Welcome To Botany Bay

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either." - Christopher Hitchins

Welcome to the penal colonies

One of the best American thinkers in recent years was a Brit.  Hitchins' geopolitical views were absolute rubbish.  He couldn't shake the monarchist prejudice.  But his cultural and social commentary were spot on.  In fact, he was almost as insightful as Mark Twain or H. L. Mencken. 


But that's neither here nor there.  What I really want to talk about is government, and the imperative that humanity faces to get rid of the Frankensteinian monster we collectively have created.


All government, everywhere at all times throughout history, is nothing more than publicly sanctioned force.  That's it.  If you need a complete and unabridged definition of it, that says it all.  Government is the right to compel, cajole and kill people to get them to follow someone else's idea of The Right Thing.  Furthermore, it is the power to legally steal our money to do it.


The only reasonable and sane thing to do, is to wipe all governments everywhere out of existence.


Oh sure, there have been attempts to create the uncreatable.  Some were even notable.  Switzerland, Iceland, even the united [sic] States of America.  At some point, though, they all devolve into corrupt, seething morasses of unethical, immoral and unjust cruelty and violence.  All governments, no matter how lofty the founding ideals, eventually force you and me to follow an external code of morals and regulate what you and I do, say, eat, drink, inhale, excrete, and create.

One hears it all the time.  In the US, people bellow at the top of their uneducated lungs that "this is a christian country!"  Here in Indonesia, it's "this is a muslim country!"  All seem to forget that all countries are lumps of dirt that happened to rise above mean sea level, and that the dirt has no allegiance to any one nor any ideal.  It's simply dirt.


All human beings are nothing more than self-ambulatory balls of dirt and water.  Granted, we have an amazing capacity for reason, though few ever exercise it.


Most of us are happy to trip through life believing whatever was mashed into our heads from birth.  We believe certain old books because, well, gosh...they're OLD!  The greatest minds ever produced by our species have tried and failed to prove the existence of various gods and souls and other mystical stuff.  Not one has ever succeeded.  Thomas Aquinas resorted to faith.  Einstein resorted to non-randomness.  Newton threw up his hands.  Lao Tsu called it mu.


Ultimately, most folks resort to something called 'god', and they are willing to slaughter, torture and enslave until you believe it too.  To achieve that end, different groups of people set up different types of government to pass different types of laws to force you and me to do things this way or that way.


In some countries, abortion is an industry, in others it's murder.  Either way, it's only a matter of how money to which person to get what you want.  In some countries, marijuana is illegal and punishable by years in prison and/or death, while in others it's a subsidized crop.  In some countries, you can run naked in the streets if you want, while in others, you must cover your body from head to toe or be lashed into submission.


Why, for god's sake, hasn't anyone ever tried to just leave people alone?


Here's an idea...I believe the sky is green.  I seek out others of like mind and we form a community.  If believing the sky is green is beneficial, we thrive culturally and economically.  If you are born into this community, but over time you come to believe that the sky is yellow, then you find another community of like mind and pack your bags.  Or better yet!  We build a community of people who indivisually believe the sky is many different colors, and we acknowledge that difference and use it to build a stronger community.


The latter was an idea called 'diverisity'.  Once upon a time, there was this soupy, loopy idea that we all just celebrate 'diversity'.  Naturally, over time it evolved into, "Believe my definition of diversity or I will beat, torture and ostracize you."  Same old BS, different name.  Ultimately, it became the belief that everything is diverse except those who don't believe as we do.


Governments are like sports teams.  Many people say, "Oh, such-and-such is MY team!"  No it isn't.  It is the sole property of an owner, and it exists to enrich that owner.  Your mindless support and loyalty of the team only serves to make someone else rich and the expense of food and lodging for your family.


It's the same with governments.  People say, "It's my country and I love it!"  In reality, it is owned by a few folks in the background, and all your mindless support and loyalty and blind obedience serves only to enrich the owners, not you or me.


The process is the same everywhere at all times.  People set up governments to protect them.  The governments set up regulatory agencies to oversee the groups who potentially could do the people harm.  The groups give money to the regulators, who end up protecting the groups from the people who first gave birth to the monster.

Over and over and over and over...at all times everywhere.


Like the child who sees the government thug standing around menacing regular folks:


"Daddy, why is that man dressed like Darth Vader and pointing a gun at me?"


"He's there to protect us from ourselves, son, so we don't do anything to ourselves that will impair our ability to make money for the owners."


"Oh, I see."


It's always the same.  We're going to create a society that is full of peace and harmony, where everyone can hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" and hug trees.  God help you if you want to sing "Hokey Pokey" and slap cats, though.  That'll get you 20 years of hard labor in Sing Sing and lifetime labels that will prevent you from ever getting a job again, so that you are forced to sing "Hokey Pokey" on street corners, so they will keep throwing you in jail, so you can have a place to sleep and food in your belly.  Makes perfect sense, since the money to incarcerate you is legally stolen from me by Darth Vader-wanna-bes to protect me from "Hokey Pokey."


So what's the point, you graciously ask, and I'm glad you did.


The US is arguing over shutting down the federal government.  To me, there's no argument.  Shut it down!  It's just a bunch of steroid-addicted, pea-brained micro-willys that put on a show for us that we call Our Team.  It's not our team.  It's owned by a bunch of mysterious reptilians who sole aim in life is to take money from you and give it to themselves.  Our aim, of course, is to earn money and keep it in our pockets.  It's the polar opposite of Our Team, since our team would be on our side.


After all, what has the FCC ever done for you, except prevent you from seeing a multi-thousand dollar pair of enhanced mammary glands and hearing words you hear 20 times a minute in the average movie on the very same TeeVee set?


What has the IRS ever done for you (though I bet you can make a list of done to you)?  What has the FBI ever done for you?  What have ANY of the alphabet goons ever done FOR you?  By that, I mean direct, personal benefit that you can quantify and prove.


I'll bet, if you're one of the three people left who doesn't work for the government, you can't think of one, single, solitary thing.  And the ones shrieking about it being the end of the world are the California state nurses earning $300k+ per month, or the New York toll booth atendent getting $100k+ per month, or all the useless freakin' numb-buckets in CONgress shoving YOUR money in THEIR pockets.


Governments are now and have ever been social welfare for moral and ethical degenerates, like Newt Gingrinch.  Shut them all down.  Start fresh with a new idea.  Leave me the hell alone and I'll do the same, neighbor.  Set foot on my property with malice, and you'll get a case of lead poisoning.  Very simple concepts, very difficult to get people to realize it.

No one expects the Inquisition!

The only reason governments keep springing up is because the owners want your labor and wealth.  No other reason at all, no matter how lofty the rhetoric.  Put the lazy bastards out of work.  Make them find productive things to do that really benefit society.


What Hitchens said about George W. Shrub could apply equally to every single government employee that ever lived:

"He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."