Things You Must Believe to be a Voter/OMG, my sentiments exactly

by Retta Fontana
Exclusive to STR
July 30, 2007
I know what you are thinking, dear reader. Where are parts II
through XXX of the delusions under which the masses operate? This is
not an exhaustive list, just an exasperating one. I'd love to hear
your responses. You might need another cup of coffee for this list,
but it will only hurt for a little while. That's it - now sit back
and keep breathing.
Delusion #13
There is someone, somewhere, who is more interested and capable of
securing your liberty, financial stability and well being than you
are. They are superior beings, who only need to be elected to deliver
to your door all the things you didn't realize that you need and want
but cannot afford. These "freebies" will not only actually arrive one
day, but will be exactly as anticipated and come at little or no cost
to you because of the sheer quantity of people who need them. When
they come, they will be superior to and just as satisfying as if you
had worked to attain them yourself. Whenever you want something, just
sit back, open another beer, turn on the tube and someone else will
surely make it materialize. Keep checking the mail.
Delusion #12
There is someone, somewhere who can be trusted, not only to deliver
your dreams, but who doesn't actually have any ambitions of his or
her own. Bureaucrats are actually a special kind of philanthropist –
they just use other people's money. You must believe that it is not
easy to spend other people's money; it is a stressful, practically
thankless job. They live to fulfill your dreams, serve, protect and
care for you.
These talking heads of government can be trusted to hold your money
for you and return it one day, plus interest. (If they mess this one
up, don't worry, you'll probably win the lottery.) You must believe
that they can be trusted to decide how much of your money they should
use to pay themselves with and how often. In fact, they are so good
that they deserve much better pensions than any you'll ever see, such
as full pay for life, a free car with driver, free body guards for
life and subsidized vacations, all at their own discretion, and you
must believe they have plenty of that. It's even OK for them to
bounce checks because they are not ordinary people. (How many times
must I tell you?)
Their personal investments and fortunes have absolutely nothing to
do with the capital spending decisions they make. It is not at all
self-serving for them to accept gifts from lobbyists, to allow
lobbyists to write legislation, nor is it nepotism to place their
family, friends or lovers into cushy government jobs for which they
may or may not be qualified.
This is all appropriate – usual and customary. Believe it; just
don't mention it because it's not polite.
Delusion #11
The millions of people who have been killed by governments over
centuries were not actually wrongful deaths. Burning women and
children alive with chemical weapons was appropriate and necessary to
sustain the life of someone else somewhere, somehow. It could just as
readily have been American women and children, or even the American
President himself and his children – believe it. This is actually
why we have to fight them over there.
Often, killing lots of people somewhere else is a good idea and it
will somehow make you free and prosperous. This killing is
appropriate because it's not actually you who has to pull the
trigger, inject the lethal dose of poison or actually clean up the
dead bodies, prepare them for burial or knock on the door of an
unsuspecting mother and tell her what you did to her child. There are
other toadies for that. Don't worry - you won't have to remind her
that her tax dollars paid for the demise of her child at the hands of
government. Division of labor and knowledge is purely accidental.
"Thou shalt not kill" needs to be put in context and interpreted by
the person for whom you vote, which is completely different than your
neighbor voting for some other serial killer.
What must be believed is that your man would never actually
interpret you as being one of those whom it is acceptable to kill,
and that's why it's important to vote. You don't want to end up on
the wrong side of a vote, do you? At this point, the characters in
Orwell's Animal Farm would go out back to find the basic rule written
on the wall of the barn has been modified to read: "Thou shalt not
kill me" and "Thou shalt love and honor thy bureaucrat with all thy
heart, mind, soul and body."
Delusion #10
Government does not play fast and loose with your money, your
property, your life or your child. (No, seriously. I mean it. Stop
that snickering in the back row!) They also hold themselves to the
same standards as average Americans. They do not consider themselves
above any law they make for the masses. Laws protect us all, they are
all good and this is why we follow them, so that we are all held to
the same standard, safe and secure. Politicians do not actually
pardon one another, that idea is a nasty manipulation of the truth by
the ferocious watchdog, mainstream media.
The legislative process actually costs nothing. We're about to
obtain freedom any day now and here's the plan: freedom fries,
freedom of voting and freedom of obedience.
Freedom is not less than a zero sum game – we can keep it and
export it to Iraq at the same time. Not that many Iraqis are dying,
especially not children. Actually only a few old, bad ones are dying
in our current war, possibly of natural causes, and they're
practically killing themselves, so they don't count. The Bush
Administration does not have a baseline number anyway, so it has no
way of determining how many Iraqis have been killed except to
estimate: "one-half," "two-thirds," or "three-quarters," depending on
the day of the week. To sum it up in a bumper sticker, you could
say, "Want Peace? Start Killing People. – That ought to do it."
Iraqis are actually bad and different from you and me, in that if
our situations were reversed, we would be resisting tyranny, they,
however are resisting what superior and benevolent people know to be
good for them. (You do believe this, don't you?)
The defense contractors who are becoming obscenely wealthy and
their relationship to the current administration is not something you
should think about. The American military personnel who are dying,
wounded or committing suicide aren't really something you should
think about or talk about, either. That would be unpatriotic. The
reason that politicians' children go to private schools and stay of
out combat is purely accidental, and again, not something you should
think about.
This particular war and the ones that follow it (and there will be
plenty of those) are much different from previous ones. This war and
future wars will be pleasant, quick and cost next to nothing. You
don't see any pictures of coffins containing dead G.I.'s in the
newspaper, do you? It's because there really aren't very many, and
they might not even be that dead.
Delusion #9
You do not own your life. Questioning authority is dangerous. It
could create chaos, the kind you find birthing order in nature every
day of the week. You must believe that it is someone else's
responsibility to see that people do not die prematurely (or even
break a fingernail) from being free to live their own lives as they
see fit, rather than the millions of souls who have been expedited to
heaven by governments since the beginning of tyranny. It is good,
noble and appropriate to die from government mandate. It is simply
wrong to decide to end your own life no matter what the
circumstances. The government needs your income and moral support.
Otherwise, what would happen to our wars?
Delusion #8
Other people's deaths are just not as important as your beliefs or
your representative's actions on your behalf. Good intentions of
bureaucrats are more important than life itself, so long as it's not
your death we're talking about. That would be different and important
to them and everyone else--believe it.
Delusion #7
You do not own your body. Other people are responsible for healing
and providing for it should you make poor life choices, and this is
why they must tell you how to live. They feel your pain. Government
programs, which you understand first hand to be completely useless
and even destructive to the human spirit, are somehow appropriate and
useful for other people.
Handouts do not create dependency, but somehow raise self-esteem
and encourage people to make better choices the next time around.
They'll have fewer children, become responsible parents, and make
better food choices and exercise. They'll stop smoking, excessive
drinking and gambling. To put it in a nutshell: teach a man to fish
and he'll starve. Create a huge bureaucracy to give Third World
dictators unfathomable piles of cash with which to fuel their
military and police powers and you'll see violence diminish and an
end to hunger. It's going to work any day now. Total government can
also nullify the fact that life isn't fair.
Delusion #6
You actually do own your property. Your name is on the mortgage,
isn't it? This is not a scam in which you are simply "renting" it
from the powers that be depending upon your ability and willingness
to pay property taxes. Coercive taxation backed by firepower is
necessary to get your trash picked up and your streets plowed, even
if it should begin to feel like highway robbery. ($4.5K a year for a
2,000 square foot house sounds like theft to me, but never mind the
musings of a troublemaker.)
If your property value should decrease, just because your taxes are
calculated as a percentage of it does not mean that they should
decrease, too. Don't be selfish – just think of the many government
employees who depend upon you. Their cost of living is going up all
the time. They're not like you--you can just go out and get a second
job.
If you improve your home in any way, trash pick up and snow plowing
costs increase. I know you are squirming now, and don't like the
sound of this, but in order to keep voting, you must believe it. You
must also believe that not only is this good, right and fair, but
your man will change all this so that you can once again be
comfortable with the idea of a Santa Claus who's making a list,
checking her twice and "getting' her done." Then the new rules will
be good, right and fair. Try not to think about how you were told
that the old ones were good, right and fair. I know this is
confusing, but just trust the government, they'll always tell you
clearly what is OK and what isn't, like the 10,000 pages of IRS tax
code and wrong answers to your queries. You don't need to think. They
are here to help you.
Delusion #5
You will never be the victim of a mistaken "no-knock" drug raid.
The police are your servants. Video cameras, tanks and SWAT teams
coming to your town will not be used against you. They will actually
eliminate crime and keep you safe. Remember, they are from the
government and they are here to help you.
Delusion #4
Elections are above board. Ballot counters are never tempted to
cheat in favor of their candidate, even though they are potential
beneficiaries of candidate's policies. Electronic voting machines are
never rigged.
Delusion #3
The emperor is not actually naked. If you voted for him, his use of
force (war/rulings/deceptions/power grab/secrecy) is different and
right, not like the last one. He is actually anointed by your god,
capable of getting direction from said god for the rest of us to
carry out just as Moses did on Mt. Sinai (no matter how many must
die), and he obeys the orders of the voices in his head without
question. Shouldn't you?
Delusion #2
The initiation of force to achieve social goals actually works,
costs nothing, and does not create unintended consequences or counter
force. Your political party, given unlimited reign, will eventually
create less government, less violence and less suffering for all life
on the planet. It can rescind the laws of supply and demand and the
tendency of everyone to want something for nothing and power mongers
from seeking office. It will end injustice, oppression, war and
hunger around the globe and require less and less of your paycheck to
do it every day.
Delusion # 1
The greatest lie you must believe to continue voting is that
liberty actually comes from pimp daddy in Washington , D.C. You do
believe this, right? Government approved and financed teachers in
schools all over the country would not lie to you. That would be a
crazy, paranoid, tin hat, conspiracy theory.
You have the right, but not the obligation, to pursue your own
happiness, except where prohibited. Or how prohibited, how much
prohibited, or when, what or who prohibited. The pursuit of
happiness is subject and limited by a few, simple parameters--
suggestions, really, which government kindly lays out for you at
every turn. (You must believe this is best; otherwise anything could
happen.) Benevolent, selfless legislators everywhere work day and
night to see to it that "anything" does not happen. And it's not
because they are high on power and prestige, nor are they
profiteering from the legislative process--really. It's because they
wake up each morning wondering what they can do for you today -
believe it.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/fontana/fontana1.html

Click to join Out_Of_The_Frying_Pan The radical of one century
is the conservative of the next.
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out,
the conservative adopts them.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens [Mark Twain] (1835-1910)