Saturday, August 24, 2024

Assassination wrong, counterproductive

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for July 21, 2024)




Once again, some evil loser killed a person, but not the specific one he wished to kill. Donald Trump, his presumed primary target, survived with a minor injury. I am no fan of politicians or their institutions, but this isn't the way to change things for the better. Not even close!

If you dislike a politician, vote against him, or better yet, do something productive. Build a life for yourself that doesn't hinge on politics or depend on government doing things your way. Be independent.

Don't try to kill the politician or his fans. It's wrong and doing so only proves the point that you, and those like you, are the problem. You've proven your opponents' narrative about what kind of people those who are against their agenda are. Is this what you want? To become the terrible person your opponents claim you are?

A violent revolution will only engender a new violent regime. It may be different from the old regime but it won’t be better. For real, lasting change, a peaceful revolution always beats assassination.

The best solution-- the right one-- is to walk away. Remove the power of politicians and their institutions by refusing to serve them from this moment forward. This works better than voting. If no one obeys, no one rules.

Politicians need you; you don’t need them. The same goes for any government employee- they need you and your compliance much more than you need their "services".

I encourage this kind of peaceful revolution; simply growing beyond fawning over, or obeying, political regimes. None of them are worthy of your respect. Democracy is mob rule and republics always become democracies on their sure slide into tyranny. Don’t keep following that path if it’s not where you want to end up.

This doesn't mean any other political system is better-- it isn't. No one has the right to govern anyone but himself. Nothing can create such a nonsensical "right" based on the dangerous superstitious belief in political "authority".

Abraham Lincoln was a racist tyrant. "The American Lenin", some have called him. His legacy embodied the domestic abuser's threat: "If you leave me, I'll kill you!" Then, John Wilkes Booth turned him into a martyr whose actual deeds and opinions have been sanitized from most history books. You don't change things for the better by elevating your opponent to martyr status.

Assassination is wrong, but it's also counterproductive and stupid.
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1 comment:

  1. “The best solution-- the right one-- is to walk away. Remove the power of politicians and their institutions by refusing to serve them from this moment forward. This works better than voting. If no one obeys, no one rules.”

    Excellent advice.

    “From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces?”
    ----Etienne de la Boétie, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1577)

    If you let them drag you down to their level, that is a victory for them, not you.

    “The best revenge is not to do as they do”
    --- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6-6

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