We all need an understanding of what is going on in the Empire no matter if you live here in the Empire or in a country outside its borders. Understanding democratic politics in the U.S. can be confusing since the politicians say one thing and then do another so often that one wonders what on earth is the underlining path they are following. To try to find an answer I would like to look at a few practical rules for understanding democratic politics today. I do not claim that these four rules are a comprehensive list, only that they are a good start.

1) If people have power over others, they will abuse that power

Rule number one for understanding democratic politics is that people love power over other people and they will abuse any power given to them. It is especially important to remember that this applies to everyone from the President (god Emperor?) down to the lowest bureaucratic functionary. The lowest people on the totem pole of the state’s apparatus may be the most vindictive of all since they have only a small amount of power and treasure using what power over other that they do have. If you have ever had to visit the DMV you will appreciate what I mean.

This rule about loving power and abusing it applies to both Democrats and to Republicans. Some people think that it is only “the other side” that will abuse the awesome power of today’s US Empire. No, gentle reader, both parties are made up of humans whose nature is to abuse whatever power they can lay their hands on. By the way, if you think that the “Green Party” would not institute a massive purge and lay down draconian laws if they ever get the chance, you have not studied the history of the French Revolution. (or almost any other one)

It is because humans love power over others and tend to use and abuse it that the architects of the US government at the end of the Revolutionary War labored to devise a weak central government that would separate the powers of the State into many hands hoping that in some sort of adversarial dance this situation would keep any portion of the state from accumulating power. As it turned out, many worked together to accumulate ever more power for the central government until the Leviathan you see today was created. There was also the idea in the original system that the various states would keep much of the power rather than have the power flow to the central government. That idea died during the war between the north and south in the 1860s when the rights of the states were utterly destroyed. Ironically, the concept of “states rights” was destroyed for the “winning” northern states as well. Amendment 10 in the Bill of Rights is a dead letter.

2) All politicians are disposed to lie

All politicians lie because they are prone to abusing power and committing illegal, corrupt, and immoral acts. They lied wholesale to gain office, so why would they become honest once in office?

We all recognize that Bush the lesser and his minions lied to the American People over and over again to get us into the war against Iraq. There were no “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened us, nor were there any connections between Sadam Hussein and al-Qaida. We all recognize that the Obama administration was lying about the scope of the NSA spying operation against the American People. The lies and scandals just keep on coming. President Lydon Johnson knew that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was not an attack by North Vietnam but he used the situation to lie the people of America into a greatly expanded war that killed over 60,000 US personnel and millions of Vietnamese.

Lying by American politicians has become so pervasive that it is hard to believe how many citizens will believe the government when it makes its various pronouncements. One should always hold suspect any finding or promise made by any minion of the State. If a politician says that the sun rises in the east, then you should get up early the next morning and check for yourself. Lies should destroy the credibility of the politicians and their bureaucrats, but the states employs all manner of opinion makers and intellectuals to bolster their myths and lies.

3) Governments love secrecy

Rule No. 3 in understanding the nature of the state is to know that governments love secrecy. The latest NSA scandal is a prime example of this. The Empire has gone nuts now that Edward Snowden has revealed that the Empire is spying on you by every electronic means known to modern mankind. The state loves to work in total secrecy but does not want you to have any privacy. Why? The state seeks to hide its corruption and abuses by total secrecy just as it seeks to gain even more power by denying the public any privacy at all.

The only secrecy that any state should be allowed is war-time information when its military is repelling an invasion of its own territory by hostile forces that have committed aggression against it. There is no other time that we can allow the state to have any secrecy and still hold on to liberty. The state has now gone overboard and promiscuously classified everything it can. There are even examples of the state classifying things that have already been in a newspaper! They are protecting state functionaries from embarrassment or exposure of criminal activities. They are not protecting you or “national security” unless you think their lying hides are “the nation”.

4) Governments promote corruption

I see modern leftist wail all the time about the power of money involved in our domestic politics. They seem to think that only those in corporations who are the beneficiaries of favoritism by the state are corrupt. But it is the very power of the state that enables all of the people involved to promote the corruption, bribery, deceit, and lawlessness that is an integral part of crony-capitalism as practiced in the U.S. today. It should be obvious to anyone who has studied the U.S.S.R. that vast amounts of corruption is inherent in any government, even those that have no private corporations at all. No, my deluded leftist friends, it is not the “evil corporations” who started what you see but the raw power of the coersive state.

Conclusion

Is should be obvious that unless you want to be a “player” and live off the labor of others by force and coercion that you should be an enemy of the state. There is no way that you can use politics to fix the hell that politics has created. You can not use the same system that got us in this deep hole to get us out of it. Reject the state.