The Continuing Shame of Veterans Day by Bill Buppert

Publisher’s Note: Another year rolls by and the gory parade begins of all the maimed and murdered young men and woman who fought overseas to prove empire and sustain the military-industrial money-laundering complex emanating for the corridors of coercive power in DC. I served most of my adult life in the Legions and like Smedley Butler left an unbeliever and disgusted with the whole wretched enterprise. Stand by for all the bad music, war fetishism, and convoluted apologia for bringing most of the troops back. I say most because no serving human in the military machine ever makes it back completely alive. Some return near whole but many return the worst for wear and haunted by the things they’ve done and witnessed in obeisance to political directives. Want to support the troops? Bring them soonest. It appears USSOCOM has approximately 7000 soldiers deployed to 84 countries (probably more if the rulers were more transparent in their machination) and active conflicts engaged and emerging in a dozen hotspots around the globe as the American empire takes its intensely violent brand of world policing to different parts of the globe. And please spare me the pathetic mewling of a lack of patriotism for failing to get excited about maiming and killing men, women and children planet-wide so the mandarins in Mordor can play macabre chess with flesh and blood human pawns.

The USSA has been at active war with the world since 1893 after the extermination campaign against American aboriginals was close to its bloody conclusion in the USA.

Please read this brilliant conversation with a Canadian veteran.

Chris Sullins wrote a very touching essay in 2009 on this subject as a fellow vet. And, yes, Jack Spirko, still hates my guts.

Any assignations of sadism on the part of some soldiers is not isolated to the US, warfare through the ages both East and West has been a stage for the psychopaths of every nation to ply their twisted trade.

Read it and weep and realize that your entire government education was a lie. -BB

“Happy Veterans Day and thank you for your service” or “thanks for protecting our freedom.”

What!  I hear this familiar refrain again and again every November.  I am appalled whenever this unthinking salutation is proffered.

I am a retired career Army officer and like USMC General Smedley Butler before me, I find these sentiments to be hogwash.

The only service rendered was to the American political power structure in the dishonorable hands of the Democrats or Republicans; the former, despite their protestations to peace, have gotten America involved in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Starting with the shameful expropriation of the Mexican territory from 1846-48 to the War of Northern Aggression from 1860-65; the United States went into hyper-colonial overdrive in 1893 in the Hawaiian Islands and has not stopped since. The entire history of American arms on Earth has been a shameful and expansionist enterprise culminating in the first ever post-WWII (the Japanese attack on American territories in the Aleutians during the War to Save Josef Stalin and the minor coastal skirmishes in Oregon) attack on American state soil in 2001 .  I am frankly astonished at the length of time it took for a substantive attack of any kind to be initiated on American soil with the breadth, ferocity and long sordid history of American mischief and mayhem abroad.

The sheer number of military expeditions the US has embarked on over time is breathtaking.  One worthy notes there have been 234 military expeditions from 1798-1993.  Another posits 159 instances of the use of United States armed forces abroad from October 1945 through December 2006. “This list does not include covert actions and numerous instances of US forces stationed abroad since World War II, in occupation forces, or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, and routine military assistance or training operations.”

Good God, if I were a Martian who landed on Earth ten years ago and found myself attending government schools, to include college, and watching television for any additional cultural education,  I would not be aware of any of this.  The constant drumbeat emanating from the State is the Orwellian chorus about America making the world safe for freedom and liberty and never using force abroad except in self-defense.  The history proves otherwise.

America, next to Rome in the Western world, ranks as one of the world’s most aggressive nation states when one examines the evidence.  A country sheltered from the tempestuous and constant warring on the European continent by one ocean and the turbulence in Asia by another ocean yet it simply cannot mind its own business nor resist the temptation to maim and murder abroad for expansion of political power and control whether for mercantilist or colonial aspirations.

One can even see that the brutality practiced by American soldiers abroad is not recent but a long-standing tradition.

Afghanistan, now:

All told, five soldiers were charged with killing civilians in three separate episodes early last year. Soldiers repeatedly described Sergeant Gibbs as devising “scenarios” in which the unit would fake combat situations by detonating grenades or planting weapons near their victims. They said he even supplied “drop weapons” and grenades to make the victims appear armed. Some soldiers took pictures posing with the dead and took body parts as trophies. Sergeant Gibbs is accused of snipping fingers from victims and later using them to intimidate another soldier.

He also pulled a tooth from one man, saying in court that he had “disassociated” the bodies from being human, that taking the fingers and tooth was like removing antlers from a deer.

Sergeant Gibbs said he that was ashamed of taking the body parts, that he was “trying to be hard, a hard individual.” But he insisted that the people he took them from had posed genuine threats to him and his unit.”

Philippines, then:

“Like many of their officers, American troops also showed incredible callousness toward the Philippine civilian population.  A man named Clarence Clowe described the situation as follows in a letter he wrote to Senator Hoar.  The methods employed by American troops against civilians in an effort to find insurgent “arms and ammunition” include torture, beating, and outright killing.

At any time I am liable to be called upon to go out and bind and gag helpless prisoners, to strike them in the face, to knock them down when so bound, to bear them away from wife and children, at their very door, who are shrieking pitifully the while, or kneeling and kissing the hands of our officers, imploring mercy from those who seem not to know what it is, and then, with a crowd of soldiers, hold our helpless victim head downward in a tub of water in his own yard, or bind him hand and foot, attaching ropes to head and feet, and then lowering him into the depths of a well of water till life is well-nigh choked out, and the bitterness of a death is tasted, and our poor, gasping victims ask us for the poor boon of being finished off, in mercy to themselves.

All these things have been done at one time or another by our men, generally in cases of trying to obtain information as to the location of arms and ammunition.

Nor can it be said that there is any general repulsion on the part of the enlisted men to taking part in these doings. I regret to have to say that, on the contrary, the majority of soldiers take a keen delight in them, and rush with joy to the making of this latest development of a Roman holiday.

Another soldier, L. F. Adams, with the Washington regiment, described what he saw after the Battle of Manila on February 4-5, 1899:

In the path of the Washington Regiment and Battery D of the Sixth Artillery there were 1,008 dead niggers, and a great many wounded. We burned all their houses. I don’t know how many men, women, and children the Tennessee boys did kill. They would not take any prisoners.

Similarly, Sergeant Howard McFarland of the 43rd Infantry, wrote to the Fairfield Journal of Maine:

I am now stationed in a small town in charge of twenty-five men, and have a territory of twenty miles to patrol…. At the best, this is a very rich country; and we want it. My way of getting it would be to put a regiment into a skirmish line, and blow every nigger into a nigger heaven. On Thursday, March 29, eighteen of my company killed seventy-five nigger bolo men and ten of the nigger gunners. When we find one that is not dead, we have bayonets.

These methods were condoned by some back at home in the U.S., as exemplified by the statement of a Republican Congressman in 1909:

You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon; and the secret of its pacification is, in my opinion, the secret of pacification of the archipelago.  They never rebel in northern Luzon because there isn’t anybody there to rebel.  The country was marched over and cleaned in a most resolute manner.  The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground.  Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country, and wherever or whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him.  The women and children were spared, and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers in that part of the island.

And countless incidents small and large in between from the only nation state in the Western world that not only endorses the use of torture but makes it an official means of projecting power abroad.

I have often remarked that cops are the only reason freedom and liberty is and has been in the hazard in America, and unfortunately, the same standard applies for military power abroad.

The only just war is one fought to defend one’s own soil from invasion.  There is no other.  Every other conflict reeks of statist opportunism and yen to expand tax jurisdictions and the power to rob others of their wealth and resources.  Some may mistake this for a pretense of the Left.  Not only do the progressives and the collectivists in America have a rich history of cheer-leading wars such as WWI and WWII but they also wish to employ military-style violence domestically to achieve their government supremacist dreams.

The notion that foreign wars and entanglements are wrong still emanates from a sparsely populated philosophical quarter that has no majority presence in the academy or the government–media complex.  It is a true voice in the wilderness.  That voice has one signature message:  you cannot thank a veteran for your freedom because they have actively done nothing more than endanger its very existence.  In fact, American military power abroad (and increasingly, at home) has made civilians more unsafe than they have ever been.  The threat not only emerges from aggrieved victims of American brutality abroad but a government desperate in bad times to ensure that not one dollar of military expenditures is reduced.  America is now a national security garrison state.  Think about that the next time you take a flight.

Veterans don’t need gratitude but a self-realization on their part that the machine they worked for was never an engine for liberty but a device whose single purpose was aggrandizement of American political power at home and abroad.  And that political hammer always extinguishes liberty and never expands it.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

– Gandhi

 

30 thoughts on “The Continuing Shame of Veterans Day by Bill Buppert”

  1. Boon Vickerson is out there

    Bill,

    For all our foibles and warts as people, for all our faults and sins, there is still lots of good in this world, good worth fighting for.

    Yet again, it is not good men who bring out the worst in us, it is the fetid hand of the tyrant, the few who rule and employ their evil through the vehicle of the state.

    The use of the US military as it exists is just another system of slavery and means to an ends.

    How is an 18 year old boy know these things when all around is the glorification of the military?

    We all know great men who have served, that they are pawns in a deeper darker sinister game doesn’t take that away from them.

    But we are all adults, what is done is done, now we have to look at things straight up and go on as before or abolish this instrument of tyranny.

    Most of all, no matter how bitter a pill, if we are to be free of the state, we have to understand and accept the truth of these things you speak.

    I think there is redemption in all this. An opportunity to redeem oneself, and that just don’t apply to veterans only, it applies to us all because we are all part and parcel victims of the state, the evil sonofabitches who have used us for arse wipe.

    Lets get the bastards who have done this to us and abolish them completely.

  2. Bill –

    Toward the end of the Vietnam debacle I was safely off the coast on an aircraft carrier. I had no clue what was really going as the planes were launched with full bomb racks. I learned first hand in 1999-2000 when I went back to SE Asia to assist with de-mining and UXO clearance. What I saw shocked me to my core. Laos and Cambodia were still reeling from the effects of the war a quarter decade earlier. The numbers of landmine victims was staggering. And what I learned about how the US enabled the rise of Pol Pot shook me up. When I got home I put my (not so) honorable discharge and DD-214 through the shredder and threw away everything related to my time in the military. Had I to do it over again I would never, NEVER enlist. I actively discouraged my children and their friends from enlisting and was relatively successful once I showed them photos of what I saw.

    I am sick and tired of the “military exceptionalism” that is so pervasive in our society today. The notion that the military is unique, different and morally superior to the rest of government. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no difference between a soldier and an IRS agent. One is trained to kill and one is trained to steal. Those in the military think they are doing good I suppose but even a cursory examination of history will show that the US military have simply been lackeys for those that want to advance a global agenda. There is nothing noble about “serving” in the military. I cannot think of one single reason why any reasonably sane parent would encourage their child to join. When I articulate this position I get a lot of hate but in the final analysis it doesn’t matter. I tell people to go abroad, actually go to a country where the military has invaded and see for themselves what it does. Of course most are content to sit in their easy chairs and continue to worship of the alter of all things military.

    David

    1. David,

      I am with you, brother, I was amazed when I was in Vietnam in 1997 how gracious they were. What we did there was dead wrong.

      Bill

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  5. Bill,

    As always you hit the nail squarely on its head. I have been told that my problem over these many years is that I was attempting to build shrines in whore houses! Well all I know is that I and those of my family and friends that have “gone to war” have done so with honor and none maltreated those we went to help nor those we fought against.

    My Father, a war fighter, instructed me to follow neither an illegal nor an immoral order and to always remember that I would answer to God for whatever I did.

    I have done so and it has been costly, yes, but I am able to sleep with a clear mind and whole heart.

    The following is my remarks for fellow veterans and citizens.

    THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRIOTISM. THANK YOU FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY TO REPRESENT THE AMERICAN VETERAN COMMUNITY…IT IS TRULY AN HONOR.

    MY INTENTION TODAY, IS TO CLARIFY THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE TO OUR NATION AND WHAT OUR FELLOW CITIZEN MAY DO TO ADEQUATELY DISPLAY HIS OR HER APPRECIATION.

    OUR AMERICAN CAUSE IS SPECIAL AND UNIQUE…IT REQUIRES MANY FUNCTIONS, JOBS AND MISSIONS; TO WIN THE FIGHT. ALL ENGAGED ARE CRUCIAL TO SUCCESS. ALL SACRIFICE SOMETHING OF THEMSELVES TO CARRY ON THE AMERICAN STORY.

    YES, SOME BLEED AND SOME LAY DOWN THEIR LIVES. THOSE LOOKING FROM THE OUTSIDE TEND TO GLAMORIZE CERTAIN JOBS AND SKILLS…BUT FROM THE INSIDE, WE WHO SERVE HAVE NO DOUBT THAT WITHOUT A TEAM EFFORT AND LOVING CONCERN, OUR MISSION WOULD BE DOOMED.

    THE AMERICAN WARRIOR, THEREFORE, MAY BE SUMMED-UP WITH THE LAST SENTENCE OF OUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WRITTEN SOME 238 YEARS AGO…

    “WE MUTUALLY PLEDGE TO EACH OTHER OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES AND OUR SACRED HONOR.”

    OVER THESE MANY YEARS, MILLIONS OF CITIZENS HAVE STEPPED FORWARD TO MAINTAIN THE QUEST FOR INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND JUSTICE.

    AT TIMES WE HAVE DONE REALLY WELL AND, AT OTHER TIMES, OUR SACRIFICE HAS BEEN MISUSED AND ABUSED, BUT ALWAYS WE CARRY ON.

    YES, THE COST HAS BEEN DEAR, AS OVER 6 MILLION HAVE BLED THE GROUND AND ALMOST ONE AND A HALF MILLION HAVE BLED OUT; LAYING DOWN THEIR LIVES IN DEFENSE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND JUSTICE.

    AND, AT THIS VERY MOMENT, SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD, WE HAVE ASKED A YOUNG AMERICAN MAN OR WOMAN TO PLACE THEMSELVES IN HARM’S WAY.
    THEY HAVE DONE SO AND MAY VERY WELL BE BLEEDING.

    THEREFORE, PLEASE UNDERSTAND, THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE THAN TO LAY ONE’S LIFE DOWN FOR HIS FRIEND… THAT ON THE FIELD WHERE THE METAL MEETS THE FLESH, DUTY AND HONOR WILL ALWAYS OVERCOME RANK AND STATUS.

    THOSE THAT SERVE ARE OF CLASS…
    AMERICAN CLASS.

    THEIR ACTION TEACHES THAT CLASS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHERE WE LIVE, THE CLOTHES WE WEAR, THE VEHICLES WE DRIVE NOR THE SIZE OF OUR BANK ACCOUNT! NOT ETHNIC BACKGROUND, NOT RACE NOR CAREER PATH NOR VOCATION.

    CLASS IS SOMETHING THAT ONE EITHER HAS OR DOES NOT.

    CLASS IS WHAT IS HELD IN YOUR HEART AND MIND.

    CLASS IS KNOWING THAT AMERICA IS AN IDEA NOT A PLACE…THAT THIS IDEA IS ABOUT FREEDOM NOT FREE STUFF.

    CLASS IS KNOWING THAT OTHERS SURRENDER THEIR TOMORROW TO PURCHASE FOR US THIS DAY.

    CLASS IS KNOWING THAT THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION WE MUST ASK OF OURSELVES EACH AND EVERY DAY IS…WHAT HAVE WE DONE AND WHAT ARE WE DOING TO DESERVE THEIR SACRIFICE?

    IN REALITY, FROM A TRUE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE, THE MOST POWERFUL IS NOT THOSE THAT SIT IN THE OFFICE THAT IS OVAL NOR TOWERS OF IVORY… NO, THE MOST POWERFUL IS THE INDIVIDUAL THAT STANDS IN THE BREACH BETWEEN PEACE AND TERROR….AFFORDING OTHERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE A SEAT.

    THEREFORE, LET US SPEND OUR BLOOD AND TREASURE WISELY….LET US BE GOOD NEIGHBORS AND LEAD BY EXAMPLE. LET US SEEK TRUTH AND WISDOM AND STRIVE TO BE ALL WE CAN BE.

    LET US ALWAYS PROMOTE ONLY THOSE THAT UNDERSTAND AND HONOR THE SACRIFICE WHICH SUSTAINS THE AMERICAN NATION.

    THANK YOU.

    Frank W. Giroux, Americanism Officer
    Department of Arizona
    The Military Order of The Purple Heart

    1. To Frank Giroux –

      You said – “Well all I know is that I and those of my family and friends that have “gone to war” have done so with honor and none maltreated those we went to help nor those we fought against.” Are you kidding me!? You can’t possibly go to war without maltreating people. It’s metaphysically impossible to wage war without mistreating people. A statement like that just validates my belief that most Americans are brainwashed to support the war-making machine that is the US government.

      Please do yourself a favor, buy a ticket and go to any of the sovereign nations where the military has so graciously spent quality time and see for yourself just what it does. Today, 40 years after the fact, in Vietnam an area the size of the state of Maryland will not sustain crops due to dioxin based defoliants and birth defects are off the charts. Take a flight over to Iraq and Afghanistan and witness first hand the results of the use of depleted uranium weapons.

      This notion that soldiers are defending their country is just pure bovine scat. They invade sovereign nations and kill innocent people by the millions. That isn’t self defense. To suggest that what a soldier does is self defense is ludicrous. If someone broke into your home and you pointed a gun at them to defend yourself and the robber shot you could that person claim they shot you in self defense? No! Because they were the aggressor and trespasser.

      And don’t thank me for my service. I don’t want or deserve your thanks. I was paid with money stolen from taxpayers immorally. I was educated with taxpayer dollars and had a host of benefits at taxpayer expense. As I wrote above when I returned home from SE in 2000 after going over there to do some humanitarian work I promptly put my DD-214 and honorable discharge through the shredder and threw my ribbons/medals in the dumpster.

      Finally, I have no idea what an “Americanism Officer” is but that is perhaps the most Orwellian title someone can have. But it certainly is befitting of someone who wrote what you did. Pure unadulterated drivel.

      “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.”
      – Tim O’Brien

      David

    2. Frank,

      With respect, you don’t agree with anything I said. BTW, the use of all caps is quite distracting. I would suggest that most every order issued since the Founding of the USSA has been immoral in a large way if exercised by a military machine doing the official business of the USG globally.

      David sums it up brilliantly and I cannot disagree with a single word he penned.

      The war in Vietnam was a snapshot of everything wrong with American arms frozen in a horrific museum display of arrogance, hubris, mayhem, civilian slaughter and military malpractice married to severe strategic deficit disorder.

      The Swiss are the model, they got the vision correct in a flawed world. Commerce with the planet and zero aggression against the world.

      Bill

      1. Bill, I appologize for the “caps”…no disrespect intended; just posted as I had formatted to speak from.

        David, Please read my remarks again…my intent is to educate and manage a mindset such that folks will be very careful with deploying the hounds. Having been raised to appreciate that my liberty ended where the other fellows nose began, I seek possibly a different path than you but our destination might be the same.

        Stay Well and Noble, All!!
        Pancho,
        RVN 7/67-1/69

  6. Longer. The United States government has been waging unjust wars beginning with the War of 1812.

    The real turning point to a permanent standing army came at the end of the illegal, immoral war of invasion of the lawfully seceded southern states, justified by the “need” to occupy said states, an additional war crime in and of itself, which required a huge army.

    The same people, not similar people, the SAME people who prosecuted the war of invasion of the south then turned west to wage war against the remaining indian tribes of the west, which while pulling themselves out of their stone age culture, were unable to fight against what had become a leviathan, ruthless army which had already engaged in murdering men, women, and children in the south.

    The US government is a disgusting entity which, eventually, will be shown no mercy.

    1. Pat,

      Noted but I was specific on extra-continental designs on empire beginning in 1893. You and I are on the same page per the War of Northern Aggression and the extermination of the abo tribes. Thanks for the response.

      Bill

  7. Again, that line from Rudyard Kipling speaks truth;

    “If any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.”

  8. Net positive. The blatant hypocrisy of the Military-Industrial Complex and its relationship with the global banking consortium. Cannon fodder.

  9. Boon Vickerson is out there

    I think there is aspect to all this which needs to be considered with all the honesty and seeking of the truth as what Bill put forth.

    I see and read much among veterans of their mutual respect and honoring their service in the name of freedom and support among each other for their duty to not just their country but themselves.
    It is judged noble and honorable to do so. The tyrants and their use of the military for ulterior ends and agenda not withstanding, this badge of courage duty and honor has much to be said for it.

    But something really troubles me about this. In a fashion it is something that is of far graver concern than the agenda of those who comprise the elite of the state, overt and deep.
    I have written to a number of notable men who have served and posed the question of where is all this honor and duty in the face of the tyranny descending upon us today from the very state they served, bled and died for?

    DOL, the Special Forced motto. De Oppresso Liber: To Free From Oppression

    There is a particular clause in an oath which stipulates protecting from enemies both foreign and domestic.

    I have asked many a warrior why can the men who venture to foreign lands and risk everything including death, fight against evil of enemies foreign to our land, for the oppressed whom have no allegiance, who provide no support, morally, materially or monetary, who are not the sons or daughters or mothers fathers spouses sisters and brothers of these warriors, then return to the country of people who genuinely, honestly believe in these men as good men, who blindly for the most part, though they do, support them and honor them for their duty and sacrifice, but these same men as a whole, ignore the very same oppression, the same tyranny,the same corruption of good, the same tyrants, of a common people in the land that supports and provides them?

    Where are these vaunted heroes?
    Why are their voices, never mind their abilities to deliver people from oppression, from tyrants?

    Where are these men with their honor and duty in the face of everything they claim is their honor to defend against on the very soil of their very birth?

    With the notable exception of a handful of men, the silence is deafening.

    Is this a far greater commission of something worse than being used as cannon fodder by tyrants?

    Why are these men not rising up in the name of liberty?

  10. All war is about money. Valor, bravery etc etc – comes with the program. Some men are capable of vast courage and compassion; and vast brutality. That’s how war goes; how it’s always gone. War is good business for the uber-wealthy and always has been as well. If they can’t politic an army into existence – they will starve the population a bit, lie as much as is needed, use false flags generously and then provide wages for those willing to be soldiers in their armies. There are no “sides” in the wars sponsored by the uber-rich – the most profit from war is best derived from bleeding both sides.

    Those in power have defined the “storyline” that promulgates war for centuries. It won’t change; because people have to eat, feed their families and survive. The Swiss are the anomaly that defies all odds. How they are still among us is a mystery and a wonder. The chances that another nation will emulate the Swiss is so remote as to be non-existent. Men, as a group, only ever take a stand on anything of substance when they collectively face a threat that is collectively “personal” to the vast majority of the group on an individual basis and has already caused each of the group harm, as individuals. Or as in most cases, if the group can be made to believe that is the case. It’s been the way of the world and war, forever and ever amen.

      1. Boon Vickerson is out there

        It is most excellent as you said. Haven’t finished reading North’s work, but the cause of abolition is crystal clear, there is nothing new or radical about it. In fact it is classical in its substance. The whole idea and cause of confederation and secession is as just and legitimate as a man’s liberty. Anything less is unacceptable.

        It’s that damned, and I mean that literally, Constitution. What a freakin’ con. Hamilton crammed it right down their throats. Man was he a cunning psychopath or what? The sonofabitch is the template for every administrative tyrant and the entire spoils system since. But what gets me is how easy it was, even after all that blood was spilled.

        Maybe it’s the never say die yankee blood in me, but maybe abolition’s time wasn’t ready even at that juncture in history.

        Nothing else has worked. No other system of state has been successful, they all have been tried, repeatedly, and only existed as a form of ever declining self destructing system of power over others by the few. Some lasting longer.

        Constitutional administrative totalitarianism was only putting earrings on the pig of tyranny. It just looked and smelled good enough.

        And all those guys on Revised History, they have their act together too. Some really great stuff there.

        I love the reason these guys employ naturally in their writings. It is refreshing.

        Lot of people are missing out on some great stuff I think. I know I was.

  11. Bill, a general question the mystifies me. Knowing what you do, how is it that you can take a military retainer?

    Depending on the day, I can’t decide if my decision to pass on the retainer as awareness grew was a Ghandi-like brilliant exemplification of first principles or if I was simply the village fool.

    1. Retainer or retirement? Moral cowardice is the closest answer. Having spent most of my adult life in the Legions left me a peculiar skill-set. As a family man, my choices aren’t always simply serving myself. Smedley Butler came to similar conclusion after three decades of service.

      Did you pass on yours? I’m interested in the story.

      The blood money parade: https://newsite.zerogov.com/?p=3062

  12. Yes Bill, I did pass on mine. Daily it poses struggles to be sure. But, too often I see old acquaintances who did take it with degrees of awareness ranging from high to non-existent, and see that they are all in chains.

    My example was an army general. Can’t remember his name. Heisman trophy winner Way Back. He left the service, as a general, quietly, without retiring. He said he was there for service and not for a pension, and that he had served.

    Today I am in a cheap motel just north of you in Tucson. Visiting a family member at the VA after his latest near-million-dollar major surgery. The guy believes he is entirely justified to smoke, drink and engage all sorts of destructive behavior and then have VA fix him up to the tune of seven figure costs. Why? Because he served two years (the old ‘kiddie cruise’ on an aircraft carrier in the early 70s).

    I guess I’m eligible for this care, too. But, like the guy before described, what was done was done at service in the best Norman Rockwell understanding of the nation I knew at the time. I’ll die before taking the govt handout, and be happier for the choice.

    In this question probably the largest difference between us is that you have a family and I do not. Living first principles is far more achievable for me.

    Thank you for your straightforward introspection.

    1. One more point of importance I think. Life is pretty sparse without the pension check, but I’ve made concessions in other ways. We life almost entirely on girlfriend’s paycheck. She works very hard as is well paid. But as a court reporter, she contributes to the system we all despise. And so I do take benefit from something detested. Still, there are no dinners out, no vacations, no trips to Libertopia &c, or of supporting websites like ZeroGov, Marc Stevens &c. So in the end I’m not the effective producer I should be as a result of my decision.

  13. We haven’t done any such thing as you imagine. Human beings are not a coral reef or a termite mound of shared action.

    To be an abolitionist, is to be a destroyer. The underlying premise of destroying slavery is evil and could only be accomplished by violating the Non Aggression Principle.

    Destroying and abolishing whole phyles of people rather than working on your own freedom and independence is collectivist witch doctoring and whim worshiping of the worst sort.

    The first thing to do is to abandon consideration of all groupthink coming out of Harvard Divinity School and especially statist authoritarians such as the Feminist Theologian Professor who coined the absurd term “kyriarchy.”

    The second thing to do is to forsake any further destruction of your faculties by trying to integrate various kyria (myths of christs and lords) into any rationally based system of freeing your mind and body from the nationstate enslavers.

    What is best, is to start to repair you mind which seems horribly crippled by religious dogma. The truth is, there simply is no God, and you must begin d loved ones in your life have lied to you and misled you.

    Once you admit there is no God, then you can look in the mirror and no longer grin and muse about a glowing soul, but see rather the stark truth of your being a cramped sub-species of superstitiously indoctrinated livestock.

    I implore you to work on this, rather than continue to get sidetracked down junk-food aisles about white male privilege and other such easy examinations. Eat your vegetables and take your medicine like a clear-eyed adult.

    Be a man, or be a woman, and face the fact that you’ve been lied to, bullied and controlled for the sake of material money in the here and now. You are not a free man, basking in the glory of the divine, but instead a mere slave to the lies of the priests, you’ve been fed crippling falsehoods and fattened for the feast.

    Religions are the ultimate case of the emperor’s new clothes, an old fairy tale where thieving weavers pretend to make a suit for the King, claiming that anyone who is unfit to his position will be unable to see it.

    If you walk up to a man and tell him that his parents lied to him about everything that is true and good and right in the world, and sold his hide to thieving priests because they were afraid to stand up for truth and virtue, naturally he will be very, very upset. Yet this is what you must do.

    If you’d rather cling to childish fantasies, and live in a further oppressed world where everyone is afraid of objectifying anyone rather than step into the boxing ring of philosophy – and deal with the real issues, that’s OK. Not everyone is suited for these kinds of mental conflicts, and certainly battling superstition is not a strict moral requirement.

    It’s a shame really, but go on ahead and persist in your folly. Tell yourself there is a path where you can cling to your superstitions and dark age dogmas, yet still contribute to a technologically advanced world of strict rationality and the growing confidence of human arts and sciences.

    For truly, all will indeed be revealed. Not by the local cretin in a fancy hat and a flowing robe who lives in a house with a pointy roof. But you go ahead and keep gushing over this or that squawker of the pulpit.

    You will have no effect, but there will be others who are systematic and doggedly persistent scientists and practitioners of mastering nature and finding an explanation for everything that is both repeatable and observable, everywhere throughout the galaxy.

    Nothing new has come from theologians in two thousand years now. Don’t let that stop you though, keep on doing the same things, repeating the same stale scriptures, and chasing after the never-ending long train of charlatans and confidence men, and hoping and praying for different results.

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