Follow The Leader

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. (Anonymous)

• What is happening right now in the United States?
• What has happened to the gap between wealthy and poor over the past 50 years?
• How have the population percentage shares of those two groups changed?
• What has happened to fiscal regulation in the U.S. over the past 20 years?
• What is happening with taxpayer money right now? Where is it going? Who is getting it?

The quote mentioned is often paired with the following:

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. (Henning W. Prentis, Jr.)

If any credence can be given to this statement, where might the current population of the U.S. fall in this sequence today? Questions to answer a question:

• How is your living arrangement secured? Could you create shelter on your own if you had to?
• How is your food procured? Could you acquire food on your own, if you had to?
• Where do your "tools" and other devices come from? Could you make or mend them on your own?
• Are you largely dependent on systems you cannot control for your basic means of survival?

Many Americans, myself included, should consider the degree to which they are dependent on the government and the social framework for the basics of survival. For many Americans, the dependence is absolute, meaning that if that framework were taken away, they would be unable to keep themselves alive. They would die from an inability to care for themselves, unable to produce their own food, shelter, or health care. They would die from a lack of independence. The frightful part of this is not that we might find our safety net taken away, but rather that the THREAT of its loss will be used against us. This is why "bondage" follows "dependence" in what has been called the "fatal sequence." There is no need to take away the system that provides society's basic necessities. Merely threaten to, and fear, driven by lack of knowledge of how to care for itself, will drive society into the arms of whomever is holding the reins. As the anonymous quote suggests, this is a recipe for dictatorship.

Is America NOT in a phase of population dependency? Is money NOT, at this very moment, being shuffled from the taxpayer (our treasury) to the highest tier of the wealthy class at breakneck speed? Are the wealthiest NOT those with the most influence in the government?

During the Great Depression, with a massive loss of employment, the basic necessities provided by the socio-economic framework began to dry up. Thankfully, this was off-set, in large part, by the fact that the American people were still fairly independent. They had not forgotten how to grow food, nor how to preserve it for hard winters. They had not forgotten how to mend clothes (rather than simply buying new ones). They still had quality tools and machines, made by craftsmen, to last, not quick-to-break devices, made by assembly lines, made to be replaced (at maximum profit to the producer). In short, the people still had a modicum of independence, and it was enough to see them through the failure phase of the modern, cyclical, monetary system without widespread social unrest (and the sort of military rule that inevitably is a response to it).

What would happen, today, if the Great Depression revisited us? Let me ask this another way: what would the mid-western housewife, with four young children, do when the Multi-Mart stopped stocking the shelves with boxes of candy-cereals, or when the refrigerators stopped being filled with microwavable, TV dinners? Would she go out and start foraging? Would she miraculously produce a garden in her backyard that could feed her husband, her ravenous kids, and herself? Or would she do whatever her government asked her to so long as it handed her another meal?

Is this not the equation that leads to abject tyranny? Do we fail to see the forest for the trees? How are we missing the historical parallels?

Some, such as the self-penned "Old Horseman", have suggested dire ends for we of the new-gilded age. Conspiracy theory? Sure, but what phase of world history leads to the belief that the powerful have not conspired against those without power? There are myriad examples of MOMENTARY altruism, such as the formation of groups like the Red Cross, but the tale of humanity is not told by a single chapter. Rather, the entirety of the novel must be examined. Within it, there is a narrative line that leads in a direction, and though it may zig and zag, occasionally, as the hearts and minds of men sway, it appears, inexorably, to push toward one end: with an increase in population and modernization comes an increase in systems of control and a decrease in individual autonomy. Human lives are short, though. This, coupled with our need to learn mostly from experience rather than analogy, causes us not to feel the extent to which the autonomy of the human-animal has been revoked by consolidation and transformation of our own social framework. We feel no more imprisoned than the chimpanzee that is born in a zoo. Knowing only the cage, he, and we, are largely unaware of the world outside the bars. I have been to the zoo, though, and seen the ape stare across the moat of his enclosure. Likewise have I read from and spoken to some few who have imagined a cage with bars fewer, with moats more distant. The first step to living in such places is to see the cage and understand that it is growing smaller. We must see not only the cage, but also those who profit from keeping us all in it, for even in the smallest cages, certain apes must hold sway over their brethren. One thing is for certain: given our increasing population, our diminishing open land, and the profitability of the cage to its highest ranking denizens (measured in degree of social power), the cage will continue to shrink, a progression made possible by a slow and unending decrease in individual freedoms and autonomy for the general population. As with the board games I played as a boy ("Monopoly" immediately comes to mind, though "Risk" is perhaps most appropriate here), the strong grow stronger and the weak weaker until the game itself is no longer worth playing to its finish, its conclusion already obvious and inevitable.

In the glare of a light

I see a strange kind of sight;

O cages joined to from a star

Each person can't go very far;

All tied to their things

They are netted by their strings,

Free to flutter in memories of their wasted wings.

In the cage

Get me out of the cage!

Outside the cage I see my brother John,

He turns his head so slowly round.

I cry out "Help!" before he can be gone,

And he looks at me without a sound.

Each day we grow closer to the moment at which the game is ostensibly done, a moment that will be marked by a populous so incapable of analytical thought, so indebted to power-run media outlets for information, that concepts of revolt or revolution will be beyond appropriation. How close are we? Look around you. Americans don't even remember how to feed themselves anymore. Instead, they trust the government to provide them with nutrition and dietary guidelines by which to figure out what selection and quantity of food to put in their mouths. We are bereft of the most basic knowledge required for our survival, yet, having been born in the cage, Americans, young and old, do not even see it. Having known naught but bars, they accept them as normalcy. As the moat constricts, what sort of world awaits we cage dwellers?

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.  (Friedrich Hegel)