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 Updated June 1, 2020 - Created May 6, 2020
Why write and connect hundreds of links to corruption in the intelligence community and the continual invasion of our privacy?  Why publish links to Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff's great work on Surveillance Capitalism?  Why write about guns and people potentially reacting violently to abuse by their government?  What is the common denominator?  It is to show people how they are being systematically attacked in order to control them and the remedies the founders put in place for them to correct all of it.

The recent death murder of George Floyd exposes the tremendous dissatisfaction with the current system in America, with sound reason. There is zero sense of equity among people in America, with everyone out for themselves, and no sense of responsibility for helping others when you are ahead.  What that simply means to draw an analogy is that if you are the best team in the league, you need to raise the playing level of every other team in the league and still try to beat them after giving your best away. If one team in the league has absolute dominance that it can maintain year after year, it almost becomes pointless to be a fan of the game knowing the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The draft is simply an agreement to drill holes in everyone's boat so that no team has an absolute advantage over everyone else.

The police are like a team with no holes in their boat. The following articles discuss how police unions protect the way policing, including bad policing, is protected (link), (link).  There is a serious problem with that approach. The police are in place to serve and protect the people.  They are an essential part of the community and not an enemy of it. In fact I would suggest  the police are the face of the nation because they are the only organization with people on the street 24 hours per day and directly in contact with citizens.  I doubt any organization has a more advantageous position to feel the ebb and flow of the pulse of the nation at any level. When things are bad for the people they serve, it is their role to be the Mother Theresa and the Mother Superior with the cane to maintain order to serve and protect the community. Their role is a privilege that comes with great responsibility, and requires proper training and constant interaction with the community to grow together.  They ride the waves of discontent like everyone else, and although the public can be unruly, at times showing no understanding or restraint, anyone who has raised children understands the challenge of helping human beings to grow. In fact any police officer frustrated with their role in the community is as much of a problem as a badly damaged community at large.  Look at how poorly the black community is served in their schools, in many cases not having proper parenting or positive role models, how their ability to work and have meaningful jobs is taken away because some moron wants to outsource jobs and flood the country with illegal immigrants to lower wages and increase their profits, and it becomes pretty clear the system is failing police departments' customers, the citizens of their communities. The police departments are the representatives of the people in their communities and as such are responsible for maintaining their relationships with them.  Governments come and go, but citizens and the police that represent and protect them do not.

These problems will never be solved however if the police and their actions are condoned or ignored by the state, and the police are increasingly militarized.

The potential solutions are likely to be difficult and not exactly what the orated media dialog would have you believe. The media narrative not matching the facts is most encouraging however, because when the media lies or manipulates you, you get to see that with your own eyes, which should cause you to wake up and realize those you have thought of as trustworthy are not. Maybe then you will start checking your references and grow up.

It is also critical that every person in the nation, no matter how poor, mistreated, and especially those that are criticized for less formal schooling than others understand they are the true keepers of the nation. You are the first called to defend it when the chips are down, while the rest hide behind excuses and deferments. There will always be cowardly and deceptive people in the nation who will give up their freedom for comfort.  They are the ones bleating the loudest about what the founders intended, but is merely out of fear for the utter failure of their position.
 
There is a massive amount of effort being put into controlling the people of the nation by the intelligence community and the collective of companies like Google, Facebook and other social media firms, a combined group you could call the Cult of Control. The two weapons utilized by the Cult of Control are assembling massive amounts of your personal data and an overwhelming and continual barrage of propaganda thrown at you by social media websites and the media. These two things when combined together enable those that control them to totally influence you in an attempt to render you incapable of acting outside the bounds of the propagandized messages you are bombarded with.

The best examples I can think of that demonstrate how this works are religions, which are able to enlist and keep millions of people in their orbit with messages that are a combination of hope and fear to create absolute fealty to the invisible hand of God, and also the military. The military creates fear in the form of a devious and dangerous enemy, and hope in the form of team spirit, the best weapons, and a completely regimented way of life, that also comes with pay. Churches bring you into their blessed temples where like minded parishioners bond and reinforce the message of the goodness that they are involved in, hoping for an eventual payoff from God, while the military does the same thing in their righteousness camps.

The military has the added advantage of making the devil actually appear in person by bombing and destroying the homes and cities out of some poor guys until they get enraged or utterly terrified and fight back, proving they are the enemy the military talked about. If only the church could get the devil to open the ground, spit flames, swallow a few kids and ravage a few virgins, people would flock in even faster.

So how do we get out of this Orwellian maze and move forward with a new way?  What became terribly obvious to me is how much we depend on other people to be able to live in society, and how little we really know about those we are asked to trust.  In business, you learn that trust comes with conditions, you inspect what you expect, which is critically important. To understand how important inspecting what you expect is, you have to look no farther than Steve Jobs, or the hundreds if not thousands of others like him. Jobs designed and built some of the coolest and most important consumer electronics on earth.  Everything written about Steve Jobs indicated he was fanatical about function and design and getting it just right with his vision.  The reason I bring up Jobs' fanatical attention to detail at this point is to talk about the way leadership in companies works, and the idea that worker run, or government run, or management by consensus systems, a socialistic approach like Bernie Sanders and others are attracted to have a serious weakness.  You can't shore up lousy products or terrible production by edict.  The other problem to me anyhow is in a communist system or any system with state control for that matter, you switch one type of boss for another.  Like the old joke about new underwear day. Ok Harry you switch with Jim. Mary you switch with Louise.  There has to be a better way to direct the enterprises.

And please, do not take this as closing the door on a more socialized approach to business, its just that I am certain that absolutely crazy committed guys like Steve Jobs in the midst of a company, with the power to be as crazy and fanatical as he was, are necessary for brilliant innovations and leadership to dramatically move a company forward.  I don't think people with just interests are as powerful a force as those with fanatical beliefs. I know carnivorous capitalism can destroy as much as it creates, so there has to be a new way while recognizing and rewarding Steve Jobs' types of skills. Simply copying what a Jobs does is not enough. We need to come up with a new design that gets the Steve Jobs types and others like him to carve out new business models and for that model to encourage and reward effective participation.  A combination of rugged and aggressive individualism well rewarded with a participatory system for people who work effectively and are rewarded appropriately, with a commitment to a safety net for members of the company, may be the right solution. The business thinking in the current system is seriously flawed. 

And I have to bring this point up for immigrants. In another article I am working on, I will show you what the party pushing unlimited immigration, open borders and letting criminals out of jail is doing. They are destroying the country, just like the one you fled or escaped, to get cheap workers and in the hope that you will vote for them because they let you flood into the country without any rules or limits.  Then when they have used you up, they will flood the country again with another fresh batch of suckers. And whose jobs will they take on the second flood, or third flood?  Do you think they care?  Come on.  They live in gated communities, their kids go to expensive private schools and they have no idea at all about the reasons you had to leave the home of your parents and grandparents.  But I can assure you its people like them that screwed it up. Where you gonna run to next? The best friend you may ever have is an armed American, because at the end of the day they do not have to put up with a corrupt state. Yes, some are crazy. I get that. But how many people did the cartels kill last year in Mexico and how many cops, judges, and government officials were on the take to let things get that way? You would have better ideas on that than anyone. So if you can vote, don't vote for anyone that would try to undermine the citizens rights here. There are enough lousy governments in the world that already do that, as you would likely know or suspect.

The home you fled similar to the situation the people of Hong Kong face should tell you all you know about unarmed people and corrupt governments. The people of Hong Kong are in trouble no matter what. They have no guns and if they did, only a percentage would be willing to fight for their freedom, while the Chinese government will do everything in their power to suppress them. The US getting involved will not make China relent or the citizens of Hong Kong better people, just subjects to a new master who has zero interest in their human condition, only making a buck for their weapons makers and stopping China from beating them at their own game. If the people of Hong Kong want freedom, they will have to fight and die for it.

Why bring up the guns? I lived with violence when I was young, did not like it and could do nothing about it. I was certain from the number of people devoted to religion that God was out there and would intervene.  I read the bible and hundreds of books on religion, faith, mysticism and lived in an ashram for 6 months. God never showed up.  It reminded me repeatedly that I am the one that has to make things happen.  Not one person in the nation should ever feel helpless for any reason because of bullying or when those put in place to manage the country act like kings and queens ruling peons.  The media is trying to put a spin on people who are armed and angry as somehow violating the Constitution.  While some of their behaviors are inappropriate for the time and place, they are certainly not wrong about their right to bear arms, nor for example are they violating any other rights by refusing to stay locked down. No one is seriously addressing the damage that is happening to the majority of peoples' lives with the lock downs and there are enough places who are not locked down that there is no irrefutable evidence that an absolute lock down is better than proper social distancing and protecting the most vulnerable. 

The idea that our grandmas are going to die is simply nonsense.  I am one of the elderly with preconditions and yes I could die. Bad news, I will anyhow, its just a matter of when.  Isolate us, keep us separate, which we can do on our own without your help and phony bleating thank-you very much, and if I want to commit suicide by shopping, or run out on the street without a face mask and commit suicide by unprotected breathing, I will.  Thanks for the choices, since doctor assisted suicide is far more highly regulated.

In reading the writings of the founding fathers I was struck by their commitment to building a nation of highly individual people working together for a common cause, yet retaining their individual rights in society. The design of the governance model they created enshrined those ideas.  Moreover, many of them were religious, and saw their religious beliefs as being important to the moral quality of the new nation. Although many had a religious background they did not make the nation favor any religion, simply protecting the right to believe in whatever an individual chose. They also saw their new nation to be confined to its borders, probably because the saw the imperialism of Britain as a threat to nations like them, and took steps to make sure they did not become another Britain.  They also put as many checks and balances in their governance model everyone agreed to, to make sure as far as they could envision, that it worked.

But the basic overriding principle behind everything the founders did was "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and that to "secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This statement says it all. The people are supreme, and they are the ones that consent to a government, not the other way around, and that their government is allowed to operate until "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."

The people giveth and the people can taketh away. Yet if you look today you would believe the government is the power and everyone else is subject to the power of the government, which is bullshit.  They draw their authority for their existence from their performance of their obligations under the Constitution. Here are quotes from a leader that understands his role in a nation just to give a comparison.

The obligation is not on the people to perform for the government.  If you believe everything that is written you would think you are some how operating as servants of the government, like that complete pompous asshole of a judge that jailed a woman for opening her hair salon and then demanded she apologize for her behavior.  No one has to go to any place that is open, and those complaining that people who go out to open businesses are endangering their lives are unreasonable.  Socially distance if you are concerned about anyone around you, and wear a mask if you think that helps. Flu kills a lot of people every year, so does driving and and many other activities. Anyone that terrified should stay home if they can afford it. 

The following quotes from your founders, all of which are duly confirmed as to their accuracy, make it absolutely clear what the colonists intended and the framers enshrined in the Constitution for the nation they founded for you:

“..the constitutions of most of our states assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, both fact and law, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person; freedom of religion; freedom of property; and freedom of the press” - Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.” - Thomas Jefferson, to Abigail Smith Adams, February 22, 1787

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” - Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 4 April 1819

“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.” - St. George Tucker

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." - Thomas Jefferson

"Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." - George Mason, Document 27, Debate in Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 14, 1788
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike especially when young, how to use them." - Richard Henry Lee, Walter Bennett, ed., Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, at 21,22,124 

The governors and their governments would have you believe they are the power in the land and they are not. No matter what level of control is taken wrongly, the colonists and the founding fathers, the only true authorities in America of people's rights, ensured the people of the nation could rise up and take the nation back by force if necessary. Think of it this way, every single law, order, limitation placed on American citizens by a government that has been temporarily authorized by the people, is like a coat of paint on glass. If the paint has to be replaced for some reason, like governments that after "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them (sic "the people") 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. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government" it is a matter of scraping off the paint and leaving the underlying glass intact.

The colonists did so when "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world." One can only hope that it does not become necessary to do so again, but that should stop no one from insisting their rights be maintained. 

The bottom line is simply this. You are the owners of the nation and have agreed to a system of governance as long as it serves your needs. You have no need for self appointed kings and queens taking it upon themselves to rule you in the way they see fit to benefit themselves and their cronies. In this time of Covid it is understandable that caution is in order, and absolutely take care of the elderly, I am one of them lol, but for the sake of the nation and your children if and when you have any, you need to move forward with your life, and while you are at it, start a log of every act of those around you to control you, disarm you, undermine your freedom and anyone who called you a filthy name, or stupid, or suggested in anyway that they are in charge and not you. 

One of the great failings of our system seems to be an inability to understand the fact that the poor, uneducated, people who come from very difficult circumstances, and minorities that have been derided forever can be ignored and cast to the side, freeing those self congratulatory types to live in insulated bubbles of their own vanity.  While there is a lot I don't like about the bureaucracy built up on the coattails of the few religious visionaries, it seems the idea "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all." is more than a simple platitude.

It is sickening to think that people living in America should feel helpless. I watched my father beat my mother on many occasions and there was nothing I could do about it.  Not one person in America has to live with that feeling. The founders made it absolutely clear that as a last resort being armed was a way to protect their rights.  The following quotes are from James Madison, 4th president of the United States.  Anyone who says the intent is wrong should be directly transported to a war zone, unarmed, with no body armor and with no protection of an army unit to see how long they will last with their high moral tone bleating about their Harvard degree and favorable reviews in the mainstream press.
"The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison of Virginia, The Federalist, No. 46)

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country...." (James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 [June 8, 1789])

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed ― unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (The Federalist, No. 46 at 243- 244)

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (The Federalist, No. 46)

"It is not certain that with this aid alone [possession of arms], they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to posses the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force; and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it." (The Federalist, No. 46)

Its like having a repair man come into your home, eat your food without asking, helping himself to your possessions, and then telling you to get out so he can sleep. Not hardly in America folks. You may not have a university education, or get pay for being a good little boy or girl by being a conformist so you can bury you ass in debt, but that has nothing to do with standing up for the rights the colonists and founders recognized in the creation of America. You may have to take arms to straighten it out, but
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” - Samuel Adams

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States

The Bill of Rights