Some of us still see our political paradigm as left versus right, or liberal versus conservative or even Democrat versus Republican. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In today’s society, it is just us versus them.
Eisenhower had it right, but didn’t phrase it properly. It’s not the military-industrial complex, exactly. It’s the government-corporate complex. Included in ‘them’ are the military, the executive/legislative/judicial federal unholy trinity, the corporations that enable them in return for favors, and the complicit state bureaucracies that feed off federal largess. That’s the “them“.
The “us” is all the citizen dupes, of every shape and flavor. Oh yes, we’re indoctrinated to think that we’re diverse, but we’re not. We’re all frogs in the pot, as it were. And the temperature continues to rise.
We’re encouraged to rant and rave about the differences between you and me to disguise the fact that the real differences lie, hand in fisted glove, between the ones who control and the ones who allow themselves to be controlled.
The only true conservative in our society is the individual with power, who seeks, before all else, to retain the status quo ante, holding out against all opposing forces. Said individual is neither left versus right, or liberal versus conservative or Democrat versus Republican. No, that individual is a person to whom we have granted authority, in the mistaken belief that the power we give them will be applied to serving us.
Power does not serve; it controls. We should have realized that granting the authority to speak for us is fundamentally different from granting the authority to think for us. And until we make that distinction clear, hold our alleged public servants accountable to that distinction, and remember how to think for ourselves and govern ourselves, we will remain slaves to the only true conservatives in America.
When a person accepts the fact that human beings own their lives and bodies, and takes full responsibility for that life, they no longer wish to authorize anyone to speak for them. But even if they do, they recognize that they cannot so authorize anyone to speak for others. Thus, the whole “public servant” thing is unworkable for individual sovereigns, regardless of their motives or how closely they are watched. Who watches the watchers, and to what end?
The dangerous superstition is that anyone can possibly have legitimate authority over the life and choices of other people. When they wrongly believe that others have some legitimate right and authority to control them, their self ownership and self responsibility withers and may die. That is the problem.