To defeat our lying and power hungry elites, to deny them control, all we have to do is stop playing along
America chose to become independent from Britain because most (though far from all) Americans decided that their ruling elites across the ocean stopped caring about them as anything other than producers of revenue. They did not see in Americans, no matter their socioeconomic background, their equals; George Washington could not get an officer’s commission in the British army, no matter how exemplary his service might have been.
American elites today are no less detached from regular Americans that the British were two and a half centuries ago. The denizens of luxury condominiums and brownstone townhouses in New York and DC and Boston prefer Aix-de-Provence to Bowling Green. As Bill Maher has so eloquently stated, they prefer the bland, prepackaged grab-and-go creations of Wolfgang Puck available in most airports to the cans of Chef Boyardee pasta available in most Walmarts. It doesn’t matter that Wolfgang Puck and Ettore Boiardi, the original Chef Boyardee, share the same story. Immigrants who were as good at marketing as cooking, they adjusted the flavors of their European national cuisines to the American palate and found a way to mass market them to Americans making themselves rich in the process. Both started upmarket, Puck with his own restaurants, Boiardi in the New York Plaza. Both understood that mass market was where the real money was. In fact, Puck followed in Boiardi’s footsteps every inch of the way, but that is not what matters to Maher.
Image by Gerry Dincher
What matters to Maher is not the truth, not the real story here, the story that shows how the American system rewards hard work, and talent, and ingenuity, no, what matters to him is the how he and those like him may very well grab a Wolfgang Puck sandwich to eat on the plane, but you wouldn’t catch them dead buying a can of Chef Boyardee pasta. Just like the 18th century British elites, the 21st century American ones harbor nothing but disdain for regular Americans and differ only in their willingness to externalize this disdain, a willingness that is much greater today than it has ever been before.
The American rebellion in the late 1700’s required mobilization, militias, active resistance, political activism. It demanded from its participants, precisely that: active participation. Participation in boycotts of imported goods, in political gatherings, and of course in the newly formed Continental Army. The American rebellion of the early 2100’s requires quite the opposite. It requires NON-PARTICIPATION. It asks us to REFUSE to participate.
See, we are being asked, we are being commanded in fact, to participate in many progressively self-evident, evil, and ridiculous lies and it is is precisely these lies more than anything else that are the instrument through which our elites are exercising their control over us. The participation that is required from us is not passive, as in “mmhmmm, whatever you say, dude”, but active. We are required to actively affirm the obvious lies that are are being fed to us as gospel truth. Even more egregiously, they demand of us to no less actively DENOUNCE and REJECT the obvious truths that we see with our own eyes every single day.
When a boy who cannot successfully compete against other boys in track or wresting declares himself to be a girl so he can deny actual girls the rewards they worked for so very hard, we should say: “you are a dirty low-down cheater, boy, go peddle your nonsense elsewhere.” But we are required to say: “you are a girl and your win in this race is wonderful, congratulations!” How about we choose to say nothing? How about we choose to walk away from this pernicious nonsense? How about the girls and their parents simply decide not to show up to the track meet with the cheater boys? Let them compete against themselves. How about he parents organize a track meet for girls, so they can showcase their athletic prowess? Maybe the first time around all the college scouts will be at the official meet with the two fake girls. Next time they will be at the one that has the real goods.
How about we call in sick for the mandatory indoctrination sessions at our workplaces known as “sensitivity training” or any number of other euphemisms? How about we keep our sons and daughters home when these types of activities are scheduled to take place in their schools? We do not HAVE to participate. We can simply choose to refuse. Refuse to be complicit in their lies, their propaganda, their mind games. We can simply stay away.
Great art holds a mirror to the human condition. In the parable about the king that had no clothes, Hans Christian Andersen showed us how ludicrous we can be when we acquiesce, even passively, to something that is patently and obviously ridiculous, outrageous, false. How complicit are the citizens who refuse to acknowledge the fact that their king has no clothes in the king’s folly? How much responsibility do they bear for being ruled by an imbecile? Why does it take a child, someone who is unfettered by the chains of convention and by fear of losing his job, of being “deplatformed”, of being banned, to say “enough!”. To declare “I know what I see and what I see is that our king is naked and is probably an idiot”. These are the questions that Andersen asks in his timeless tale, timeless precisely because it so well captures the timid, complicit attitudes of so many of us.
Today, like in 1776, it takes courage to stand up to power. There are possible and even likely adverse consequences, but let’s not kid ourselves: being banned from Twitter or even fired from a job is not the same as being shot by redcoats. Those Americans that chose to overthrow their obnoxious British rulers by risking their very lives have made it easy for us. All we need to do to get rid of our no less odious elites is simply tell them to their faces that they have no clothes. Stay away from them, shun them and their stupid “activities”, refuse to acknowledge their obvious lies about sex, and unborn babies, and the climate, and Islam, and immigration, and so much more. Whatever they want you to do, whatever they want you to say, wherever they want you to be, JUST SAY NO.
