies of those who have something to sell us. No one checks their facts. Like mindless drones, they repeat what is told to them, not only by their leaders, but by those false prophets who have so much to gain by keeping us confused and in a state of constant chaos.
This is, again, a grand design, as history has shown.
One of these leaders even bragged about it once, saying: “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”
Who said all these things? Was it Dick Cheney? Barack Obama? Richard Nixon?
None of the above. It was Adolph Hitler, arguably the most vile, inhuman and calculating leader in modern history, if not all time.
And yet, there are strains of an awful truth in his words today. We may have not noticed it yet, as the power brokers hope. Or we choose not to see it, which is a crime against our fellow man and against our country.
Some other wise men have shown us the promised land, one that delivers us from tyranny.
Let’s start with Justice Louis D. Brandeis:
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Or how about: “The state is made for man, not man for the state…. That is to say, the state should be our servant and not we its slaves.” – Albert Einstein
And finally, two quotes from leaders of our generation that I find particularly fitting in these times, with an election looming on the horizon that will profoundly affect our personal rights and freedoms:
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
– John F. Kennedy
And finally, a a little more food for thought:
“A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.”
– Ian Williams Goddard
All I ask is that you do your part. Stop spreading the lies. Research the truth and share it instead. Be wary of the jackals who disguise themselves as your friends, saying they are only here to help. Or worse, telling you that they are “independent” and would never try to peddle snake oil to you.
Vote your conscience, but don’t vote a party line. Remember, the only difference between our democracy and a totalitarian state is that we get one more party to choose from.
In the Emerald City, beating my chest from an ever so shaky soapbox,
– Robb