The Smilers Among You

Column by Alex R. Knight III.

Exclusive to STR

I don’t know why you do it, any of you, when I talk about or discuss the fundamental issues. It is entirely inappropriate, absolutely irrational. Yet you continue to do it, almost every time.

The smiles. The grins. The amused looks – sometimes even outright laughter. It puzzles me, and it frustrates me. I’ll even admit, it upsets me – angers me, to a certain degree, that you react this way while I’m talking about these things. Don’t you understand that what I’m talking about is dead serious? Can’t you comprehend the magnitude of what I’m talking about, and its further ramifications? Can’t you see that I’m in no way trying to be amusing?

I’d suppose not. Otherwise, you wouldn’t react like this – a bunch of giggling children who think everything I’m saying is just a big joke, a comedy act put on for your amusement, and little else.

To what am I referring? Well, government, of course. Politics. Authority.

Why concern myself with such things, you ask (already cracking that grin that makes me hate the fact that I even co-exist in a world with such as yourself so much of the time)? Well, let’s see: While it is true that I don’t vote, and try to concern myself with other subjects as frequently as my time and conscience permit, here are just a few other people I haven’t managed – in spite of my best and most sincere efforts – to eliminate from my life altogether:

Tax-collectors. Police. Soldiers.

Really, I’d say it’s down to these people. Yeah, other than them, I wouldn’t really give a rat’s ass. There are, in reality, two classes of criminal in the world: The murderers, thieves, rapists, and other sociopaths in various jails and prisons – and the bureaucrats who work within this thing called Government – both the elected and unelected kind. But the government criminals who don’t actually go out and perform the hands-on dirty work of enforcement, the ones who don’t serve as the Mafia’s goon-squad, but only give orders – they’re in a sense irrelevant. Of what significance, after all, would their “laws” and dictums and orders be, if it weren’t for the mindless or power-mad automatons and sadists with weapons who deprive the rest of humanity of their lives, liberty, and property at the behest of the former? Let the politicians and other useless pencil-pushers scream and yell and tear their hair out all day and all night for all I care. Without goons to make me comply by violent force, their sick cogitations and perverse political fantasies would be as irrelevant as the shrieks of hyenas in a forest.

But you think all of this is funny, don’t you? Amusing in some equally sick way. I’m just an angry, malcontented radical with a lot of nutty ideas about people being free, after all, aren’t I? And such things aren’t nearly as important or relevant as NFL football, or NASCAR, or American Idol, or Oprah, or Dancing With the Stars, or video games, or how cute Michelle Obama looks in a dress.

No, people like Alex Knight really don’t have anything important or practical to say, and besides, if anyone were to openly acknowledge agreeing with him, they’d be running pretty short on friends pretty fast, because being accepted is always more important than being correct, right? In fact, social acceptance must be achieved at all costs – there’s just no other way to have a happy life, so let’s all mill around in circles pretending to think like everyone else without ever saying anything that might be considered unpopular. That’s the key to contentment, and smooth sailing, and let’s face it: getting laid next Saturday night. Never mind all this Doestoeovskian stuff about “living with the truth no matter how painful” . . . who the hell is Doestoevsky, anyway? Another kook like Alex Knight?

Here’s the thing: I hope you also think it’s just a barrel of laughs when the IRS destroys someone . . . because I don’t, never did, and never will. I hope you think it’s a big comedy fest the next time you or someone you know goes to jail for drugs. I hope you just salivate with glee when a family loses their house to the worthless excuses for human life who sit on the local board of selectmen for an inability to pay property taxes that keep the unionized government-school indoctrination machine running so smoothly. I hope you roar with delight when a bunch of Pakistani, or Afghan, or Yemeni kindergarteners end up with their heads and limbs blown off by CIA drone strikes while your kid drools into his applesauce from the safety of a high chair. I hope you just love every instance of police brutality, every dollar of tax taken by force, every pound of flesh massacred, and every ounce of total waste engaged in by the bloodthirsty, thieving, centralized force that uses as their constant excuse in everything they do the idea that it’s the end of the world without them.

Really funny. Totally amusing. And sorry to spoil your good time, but I’m going to shut up now.

I hope you laugh yourselves to death.

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Alex R. Knight III's picture
Columns on STR: 153

Alex R. Knight III is the author of numerous horror, science-fiction, and fantasy tales.  He has also written and published poetry, non-fiction articles, reviews, and essays for a variety of venues.  He currently lives and writes in rural southern Vermont where he holds a B.A. in Literature & Writing from Union Institute & University.  Alex's Amazon page can be found here, and his work may also be found at both Smashwords and Barnes & Noble.  His MeWe group can be found here.

Comments

mjackso6's picture

Alex, while I agree 100% with the content of your message, I can see why no one is listening to it. If you immdeiately make your presentation adversarial, and essentially just preach at folks about their own idiocy and how your POV is the only, One True Correct one, they're automatically going to go on the defensive before they even hear what you have to say. In other words, if all you plan on doing is calling a bunch of fools fools, you might as well save your breath (or key strokes); they're not going to hear anything past the initial volley. I'll admit that it's frustrating trying to get people, especially perfectly rational people you've known for years, to listen to and seriously consider what you're saying, only to have it bounce right off the mental 'armor' that a lifetime of brainwashing has built up, but going apoplectic and screaming at them about their idiocy and foolishness is unlikely to do anything but reafirm their image of all of us as the 'tin-foil haters'. If folks are unreceptive to what you have to say, so be it; just say it in the most calm and logical manner that you can, using as many of those dreaded facts (pure kryptonite to the sheeple) to back yourself up as possible and then go on about your business. It may not look like you've accomplished anything, but every once in a while, those seeds you drop in other folks' minds will take hold and germinate, leading them to start doing their own research and at least possibly starting to see the truth. That's how it started for me; my ex-wife planted the seeds, and for a long time they lay fallow. It took a couple of years before I was able to shake off the old paradigm, but when I did, it was completely. I used to be two different things on the 'goonsquad list', a Soldier and a policeman, for twenty years. Today, I'm a Voluntaryist and an Anarcho-Capitalist, and I can see how misguided what I used to believe was. Also, by virtue of having been on the 'inside', I know how the 'goonsquad' works, and I know that most of the 'goons' are, tragically, mostly regular people who've been fooled into thinking that they're doing the right thing by a lifetime of brainwashing and indoctrination that starts even before pre-K these days. I guess I'm saying, basically, don't give up, don't loose hope, and don't let other folks' blindness turn you bitter. Just enjoy your life to the maximum extent you can within the boundaries that we're currently stuck with and continue to exert as much subtle pressure on those boundaries as you can by educating those who will listen and planting the seeds of education in those who might someday break through the walls of the mental prison that's built around all of us as we grow up these days. Sorry for being so long-winded, by the way!

Alex R. Knight III's picture

mjack:  Thanks for your response -- it's a good one.  :-)  But maybe I put forward the wrong impression:  I don't yell or scream, etc. -- in fact, I no longer believe in debating, except in very limited circumstances ( http://strike-the-root.com/voluntaryist-art-of-not-debating ).
I simply wrote this because every time I point out how things are, especially in group situations, it seems like this is what almost everyone present does -- for what reason, I don't know.  I'd love someone to shed some light on it.  To my mind, even to someone uninitiated, this should be DEAD SERIOUS business.  Yet, 99% of the people I encounter view it as nothing but amusement.  Or at least, that's what all physical appearances demonstrably suggest:  Smiles, grins, chuckles.  Like they're watching a sitcom on TV.
Sickening.

Glock27's picture

Alex:)
Mack is correct to a degree about brain washing but that started with the first psychopathic humanoid who reaized he had power when he knocked his own members in the head with a rock. From that point on it was follow me or lights out. It appears as if all governments are lead by psychopaths.
I think that it is possible that what most of us want is a leader who is fair and equitable and has virtue. Reading revolutionary history virtue seems to be the only thing they consistantly talked about yet one of the Most Virtuous charged after revenue from whiskey. True, honest to G-od, freedom will never be had. It reminds me of the west and why nearly everyone carried a side arm and a rifle. While you were making your campfire you never knew who you would have riding into your camp. Is he friendly for foe wanting your stakes, your horse, etc. When firearms were created every imaginative person could see the immediate use of the tool "Self Defense" I think everyone is sick and tired of being told what to do, how much to give, where you cannot go, being forced to take less for your product than you should have to take. The world is loaded with psychopaths, especially political maggots from the local county boards to the very top of the heap.
Reading the news today it appears as if these idiots are going to pass all the ban the gun laws and more while 27 plus states have in legislation laws banning anti-gun laws by the federal government. I will try to send you a copy because they also discuss states with anti-NDAA among others. Some states have passed these laws already. The Utahs Sheriffs Association sent a letter to el president informing him if these laws were passed none of the sheriffs of Utah would enforce the Unconstitutionality of that law.
Van Jones, four years back, explained el presidentays plan as "Top dowm:, Bottom Up" "Inside out"
What this means is the government maggot at the top pushes the people around with dumb assed legislation they don't want, bottom up is the people resisting the government in various ways, and inside out ment aggitators planted inside to bring things to a critical mass and civil unrest occurs. So, when civil unrest occurs what does el presidenta do--calls out the National Guard to put down the civil disobediance, announce martial law and becomes a "Dictator" No more elections which everyone here is against to begin with so you will at least get one of your goals achieved. "No beans will be cast", there will be no red or blue pills to take
With over 600,000,000 guns owned in this country I am wondering how this is all going to play out.
More than I intended to say.

tzo's picture

It is probably a defense mechanism. Many people at some level understand that it is deadly serious, and they don't want to contemplate the details. By treating it lightly, they avoid getting near the issue and its unpleasantries. It's a callus built up around an injury. It's not there to fix the problem, but to keep everything away from it. By consistently treating it like this, they fool even themselves into believing that it's just a bit of a joke. There are some seriously mentally?/psychically?/emotionally? damaged folks out there and you are seeing the results of the damage more than you are seeing a reasonable representation of the actual person. It's a self-preservation reflex, like breathing while you're asleep. It's like the subject induces a hypnotic state that lasts until the subject can be changed. Getting overly frustrated at them is like being annoyed that a person with a broken leg 'refuses' to walk, which is just about the easiest thing in the world to do for any healthy human being.

mjackso6's picture

I think tzo is on to something here. I'm intimately familiar with humor as a defense mechanism. Both on the road and in the field, I've seen some things that made me want to cry or scream on the inside, innocent people hurt or killed in messed up ways either by messed up people or through accidents that should never have happened, and the only thing that kept me and the folks around me from snapping or collapsing into some kind of despair was gallows humor. It's continued to serve me through major medical problems, early, involuntary retirement ~because~ of those problems, and two divorces now. I can easily see humor being a defense mechanism for folks who start to catch an inkling of what's going on and don't want to believe and for those who are still so brainwashed that their personal paradigms can't even begin to encompass reality. For those folks, everything that we say really ~is~ absurd, and 'merits' their derision.To them, we're just the funny 'tin-foil hat' crowd, spouting off a bunch of junk that they don't understand, but that's clearly in opposition to all that they 'know' to be true, i.e. the regurgitated pap that's been poured into their ears by the 'education' system and the mainstream media since they were toddlers. Now, I intend this as an explanation, not an excuse; I don't think anything 'excuses' the situation, nor do I want to go the o-so-popular 'helpless victim' route. Everyone is responsible for themselves and their own minds beyond a certain age, and even with the cards stacked against them should be able to find their way out of Authority's mental cage. Without trying to sound too proud, with a good deal of assistance from my wife, and from this web community, I managed to break out of that paradigm, and if I can do it after two decades on the 'dark side', anyone who wants to can.