Under the Stars

I’ve made this analogy before, but I’d like to expound on it because I find it to be quite apt.

I see anarchists as people who have inherited a huge house that was not kept up well by the previous owner. Upon seeing the leaky roof, the cracked stairs, the rug stained with blood from who knows what horrible occurrence… the anarchist makes a funny statement.

“This house is horrible and housing in general is just too much work. No matter how nice a house is, it will start to fall apart. I’ll solve this by living outside.”

I guess if you come from a disposable culture that just throws everything away once it’s broken, rather than fix it, perhaps this makes some sort of sense.

I suppose there almost appears to be evidence. Nearly every house that was built in the past has fallen apart, and we all know those that are built now are only here for a finite time. And it’s true, homes need maintenance: they don’t upkeep themselves.

That does indeed mean getting off your lazy ass to fix things from time to time, and sometimes it’s expensive and difficult. A home probably seems like a money pit that is more trouble than it’s worth. That is, until you actually live outside.

Government is not something that plagues mankind, it is a development that has enabled things we never dreamed imaginable when in small tribes - which are perhaps the base unit of an anarchy, which are still hierarchical, mind you, just not large and centralized.

That’s really what anarchists want: no centralized power. They can’t even be bothered to come up with a plan for how ordinary, real people will live day to day without any form of hierarchy at a personal level, they just hate “the state.”

Oh, “the state,” how I “adore” thee… let me count the statist reasons I pour my heart out for you…

Thank you for enabling me to not be my own security force, both from local and foreign threats.

Thank you for paving the roads and providing a system for minimizing traffic accidents (although would it kill you to fill in the potholes faster?).

Thank you for delivering pieces of paper vast distances from their source to my front door, even though most of it is advertisements.

Thank you for captivating the imagination of the world by going to the moon, even if cynics say you only did it to win a dick measuring contest with the Russians (though to be fair, they had the first satellite in space, the first animal in space, the first man in space, the first probe to orbit and impact the moon, the first to land a probe that on Mars and Venus, first woman to walk in space…).

[Boy, that last parenthetical is killing me on paragraph length uniformity… way to fail, NASA.]

They say, “You have to love someone for who they are. You can’t expect them to change.” And that’s true, of people you love. Except, I don’t actually “love” the state, I simply rely upon it, like all of you. Yes, you, person who is reading this and is kidding himself by pretending you don’t.

The state can change, even if right now it seems hopeless. You can fix the roof, redo the stairs, get new carpeting (which will get stained in the future, but what are you going to do?). If the frame and foundation aren’t solid, you can always rebuild it from scratch… but you’re looking at a lot more work. In fact, about the only thing that doesn’t make any sense is deciding it would be better for everyone to sleep on the ground.

But why not? Homelessness is an option. I don’t care if you’re homeless, you’re free to be homeless, but the reality is a lot less glamorous than the idea. If you want to abandon your house and be homeless, no one is stopping you. However, consider this: there are people who are homeless not by choice, and nearly all of them are not happy about it. I would know: I dated a homeless girl. The best part was, when I was taking her home, I could drop her off anywhere.

Anyway… in all seriousness, I honestly believe homeless people achieve about as much compared to people with homes as anarchies do compared to governed nations. Sure, some people are torturing people in homes (sometimes they’re torturing the homeless, oddly enough…), but is that really what homes are about? Is that your normal, every day interaction with your home?

I ask you honestly, especially anarchists: what has the government done to you personally? I can cherry pick thousands of exceptional scenarios where one of the 300 million Americans had a bad experience, but in my normal, day-to-day life… I don’t have a lot of problems.

That isn’t why I’m “a statist,” it’s just an observation. I have plenty of freedoms, and I exercise my freedom to voice grievances against the government when it is abusive. What cracks me up is that people I know who have been abused by the system are still not as hostile as the people here, who seem to be a bunch of middle-class whites who never had a real problem in their life. I can relate to that through my personal experience, but what you guys complain about boggles my mind.

I see a lot of “oh the poor oppressed business owner” bullshit. Fuck the business owner. Fuck him over a barrel with a 17 inch cast-iron strap on with razor barbs. Who gives a flying fuck about the rich? During times like these, when the middle-class worker is making less and the lower class worker can’t even find employment, these rich assfucks are pulling in record salaries and bonuses to boot.

The rich take care of themselves, they don’t need help. They’re getting sympathy from the government because of deregulation pussies whining about the poor oppressed business man. People have it in their heads that giving more money to the rich will create jobs, so the government did that to appease right-wingers and libertarians, then those same assclowns complained when Obama did the same thing as Bush.

How is it that people who are so obsessed to the point of having a conniption fit while trying to refute the government over the day of the week are also the same people who kiss the boots of the private nobility? Hierarchy is apparently acceptable to the anarchist when the power structure is based on money, but heaven forbid the people have a say.

I came here to SE contribute because governmental abuses should be publicized. There needs to be accountability. I’m all for that. But boy oh boy… is it mind bending the conclusions some people draw from witnessing the same things I do.

Let’s put it this way: assume I can snap my fingers and government disappears. There’s already going to be instant injustice, because who is going to prosecute and bring to justice all the criminals we had running our country before I snapped my fingers? The mechanics of anarchy are just so idealistically naïve, I can’t take it seriously, especially coming from people who put so much stock in the kings of capitalism.