Poor Man Survival
Self Reliance tools for
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2161-5543
A Digest of Urban
Survival Resources
The Illusion of Freedom:
We’re Only as Free as the Government Allows
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
We’re in a national state of denial...
For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the
American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but
not enough to actually allow us to live as
a free people.
Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to
favor a high
school football coach’s right to pray on the field after a game, the high court let
stand a lower court ruling that allows
police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their
personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a massive digital data dragnet that
does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or
criminals.
Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the
go-ahead for a death row inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands
on him in
the execution chamber, it refused
to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record
and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an
extended period of time.
For those who have been paying attention,
there’s a curious pattern emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant
of those who want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that
doesn’t challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on
a football field or in an execution chamber.
On the other hand, dare to disagree with the
government about its war crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police
brutality, and you’ll find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded
an extremist.
The U.S. government is particularly intolerant
of speech that reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s
lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many
injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest victim
of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in the process of
being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the Espionage Act for
daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S.
government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and
responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Even political protests are fair game for
prosecution. In Florida, two protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming stating “F—k
Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that
violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other graphic
displays.
The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but
don’t mess with the U.S. government.
In this way, the government, having appointed
itself a Supreme and Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious
freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the Constitution.
We’re in trouble, folks.
Freedom no longer means what it once did.
This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.
My friends, we’re being played for fools.
On paper, we may be technically free.
In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.
Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship
disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we
say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate
shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the
government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the
dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights
of the citizenry.
With every court ruling that allows the
government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that
limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes
unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little
real control over our lives.
As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and
an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a
new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles,
but won’t be able to think.”
Indeed, not only are we developing a new
citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a
complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do
everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to
believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and
on.
In this way, we have created a welfare state, a
nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration
camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less
personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome
obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society
in which we have no true freedom.
Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team
raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation,
militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary
detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile
markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle,
to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.
Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being
threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political,
cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us,
freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often
given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and
circuses.
This is part and parcel of the propaganda
churned out by the government machine.
That said, what we face today—mind manipulation
and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and
the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive
surveillance.
We are overdue for a systemic check on the
government’s overreaches and power grabs.
By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly
partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m
referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is
unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself
beyond the reach of the law.
For years now, we have suffered the injustices,
cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that
has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.
We have lingered too long in this strange
twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial
presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic
courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by
fiat rather than by the rule of law.
Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable
position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive,
the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown
drunk on power.
We are the unwitting victims of a system so
corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency
in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all
branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive
branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary
that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities
and corporations.
The predators of the police state are wreaking
havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t
listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our
rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little
else.
The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by
thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel
universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is
all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against
government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally
inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
This dissolution of that sacred covenant between
the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters
and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen
because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a
process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and
abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide
and conquer.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to
transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely
fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose
priorities are money and power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American
People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries,
our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.
If we continue down this road, there can be no
surprise about what awaits us at the end.
WC: 1720
Source: https://bit.ly/3Mtx4fq
USEFUL AND NOTED
Inflation is here to stay, and it is getting
worse. In the first leg up, energy led the charge for higher prices at
the pump. Now, food inflation is growing with shortages on the horizon,
according to Bob Unanue, CEO of Goya foods. He said on FOX Business “the
world has weaponized food.”
25 Items That
Will Be Worth Their Weight In Gold After SHTF
When thinking about what to stockpile in case of a major
collapse, it's easy to get caught up in the big stuff and forget about all the
little things. I'm talking about small items we use almost every single day and
never think twice about until they're gone.
Things like soap, trash bags, toilet paper, and so forth. These
things are inexpensive right now, but after the shit hits the fan they will be
very valuable.
That's why when you're preparing for a disaster, you need to
make sure you don't forget all the little things. When the power is out and you
don't know when (or if) it will come back on, a simple toothbrush will be worth
far more than smartphones, video games, and fancy flat-screen televisions...
25 Items That Will Be Worth Their Weight In Gold After SHTF
You may also like...
45 Dirt-Cheap Items That Will Soon Be Hard To Find
50 Survival Uses for Duct Tape
You may also like...*
*On Sunday the store manager of our
local retail outlet told us the wholesale price of WD-40 is rising $2 per week! We use a case per month in our business…
Budget-Friendly Beneficial
Borax
Borax
can be very beneficial around your home and for your budget. Discover the many
uses for this inexpensive, natural mineral compound.
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The world we used to
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unraveling….
It’s only a matter of
time before we feel significant consequences.
Are you prepared for:
- Further supply chain disruptions, leaving stores with more empty shelves?
- Cyberattacks on the infrastructure we Americans need to live?
- Dirty water that is undrinkable?
- Blackouts across entire states?
·
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No one
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Natural disasters don't wait for a convenient time
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Prepare now to lessen the impact of disasters and
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- 4Patriot Greens sample pack
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Free enterprise, limited
government, individual freedom!
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Not Prepared?
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3 comments:
Only rubes and lemmings believe demon-rats work for the people...
I feel as if we're under a daily aasault against our standard of living along with our rights-I blame Democrats for this crap-they want to destroy this nation!
Ever since the un-Patriot Act was shoved on America, we've been losing our Bill of Rights ever since-it's all about control & cash my friends!
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