Fools or Knaves? It Doesn't Matter

The hubris of our Ruling Class will eventually get us all killed, then no one will be left to care if it was an accident or on purpose. Time for a Coalition of the Willing.

Fools or Knaves, an age old question. On Substack, and Twitter, and everywhere else. We continue to debate amongst ourselves (me included) about whether the people in charge of the debacle of the covid era (and other things) are simply not as smart as they think they are, or just plain old evil. Are they fumbling their way toward disaster in a series of uncoordinated and stupid acts, or are we all being driven into destruction by Machiavellian conspirators? What if the only reason why we argue about motives is to avoid facing the hard truth? That our actions are all that really matter, talk is cheap and taking action is scary.

I’m sure our forefathers were scared, scared while they organized and met in secret and plotted their coup, to take down the government of a King. There had to have been so many steps to take in that long process, a grand Masonic conspiracy (the good kind) to create a new type of nation; free men and free markets. Jefferson envisioned a nation of Gentleman Farmers. Can you imagine how revolutionary of an idea that must have been at the time? Not nobility and peasants, not insane hubristic kings or white coated tyrants, but freedom, and a great green agrarian landscape of family farms from sea to shining sea.

To even talk of such things then, and now, is treason.

Twenty years ago there was still enough square footage in Texas alone to give every family in the world 6,000 square feet of space (population increases since make Texas just a bit small for every person on earth today.) There is enough land in the U.S. to give each family 10 acres, and that’s without expropriating anything from family owned farms. Just a thought exercise we should all practice from time to time; what if we erased the chalkboard and started over?

The first obstacle we, the common man, have in even starting to talk of taking action, is that at, a national level, we don’t have a common set of First Principles. Without commonly understood and agreed to First Principles, there can be no trust, certainly not at a fundamental level where it counts in revolutionary action. There are still churches, families, clubs, and other community groups who abide by a common code; creating social trust within their members. Perhaps, if that’s what we have to work with, we should move toward a decentralized arrangement of autonomous communities? Then again, that would leave the many communities without such intangible assets unstable, and likely fall to crime and chaos; endangering the other communities. It is possible or desirable to keep America intact as one nation? What are the alternatives?

Again and again, any exploration of taking action at scale quickly becomes a morass of what is what, who is who, and how can I know you won’t fuck me over worse than I’m getting fucked over now. If we don’t break out of this cycle of inaction, our grandchildren will live as slaves, if they live at all.

“To begin, begin.”

- William Wordsworth

People talk about where your line is, drawing your line in the sand, how much is enough. This is all nonsense, all of our lines have been crossed in the last two years. We’re not waiting for some additional encroachment to finally justify action. We’re just too atomized, diversified, divided, and dispersed, and to take collective action. Yet.

There has to be a way.