Do People Even Want Things to Improve?

The short answer: no.

There, I saved you some reading for today.

But, no, seriously. Once a vice has been enshrined as a freedom in people’s minds, they will fight for the right to continue to damaging themselves and their society. It is very hard to walk back “freedoms” once they are handed out by a malicious elite seeking to exploit the peasantry.

For most people though, the various gifts of freedom are a death sentence.

Giving people the right to choose whether or not they will get that tattoo, follow through with that abortion or pick up that meth habit means that most people will end up making the wrong choice. This is because the average person is almost entirely a slave to the circumstances of his environment. Exceptional people who are capable of thinking about the consequences of their actions and going against social trends are few and far between and they are routinely hounded out of polite society.

Unfortunately, the standard conservative “Don’t Tread on Me” position is that people ought to have the freedom to do as they please so long as they don’t harm anyone else. This is the most callous and cruel position one could take and only a thoroughly atomized person could even contemplate such a proposition in actual seriousness because it is essentially condemning swaths of the population to misery. Libertarians ought to change their slogan to “do what thou wilt” so that some people actually start scratching their heads and wondering what exactly differentiates them from their Liberal political opponents.

But we’ve covered all of this already. Let us consider another gift that the elite has bestowed upon the people: participating in politics.

Now, people with money and connections do indeed have a legitimate reason to engage in politics. By creating coalitions to go against rival interests and then assuming the power of the state, the rich and powerful can make themselves even more rich and powerful by putting pressure on their competitors or eliminating them all together. This is politics in a nutshell. The rest is just smoke and mirrors to dress up the whole process and make it appear noble and principled to justify the continuation of the non-stop scheming and looting.

But does the average person benefit in any discernible way from engaging in Liberalism’s preferred system of mercantile party politics? No, of course not. If we had a free referendum today or in 2015 or in 1995, the people would have voted for the same things: ending migration, economic justice and a strong leader to protect their interests. But the people are never allowed to catch a break, as that would undermine the purpose of the predatory system that was set up in the first place.

For most of human history, however, the peasants were kept blissfully insulated from the internal scheming and squabbling of the ruling elites and were under no illusions about what politics actually was. Given the chance, the peasants always supported a strong man who would rise to power and put an end to politics thereby allowing the country to live in peace for awhile.

But, at some point in history, the elites decided to gift the peasants yet another poisoned gift. Yes, they shared a piece of their own minds with them. Imagine a surgeon grafting on a piece or foreign tissue on another person’s skull. All of a sudden, strange thoughts started appearing in the head of the patient. He began to think and act like the person from whose brain the tissue had been taken and a schizophrenic personality developed as a result.

Despite remaining a peasant, the patient with the mind-graft from the oligarch began thinking that he was an oligarch too! He started caring about inheritance taxes, even though he’d never have half a billion dollars to pass onto his sons. He began to care about free market principles, even though he knew next to nothing about economics and only really cared about things remaining more or less affordable before. Foreign wars fought for mercantile interests suddenly engendered passionate support from the mad man.

His peers tried to remind him that none of that stuff really mattered or affected his life directly and that, even if it did, there was nothing he could do to affect these events in any way. What’s worse, he had started quarreling with people from his village and the townsfolk over politics when before they had always gotten along and helped one another, regardless of what party or faction was in power in the capital. His peasant neighbors and friends begged him to come to his senses and stop sowing rancor into the community. But, because he was possessed of the delusion that his opinions mattered and that he was a key player in the political processes of his country at the time, the mentally-ill patient refused to listen to them. Worse, his ravings began to have an effect on the other peasants over time. Some sided with him, others against him and they eventually formed their own faction to combat his. Now, the village and the town was divided.

Rancor began to grow within the community, with some families even coming to blows with others. The discontent spread within the family as well, with the youth splitting from the politics of their parents even though they lived under the same roof and ate the same food and relied on the same sources of income. In time, politically-motivated killings started to occur. First just one or two debates that turned into bloody brawls. Then, a knife fight at the local tavern. Finally, mobs attacked one another in the street. Eventually, the two factions appealed to the oligarchs for help in their feud, and the oligarchs were happy to help, for a fee, by arming their respective sides. After years of fighting, the entire county was desolated and the survivors reduced to destitution. An uneasy truce was signed, but a neighboring county, led by a strong man who did not tolerate political discussion on his territory quickly conquered the weakened community.

The sick peasants were, at first, outraged by the new system that had been put into place. But, in time, they could not help but notice that there were fewer reasons to continue the feud with their family members, their neighbors and the enemy faction now that politics had been banned. They found that life was a lot freer now that there was a despot ruling over them. So long as they did not attack the evil strong man, they could say or talk about whatever they wanted. Shorn as they were of any opportunity to participate in political processes, there was no one to police their thoughts and force them to conform to the dogmas of one political faction or another. They could say and think what they wanted, because the strong man didn’t really care what they were up to, so long as they weren’t causing trouble for him.

Over time, the peasants began to remember the era of politics as an age of turmoil and chaos. They clamored for the strong man to appoint a successor who would ensure stability going forward and he obliged, eventually handing over his position to his son. Their family then went on to rule for many generations.

/fin.

This scenario will come to pass in one form or another. Either a strong man rides a wave of popular support to achieve this scenario from within the system, or an outside strong man will effect the same change from without.

The peasants, infected with the virus of politics, think that they are made “freer” because of it. They won’t willingly give up their non-existent political freedoms, because, despite the fact that they have literally no say in anything of any value or importance in their country, they like to cling to the illusion that they do. This is because they are mentally ill. And any doctor who explains to them how to cure their illness will be met with derision and scorn.

“Are you saying that the Doritos and Mountain Dew are contributing to my diabetes? What a quack!”

But, eventually, the cure will come in one way or another. Either the patient overdoses on refined sugars, fentanyl and politics, or he’s chained to a bed and forced to detox against his own will.

This farce can only continue on for so long before the body of the people simply gives out.