Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004 - 4:25 p.m.

Anti-Socialism Rant

Here's a rant against socialized nursing homes and day care, a response to Ilonina's diary entry of today. It was so long, I decided to make it an entry here.

Christmas is over, so I shall bestow upon you another gift of an anti-state tirade. I see government as akin to an organized crime syndicate that so successfully holds the populace in a state of subjugation and fear that the hostages start to identify with their captors, a sort of Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale. As mobsters sometimes do, the State occasionally does favors to benefit people, thereby training them with the carrot as well as the stick. Through the State’s monopoly on the use of socially legitimized violence, and its potentially endless source of capital from extortion (taxation), the State can play a beneficent role, claiming to provide protection (not doing so well at this in Ireland by your own account), as well as providing education, welfare, health care, etc. Small-time mafias like to addict their clientele to luxuries such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, and prostitution. The big-time mafias, in contrast, are in the privileged position of being able to addict their clientele to necessities such as food and life-saving surgery. It especially helps when they dole out the education, so they can teach children from a young age that not only is the Big-Time Mafia necessary and inevitable, but that providing these life-sustaining and life-enhancing services is the proper and necessary role of the Big-Time Mafia, even, retroactively, the reason for the Big-Time Mafia’s existence.

So when a group of hostages of the State, feminists for instance, want to reduce their level of exploitation in the home, the first place they think to turn to for help is the Big Daddy State. The irony of beseeching favors from the biggest exploiter of all never crosses their mind due to their conditioning by State schools and the media. Not all factions of the State realize that it’s in their interest to grant these requests, because they’re juggling other priorities in their quest for domination. But the Left usually intuits the wisdom of fostering dependence in order to bolster its stranglehold on the populace.

To rephrase your statement, just remember: wherever the state bails out of taking care of its family obligations, it's women and young girls who pick up the slack, when women and girls decide to allow themselves to be relegated to that role, in denial of their fundamental power to go on strike. ARRGHH. The State tempts one with convenience: just vote your troubles away, it only takes a few minutes. But the price of convenience is alienation: a grand centralized bureaucracy accountable directly only to itself, garnering more and more control over our everyday lives, the State controlling how aged relatives live instead of their loved ones, children in day care tended by workers instead of those who love them most.

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

addendum

I do not claim to have transcended my own hostagehood. Yet. I used to vote and pay taxes, and even recently I have received food and medical benefits from the government. I don’t fault anyone for doing whatever is expedient in order to survive. I just insist that supporting the State is extremely deleterious to our individual and collective wellbeing in the long run, so I think it would be advantageous to extricate ourselves from its co-dependency racket as much and as soon as possible.

Here’s some news from Friday, showing that it is possible to assert grassroots autonomy from the State:

AMY GOODMAN: Local people clashed with the police in Morales, Mexico. The people there south of Mexico City declared themselves autonomous and seized the town hall after refusing to recognize the mayor since November. Armed riot police stormed the town earlier this week, leaving at least two people dead, dozens are missing, and wounded. Yesterday we talked with Greg Berger, who is a documentary filmmaker living in the state of Morales.

GREG BERGER: An armed incursion by the state police of about 1,500 riot police stormed the town. There were snipers placed on buildings, a rain of bullets fell on the people who were holding the city hall as an autonomous municipality, and at least two people were killed. Many people were beaten. I personally spoke with several old women who were beaten in the face and body by the riot police. Many of the people from the town ran into the hills and are currently being chased with helicopters and police dogs through the woods. And the entire town is basically in a state of siege. We are asking that people contact the governor of the state of Morales to let him know that the international eyes are watching what's happening. And that this cannot go by with impunity, and his email address is gobernador@morelos.gob.mx. Email the governor of the state of Morelos that you demand an immediate withdrawal of the police from the town. And call your Mexican consulate in your region if you can.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Berger, documentary filmmaker living in the state of Morelos in Mexico

Send your veiled threats to the governor to cow him into going easier on the insurgency.

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