Tag: authority

Mixing Messages

A page I follow on Facebook recently posted the image you (should) see at the beginning of this article among some other images generally promoting the ideology of anarchy and insisting that “government” – no qualifiers – is “dangerously evil.”.  Included was the hashtag #GovernmentIsTheEnemy.

(Note:  Under ordinary circumstances the image would be intact and properly credited, including the creating page’s name that was on the original. In this case however I want to avoid both provoking a direct confrontation (because there’s no point in it and it’ll just seem like petty personal crap rather than a principled criticism) and, frankly, advertising for someone this careless about their messaging, so I’ve cropped it out.)

Those of you who have been following me for a minute can probably already guess where this is going.

I commented to the effect that if this was what was going to pass for substantive dialogue, I would go ahead and see myself out…and of course, the poster immediately challenged me to provide some substantive dialogue.

And so here we are.

There are a couple of things I want to point out before we get too deep into this:  first, I don’t disagree with a single letter of the first sentence.  I am wholeheartedly behind the sentiment and in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if I wrote it ten or fifteen years ago and have since forgotten, that’s how much it resonates with me.

The second sentence, however, and the hashtag, render the whole thing about as basic and banal and entirely un-revolutionary as a thing can be.

The second thing I want to put up front is that my comments are predicated on the core assumption that we’re discussing life in a democratic system of some kind, and that system is at least somewhat functional – enough so that it’s not a dog and pony show to validate a dictator, such as we see under Putin in Russia.  Obviously the subjects of a totalitarian government cannot take responsibility for that government short of open rebellion.

So with that said, let’s nail a few things down about this recurring fantasy – which seems to inhabit mostly young, white, fairly affluent men between 15 and 25 – that all you have to do is get rid of that darned ol’ government and everything will be a beautiful anarchist utopia.

Government: Is-es and Isn’ts

First, government is not an external entity, nor a mysterious overlord, nor an unyielding and ineffable omnipotency. If you live in a functioning democratic system – a system in which, one way or the other, the people’s voice controls who represents them and how – the government is you. If your government is acting in a way contrary to what you think best, it is up to you to get up and fix it.  You vote.  You lobby your representatives.  You organize public demonstrations.  You run for office yourself.  That’s how this is supposed to work.(*)

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. – Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

– Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

This insipid abuse of stupidity by picking words to artificially demonize is obnoxious to critical independent thought. “Government” is not some outside actor imposing its will on people. If you live in a democratic system and your government is not governing to your satisfaction, you change the government.  That’s literally what democracy is for, the reason our form of government exists, to ensure that “the government” – that is, the citizens elected to represent their fellow citizens in the processes of determining the details of being a successful country – is always responsible to its citizens.

This idea that anyone does, or even CAN exist without some form of government outside a single-person vacuum is as frankly ridiculous as it gets. I’ve gone into the question of anarchy itself in a previous article that I’ll resurrect when I find it, but the key point is the simple reality that “anarchy,” this notion of free people freely choosing to live in peace without government, is a delusion.  It literally can not exist.  See now:

There are two people. Those two people meet. Those two people carefully approach each other, find they can communicate effectively, and arrive at some basic agreements to avoid displeasure.

You now have two governments and an international treaty. If you decide that guy is better at chopping logs but he sucks at hunting meat so you’ll trade him some of your excess meat for his excess logs, you now have an international trade agreement. You agree not to kill each other, you now have laws.

That is “government.”  I’m quite sure someone reading this, and probably many of them, are thinking well you just don’t get what they mean by “no government.”  That’s not my problem, frankly; what they said was “no government,” and if that’s not what they mean then they should speak more accurately.

(* After publication, a reader pointed out that any number of exigent circumstances might prevent someone from taking any of the actions I described, running for office, voting, etc.  I do understand this and probably should have clarified that in the absence of an ability to do these things, at the very least you can support organizations and individuals working in your interest by sharing their content on social media, talking with your friends about these issues, and other activities that are free, easy, and take little time.  Really, the effort to be a genuinely good citizen isn’t much.  It just gets built up that way by the ownership class to discourage participation.

The point is, in a democratic system the government is by definition responsible to the people, and the people are responsible for their government.  For instance in the 2016 election it’s pretty fair to say that at least an effort was made to subvert the process, but it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did if people hadn’t cooperated by backing a status-quo candidate in a rebellion election, by tolerating the obvious dirty pool on behalf of the DNC with regard to Sanders, by not pushing back against those stunts.

The degree to which any one person in your democracy may be disenfranchised, excluded, or subverted in their political choices is precisely the degree to which you do not live in a true democracy.  Even in a republic, the job of the elected representatives is to work on behalf of the best interests of the people.  If they’re not doing that, get rid of them before they break the system to the point you can’t.)

Words Matter

As my late friend Sam was so fond of pointing out, words matter. I should HOPE their opposition is not to “government” but to “abuse of power.” So say that. Because the two are not equal, and attempting to equate them just makes you look like an ignorant hand-waving agitator with little if any understanding of what government even is at its most basic level.

As long as there are people, there will be government. Inescapably as there will be wetness as long as there is water and it’s above 32*F somewhere the water is. Trying to ignore or “work around” or protest that is the absolute definition of Quixotic.

It’s not that I’m telling you “you can’t because I say so,” I’m telling you “you can’t because it’s functionally impossible,” like trying to create a one-sided three dimensional object.  This isn’t about “I don’t like what you’re saying,” or about “I think you” anything.  It’s about the basic impossibility of the premise of having “no government.”  The very second there are two sentient beings interacting, there is some kind of government, no matter how rudimentary, and that government is going to do exactly the same things in terms of function as any other: work to ensure its own survival through the easiest means available.  That means you have to work out SOME kind of rule for your relationship with that other person you inhabit your planet with, even if that rule is “there will be no other rules.”

Yes, even that is a form of government.  Even a two-person world in which the only rule is there will be no rules, has government.  It also has authority; you just exercised your authority to negotiate “no rules” with your co-planeteer.  They exercised theirs to negotiate with you.  Their authority extends only over themselves inherently; to extend it over you requires either your cooperation or force.  But it’s still authority; it’s still the privilege to make a decision and commit to it, and it’s still the responsibility for bearing the consequences of failing to live up to that agreement – or for that matter the consequences of succeeding – even if that consequence is nothing more formal and organized than a punch in the eye.

So we now see that simply poo-pooing government and making aggressive anti-government generalities just doesn’t float.  To put it more formally it’s an ineffective, dead-end tactic for genuine reform or even revolution.  All it does is mark those who fall for it as easily manipulated and not real careful thinkers.

Of course, it’s very easy to agitate people into the streets to make anger and break things. Doing the hard work of actually crafting a better idea and implementing it is a much more daunting process, and it often doesn’t fit easily into a meme or bumper sticker.

Ours is a world in which words matter, and the chest-thumping pronouncement of inflamed passion untempered by wisdom or depth of thought creates nothing but the same old stupid escalations and abuses they always did.  If you’re going to take on the system, you need to know that before you even leave the house.

This is precisely why so many revolutions end up becoming tyrannical themselves.

Either you want to be rid of Orwell’s Boot, or you want to wear it. If you want to be rid of it, engaging in doublespeak and agitprop is pretty much the opposite of doing that.

That makes you no different from the power you’re supposedly fighting.

No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

George Orwell, “Animal Farm”