A lot of people have trouble being able to see through the distortions in language that are ever-present in modern westernized culture, I know that I was no different for most of my life.
A lot of this is the fault of the very foundation of the American Compulsory Schooling system (refer to John Taylor Gatto for an author who did excellent and extensive work on the history and designated aim of the modern schooling system in the U.S.).
Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric--referred to as The Trivium method--are the great lost tool that were once used to teach young humans how to go about thinking and learning so that they could teach themselves anything and decipher truth from untruth, distortion from reality, bullshit from authenticity. Logic is the tool that is used to see reality for what it is, rather than for what someone teaches you to repeat that it is. It is the tool that allows a free mind to poke holes in what is being handed to them, and the tool that allows someone to determine for themselves what is workable, true, viable, etc, regardless of information they are told to swallow or to regurgitate.
The Greatest Euphemism
One element of language that is lost on many is the Euphemism. Because the average heavily-schooled mind (like the one I possessed for most of my life until recently) is used to deferring to an authority to shape the nature of their reality--their worldview--it often passes right over their head that the label or word they were given for something doesn't at all represent what they were told it represents. If a young person is repeatedly told a word means something it does not, before they are old enough to intellectually defend themselves, the meaning gets swallowed and lost in the abyss of the subconscious.
A euphemism, a word that is indirect and used as a substitute for a harsh and true reality, can be used in many ways, but no greater group engages in euphemisms than the entire gang of "government".
How I Learned To See The Matrix
Part of how I learned to see past linguistic distortion, and see reality, was by looking at the human actions that backed the words I was taught. When I put away the words I was given, just for a bit, long enough to focus on what was occurring in the real world, the blinders fell off. To my horror, I saw the human actions taken by those who called themselves law enforcement, military, and representatives, for what they actually were.
I saw that the police officer behind me with his lights on was not asking me nicely to pull over, he is not respectfully engaging me as a peaceful and innocent human. He is backed with his weapons, and a gang he can call at a moment's notice, and when he puts his lights on I only have one of two choices-- attempt to go on about my day as a free person, or be chased down until deadly force is used against me to either make me comply, throw me in a cage for resisting, or shoot me for trying to live freely, rather than comply with a death threat.
If your option is 1) pull over, or 2) be threatened with deadly force, thrown in a cage, or shot, then you are being aggressed upon, and you are a victim of violence.
I removed the badge, the title, and the uniform, and looked at the action itself of any other human trying to chase down other humans on the road minding their own business, calling friends for back up to subdue them with force, and caging them for trying to keep going on about their day--even killing them sometimes. When I looked at the actions, and realized any human doing that in plain clothes, with no title, would be considered a sick, immoral, barbaric piece of shit-- I saw my own stupidity, and I saw that I was being the most inconsistent a human can be.
Here I would have claimed that violent aggression, theft, harassing strangers who are not bothering you is wrong, and yet I believed that some humans got to do that and it should somehow be considered okay, if enough humans voted for them to be hired by other humans who were voted for.
Important Questions For An Honest Mind
I asked myself: "How the hell is murder, aggression with deadly force, theft, or kidnapping ever moral because some humans voted for that? How is evil legislated into good?"
That, my friends, is a logical impossibility, but because euphemisms were used to blind me my entire life, I had not seen that evil for what it was. I saw murdered innocents in foreign lands as "collateral damage", I saw theft and extortion as "citations, fines, taxation".
In reality, everything government does is backed by the threat of deadly force. If you repeatedly try to not comply, to be a peaceful human who does what you wish without following their rules, or without allowing yourself to be robbed by way of "taxation", government will always escalate.
If my choices are "comply or be caged", or "comply or be robbed", or "comply or be shot", then I am not freely making a choice, I am a slave to the one aiming the gun at my head.
I asked myself how it was not okay for me to go to my neighbor's house, with my own gun, and tell him "Give me your money so I can use it pay for my education", yet if I voted for some other humans to write scribbles on paper--which would then be enforced as law--it was okay for those enforcers to use threats backed by guns on my neighbor.
The Dark Truth
Nothing made the reality of "government" more clear than reading stories of good people who did nothing other than attempt to hang on to the fruits of their labor, having their homes invaded by armed men with weapons who arbitrarily stole things of theirs, went through their private things, and later threw them in a cage for months, in addition to still requiring them to pay up or face more caging.
Do you know what sets tribal warlords apart from politicians? Attire, and rhetoric.
Government is euphemised barbarism. Suits, scribbles on paper, rituals like voting, all of these things do not alter the fundamental reality of what the humans acting as 'government' will physically do to innocent people if they do not comply with their arbitrary demands.
Do NOT mistake a culture with luxuries or nice things for 'civilization'. Civilized people don't use deadly force against their fellow humans to make them live how they want.
