“Keep working on the window if we’re ever going to regain our freedom.” – Star Trek TOS
The homeless voted for Obama. They heard he’d bring change.
I hadn’t heard of Benjamin Carlson until today. I had another post that I was planning on doing, but when the perfect content presents itself I become as flexible as a Romanian Olympic® gymnast whose parents are watching from the GULAG breakroom.
Carlson wrote about his time living in China as a journalist. The title for his X® thread is, “What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?” In it there are 14 lessons that he learned in China. He’s now warning us about them, for, I guess, reasons.
All the bolded bits are Mr. Carlson’s words. The other bits are mine, since I want to give Mr. Carlson credit, but don’t want anyone to think he endorses any of my interpretations, opinions, or bad jokes.
What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?
In 6+ years living in China as a journalist, I was informed on, spied on, tailed when traveling.
This is nothing compared to what Chinese go through if targeted.
Here are 14 lessons—and warnings—that many need to hear: pic.twitter.com/f4R0P1lhCS
— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) September 21, 2023
- People will adapt to oppression sooner than they will rebel.
That is true of a compliant people. The makeup of heritage Americans is anything but compliant – to come across an ocean to hack a life from trackless wilderness is mostly the opposite of compliant. Different people came here for different reasons, but the big takeaway is a lot of us have oppositional defiant disorder, but the good kind.
But that doesn’t get them into Congress (except for a handful) and it doesn’t get people invited into fancy parties and offered media access. But still, many people reject petty oppression, and are willing to stand up against it. New Mexico’s recent utter rejection of a wine-aunt governor blatantly violating all the Constitutions she said she’d uphold made me smile.
I have a guess that at least part of the desire to import the unending hordes of illegal aliens at a breakneck pace is related to the desire to have a much more compliant people – people who come here for the give-me-that’s and whose idea of America has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with a parasitical relationship where they benefit. They’re used to oppression and okay with it, they just want to be comfortable.
What’s ET short for? So he can fit in the spaceship.
- The most effective censorship is first legal, then social, then internal.
Legal censorship is difficult in the United States, though the government has several cases against Trump that rely on him having opinions they find “problematic”. Social censorship means that certain ideas can’t really be expressed. Ever wonder why the comment section of the online newspapers mostly disappeared? The last thing they want is people realizing they’re not alone. This causes social censorship to fail. At least among people who can read.
Lastly is internal censorship, when the Truth is so obvious that everyone sees it, yet everyone is afraid to say anything. Not that I’d mention an election or anything . . . .
- A repressive system makes selfish behavior rational.
Look at the looting that is pervasive across Leftist cities. Why? Because laws are only to be enforced against people on the Right. Therefore? Free Air Jordans™.
I heard he was going to take another stab at marriage.
- Ruining 1 person who threatens the regime sends a message that will be heard by 10,000.
People broke stuff on January 6, and some used violence. But the vast majority were just dudes walking around the Capitol Building. Yet the harshest penalties are being used against them, including inhumane conditions in prison.
Why? See point 4. above.
- If you can limit the words people use, you can limit the thoughts they think.
Why do you think they demand that calling someone an illegal alien be banned? Why do you think they want to call a baby a fetus? Why do you think they want to call anything “gender affirming” care?
They want to change the dialogue, and that means making the words you use socially unacceptable. This is never ending, and will continue until the word “bad” is replaced by “double-plus-ungood”.
What is the most macho musical instrument? The MANdolin.
- Even decent people will choose to be blind if seeing injustice would hurt their interests.
Why do most cops go-along to get-along? Yeah, this, but it’s not just cops – any location where people close ranks to avoid scrutiny is suspect. What happens when the entire country looks that way because there are people you can’t criticize?
- If the government lies, many will still accept it as true because of the authority of the office.
This is becoming less true in the United States – look at the pushback on COVID. I think the trust level has dropped. Yet, still, 20%-40% of the citizens of the country will believe whatever they’re told by Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert.
- Destroying a people’s cultural & religious identity, severing them from their history, punishing their defenders, and making them ashamed of who they are, is a brutally effective way to annihilate a threat.
When Thomas Jefferson’s statue is removed by New York City, and they’re thinking of bringing down all of the George Washington statues and the people who founded the United States are being vilified? Yeah. It’s already in full swing
- The goal of an unfree system is to protect itself by transferring your distrust of the state to fellow citizens.
According to the Left, Catholics and “White Supremacist” groups are the greatest threats to the United States, despite being responsible for fewer deaths than a Chicago Labor Day weekend.
If only they would have played the national anthem, everyone at the BLM® riots would have sat down.
- In an unfree society, the wealth and privileges amassed by politicians become state secrets.
Elizabeth Warren makes $174,000 a year, but her total earnings were $1.36 million last year. Bill Clinton was broke in 2000, but has at least $90 million today, excluding his Foundation. Why don’t people know this or care?
- If the government shows it has your interest at heart, many are happy to trade freedoms for it.
I’m sure everyone can give plenty of examples. One lesson I learned is that when people want to give you something, that’s generally because they want something in return. To be clear, this doesn’t always have to be manipulative, since if after I feed Pugsley, I typically want him to take the trash out after I remind him three times to do it. I think the three times is just because he wants me to feel like I’m part of the process.
When the government gives, it wants control.
- Corruption corrupts everything.
If 10% for the Big Guy is the norm, why shouldn’t everyone take a cut? Corruption corrupts, and it takes time and relentless effort to root it out.
- Even politicians who fight like dogs will protect one another against the people.
The Clintons and Obamas sure look cozy with the Bush family.
My doctor told me I had a healthy prostate. I was deeply touched.
- History must continually be rewritten to serve the purposes of the present.
I’ve touched on this on countless posts and touched on this above. The history has to be changed from the glorious story of a proud people taming a continent. The truth has to be replaced with a cursed and infected lie so that the political needs of the Left can be met. It has to be universal – on television, movies, the Internet, YouTube®, and anywhere people go.
Orwell saw many of these and they’re in his books, 1984 and Animal Farm. Carlson, I’m sure, has read these and also experienced them.
Just like we are beginning to experience them now.
I could have written much more, but I think I’ll leave it up to you to add in comments about Mr. Carlson’s points. The good news is you don’t have to be a gymnast to appreciate it. Besides, I’ve heard that the Eastern Europeans are now into Olympic® boating events. I guess they’re in row-mania.
John – What an absolutely alarming (and accurate) set of points.
One of the most fascinating (in a macabre way) developments of even the last year is how often government agencies cannot “release information” to Congress, the duly elected arm of the People. Not that I trust Congress to do anything with it, but the fact the refuse to release it because of any number of reasons is telling of how they “view” the people the serve.
Once upon time in my lifetime (as in yours) one often heard the saying “I may not agree with you, but I will fight for your right to say it”. It has been a long time since I have heard anyone say that. Along those lines, I wonder when the word “free” and “freedom” will become banned language.
“I may not agree with you, but I will fight for your right to say it.”
And that is how we lost. We refused to fight back because doing so would be impolite.
Carlson’s lessons are accurate and to the point. Your comments are invaluable. They remind me that we need more Lysander Spooners, more H. L. Menckens, more Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns, more Vaclav Havels, more Marvin Heemeyers …
And waking people up is still crucial.
John: The Sheeple, Normies, and Cucks do not want to wake up. They all still have and enjoy their bread and circuses. They still: “Back the Blue”. They still stand by while their sons and daughters join .mil to voyage and die for The Leviathan and the Banksters. They are masking and lining up for their next jab even as I write this.
Until this corrupt, syphilitic-thinking country goes full Weimar, the masses will not wake up. And when they do, like the pathetic lemmings that they are, they will swallow whatever solution Mordor-On-The-Potomac sells them: CBDC, gold confiscation, rationing, etc. Frank the Cripple did it in 1932. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People.” – H/T to H.L Mencken. Life is a vale of tears. Bleib ubrig.
Oh, they’re waking up. The Left never will, but the middle is moving.
Free speech is no longer an operative concept in the United States. Why leave a weapon on the battlefield?
Well, “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Went away pretty thoroughly too
WE ARE NOT CLOSE….WE ARE THERE
Re: Those people who remove statues etc. of the founders because they owned slaves. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, with all their benefits, can’t apply to those people either.
For the same reason.
Oh, it can always get worse.
Also, ET was was an illegal alien trying to learn English.
Ba-dum-tiss
Jeez, JW, all this noticing is going to get you…noticed.
Alphabet Bois: We noticed you noticing what must not be noticed, so we are putting you on notice. Nice blog you got there, Wilder. Would be a shame if anything were to…happen to it.
Seriously, where else could we all go for Michelle Obama prostate jokes on a Monday morning?
It is. Throttling of search engines has been increased. Again.
Very nice/nicely done…read no evil,
don’t see it either, and above all do not
comment on it.
Mr. Carlson did a good job.
George Washington…the man who would not be king, and became the most famous man in the world…His history will be destroyed by a gang of illiterate savages, as white people look on…A fitting close to our age….
And, indeed, after us, the flood?
It’s already raining. The waters are rising as we stand by and merely watch.
My doctor told me I had a healthy prostate. I was deeply touched.
Ok, Ok…my wife even laughed at that one.
Good!!!
Our origin story has been suppressed and distorted. Where are the tall tales? When did they drop Paul Bunyon? Davey Crockett, gone. Say something is like a Horatio Alger story and you get blank looks.
Where are the stories of how the west was won? Hollywood mined that for decades…
Who we are, how we defined ourselves as people, has been systematically replaced, just as we as people are now being replaced.
n
Exactly – even our nursery rhymes, dating back hundreds of years are being censored.
Couple the beglamouring of all things electronica, and an encouraged illiteracy (except when there’s child p*rn in the school library) about 14 years ago, it seemed another ‘for the children’ pretext gained some enthusiasm. The “Consumer Product Safety Commission” (thanks, taxpayers!), interpreted a notion that olde books were literally toxic to kids. Remember this?
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-new-book-banning
“row-mania”?!
I bow to the Master.
Thank you!
American white men are the most domesticated cowards on the planet. They won’t even protect their daughters from pedophiles in the girls room. You earned your misery white man: good and hard. Now go to work and pay your taxes like the serf that you are.
If you need 14 signs, you’re probably politically myopic.
Fair point.
Nicely done.
I remember touching down in Atlanta airport from shithole Nigeria after 3 months and getting tears in my eyes. Most AMERICANS don’t realize how good we have it and just take it all for granted.
That clock has got to be down to seconds by now.
All of these things take longer than you expect, until they don’t . . . .
“but when the perfect content presents itself I become as flexible as a Romanian Olympic® gymnast whose parents are watching from the GULAG breakroom.”
Like the J6 prisoners?
I’ve been waiting for at least two years now for you to finally realize, and admit, that we are at war in your Civil War Reports. I know I know. Once you admit that then everything changes. There will be no return to Normal. Wasn’t Lahaina enought for you?
Excellent comment – I’ll address it in the next CW Report.