whatmakesmansafe

The political pendulum swings Left to Right and back again over time. But what many do not notice is the hand holding the pendulum, which moves up and down... without the certainty or predictability of the Left-Right swing.

History, Voltaire once noted, is a Mississippi of lies. Because there has always been a war on for your mind. Thus those lies are aimed squarely at ordinary individuals, who must never be permitted to wake up to their true potential. That is what Slavery was all about. It is what the failed experiments in the former Soviet Union were about. And it is what all modern forms of State-protectionism including: central banking, public education, government-licensed medical practice, are about, today. It is also why aggressive wars are waged under a defensive garb and why the internet is under threat of authoritarian censorship. It is, in the final analysis, what underlies all forms of seemingly unresolvable human conflict.

In the midst of all the attempts to suppress man, to put and keep him down, history is punctuated with examples of an irrepressible urge on the part of man to be free. You can imagine this as the hand, holding the pendulum, moving up, while attempts to suppress man are the hand moving down. You can imagine this up-down movement creating an irregular bounce over time.

George Orwell once said the real division is not between conservative and revolutionary, but between authoritarian and libertarian.

After a while of studying the pendulum picture, it becomes noticeable that the pendulum can only ever be lowered by getting it to swing Left to Right and back again.... continually. And a large part of that is about distracting you from the ongoing up-down battle. Because if individuals ever started to seriously suspect that ongoing large-scale conflict is not inherent to being human, it would be over very quickly. This is why the distraction - the Left-Right swing, the polarization of Left and Right - increases the closer mankind comes to waking up.

The Left-Right political spectrum forms a middle(together with those who opt out of politics), which is for the most part oblivious to the up-down bounce. On either side of this middle is a minority. One minority is tiny and exercises vastly disproportionate influence over the middle. But occasionally, the larger minority, whose only goal in life is to be free to flourish and prosper under voluntary association with their fellows, becomes organized and resolute enough, to raise the awareness of sufficient numbers in the middle to give it a real chance of upsetting the balance of power.

To me, what we are witnessing in the form of Brexit, Donald Trump and Marinne Le Penn is a mixture of Right and Up pendulum movement. Arguably a lot more Right than Up, at this point but that is likely due to the extent the Left has been pushed over the last decade or so. You could also say humanity's chances of breaking the cycle have never been as good as they are now.

One thing is for sure, nobody who prefers liberty to slavery has anything to gain by writing off their fellow human beings, completely. Least of all at a time like this, when it could go either way in the coming years. Life is full of surprises, some of them actually pleasant. And, as Margaret Mead said: never underestimate the power of a few thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world... it's the only thing that ever has.

So why not rather join those who love liberty. Get educated on history and get a firm handle on some basic economics. In doing so you will become a devastating threat to those who are dead-set on keeping mankind suppressed and who rely solely on misdirection and the perpetuation of logical fallacies, using fear as their main tool to do so.