by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Nov. 18, 2005
My grandma told me when I was very small that I shouldn't decide if I was a good person by what my friends had to say about me. I should, instead, look at who my enemies were.
The enemy of my friend is my enemy. The friend of my enemy is my enemy. So goes the thinking of the ruthless.
What it has come down to, and I can't imagine how any thinking person could expect differently, is that if you are a friend of the people of the United States, if you are a friend of the constitutional form of government of the United States, then you become an enemy of that nexus of power that uses George Bush as a figure head because, if nothing else has been proven in action, the people controlling the levers of power in the United States are friends neither of its people nor of its constitutional form of government.
Above all else, the founders of our country were cautious of concentrations of power. Hence the division of powers, the separation of church and state, the statements of the Bill of Rights to protect individuals from the excesses of power, the abhorrence of hereditary nobility.
If there was a flaw in their planning, it was in assuming that the power of government was the primary threat to liberty. They did not prepare us to deal with the crisis of the concentration of immense power, power greater than that of a government, in private hands. The impunity of action inherent in great wealth, expressed through the legal mechanism of the giant corporation, is the central crisis that our nation faces today.
First Teddy Roosevelt and then his nephew Franklin made a show of stemming the tide of these great concentrations of wealth, but in reality they did little but punctuate its advance. No, as with our original Revolution, this is no job for servants of the people acting on our behalf; it is the job of the people themselves.
We the people need to confront each other with the question of whether we are willing to live in conditions of slavery or not. But not to worry. If we fail to decide in favor of liberty today, tomorrow tyranny will merely up the ante and we will then be yet better motivated to choose to fight for our inalienable rights.
We actually do not need to put up with tyranny. The power of a people united asserting their individual dignity cannot be overcome. We will wait, if need be, for the maturation of our sense of outrage, and then we will break the bonds of the mental conditioning that lead us down the garden path of slow strangulation by authoritarian criminals.
In the past, violence was the tool of liberation. It need not be so today. What is remarkable, and true, is that when we begin once again to think as free people then nine tenths of the struggle is done.
Thinking as free people, we will make billions of small choices differently, and, by a process of aggregation, the force of these billions of small choices will be as a giant flood that will wash tyranny away like a bad dream. No need to man the barricades. No need to bleed as did Crispus Attucks. Just a need to see our oppressors for what they are.
There is even no need to organize a struggle. In fact, any attempt at central organization against this tyranny of greed will fail. What is needed is not a club to put the beast down, but rather, billions of small slights from millions of sources. Resistance in every day life. Total transparency. Minimalist risk.
The missing element is our need to talk to each other. Meet regularly in small intimate groups that divide when they grow, so they stay small as they become more numerous. The mere act of sharing our attitude of contempt for those who would enslave us will open the way to eventual liberation. Let our imaginations run wild to plant countless seeds of resistance. A pinch of sand in the gears here, a poster ridiculing power there, and pretty soon power has a problem.
We will need to learn to help each other deal with the needs of survival. Help each other deal with our addictions that were laid on us to enslave us. Care for each other, and thereby spotlight the heartlessness of power.
There will be martyrs as passions will rise, but please, understand that for liberation to become a reality, no one needs to, in fact should not, expose themselves to critical risk. No one should seek leadership. There should be no leadership. Just the solidarity of the oppressed will act as water upon the stone to free us.
Cancel newspaper subscriptions. Disconnect the cable. Set up low power pirate radio stations. Trade down on the food chain of capitalism. Eat out of your own organic garden. Shun genetically modified organisms, trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup, and all the other products of the tyrannical system that you would be better off without anyway. Shop locally. Shun corporatism. Downsize your footprint. Never vote for the incumbent unless they are getting death threats from the reactionaries. If we have to buy it at Wal-Mart, we don't need it. Share what you own. Or what ever inspires in the moment and when opportunity presents.
And as a mantra, repeat over and over to yourself and others, "The people united will never be defeated."
© by the author.
What do you think?
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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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Previous articles by this author:
Health care in America: An ongoing, massive con game
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
Competition: Destroyer of character
by Herb Ruhs, MD
America without the myths
by Herb Ruhs, MD,
To dream the impossible dream
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Refusing to see the obvious
by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
What can we do? Rhetorically speaking, that is.
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Banned in Cloverdale, by Herb Ruhs, MD
All of us are being fatally poisoned
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Daubert is the most influential Supreme Court ruling you've never heard of
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Enough already
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
War is sometimes justified, often not, but always insane
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The bad news is the same as the good news
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Trying to control your emotions "can make you pretty stupid"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The gangsters' mentality
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Nietzsche, New Orleans, and 'Nam
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Four decades in five minutes
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The masquerade of "civilization"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Habits of successful modern cannibals
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Face these horrors with acceptance, equanimity, humor
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Yet another, higher dose of pain
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The war of one against all:
The roots of our enslavement
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Doctors, medicine, hospitals, and the rest of the story
by Herb Ruhs, MD
System of privilege expands in scope and overall power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Highway robbery turns out to be legal after all
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Class warfare, anyone?
Why class war is not a fiction but a fixture of our lives
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why the little-known news is the most important
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why "Free Speech" does not matter
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Big pharma
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The genius fish and other comments
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When all else fails, try the truth
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Childhood abuse and the role it plays in maintaining coercive power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Murder by medical device
by Herb Ruhs, MD
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