Get out yer tin foil hats. Because I’ve gone off the reservation again.
It was 2005, the first time the thought occured to me. I was buying a coffee-and-paper at my local BP. I was asked to present some ID. It was again, for my protection. I said, “golly, do you have a rash of people committing bank fraud $5 bucks at a time?” Another woman made me trapse out to my car to secure my ID for my purchase of $21 bucks. This was back in the willy nilly lassiez faire days in 2005, remember, when houses sold at an average of 4 hours on the market, and banks were lining up to give pan handlers good terms on a loan.
Both times, I was given some sort of, “well, it’s for your protection” deal. As if I was being done this big favor by this chick that had asked for my ID. “Oh, you claim it’s for my protection? Then I can’t say shit, can I. Because it was for me. And since you were helping me…I can’t say anything.” Magnanimous, she was, helping me be protected from fraud. She was even instilling fear. But really, in the wake of the bailout hand over of our labor to the banking interests, does it seem strange that our society is giving us obedience tests in preparation for the government to fill more space and usurp more power from us?
I might be alone (I’m not, check the video) in thinking that the reason we switched to check cards from checks was to get more convenience and speed. We’d be insulated from having to check ID because the vendors would know the funds were there. My thinking now was that it was to centralize transactions through one chokepoint that can be easily watched. The inconvenience of cash puts more power into the hands of fewer people who can wipe out billions without much of a problem.
Remember this:
My thought now is that these obedience tests are to weaken our defenses and get us ready for ‘papers please,’ type security tests..that no longer raise our ire or outrage. I don’t think that the government itself is in on the deal, I just think that it’s a tool best used and manipulated by those that would like to enslave us. A decent, free man who loves his life has no concept of gettting the government While fraud and identity theft are a big spectre, there are lots of times when we gird ourselves against risk with a cure that is of dubious benefit.
-booster seats.
-seat belts (click it or ticket has done more to make me not have seatbelts than anything else).
-Friggin’ texas forced immunizations
-unlawful gambling. GAMBLING.
We’re reminded time and again how we need the gov’t to protect us. They are doing this for our benefit, citizens, so you have to obey, obey obey. I don’t think that there’s a global conspiracy. I may be naive. I think that though, every man, in every position of power he is in has as part of his nature, the tendency to seek to get others to obey. The government is an all to willing accomplice, because the nature of leviathan is that it grows to consume men.
As for a ‘practical’ response to this type of stuff, without getting to ‘black hellicoptery’ or ‘new world order-y’ I don’t know really what the answer is. I know that every time I do something and make something cool, it increases the amount of energy that Leviathan has to capture. I believe we can out grow and outpace Leviathan, and win by out hustling it.
This ends the black helicopter, tinfoil hatted rants of CJ. On to your regularly scheduled programming about Goals, God, Freelancing, & Weight Loss.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you nailed it right on the head here. So much of “for your protection” is a nothing more than a scare tactic. Credits cards have proven to spend between 12-14% more than cash or check. I am sure the CC companies have a vested interest in seeing people use them.
I like the angle, and agree with the point. The G7(8) will use this global financial meltdown to usurp more financial rights from us for “our protection”. Those who refuse will be locked out of the so called new financial freedoms and protections. Those who refuse thier new “freedoms” better be good at bartering.