This is not what I imagined my life to be,
for someone to rule over me—
because all I ever wanted, was to be free.
I can’t force someone to be a part of we,
if you don’t want to be, you are free,
if you do, the rest is up to me.
I don’t need someone to give me liberty—
wasn’t I created that way to be,
and to know that God loves me?
If I am free, I can choose whom I want to be,
I can choose for me.
No one has the right to choose for me.
No one has the right to force me to be.
Even though being free means I might act mistakenly,
authoritarians want to force you to act faithfully,
so that you won’t choose what they perceive, sin to be.
It is my choice, if I allow someone to be the leader of me.
The tragedy is when I change my mind
and I can’t return to being free.
By: ElRoyPoet © 2022
“One of the challenges that violent extremists have is how to expand their base of support. If they don’t expand their support base, they just remain fringe movements forever. One way is to provoke a harsh government response. Let’s say that there are peaceful protests, but then there are provocateurs there who try to get the police to open fire or to bash a few heads. Violence entrepreneurs will use those actions as evidence that the police or the government or the opposition are evil and intent on crushing them.
That tactic is often successful in radicalizing at least some portion of average citizens. It pushes them towards the extremists. Donald Trump is what I would describe as an “ethnic entrepreneur.” He and his loyalists want to regain power. He is an autocrat. Trump has no interest in ruling democratically. But Trump is not going to get that power back without the support of the average white American. This means that Donald Trump has to convince them somehow that his is a worthy cause to defend.” Excerpt from Political warlord Trump now targets his enemies—and Mitch is first on the list
Commentary: Sooner or later everybody ends up fighting the same battles. What’s really going on in the minds of the patriots, christian nationalist and maga republicans is that they’re hoping that if they keep the dark MAGA movement going, they’ll eventually be able to eradicate the socialist democrats, black lives matter marxist, the minorities, immigrants, refugees and deviants who keep gaming government social programs, because the fear in their hearts has triggered hate mongering for whomever trump frames as unpatriotic. How will they do that? Extradition, segregation, re-education, there are too many citizens in prison, already, it’s impossible! Or are they hoping, for America to become a fascist nation by inciting the alt-right mob to start a campaign of terror? But there’s a drawback, to this diabolical plan, because when martial law kicks in the door, you can kiss all your constitutional protections goodbye. I repeat, if you or the police state mess up, there’s no civil rights defense!
For a government, to facilitate the detainment of undesirable groups, it has to suspend the constitutional protections of the infected community. But here’s the danger with this scenario, can you trust them to lift martial law, after they’ve completed the round-up, or will they use the pretense, that it’s not safe, yet? History tells us that after the citizens surrender their civil rights, chances are they ain’t getting them back.
“We (the founding fathers of our nation) hold these truths to be self-evident (these truths are universal and non-debatable), that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights (these rights are equal for everyone, because they have value in our Creator’s Eyes), that among these are Life (you have the right to live), Liberty (you have the right to freedom) and the pursuit of Happiness (you have the right to choose for yourself).
Even though we don’t all agree with each other about the Bible. The Declaration of Independence is broader than that and acknowledges that there is an expected gratitude and accountability to God. However, America needs to be warned: Since the right to attain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is tied-in to our Creator, we can’t remove God from the equation. Otherwise, we won’t have a basis for our right to expect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our children’s future!” Excerpt from A New Look at America’s Christian Heritage
“Being good is hard if you live under an authoritarian regime… Dictatorships elevate the nation and the leader as ultimate ends, while mere individuals have no inherent worth outside of their service to the state… Damir Marusic, an Atlantic Council senior fellow, recently wrote, ‘Putin is a wholly authentic Russian phenomenon, and the imperialist policy he’s pursuing in Ukraine is too.’ This is right, but only up to a point. We simply don’t know what individual Russians would choose, want—or become—if they had been socialized in a free, open democracy, rather than a dictatorship where fear is the air one breathes. Like everyone else, they are products of their environment. Authoritarianism corrupts society. Because punishment and reward are made into arbitrary instruments of the state, citizens have little incentive to pool resources, cooperate, or trust others. Survival is paramount, and survival requires putting one’s own interests above everything else, including traditional morality. In such a context, as the historian Timothy Snyder puts it, ‘life is nasty, brutish, and short; the pleasure of life is that it can be made nastier, more brutish, and shorter for others.’ This is the zero-sum mindset that transforms cruelty into virtue.
In short, authoritarianism twists the soul and distorts natural moral intuitions. In so doing, it renders its citizens—or, more precisely, its subjects—less morally culpable. To be fully morally culpable is to be free to choose between right and wrong. But that choice becomes much more difficult under conditions of dictatorship. Not everyone can be courageous and sacrifice life and livelihood to do the right thing.” Excerpt from Why the Russian People Go Along With Putin’s War
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán cut right to the chase. He said that Hungary had been “completely healed” of anything smacking of liberalism, and he was crystal clear about how to do it: Control the media. In Hungary, as Szelenyi explained in her TNR essay, this was accomplished first through the takeover of the state media and second through generous loans from the state bank to allow Orbán’s cronies to buy up most of the private media. “Have your own media,” Orbán told the conference. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.” Oh, and this: “We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops.”
The military metaphor is telling, and overall, they couldn’t have been more straightforward with us. The American right, from Trump to CPAC Jefe Matt Schlapp on down the line, celebrates and seeks to emulate a racist, neofascist anti-democracy. They want to turn the United States into Hungary.
And swing voters, that small percentage of people in the middle who decide elections, live in their bubble, committed to the notions that they’re all corrupt anyway and that the Democrats are just as extreme to the left as Republicans are to the right. They’re concerned about inflation and baby formula, as well they should be, but they need to wake up and think about all this before it’s too late.
By the time those formula-starved babies are playing Little League, they’ll be living in what’s effectively a one-party state where contraception is illegal. Where gay couples have to travel to certain states to marry—if they’re allowed to marry at all. Where the local library won’t stock books on slavery. Where the rich are paying taxes at a lower rate than middle-class people and the federal government has no money (and perhaps, given the Supreme Court we have, no legal authority) to enforce its laws. And where the right-wing, anti-democracy media has more power than the mainstream media (I think we already live in that country). And where election results can be overturned if they came out “wrong.” Excerpt from American Conservatism Just Threw a Party for Hungarian Fascism
“Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that same liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the ‘general welfare of the people’. Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by [authoritarian] tyrants—to make us bondsmen.” By: Marcus Tullius Cicero
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” By: Mahatma Gandhi
“Ignorance breeds fear. We fear those things we don’t understand. If we don’t put a lid on that fear and keep that fear in check, that fear in turn will breed hatred because we hate those things that frighten us. “If we don’t keep that hatred in check, that hatred in turn will breed destruction.” By: Daryl Davis
Let’s talk about why I look left and expectations
In order to explain why we have systemic racism and a culture of ethics violations within our institutions, we need to understand that all systems in government rely on people to do their jobs in good faith. All it takes is for one key player to cheat, and the system fails. No system is self-moderated, no matter how much we audit and try to regulate it; it is up to the civil servant(s) to do his job to the best of his abilities. All the systemic problems we find are to be blamed on the people in power who are acting slick—not on the system. Blaming the culture is unconstitutional; an individual(s) in that system who is unwilling to support it, is literally breaking his oath of office. This is why a democracy can’t survive without a free press—to force transparency of the government—so that if it is discovered that a corrupt public official(s) is gaming the system, it can be brought to the citizens’ attention, so that the bad actor(s) can be impeached by the checks and balances in place.
elroypoet.blog 