Originally posted in orange
Have you not been radicalized?
At the start of every day, I wake up to new outrages. This has been happening for more than 6 years now.
When I woke up after the morning after the 2000 Presidential votes were cast, I knew something was terribly wrong. And as those days unfolded into confusion, hesitance, and widely held desires to just get back to normal, I began to feel the first hints of anger simmering within. And when our Supreme Court unconstitutionally declared itself the arbiter of national elections without demanding that an election simple be reheld — as is commonly practiced in many countries around the world, my outrage found voice.
I contacted friends by phone, by instant messenger, by email. I asked them: Do you realize what has happened to our country? They yawned, they prevaricated, they hedged, they denied. My libertarian coworkers, my conservative stepfamily, my liberal progressive friends.
They forgot that outrage, when harnessed, is the Changer of Worlds.
This says it all:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
How many of you recognize these words and know their full importance?
Were the signers of this document crazy? were they un-American? Were they?
Most importantly: were they forgotten? Did the American Revolution and all of its consequences change the world for nothing?
If you really don’t know the reality-based context of our citizen’s call to overthrow repression, give yourself a crash course history lesson”
- Read this first as a primer
- Read this second to see how it all came about
- Read this third to learn how we responded
You don’t have to read that much to get an important glimpse into the Constitutional Crisis we are faced with today, right here, right now, in this mockery of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
As each day passes since that horrible morning in November, 200 I find myself seething with an outrage that cannot be willed away by media disinformation and propaganda, cannot be masked by consumer distractions, cannot be rendered powerless by authorities who do not uphold the laws of this nation. Indeed, the Rule of Law itself threatened by:
- A disastrous breakdown in emergency management that greatly worsened the grievous loss of life, the massive resettlement of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the ruin of a city all of us could call our own.
- the misuse in hundred of instances of Executive contempt for laws passed by our representatives.
- attempts to illegaly politicize our organs of Justice.
- the establishment and reinforcement of a police state apparatus.
- Widespread and prohibited warrantless public surveillance.
- attempting to coerce government officials to act in violation of law.
- sabotaging our means of national defense in an endless and undeclared war.
- taxing a nation without true representation to fund policies that the Public does not support.
Have you not been radicalized?
When is enough enough? When do the words of our founder’s declaration of independence from tyranny compel a nation to action? When does our history actually teach us lessons? And how would we nobly inherit the legacy of 1776 without descending into the catastrophe of 1865?
How do citizens run their lives when government ceases to provide rational and fair governance?
How do citizens demand change from a government that refuses to listen to reasonable requests for representation?
How do citizens compel a lawless government to clean its house or be removed by the citizens as a basis for their democracy?
Harness your outrage but use it wisely. Remember it is the Changer of Worlds. And that means your world could change forever.
Even after writing everything above, I am outraged without a course of action, and I’m scared. I wonder where all this leads. I wonder how to change things now before things get worse, before there is no recourse, before American finds itself tearing itself apart.
Where do you think all of this leads?
