[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s field report is by Nomad Capitalist contributor Pete Sisco.]
Dateline: Murcia, Spain
I’ve always resisted being TOLD what to think.
These days I resent being TOLD to pay constant respect and homage to people in government uniforms.
It says something about a culture when people are relentlessly encouraged to respect government authority. As George Carlin said, “The Germans lost WWII but Fascism won.” Today the State, in league with big financial interests, sets the agenda for the culture – and the culture is all about relentless State worship.
What’s this new BS about not putting up Christmas decorations before Nov 11 because it shows “disrespect for our veterans?” My dad was a veteran of WWII, and guess what – he never gave a thought to when people’s decorations when up. And he never in a million years would have taken it as a slight if it happened Nov 10th.
He also didn’t expect everyone else in a restaurant or movie theater to pay extra so he could get a ‘veteran’s discount.’ Or to get a cheaper mattress than his neighbor. He’d have been embarrassed by the very idea of being subsidized by other workers because he reluctantly went to war.
But that’s not what we’re TOLD to think these days. Every accolade and superlative is reserved for people wearing State-issued uniforms and living off the taxpayer’s dime. (Which is now more like a quarter.)
Where are the public honors for nurses and physicians who save lives nearly every day they go to work?
Why aren’t there medals to be worn on the lab coats of scientists who create new lifesaving medicines and new technologies that elevate humanity?
Why doesn’t a Nobel winner in Physics have a suit festooned with a ’fruit salad’ of science medals?
Why doesn’t every aeronautical engineer that helped create an aircraft design with a billion safe miles under its wings have a national and very public award?
Why isn’t there a visible award for every business owner who creates a thousand jobs in a year or a million jobs in his career? Good paying jobs are hard to come by these days.
Where are the touching videos of a loyal dog welcoming home his master who is a scientist who just spent six months away in an Antarctic research station?
Why don’t sporting events start with an honor ceremony for the top teachers in the community?
Why don’t we “thank an engineer” for all the technologies that improve our lives?
What the hell does it say about a country when we are TOLD to reserve highest honors for the armed government employees who go to other countries and impose political will on unwilling people at gunpoint? “We” literally kill other people in their own countries so our politicians and their financial friends get what they want!
And then we are TOLD that’s the highest calling in our culture? (Except when other countries do exactly the same thing!)
And we’re TOLD we should think twice before we decorate our homes for Christmas because it might offend the people who impose the will of the State in foreign countries while trillions of dollars get funneled to the the State’s friends in the defense and surveillance industries?
If that’s not fascism, I need a new dictionary.
And before somebody writes an angry comment telling me I don’t “appreciate” the sacrifice of people who fought for me, please understand this. I’m addressing this issue at a level far above that superficial viewpoint.
The Big Problem in this world is Germans and Japanese thought killing people was the only way to get Freedom in 1939, ISIS thinks killing people is the only way to get Freedom in 2014, and Spain, Belgium, Britain, the USA all thought or think the very same way.
In short, the reason people sacrificed and died fighting Nazis is because those German citizens believe the same stupid thing that American citizens believe today – that States need to kill people to get what they want.
That stupid, ill-placed gratitude IS the problem. Because somewhere there is a guy who’s grateful for the ‘heroes’ who flew planes into the World Trade Center.
And somewhere there is a guy who grateful for the ‘heroes’ who invaded Poland in 1939.
In 1939 Americans wished that German citizens weren’t so gullible. In 2003 Iraqis wished American citizens weren’t so gullible.
How about this instead of State-promoted gullibility – you stop thinking what you’re TOLD to think and start insisting that the State-sanctioned killing stop. Everywhere.
If I actually believed my Freedom, my ‘way of life’ and my standard of living REQUIRED putting a boot on the throat of innocent people – I’d be physically sick. Freedom through other people’s death and slavery. Yuk.
Fortunately I don’t believe that.
It’s total nonsense.
What the hell has happened to the USA, Canada and the UK since 1945? And when will gullible people stop thinking what they are TOLD to think by their State?
