Just a newsflash for all those who thought that the state is a benevolent entity. It isn't.

Not only is the power of the state predicated on the idea that it has force that it projects both internally - the police, various judicial and executive organs, etc - and externally - the military and various diplomatic methods - it is also predicated on the ability of the state to control its citizens. How many people did you know, who, when asked at the age of ten what they wanted to be when they grew up, said that they wanted to be civil servants? I'm willing to bet that the answer is exactly the same as the number that I knew - namely, none. Yet the state needs such people. How does it get them?

Through a very lovely means of subliminal propaganda. In the United States, we have the belief that to be an individual is the most important thing in the world. Our advertising revolves around it, our mythology is largely of self-made people, from Davy Crockett to Bill Gates, and we buy into the belief that we have the ability to change our station in life through a judicious application of hard work.

There's also an extremely conformist streak that makes the Hindu caste system look like hippies at the original Woodstock, but that seems to be neither here nor there - except, how often do you see something that implies that by purchasing or joining or whatever, you will have both affirmed your individuality and conformed to what every other individual is doing?

Anyway, back to the point, which is that there is a strong individualist ideology in the United States. The state does not, generally speaking, need individuals. Even in the case of the CIA and the FBI, at least as they seem to have been in recent years, individuals seem to be a hazard rather than a benefit. Sheep marching in lock step, rather than wolves working in tandem to achieve their ends.

So the government has evolved a very simple way of dealing with this contradiction. They emphasize the conformist aspect of American society in very subtle ways, and remove the ability of its citizens to think for themselves.

I know far too many people, and have evidence of many more, who believe the government is right. They base this on the idea that in theory, we, the citizens, have the right to change the government as we see fit, through elections and various movements/legal reforms/general exercise of the Bill of Rights.

This is not true.

We believe that we have such rights, but how often are they truly exercised for change, and how often do we actually affect the government by the exercise of such rights? I suspect it's far smaller than anyone truly thinks. After all, I spent a long time marching in protest of both the Gulf War and the Afghanistan conflict, and the government paid not a whit of attention to my view. And I was not alone in either case. The government is simply too massive an entity to have to regard the views of any minority unless it chooses to do so. The President is a figurehead and the business of government goes on regardless of who's in charge.

But back to the subject at hand. The government creates conformers to perpetuate itself. It emphasizes the conformist aspect of American society until it winds up with a small number of citizens who believe that they are in charge of their own lives, an even smaller number that are prepared to act on that belief, and a large group that think they are not in charge of much at all.

Consider the Pledge of Allegiance. This pledge is recited every day by millions of school children, at every sporting event, and at a significant number of other events. This pledge also promises the pledgers to support the flag, the nation and - by extension - the government in its acts. This pledge is recited blindly by all these people. I haven't said a pledge since realizing that I did not support the government in all that it does, but there are many who feel the same way and continue to vow their support. It's just one small step in the process of conformity - they've vowed their support, and, more importantly, believe that they should, because the government is so busy proclaiming what wonderful things it does for its citizens and foreign nations alike.

The government also hands down mandates from on high about how Americans will be allowed to take care of their own lives. There are laws governing most things that it is possible to do, from birth to death. There are certain things that the government does not regulate, more because of their visibility than because they don't care - if the government did not want citizens to have access to high-powered rifles, they would be banned tomorrow, NRA or no. It does not come down to the Constitution or the letter-writing campaigns that the NRA is capable of mounting - instead it comes down to the idea that you do not let the pressure cooker boil over. If such a campaign did not exist, the people who are currently wasting their time on taking sides would have to look for a new outlet. Consequently, the government will not step in on one side or another until such a time as there is need of a new stew in the cooker.

Other than such mandated conflicts, the government has taken or been given the right to control our lives. In theory, it should not matter one bit where I want to be buried. Or even if I want to be buried. But, due to the need for health regulations, property rights, and etc, there are one hell of a lot of laws about burial. The government, we will therefore take it as read, is capable of passing and justifying laws on most possible activities.

There are other aspects of the conformity that are used by others - people who regulate gated communities, for example - that the government does not directly foster, but uses the results of. The minute you can tell someone what color they can paint their house, you can tell them how to live the rest of their lives.

In short, the government is capable of fostering an environment of conformity, encouraging restriction on activity, and using the efforts of people engaged in the same process.

I believe that the government goes one step further. By failing to create a working educational system, the government is capable of graduating individuals who ask no questions. Because they can't hack the system, they are told that they are stupid rather than that the system is wrong. Not only do they ask no questions, but they also do not believe that they should question anything in the first place. If the government wasn't interested in this result, the educational system would be changed - again, it's like the NRA. As long as education doesn't work and it seems to be the fault of the voters, then the government is not to blame for encouraging non-performing teachers and barely-literate students. Attention has been distracted to the fact that the various initiatives placed on the ballot have not been passed. It's been diverted to the fact that people are abandoning public schools for private schools and the Bush Administration is perfectly prepared to expedite this with vouchers, because then the government will be once again involved in education and can muck it up.

The government wants semi-functional idiots who wouldn't question anything. Those are the people who give up on the idea of being what - and who - they want to be and become, instead, lower-level middle-management governmental pimps.

To recap, the government takes advantage of at least two different factors to create the kind of people they want - people who don't question what their elected leaders do for them. It uses the aspect of conformity in the American psyche that's already exploited by advertising and etc. and it also maintains a fifth-rate educactional system, where only a certain number will succeed, and should they want to go on to college they'll have to find some way of paying for that, since that'll winnow out a few more.

The scary thing is, this works. I know more people who've gone into the mundane jobs - either governmental or corporate - than have done what they wanted to do.

Holding a heap of broken images,

Channon