For a long time; I along with countless others who are better informed than me have wondered at the strange nature of our governments actions upon the citizens they are supposed to represent and protect. If one didn’t know any better, it would seem that rather than being constituted to fight for the rights of their fellow countrymen, there has been an increasing shift at all levels of government that puts the needs, concerns and priorities of it citizens beneath government’s own – almost to the point of outright animosity. Rather than providing for “the common defense”, it increasingly feels to me like our government at all levels views us citizens as their enemy.
If this is true in any measure, why would that be the case? What purpose would driving public opinion down and fostering anger serve a government that ostensibly is only in power or control at the will of the people? There are a million theories I have heard espoused in prepper blogs and on the comments of survival forums, but the only thing that makes sense to me is that this is not accidental. This is not just the offshoots of our decaying culture where respect is a victim thrown in the gutter long ago. This is not a generational shift that speaks to our increasing lack of values. I believe the rising conflict and confrontation is all being done with a specific goal in mind. The goal of government agency abuses and apparent lack of remorse or responsibility to their citizens is to drive an agenda that foresees a world much differently than what we have now. I believe that on some level, our government is willingly complicit. Could it be that it is the people we elected, who say they are protecting us are, who we actually have most to fear from? Is our government building the terrorists they need in order to enact the changes they want in our country.
You have to have a bad guy
Many of you will read that paragraph above and naturally go with the conspiracy theory angle. I understand how simple that conclusion would be, but I don’t have grand answers, blueprints or reasons. I only have observations that I will list below. I don’t know the specifics, but I do think I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that when viewed together paints a picture. Answering the question of who painted that picture or why they painted it in the first place isn’t the purpose of this article, but I do hope to outline a trend. For many of you this is nothing new, but for some I hope that I can phrase this argument in a way that will at a minimum make you consider the changes our country has undergone and to question if possibly there isn’t something more worth investigating.
Everyone who has ever seen a movie or read a book knows that you must have a bad guy. There has to be some conflict that your hero can rise above. This bad guy can come from anywhere, have any motivation and they simply just need to be the person your hero struggles against. In this struggle, if the author has done a good job of developing the story and making your hero loveable, you will cheer on the hero and start to hate the bad guy. Maybe hate is too strong in all cases, but you have a clear allegiance to the hero and willingly believe all manner of situations as long as those eventually put your hero in the winning spot.
I maintain that national politics behave in a similar fashion, at least in our country even if I am making this overly simplistic. Our government is the hero to our country, national pride is easy to come by and chants of “USA, USA” are almost comical now. But like any good story, our hero needs a bad guy to fight against in order for this to work. This bad guy has taken on many forms in the past. The Indians, British, The Southern States, Germany, Japan and Russia, Cuba, Drugs, Russia again, Poverty, Iran, Iraq, Sugar, Al Qaeda, ISIS and more recently returning veterans and gun owners. At various times we have always had someone we needed to fight but have you ever questioned why that is?
It seems logical in war-time situations that when an aggressor comes to your land they must be fought off. This has morphed via treaties into extending our military to protect the interests of our friends and some would say our own national interests in the form of natural resources. I can understand almost all of those situations even when I don’t agree with them.
What I can never understand, absent some ulterior motive, and this is the thought that prompted me to write this article, is when the enemy becomes the citizens of our country. Don’t you have to wonder what the goal is when our government with its national security apparatus and all of the other forces a nation of our size can mobilize, is identifying its own citizens as targets for scrutiny? The following are just a few examples of this trend.
Labeling returning veterans as domestic terrorists – In 2009 a report from DHS was leaked via the Washington times, which you can read here naming returning veterans, gun owners and people who are opposed to abortion or illegal immigration as right-wing extremists – essentially equating them with terrorists. Police and government agencies are now often war gaming scenarios where the disturbance is caused by “sovereign citizens” or people opposed to the government and to make things interesting, gun confiscations are practiced.
Military exercises in Civilian areas – Operation Jade Helm is a multi-state training exercise that has a lot of implications that can be viewed as being war-gamed for potential use in the U.S. 1200 military special operations forces will be working to operate undetected among civilian populations. There are some reports that these exercises are preparations for martial law, which isn’t completely ridiculous when you consider that Texas and Utah, both large populations of gun owners and veterans are listed as “Hostile” in the exercise materials.
Denying Veterans medical treatment – What better way to both ensure that your veterans are simultaneously angry and less able to resist you than by denying their prompt medical treatment after they return wounded from serving the same country who now labels them as a potential threat.
Stifling of protests and dissent – Our Constitution guarantees our freedom of speech and the right to lawfully assemble, but these rights are increasingly under attack and marginalized. From high-profile cases like the Bundy ranch standoff where a cordoned area was set aside for protests (free speech as long as you do it where we say) to the FCC controlling the internet. Our freedoms are being taken away and you must ask why.
Ignoring the wishes of voters – This is probably the most in your face example of how our government is directly working in ways contradictory to our wishes and it begs the question why anyone would do something so seemingly counter intuitive to a politician’s survival instincts. From Immigration Amnesty that is overwhelmingly opposed by Americans to NSA spying and legislation that increases debts to continuing risky practices that got us into massive debt in the first place. Our government has shown repeatedly that they do not care what you want. The only logical conclusion is they do not care if you are happy with what they are doing – they want you angry.
