Real Tyranny Versus Real Freedom

There are people who believe the (United States) government is out to get us: First they take our guns and then they put us in FEMA camps where we will be forced to wear hemp jumpsuits, listen to the Dave Matthews Band and, worse of all, eat kale on a daily basis.

We need to be armed against the tyranny of our government!

We need to keep being free!

These believers extoll these suspicions and then they drive to Starbucks in a huge pickup they are paying $1000 a month for from a house they struggle to pay the mortgage on. Every few weekends, they hook up their $100000 trailer they are making payments on and shoehorn it into a campground site. Second thing they do after parking—first being opening a beer—is to put up a large version of a flag that represents a government they feel is tyrannical. While camping, they will get emails and texts relating to work that they will have to respond to because they are working towards a promotion so the juggling of bills won’t be quite so hairy. Of course, if the company they work for isn’t making enough money that quarter there will be lay offs and as our camper is the most recently hired into their department they will be first to be laid off.

The government isn’t taking your guns. Even if they did, they wouldn’t put you in camps. Don’t you see, you are already incarcerated; you are held in bonds by debt. You have debt, I have debt, as well. Besides, they don’t want you in a camp where they have to house and feed you, they want you working so you can pay large financial institutions for that truck, trailer, and house. They want you ordering crap off Amazon and other on-line retailers. They want you driving around in your gas guzzling truck to support the oil companies. They want you “free” to vote for representatives, senators, and presidents that will protect the status quo. You want real tyranny? Imagine if you owned a company and your employees had the best healthcare in the world included in their job…while you had mediocre healthcare that takes $150 out of each check with $2000 deductables. Your senator is your employee, he or she (allegedly) works for you, they are paid by your taxes. You want more tyranny? People who put the work in to get an education to better their lives (and add to our tax base) who are then saddled with student loan debt….while the auto industry and financial institutions are bailed out by the government. Or, working families who have to live out of vehicles or live in substandard housing because they can’t afford any better—in the wealthiest country on the planet. All of those are examples of real tyranny.

Freedom is a personal concept. My personal idea of freedom is to be free of debt, to be able to work anywhere (remotely). How can we say we are free when we have to stay in these demanding jobs just to juggle bills and have mediocre healthcare? The adversary is not the Progressive with the BLM sign in their yard or the people with MAGA hats and huge US flags flying from beds of their pickups. The advesary is our collective ignorance, our laziness at digging below the surface and understanding that we have so much in common and so few differences. We blame our government for “tyranny,” but fail to see the men and women “behind the curtain,” the arms manufacturers, financial institutions, etc. etc. The minimum wage is still $7.25 in a couple dozen states—how is that reasonable in 2023? How can we say we live in a free and fair country when so many people struggle to keep a roof over their heads and provide food for their children? When old people freeze to death every winter because they can’t afford heat?

How do we acquire freedom? Freedom being, again, a personal concept, that depends on the individual. I want to be debt free and have my own business, to not live check to check. That involves sacrifices including living out of my van and (very) rarely eating in restaurants or splurging on other luxuries. These are not painful sacrifices because I enjoy cooking and am a minimalist. That’s the key, to keep your sacrifices as painless as possible—why make yourself miserable?

We need to stop pointing the finger at each other. We need to get past this division and embrace the truth that we—Red folks and Blue folks—are all being dealt the same shitty hand. We need to focus on all the things we have in common, all of us working people, Red and Blue—until we do, the real tyranny will continue.