needs for leverage.
Only when we can let go of that stuff, when we think freedom means more than comfortable homes and lazyboys will we get it back again. But most people today would not die to make sure it exists for others, (except, perhaps, on a reality show), and that is all the tyrants need to hold it over our heads.
History isn't promising. People threw Jimmy Carter out and elected Reagan to avoid turning the thermostat to 68 degrees. Lazy bastards.
la Boetie said all we have to do is quit giving the tyrant all that he has, our legs, our arms, our lives, and he will fall of his own weight. We can't even deny ourselves a little warmth to help our own damn economy.
Do you believe that shit?
I suspect some are in for a lesson in where American exceptionalism leads. And I think the ones who pay for it, our kids kids and theirs, after perhaps a nuclear war, and certainly mass dislocation from global weather changes, are gonna spit on the landfill they throw our bodies in after they dig us up to repurpose the land. As the waters rise.
Btw- 50 million people on food stamps, about 100 million working poor - they already live lives of violence. And that's just in this country.
Does that help?