Resistance Isn't Futile

Random Thoughts and Concerns about The End of The World as We Know It
Part 10
All change meets resistance, but without resistance there is no change.

Speak up
First They Came, by Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor, a theologian, and the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler. He was arrested in 1937 and confined until his release by the Allies in 1945. His familiar and frequently quoted poem is a popular model for describing the danger of political apathy.

"First, they came for the socialists, but I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the unionists, but I did not speak out because I was not a unionist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and President of the ACLU of Southern California, has provided a modern twist to Martin Niemoller’s original poem.

“First, they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim. Then they detained and deported the immigrants, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant. Then they arrested eavesdropping suspects consulting with their attorneys, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a suspect. Then they prosecuted non-citizens before secret military commissions, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a non-citizen. Then they entered homes and offices for unannounced "sneak and peek" searches, and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.”

“Then they reinstated Cointelpro and resumed the infiltration and surveillance of domestic religious and political groups, and I didn't speak up because I had stopped participating. Then they came for anyone who objected to government policy saying it aided the terrorists and gave ammunition to America's enemies, and I didn't speak up because ... well … I was too scared. Then they came for me ... but by then there was no one was left to speak up.”

The constitutional protections of due process and equal protection should apply to everyone in the United States, including non-citizens whether here lawfully or un-lawfully. True justice dictates that we remain dedicated to preserving and defending the rights of all people, immigrants and refugees included, in accordance with the Constitution: Because if we don't, then eventually there will be no left to speak for us.

Resistance
America at War with Itself, By Henry A. Giroux, 2017

Resistance is no longer simply an option. The promise of shared rule has been eclipsed and given way to the promise of a large stock portfolio for some and the despair and anxiety of facing daily the challenge of simply trying to survive for hundreds of millions more. One consequence is that a market economy expands into a market society, making it easier to normalize the notion that capitalism and everyday life are inseparable.

As authoritarian power becomes more concentrated, it pushes democracy into a twilight existence where corporate domination and militarization become more menacing, and where organized and collective resistance become an urgent necessity. Flint reveals the omissions, lies, and deceptions that thrive in such a twilight, and provides an opening to harness the increasing sense of injustice, inequality, and moral outrage, and mobilize it strategically through insurgent forms of pedagogy and politics.

Doing so is a crucial part of a sustained struggle to re-democratize the economy and society. Flint is a wake-up call to make the moral poverty of power both visible and accountable. Moral outrage over the poisoning of the children and adults of Flint must draw upon history to make visible the long list of acts of violence and domestic terrorism that have come to mark the last three decades of neoliberal governance and corruption. Flint speaks to both a moral crisis and a political crisis of legitimation.

Flint calls out for resistance not only socially and politically, but economically. The need has never been greater for an alternative to a predatory financial system whose means, and ends, are not only completely divorced from “the general welfare of the population”, but are used to discipline and punish both the larger public and its most powerless populations.

What young minded, progressive, movement-oriented people are making clear is that economics cannot drive politics, violence cannot be the organizing principle of the state, and markets cannot define the present and future. There has never been a more important time to rethink the meaning of politics, justice, struggle, collective action, and the development of new political parties and social movements.

Stand Up, Stand Out
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, By Timothy Snyder, http://samuel-warde.com

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. How long does American democracy have before the poison, that is being injecting into our country’s body politic, becomes lethal?

What if an American President, Vice President, or other official attempts to stage a coup to overthrow democracy? What lessons can history teach about the rise of authoritarianism and how democracies collapse? Our one advantage is that we might learn from those experiences, and now is a good time to do so.

What can the American people do to resist such a leader? Are there ways that individuals can fight back daily in their own personal lives against the political and cultural forces that gave rise to authoritarianism? Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

Do not obey in advance: Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you! Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

Defend an institution: Follow the courts or the media, via court hearings or newspapers. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

Recall professional ethics: When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just-practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have trials without judges.

When listening to politicians, distinguish their words: Look out for the expansive use of "terrorism" and "extremism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "exception" and "emergency." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

Be kind to our language: Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Don't use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read something worthwhile.

What to read? The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev; and check out the Reading List in the right hand column.

Stand out: Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different, but without that unease there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

Believe in truth: To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true then all is spectacle, and the biggest wallet pays for the most attention.

Investigate: Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign and domestic propaganda.

Practice corporeal politics: Those in power want your body softening in a chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them. Practice civil disobedience.

Make eye contact and small talk: This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

Take responsibility for the face of the world: Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

Hinder the one-party state: The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

Give regularly to good causes: The moral test of any society is in how it treats its children, in how it treats its elderly, and in how it treats its sick, needy, and handicapped. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society, by helping others who are doing something good.

Establish a private life: Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person, and resolve any legal troubles. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

Learn from others in other countries: Keep up with your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

Watch out for the paramilitaries: When the men with guns who claim to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

Be reflective if you must be armed: If you carry a weapon in public or private service, or for self-protection, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen, soldiers, and others who one day found themselves doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. Practice professional and personal ethics.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives: When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians will either await or plan such events to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. To use any sudden disaster to end the balance of power, or to end opposition parties, or to further restrict freedom, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.

Be as courageous as you can: If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in tyranny. Attend rally’s, listen to reliable news sources, march with pride, and if necessary practice civil disobedience.

Be a patriot: Those whom we’ve sent to Washington DC are not patriots, they are career politicians. It’s up to us to protect our rights. It’s up to us to set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Push Back
Push Back, By Neale Wade, https://confessionsofaliberalgunowner.blogspot.com

Ronald Reagan once said, “I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts."

It’s incredibly important to recognize that laws are not being created “for our benefit”, regardless of the government arguments or media hype. More and more, what makes sense to some people is being established as the law for all people. Following the law is mandatory regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, and not following the law then becomes the wrong thing to do, and is criminalized.

What I meant, near the beginning, about those who don’t follow the rules being better examples is that we (society) need people who refuse to follow "all of the rules all of the time". By obsessively following the rules the way I used to I was contributing to the rise of an autocratic state. If there is no one to push back at the rules, then new rules will continue to be created and applied to citizens at an ever-increasing rate.

Let’s carry this to the extreme. Imagine what would happen if no one complained about rules: I’m convinced that local, state, federal, and international agencies would constantly be creating new rules for everything you can imagine; and for a lot of things you can’t imagine. Ultimately, we would have no freedom at all.

We would be told when to get up, how to dress, what to eat, where to work, how to get there, what to do while we’re there, when to leave, and how to get home. It would extend to where we could live, who we could marry, how many children we could produce, what their names would be, and what they would learn in school.

Our lives would not only be totally dictated to us, we would be monitored every moment of every day. Cameras at intersections, cameras at work, cameras at parks, cameras at home, cameras at church, cameras in our cars … oh wait … I’m not sure we’ll have cars. All of this would be “for our own good” of course, and unfortunately the reasons would “make sense” to lots of people.

Don’t look now but recent news stories suggest that this is happening as you read this. It’s not our future it’s our present and the only way to stop it, or at least slow it down, is to push back. As citizens, and more importantly as humans with natural rights, we need to resist the creation of more and more rules that are imposed “for our own good”. We, The People, need to become rebels for our own cause.

I’m not suggesting anarchy, society requires rules, and I’m not sure how to balance this requirement for rules and the freedom to ignore them. I admit that it’s a difficult problem, but it’s important that we refuse to reduce our sense of what’s right and wrong to someone else’s complicated list of rules. If we don’t I believe that what we cherish as humans will be lost, and that our society will ultimately fail, because we’re giving up our ability, and our right, to determine our own lives.

So be a good example: Rock the boat; create some waves; walk on the grass; freely give to the homeless guy; take your elephant for a walk; remove the water restrictor in your shower; go where no man has gone before; ignore the sign that says, “No Dogs”; embrace the idea that rules are meant to be broken; choose to be the bad apple; and follow the sound of a different drummer once in a while.

Yes, society may require rules, but you have a right to live without a bunch of crazy rules enacted for the “greater good”; or at least you do today. If you don’t recognize and react to the threat to your liberties now, you are going to lose everything that is important; and worse, your children and grand-children won’t even realize they’re missing.

Rupture

Black Prophetic Fire, By Cornel West in dialog with Christa Buschendorf, Beacon Press, 2014

The cycles of domination are so deeply entrenched in human history, that more than likely the best we can do is to break the cycle. Even when you call for revolution, or when you think you have finally broken the cycle, the cycle comes right back in new clothing. So, it’s not a change in the system, but it’s a rupture in the cycle.

In long term organizing it’s important to recognize the value of slow-pace education of groups and what follows from that, the need for a more radical pushing of those groups. The Shining Path in Peru, admittedly a terrorist group, spent 17 years educating their young people before moving against the government.

The kind of crucial radicalizing of a group toward a more revolutionary consciousness becomes one of the essential elements in rebellion. This is to say, when the rupture takes place the system must stop and respond, rather than continuing to deny the suffering of the people who are revolting.

It’s important to recognize this as a spiral, where these systems of domination, oligarchies, hierarchies, and anti-democratic forms reemerge, while at the same time the growing revolutionary consciousness becomes more deeply suspicious of those hierarchies and oligarchies, etc.

To rupture the system, you must have people who are willing to take the risk. It’s a threefold movement, with people willing to be in the streets, willing to go to jail, and willing to die for what they believe in. In the leadership model, you have someone whom you identify with and who acts on your behalf. This is why Martin Luther King, who touched the hearts, minds, and souls of so many people, was a charismatic leader, and why his death generated the rebellions it did.

Within the Occupy movement people go to the streets, people go to jail, and people are even willing to die, but there is no charismatic figure. They recognize that it’s not enough to understand the problem and act politically: You need emotional involvement. In the Occupy model, you have personal connections and interactions.

To rupture the system in either model, you must raise the consciousness of people and motivate them to fight for justice. If you inspire the people, if you bring them to a political sense, you don’t have to worry any longer because they become active themselves.

However, a major limitation of the global historical work and witness of change is the tremendous clash between democratic time and market time. Market time is fast, quick, push-button, and 24/7, whereas democratic time requires a long, slow struggle for hearts and minds.

The slow, bottom-up, democratic organizing has always been associated with some of the best social movements, but we need to understand how to live in some way between these times, right on the thin edge.

Unfortunately, after years of democratic organizing you get a few elected officials, and people say, “A whole generation and you’re getting people and systems in place”, while others say, “That’s all you’ve accomplished in all this time”. It’s a challenge.

There are moments when anarchists feel abandoned by their own people and times when they don’t appreciate the movements that they helped to initiate and create. They are willing to stand alone, saying “I don’t mind being lonely while standing up for the truth”, but they also get angry at the lack of cohesion that is needed for an effective political fight, feeling disappointed that they can’t make themselves understood to their co-fighters.

Given the constraints of the system, in which electoral politics is so dominated by big money, it’s the boisterous rebellions that have played a fundamental role in getting concessions from the powers that be. More so than the long-term organizing that’s quiet and on the margins, hardly visible. When 200 cities go up in flames, the powers that be must concede something.

Anarchy
Black Prophetic Fire, By Cornel West in dialog with Christa Buschendorf, Beacon Press, 2014

The question is, how can change be brought about with the powers that be? Should we, as individuals, work locally and change the system in our communities, and go on from there? Or should we, like anarchists, change it radically at a particular place and in a particular moment, and hope to make at least a small difference? Or should we, as organizers, work nationally and struggle daily for greater success, and risk being shot or defeated?

The question becomes more urgent when we look at what we are fighting for and against right now, compared to the past.

Of course, when you look at it from the perspective of the powers that be, what do they find most threatening? They are threatened by any serious challenge to their oligarchic power, to their profit-driven economic system, and their forms of distraction that keep the masses satisfied. They are more threatened by the goal of engagement, because the patience, receptivity, and love of a leader who is shot or mistreated leads to rebellion.

There has been a shift that is part of a larger structural transformation in the history of capitalism, in which neoliberal elites marginalize social movements and prophetic voices in the name of consolidating a rising oligarchy at the top. Leaving a devastated working class, struggling to make ends meet, in the middle, and a desperate poor, whose labor is no longer necessary for the system, at the bottom.

This neoliberal shift produces a culture of raw ambition and instant success that is seductive to most potential leaders and intellectuals, thereby incorporating them into the neoliberal regime. This culture of superficial spectacle and hyper-visible celebrities highlights the legitimacy of an unjust system that prides itself on the promise of an upward mobility of the downtrodden.

This neoliberal regime contains a vicious repressive apparatus that targets those strong and sacrificial leaders, activists, and prophetic intellectuals. Character assassination becomes systemic and chronic, and is preferable to literal assassination because dead martyrs tend to command the attention of the masses and thereby elevate the threat to the status quo.

The central role of corporate media, in support of the neoliberal regime, is to keep public discourse narrow and deodorized. Narrow, meaning confining the conversation to conservative Republican and liberal Democrats while shutting out radical visions. Deodorized, meaning ignoring the issues highlighted by prophetic voices.

The state of America today has been one of desperation, confusion, and capitulation. The desperation is rooted in the escalating suffering on every front, the confusion arises from the conflation of symbol and substance, and the capitulation rests on the obsessive need to protect those in power.

What does it profit a nation when a symbolic figure rises to power if we turn our backs to the suffering poor?

Protest
Terrified, By Talia, www.facebook.com

People keep posting on how they are terrified, or scared, but what are they scared of exactly? War? Because that's happening. School shootings? That's happening. Pipeline? That's a government sponsored disaster waiting to happen. Terrorism? Alive and well. Going broke due to sky-rocketing health insurance? Well yes. Corruption throughout the system? Already here. Police officers being murdered? Yep, that's happening. Bullying? Check. Loss of jobs? We've got that on lock. A tanking economy. Yep. Being discriminated against for your religion, political views, sexual orientation, race? That's still going on. Rape, murder, violence, riots? All seemingly unstoppable.

Right now, all I see is hate. It's disturbing, and the ones with the most hate are behaving exactly in the ways they claim to be against.

So, tell me what are you scared of that is not already happening basically, everywhere? What is happening isn't a Trump problem, this is a people problem, and it's time for everyone to reevaluate their attitudes. Maybe America is a little too scared and a little too easily offended.

Quit being scared, stop crying about what you dislike, and don't get offended by everything. Step up and do your part as an American, or rather as an intelligent concerned human being. Treat others with respect, help and encourage one another, raise your kids right, be a contributing member of society. Make sure your hands are clean, that's your job.

Instead of burning the American flag, how about doing your job to make the world a better place! We shouldn’t speak without thinking, but neither should we think without speaking.

No is Not Enough
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning …, By Naomi Klein, www.democracynow.org

We need to focus on what this or any administration will do when it has a major external shock to exploit. Maybe it will be an economic crash like 2008, maybe a natural disaster like Sandy, or maybe it will be a horrific terrorist event like Manchester or Paris in 2015. Any one such crisis could redraw the political map overnight. And it could give a president and his crew free rein to ram through their most extreme ideas.

An example of shock resistance was where Theresa May was exploiting the Manchester attacks and the London Bridge attacks, saying, "We are going to have to get rid of your online privacy; We need backdoors into all of your communication apps; We may need to suspend human rights law."

Leadership is not talking about root causes, which is the failure of the war-on-terror paradigm and how this is leading to an increase in these types of attacks.

Citizens do not want to double down and give up more rights in these moments. In London, a lot of people decided that it made more sense, after all these years, to try to understand why this is happening rather than reacting to an event.

Here is what the author has learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of crises around the world: She has observed how the tactics of shock politics can be resisted, and for our convenience she has tried to boil it down to a five-step plan.

Step one: Know what’s coming. What would happen if a horror like the one in Manchester took place on U.S. soil? Based on an obvious fondness for control, we can expect him or her to impose some sort of state of exception or emergency where the usual rules of democracy no longer apply.

Protests and strikes that block roads and airports, like the ones that sprung up to resist the Muslim travel ban, would likely be declared a threat to national security. Protest organizers would be targeted under anti-terror legislation, with surveillance, arrests and imprisonment. With public signs of dissent suppressed, the truly toxic to-do list would quickly bubble up: Bring in the feds to pacify the streets, muzzle investigative journalism, and control the people.

And the most lethal shock we need to prepare for is a push for a full-blown foreign war. And, no, it won’t matter if the target has no connection to the attacks used to justify it. Preparing for this is crucial. If we know what to expect, we won’t be that shocked. We’ll just be pissed.

Step two: Get out of your homes now, and continue to defy the bans when they’re imposed. When governments tell people to stay in their homes or show their patriotism by going shopping, they inevitably claim it’s for public safety, that protests and rallies could become targets for more attacks. What we know from other countries is that there is only one way to respond. Disobey in masse.

That’s what happened in Argentina in 2001. With the country in economic free fall, the president, Fernando De La Rua, declared a state of siege, giving himself the power to suspend the constitution.

He told the public to stay in their houses, but that’s not what they did, and the president resigned that night.

Three years later, in Madrid, a horrifying series of coordinated attacks on trains killed more than 200 people. The prime minister, José María Aznar, falsely pointed the finger at Basque separatists and used the attacks to justify his decision to send troops to Iraq. His rhetoric was classic shock doctrine: Division, war, and fear, but instead the Spaniards responded by turning out in Masse. They voted Aznar out of office a few days later

Step three: Know your history. Throughout U.S. history, national crises have been used to suspend constitutional protections and attack basic rights. After the Civil War, with the nation in crisis, the promise of 40 acres and a mule to freed slaves was promptly betrayed. During the pain and panic of the Great Depression, as many as two million people of Mexican descent were expelled from the United States. After the Pearl Harbor attacks, around 120,000 Japanese Americans were jailed in internment camps. If an attack on U.S. soil were perpetrated by people who were not white and Christian, we can be pretty sure that racists would have a field day.

The good folks of Manchester recently showed us how to respond to that, as they chanted “The people of Manchester don’t stand with your xenophobia and racism!”

Step four: Always follow the money. While everyone is focused on security and civil liberties, the president’s cabinet of billionaires will try to quietly push through even more extreme measures to enrich themselves and their class, like dismantling Social Security or auctioning off major pieces of government for profit.

It’s in those moments when fear and chaos are sucking up all the oxygen when we must ask: Whose interests are being served by the chaos? What is being slipped through while we’re distracted? Who’s getting richer, and who’s getting even poorer?

When the floodwaters were still rising in New Orleans, one of the first official acts that the governor did was to fire all the teachers. What was happening was a raid of the money set aside for public education to be given to private companies. It wasn’t by happenstance. It was by design. You saw the political manipulations and taking advantage of the crisis.

Step five: By learning from history we can make history, by advancing a bold counterplan. At their best, all the previous steps can only slow down attempts to exploit crisis. If we want to defeat this tactic, opponents of the shock doctrine need to move quickly to put forward a credible alternate plan. It needs to get at the root of why these sorts of crises are hitting us with ever greater frequency.

That means we must talk about militarism, climate change, and deregulated markets. More than that, we need to advance and fight for different models, ones grounded in racial, economic and gender justice, ones that hold out the credible promise of a tangibly better and fairer life in the here and now and a safer planet for all of us in the long term.

Defensive actions alone won’t cut it. There must be a different vision, and it needs to be bold. Saying no to the shock doctrine is vitally important. But when the SHTF, no is not enough.

Democracy in Crisis
American Democracy is in Crisis, By Chauncey DeVega, http://samuel-warde.com

What does it mean when a world leader threatens violence against his political enemies; or makes it clear he does not believe in the norms and traditions of democracy, unless they serve his interests; or when his advisers consider a free press to be enemies of his regime, or when he repeatedly lies and has a profoundly estranged relationship with empirical reality; or when he uses obvious and naked racism, nativism and bigotry to mobilize his voters and to disparage entire groups of people?

What does it mean when a world leader threatens to eliminate an independent judiciary and wants to punish judges who dare to stand against his illegal and unconstitutional mandates? What does it mean to be in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and his inner circle? What does it mean when he and his representatives believe that he is above the law and cannot be prosecuted for any crimes while in office?

The American dream is about how nothing can go wrong.  It’s based on the idea that human nature leads to the free market and the free market brings democracy, so everything is hunky-dory. Of course, every part of that idea is nonsense. The Greeks understood that democracy is likely to produce oligarchy because if you don’t have some mechanism to get inequality under control then people with the most money will likely take full control.

One of the problems with American discourse is that we just assume everybody is a friendly democratic parliamentarian pluralist until proven otherwise. And then even when it’s proven otherwise we don’t have any vocabulary for it. Instead we toss around words like, “fascism”, “dictator”, and “authoritarian”.

Americans do not want to think that there is an alternative to what we have. Therefore, as soon as you say “fascism” or whatever it might be, then the American response is to say “no, that’s not right” because we lack the categories that allow us to think outside of the box; a box that we are no longer in.

We’re trying to move towards intellectual isolationism in a world where no kind of isolationism is possible. We believe that even though democracies usually fail, it’s a rule that doesn’t apply to us. If you examine American society, there are high points and low points. But there is certainly nothing which puts us in a different category than other people who have failed, whether it’s historically or whether it’s now.

As I see it, there are certainly elements of the current leadership which are fascistic. The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment to undo institutions, that is fascism.

Whether the current leadership realizes it or not is a different question, but that’s what historical fascists did. They said, “Don’t worry about the facts; don’t worry about logic. Think instead in terms of mystical unities and direct connections between the mystical leader and the people.” That’s fascism. Whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not, even if we forget, that is fascism.

Another thing that’s clearly fascist were the rallies. The way that language was used, the blunt repetitions, the naming of the enemies, the physical removal of opponents from rallies, that was really, without exaggeration, just like the 1920s and the 1930s.

Our current president is primarily a television personality. As such, he is judged by that standard. This means that a scandal does not call forth a response; it calls forth the desire for a bigger scandal. It just whets the appetite for a bigger scandal because a television serial has to work on that logic. It’s almost as though he has to produce these outrageous things because what else would he be doing?

I think another part of it has to do with attention span. It’s not so much a lack of outrage; people are in fact outraged. But for a scandal to have political force the outrage must be followed by the research. It must be followed by an investigation, that leads to an official finding.

Corporeal Politics
American Democracy is in Crisis, By Chauncey DeVega, http://samuel-warde.com

It’s pretty much inevitable that there will be an attempt, by the current administration, to expand power by declaring a state of emergency, with the goal of taking full control of the government. The reason is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win elections. Next year, 2018, is not looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines, not just because the president is historically unpopular.

It’s also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like. This means they could be seduced by the notion of getting into a new rhythm of politics, one that does not depend upon popular policies and electoral cycles.

Whether it works or not depends upon whether, when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether we are going to be free citizens in the future.

It might be best if the current administration tries and fails; not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this and would not necessarily go along.

We have a century of wisdom and very smart people who confronted situations like our own, maybe even more demanding, and that wisdom can be condensed. This wisdom illuminates the arc of regime change, from the beginning to the end, and it provides things ranging from simpler to harder that people can literally do every day.

The thing that matters the most is to realize that in moments like this your actions really do matter!

It is ironic but in an authoritarian regime-change situation, the individual matters more than [in] a democracy. In an authoritarian regime change, at the beginning the individual has a special kind of power because the authoritarian regime depends on a certain kind of consent. If you are conscious of the moment that you are in, you can find the ways not to express your consent and you can also find little ways to be a barrier. If enough people do that, it really can make a difference; but only at the beginning.

The most important lesson is to be as courageous as you can. Do individuals care about freedom? Do you care enough about freedom that you would take risks? Think that through. If enough of us take the little risks at the beginning, which aren’t really that significant, it will prevent us from having to take bigger risks down the line.

We are still at a stage where protest is not illegal and where protest is not always lethal. Those are the two big thresholds. We are still on the good side of both of those thresholds and so now is the time you want to pack in as much as you can because you could actually divert things.

Once you get into a world where protest is illegal, and often lethal, then the things that I recommend like corporeal politics, getting out on the streets, still must happen, but they are much riskier. It’s a much different kind of decision.

You should accept there is a time frame. Nobody can be sure how long any particular regime change will take, but there is a clock, and the clock really is ticking. Once you get past a certain threshold, it starts to depend more on them than on us, and then things are much, much worse. It makes me sad to think how Americans would behave at that point. At that point, the forces of regime change have the momentum because the American people are up against the clock.

Democracy Gone Wrong
America at War with Itself, By Henry A. Giroux, 2017

Communities of color in places like Chicago, Flint, Ferguson, New Orleans, and countless other cities in the United States, have long been considered expendable. Their preventable misery has not presented ethical dilemmas for white-dominated institutions of law enforcement, criminal justice, political administration, or the economic forces that relentlessly pressure the system to favor financial elites. Social death now works in tandem with physical death as the provisions considered basic to Western civilization are taken away, regardless of the irreparable damage it may cause, even to women, children, and the elderly.

The confluence of finance, militarization, and corporate power has not only destroyed essential collective structures in support of the public good, such forces have also devastated American democracy. A society that finds it more profitable to poison children that to give them a decent life is a society at war with itself.

A society that admits economic self-interest over social responsibility as the guiding national principle is one where politics is emptied out, authoritarianism prevails, and the processes of national decomposition accelerates. Americans are now living in an age of organized forgetting, an age in which a flight from responsibility is measured in increasing acts of corruption, violence, trauma, and the struggle to survive.

Decaying schools, poisoned water, racist law enforcement, and the imposition of emergency managers on cities largely populated by impoverished communities of immigrants and people of color represent more than “the catastrophe of indifference”; there is also a chronic case of criminal impunity in which communities disadvantaged by class, color, and residency status are divorced from the grid of privilege and protection and thereby rendered voiceless, politically invisible, and criminally suspect.

The Flint lead-poisoning scandal is not an isolated crime. Nor is it a function of an anarchic lawlessness administered by blundering politicians and administrators. Rather, it is a lawlessness that thrives on and underwrites the power and corruption of the financial elite. Such lawlessness owes its dismal life to a failure of conscience and a politics of disposability in the service of a “political economy which has become a criminal economy”. Flint is symptomatic of a mode of politics and governance in which the categories of citizenship and democratic representation, once integral to a functioning polity, are no longer recognized.

Thus, vast populations are subject to conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead. Under the auspices of life-threatening austerity policies, not only are public goods defunded and the commons devalued, but the very notion of what it means to be a citizen is manipulated and redefined in terms of consumerism. At the same time, politics is hijacked by corporate power and the ultra-rich, making it “unappealing and toxic” (full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, and pandering to an uneducated and impressionable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media).

Calexit
Break Away from the USA, By Mark Barabak, http://www.latimes.com

Since 1849, when California was made in a rush of greed and ambition, there have been more than 200 efforts to split apart, pull away, or otherwise reimagine this vast empire. Not one has succeeded.

In California's far north, a determined group of dissenters has labored for decades. Efforts have been underway since before World War II to break off more than a dozen rural counties and combine them with a chunk of southern Oregon to form the State of Jefferson, the nation's 51st state. It's a matter of fair representation; and the proposed flag, a pair of “X”s , representing “double cross”, captures the animating sentiment.

The impetus is the same that drives backers of the secessionist movement in California: The notion of a far-off government ignoring local sentiments, and a sense of being outnumbered and outvoted by a population whose social and political views are at odds with the prevailing culture. Those who support succession feel that the state sends too much money to Washington D.C., which is both politically and culturally out of step with a country that lacks its openness and vitality.

Those who wish to create another state have little use for secession, which strikes many as bizarre: Would the new California nation have its own nuclear arsenal and U.N. representative? It would prove to be fruitless in ending the urban-rural divide which is often blamed for persistently short-changing parts of the state. There's something wrong and even vaguely un-American about trying to break the country apart. "We want to add a star to the flag". "Not take one off."

Both sides agree that "We can solve our own problems and don't need to wait on a government", suggesting that California would be far better off going it alone as a separate state or country. They sharply disagree, though, on the matter of how and precisely when California should seek a divorce from the other 49 states.

One side is pushing a ballot measure that would put the question of secession before voters in 2018, believing the time has never been so ripe to form a breakaway nation. The other side is working to create a pro-secession political party, looking a dozen or more years down the road when its candidates hold office, and fears that a premature vote would undermine the effort.

In short, the effort to cleave California faces a crackup of its own. At least four proposals are floating about to reshape the state in some fashion, including two that would split up California along different axes. All work at cross-purposes, resulting in varied degrees of hostility among proponents, and none of the plans seems likely to reach fruition anytime soon; which is something they have in common.

Failed State
Failed State, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org

A nation-state can be said to "succeed" if it maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. When this is broken the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and it becomes a failed state. The difficulty of determining whether a government maintains "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force", is complicated by the definition of the word "legitimate", which means it is not clear precisely when a state can be said to have "failed".

Common characteristics of a failing nation-state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory. When this happens widespread corruption and criminality will occur, along with the intervention of non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, and sharp economic decline.

A failed nation-state is not able to enforce its laws uniformly or provide basic goods and services to its citizens because of high crime rates, extreme political corruption, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference, and cultural situations in which traditional leaders wield more power than the state over a certain area.

This might explain our government’s efforts to improve control of its territory (Home Land Security), maximizing its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (Militarization of local police), resisting the erosion of its legitimate authority to make collective decisions (Secret FISA Courts), maintaining the illusion of providing public services (Obama Care, Social Security, and FEMA), and its insisting on interacting with other states as a full member of the international community (Nuclear Treaties it doesn’t abide by, Environmental Treaties it fails to live up to, the Trans Pacific Alliance it agreed to despite a public outcry, and it’s membership in The United Nations).

Revolution

Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, By Chris Hedges, 2015

We live in a revolutionary moment. The economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The world is being turned upside down by capitalism and greed, and the pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading over the earth.

Governments that cater exclusively to a narrow group and redirect the machinery of state to furthering the interests of that group are no longer capable of responding rationally in times of crisis.

The criminals have seized power.

It is not only Assange, Hammond, Abu-Jamal, Manning, and Hashmi they want. It is all who dare to defy the destructive fury of the global corporate state. The persecution of these rebels is the harbinger of what is to come: The rise of a bitter world where criminals in tailored suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms (propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press, and a morally bankrupt political elite) hunt down and cage all who resist.

In the face of modern conditions, revolution is inevitable. The rampant inequality that exists between the political and corporate elites and the struggling masses; the destruction wreaked upon our environment by faceless, careless corporations; the steady stripping away of our civil liberties and the creation of a monstrous surveillance system, have all combined to spark a profound revolutionary moment. Corporate capitalists, dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting.

The revolutionary ideal, the vision of a better world, the belief that resistance is a moral act to protect the weak and the poor (in short, an ideology) fuses with the sense of loss and betrayal engendered by a system that can no longer meet expectations. The revolt and revolutions that have convulsed the Arab world, the warnings from the Occupy Movement in the United States, and the unrest in Greece and Spain, share these vital characteristics. The primacy of corporate profit in a globalized economy has become universal, and so have its consequences.

While violence and terrorism are often part of revolutions, the fundamental tool of any successful revolt is the non-violent conversion (to the side of the rebels) of the forces deployed to restore order. Most successful revolutions are, for this reason, fundamentally non-violent.

Most of us have heard the message from a recent popular movie that “rebellions are built on hope”, but there is nothing rational about rebellion. In fact, rebels share much in common with religious mystics; they hold fast to a vision that often they alone can see. They view rebellion as a moral imperative, even as they concede that the hope of success is slim and at times impossible.

To rebel against insurmountable odds is, in truth, an act of faith without which the rebel is doomed. This faith is intrinsic to the rebel the way caution and prudence are intrinsic to those who seek to fit into existing power structures. The rebel, possessed by inner demons and angels, is driven by a vision. We cannot predict if the current revolutionary wave and the rebels produced by it will succeed. But we can be certain that without these rebels, we are doomed.

Redneck Revolt
What is Redneck Revolt? Activists Protect Minorities, By Cristina Maza, www.msn.com

The word "redneck" is typically used to insult a white person from a poor, rural background, a demographic that tends to be politically conservative. But now a group of far-left activists is reclaiming the word and using it to spark a working-class movement that protects minorities and promotes social justice.

Redneck Revolt’s website says it aims to put “the red back in redneck,” a reference to the use of the color red to represent the working class and members of the far-left. Members of Redneck Revolt can often be found at protests armed to the teeth, ready to provide protection for minority groups such as Black Lives Matter and other groups fighting for equality and justice.

They are a national network of community defense projects that, unlike many people on the left, advocates for the right to bear arms. Since the group was founded in 2016, around 45 branches of Redneck Revolt have emerged in more than 30 U.S. states, the group says. Their aim is to respond to the upsurge in extremist rhetoric and violence coming from white supremacist groups over the past year.

The current political environment has seen armed militias intimidating people as they go into their mosques to pray, violent white nationalists attacking people in the street, Nazis openly calling for genocide all across the country, and political wavering around whether white nationalism is a defensible political ideology.

Redneck Revolt members recognize how real the threats of violence have become because of the friends and loved ones they’ve already lost, and they organize in community defense as both an obligation and a commitment to defend each other.

But the organization isn’t only focused on guns. It also aims to bring members of the working class together across racial divides. Its activities include clothing drives, potlucks, farming and gardening, and providing training in safety and survival.

Redneck Revolt promotes itself as a pro-worker, anti-racist organization that focuses on working class liberation from the oppressive systems which dominate our lives. It’s members represent a variety of political ideologies, including libertarians, anarchists, communists and independents.

The members share the goal of countering the growth of white supremacist movements and building solidarity between diverse members of the working class and the poor. In an open letter the group uses for recruitment, Redneck Revolt asks working class white people to consider the minorities who often work beside them and reflect on their shared interests.

Redneck Revolt believes that real working-class solidarity will come from working alongside each other in person and in our everyday lives, not in the sterile conversations of privilege in college classrooms, or in the phony hand-wringing of politicians.

In order to stop white nationalists from recruiting working-class people into their movements, members of Redneck Revolt visit gun shows, flea markets, state fairs, Nascar races and cattle shows where white supremacist organizations are known to look for new members.

Redneck Revolt focuses on counter-recruitment of working-class people against white supremacist and white nationalist organizations, through direct outreach in places where working-class folks are already being targeted.

Immigrants' Rights
Protecting Civil Liberties in Federal Immigration Reform, by Admin, https://www.aclu.org

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, noted that if the American people stopped being actively engaged with their governments, then Congress, state legislatures, judges, and governors “shall all become wolves”.  The freedoms of speech, assembly, and association, all preserved by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ensure that all of us can be actively engaged in both our federal government and the public affairs of the State.

Immigration reform must create a welcoming roadmap to citizenship for aspiring Americans living in and contributing to the U.S. fundamental fairness as guaranteed by the Constitution requires that these individuals be brought within the legal embrace of U.S. citizenship.

Immigration reform must not create a national identification system or include measures that harm fundamental privacy rights. Error-prone identification systems endanger the rights and livelihood of all Americans in the workplace and in civic life.

Immigration reform must end state and local intrusions into immigration policy and enforcement, as well as ban racial profiling at all levels of government.

Immigration reform must address systematic due process problems with immigration detention and deportation.

Immigration reform must transform border enforcement, which has grown wasteful and abusive without regard to genuine public safety needs.

Immigration reform must address immigration and customs enforcement's (ICE) contribution by placing many detainees in detention centers, contributing to America's mass incarceration problem.

Immigration reform must include the ability of committed and loving couples in same-sex relationships to sponsor their spouse or permanent-partner in a way opposite-sex couples have long been able to under current immigration law.

State Constitutions also guarantee that we all have the right to speak freely and work together to improve our government. The Declaration of Rights in our state Constitution also protects our rights to speak and publish freely, to assemble in a peaceable manner, to consult for our common good, and to instruct our representatives.

We, as American citizen, must remain dedicated to expanding and protecting the First Amendment freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.  Through assistance to protesters, publishers, bloggers, and activists, we must remain constantly vigilant to keep government (in all its forms)
from trampling on these cherished civil liberties.

Know Your Rights
Know Your Rights, by Admin, https://www.aclu.org

If you’re stopped by the Police: You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to remain silent, tell the officer. (Some states may require you to identify yourself if you’re suspected of a crime.) 2) Stay calm. Don’t run. Don’t argue, resist, or obstruct the police. Keep your hands where the police can see them. 3) Ask if you’re free to leave. If you are, calmly and silently walk away. 3) You do not have to consent to a search of yourself or your belongings.

If you’re stopped in your car: Stop the car in a safe place as quickly as possible. Turn off the engine, turn on internal lights, open the window partway, and place your hands on the steering wheel. 2) Upon request, show the officer your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. 3) If an officer of immigration agent asks to search your car, you can refuse. But of police believe your car contains evidence of a crime, they can search it without your consent. 4) Both driver and passengers have the right to remain silent. If you’re a passenger, you can also ask if you free to leave. If you are, calmly and silently walk away.

If you’re asked about your immigration status: 1) You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to answer questions about where you were born; whether you’re a US citizen, or how you entered the country. (Separate rules apply at international borders and airports, and for individuals on certain non-immigrant visas, including tourists and business travelers.) 2) If you’re not a US citizen and have valid immigration papers, you should show them if an immigration agent requests them. 3) Do not lie about your immigration status or provide fake documents.

If the police or immigration agents come to your home: 1) You don’t have to let them in unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. 2) Ask them to show you the warrant. Officers can only search the areas and for items listed on the warrant. An arrest warrant allows the police to enter the home of a person listed on the warrant if they believe the person is inside. A warrant of removal/deportation (ICE warrant) does not allow officers to enter a home without consent. 3) Even if officers have a warrant, you may remain silent. If you choose to speak, step outside and close the door.

If you’re arrested by the Police: 1) Do not resist. 2) Say you wish to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the government must provide one for you. 3) Don’t say anything, sign anything, or make any decision without a lawyer. 4) Don’t discuss your immigration status with anyone other than your lawyer. 5) An immigration officer may visit you in jail. Do not answer questions or sign anything before talking to a lawyer. 6) Read all papers fully. If you don’t understand or cannot read the papers, say you need an interpreter.

If you’re taken into immigration (ICE) custody: 1) You have the right to a lawyer, but the government will not provide one for you. If you don’t have a lawyer, ask for a list of free or low-cost legal services. 2) You have the right to contact your consulate or have an officer inform the consulate of your arrest. 3) Tell the immigration officer you wish to remain silent. Do not discuss your immigration status with anyone other than your lawyer. 4) Do not sign anything, such as voluntary departure or stipulated removal, without talking to a lawyer. If you sign, you may be giving up your opportunity to try to stay in the US. 5) Know your immigration number and give it to your family. It will help them locate you.

If you feel your rights have been violated: 1) Write down everything you remember, including officer’s badge and patrol car numbers, which agency the officers were from, and any other details. Get contact information for witnesses. If you’re injured, seek medical attention immediately and take photographs of your injuries. 2) File a written complaint with the agency’s internal affairs division or civilian complaint board. In most cases, you can file a complaint anonymously if you with.

Martial Law

10 Ways to Fool the Authorities and Escape Martial Law, By Mark Lawrence, www.bioprepper.com

Martial Law under a government with bad intentions, or even under a government with good intentions, can have devastating consequences: A violent and horrifying life in what is essentially a concentration camp.

We’re not talking about a regional or short-term enactment of martial law. We’re talking about martial law under a government with a program to root out and destroy any and all elements that are not in line with their specific agenda.

Remember the Japanese who were interned in the US? Few lost their lives but none were treated well and most lost their homes and everything they owned. How many Jews learned too late, and the hard way, that the Nazis wanted to exterminate them?

In a government collapse, following any number of disastrous events that might befall this nation, you can bet that any authority trying to re-establish The Rule of Law will need force, and a lot of it, to quell all who are identified as resistant.

Force shows power and overwhelming force in the form of violence spreads fear across a population. There’s no better way to show force and enact fear in people than to violently enforce martial law.

When it happens here, you can bet that extensive planning and operations, including secret government agents, computer hacking, weapons smuggling, and covert alliances, will have paved the way beforehand.

In the end, any authority enacting martial law will not do so under the American flag of our founding fathers. The American flag may still fly, but if it does fly it will be dwarfed by a larger flag with any number of national or foreign symbols poised above it.

Run, Don’t Walk: With death bearing down on your community, or your neighborhood or your front door, it’s better to make a hasty retreat for anywhere rather than to wait too long.

To get the news of approaching martial law you need to ensure that you have access to news, even following a loss of the power grid. The latest emergency AM/FM and weather alert radios now have multiple alternative power sources, while still taking rechargeable batteries and standard AA batteries. Ham radio is another option for news from the local region especially if you’re on the move, and if you have family or friends in the region with two-way radios.

Seek Cover and Stay Camouflaged: Jews who waited too long to evacuate, or moved too slowly, or didn’t do a good job hiding out, were rounded up, or simply shot where they were found.

Staying under cover is becoming more difficult every day, with drones, helicopters, planes, and even satellites, capable of monitoring ground activity. Avoid line of sight, and move so that your path of travel isn’t visible to anyone scouring the land with binoculars. Avoid meadows and open spaces.

Be ready to drop to your belly and crawl on all fours, stomach and head low to the ground, and move at a snail’s pace, moving extremely slow to avoid snapping twigs and shaking the brush or tall grass around you.

If you have any questions or suspicions about a possible search party, be ready to stop moving completely and stay where you are for the next several hours, or until the cover of darkness, or when you feel it’s safe to start moving again.

Hide or sleep well away from any noticeable trail. If soldiers are acting on orders they may not be too excited about slugging through a swamp or wetland, or climbing a steep hill of dense brush.

Choose the Path of MOST Resistance: From your starting point, what is the hardest way into the wilderness, with the most brush or the steepest gully, that is still passable? If authorities are not right on your tail and you have a head start, consider taking a path that no one in their right mind would be likely to take.

It might take you 30 minutes to climb a 200-yard hillside through the woods, but if that hillside climb takes you off the beaten track you can increase the odds that you won’t be seen, because hopefully, no one is going to follow the path you have taken.

Cover Your Tracks: Soldiers acting on orders to round up evacuees might not be well trained in tracking. That said, you should be cautious along whatever path you take not to leave signs of your presence, and especially not leave signs revealing the direction you are traveling.

Broken branches and twigs breaking off brush as you pass by are telltale signs pointing to your presence. Flattened grass as you crawl through an open area leaves a trail of pointing in your direction of travel. If you have time, stand the grass back up, so that it’s no longer flattened.

Be extra cautious about footsteps in open areas, especially damp soil. It is an easy way to leave a print revealing your direction of travel. Step cautiously over and around open areas of soil to avoid leaving shoe prints.

Smoke from camp fires can alert people miles away to your location and ashes from a camp fire can tell trackers just how long it’s been since you were there. Avoid camp fires until you are a very safe distance away, keep them short, brief, and very small when you do need one.

Don’t drop anything to signal your presence, from an empty matchbook to a cigarette lighter to garbage from your food supplies. Bury everything you don’t want, well off trail, where it won’t be found.

Fool Your Pursuers: If you plan on entering the woods near a highway, cross to the other side of the highway and break a few branches and clear a path of brush to create what looks like a trail leading in the opposite direction. If you have time, continue forward along that false trail and leave additional signs giving pursuers the impression that is the direction you or others are traveling.

In one area, urinate, or pour water on the ground, and then make foot prints in the damp soil that look like you are walking in a certain direction. In another area, make foot prints in a damp area of sand or dirt that point in that general direction.

A good time to litter is when you want to use litter to fool pursuers into believing you went one direction, or crossed a river, when you didn’t. Consider dropping that matchbook, or candy wrapper, or arrange things to look like a temporary rest site.

Then go back to your original planned starting point, perhaps choosing the path of most resistance, and head off in the opposite direction.

Only Carry the Essentials: If you’re prepared, you have a Bug Out Bag packed and ready to go, though a lighter weight Bug Out Bag may be called for if you find that you need to make a hasty retreat and have a tough road ahead of you.

When it comes to the outdoors you can get by in the same set of clothing just fine. Having an additional layer is recommended, as temperatures can drop as the sun goes down. Avoid carrying a tent, and carry a simple waterproof bivy sack. A bivy sack is a thin yet rugged bag designed to fit over a sleeping bag and keep you sheltered from the elements.

Carry less water, unless traveling through dry areas where natural water sources are few or non-existent for several miles at a time, in which case you’ll want to carry a lot more water than normal.  Be sure to have a plan for procuring drinking water along the way, like a LifeStraw.

Light attracts attention, so choose a smaller flashlight that takes smaller batteries. A headlamp is a great choice because it frees up your hands. Be smart about when you use it because any kind of light can give away your position.

Pack calorie-rich food, like freeze-dried food or light weight emergency ration food bars that do not need any water to prepare. A non-perishable meal that is ready to eat as soon as you open the package is a good idea to keep stored in your vehicle and your Bug Out Bag.

It sounds icky, but edible insects can provide enough calories to get you by for a few extra hours or even days at a time, adding time and distance to your escape from otherwise captivity. Snacking on edible plants, like roots, nuts, and berries, sounds better but be careful, many are poisonous and not edible. The wrong plant or berry can be a fast way to an early death.

Be Careful What You Tell People: If you come across strangers, keep the details about your travels to yourself. These strangers may want to follow you to steal what you have, or worse yet, be caught by authorities and give up your location.

While tracking dogs will be a threat for some evacuees, a large-scale evacuation into the countryside is likely to leave authorities shorthanded and short on adequately trained canine teams.

Keep Traveling: Even if you feel like there’s enough distance between you and them, don’t take any chances. Be ready to spend a few more days and even weeks traveling into remote areas. Better safe than sorry.

Hunting pressure and large numbers of evacuees fleeing into the wilderness in several regions of the country will send native wildlife fleeing for remote areas where there is a lot less human activity. It is these remote areas that the hunting is likely to be best.

Seek Wilderness: The difference between the European survivors fleeing from a tyrannical government in WW II, who had allied nations they could flee to, and US survivors fleeing a tyrannical government, is remote wilderness areas.

Hiding from drones under the cover of forest canopy, and using land shielded by mountains where there are few roads and no easy way for armies to move in and out, put the odds of escaping the clutches of tyranny and martial law in your favor.

Conclusion: The US has publicly apologized for the 110,000 innocent Japanese-descent individuals interned during World War II; but it would not be a surprise to see it happen again. It may sound like a conspiracy theory to many, but during a “time of war” many Americans run the risk of being unconstitutionally rounded up by the federal government and detained in camps.

Although there are lots of articles debunking conspiracy theories regarding supposed "concentration camps" built by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, there are very few articles debunking the existence of FEMA Camps in general.

Refugees in present war-torn nations and other nations struck by catastrophic disasters have sent refugees fleeing for the countryside. Those living in the ruins of their towns and villages, are exposed to crime and corruption, or death by rogue armies enforcing their own version of martial law.

Those who are interned in refugee camps, or large tent cities, face family separations, starvation and disease, contaminated water, victimization by gangs, and the loss of fathers and brothers who are often never seen again.

More Things to Think About

More Things to Think About, By Neale Wade, https://confessionsofaliberalgunowner.blogspot.com

Don't kid yourself: The government is monitoring everything we do on the internet. The good news is that at the moment they are watching for "terrorist" activity. Which means we are free to collect material without too much concern.

Once the government becomes concerned about its own safety, it will quickly crack down on the internet. Only "approved" information will be available. Which means if it's not on your computer or in a binder, you will not have access to it.

If something does happen, it will most likely involve short-term loss of power. You will be forced to utilize portable power sources. Which means if it's not printed and in a binder, you will have limited access to it.

When something catastrophic happens, that involves a long-term loss of power, you will not have access to the internet. Which means if it's not printed and in a binder, you will lose access to it. The good news is that government surveillance will also be down. The bad news is other, more direct, options will be employed to control populations.