And I say that not as a complaint, but as inoculation for newer revolutionary organizers and/or people who are wanting to get involved with this work. With the proper political education, which to me is the best inoculation, revolutionary organizing serves as the healthiest medicine for living in such a backward and decadent society? Or, have you ever experienced being bullied by someone? Once you decided to stand up and confront them, didn't you experience an amazing explosion of dignity and self esteem? Well, try standing up against the largest and most powerful imperialist country in the world? By standing up against this unjust system, you will experience that feeling. And, the longer you stand up, the stronger that feeling will get, but that doesn't deny the fact that doing this work is extremely isolating and alienating. And, unfortunately, most of the reasons for that have little to do with direct attacks from imperialism.
The super rich who navigate this system and all its institutions recognize that their best weapon is to control the thinking of the masses of people in the world. They realize that when they do that, as Carter G. Woodson taught us, they won't need to worry about our actions. Or in other words, for all of you who continue to mistakenly claim that ideology has no practical application, the ideas in your head completely dictate what actions you will take. Or, what actions you won't take. Either way, the imperialist system learned in the 1960s that it must prevent people from receiving correct education. That's why the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were/are carried out in a completely different fashion than the Vietnam war. No visuals of U.S. service people being shipped back to the U.S. in body bagged are aired today. This way, people in this country are prevented from seeing the consequences of these unjust wars and as a result, a non-conscious and dominant state where any price that needs to be paid, whether it be thousands of lives, is ok if it sustains your level of comfort. Effectively removed from the actual results and reasons for any of this, people are steered into becoming unknowing propagandists for imperialism. And, this reality is where the largest and most taxing challenges are faced by those of us who choose to fight against imperialism. By making this decision, you choose to position yourself in 100% opposition to everything this system represents and in doing so, you will be consistently and relentlessly discredited, dogged, disrespected, and dismissed. In fact, these things will become such a regular aspect of your day to day life that you will become forced to either develop a method of dealing with it or you will risk becoming overwhelmed by it.
Here are some examples. No one can honestly and articulately argue against anyone who stakes a claim that the U.S. Military is a terrorist organization, but that doesn't matter in this current world where truth and justice are completely disengaged from the dominant narrative that serves as normal discourse in this society. If you speak out forcefully and truthfully about this clear reality about the U.S. Military, you will be attacked from all angles. You will be threatened with violence and you may even become the victim of violent attack. And that would be tolerable if those types of attacks were the worst you experience. What is even more difficult to swallow are the subliminal attacks against your sanity. What I mean is any effort you make to structure your life with discipline, organization, and principled existence will be met with suspicion, disrespect, and even anger. For example, if you choose, as I have, to protest this system's stranglehold on people's consciousness by deciding to do basic things like change my name to an African name, refuse to drink, smoke, get high, etc. - as my single effort to protest this system's mind control, you can expect to be treated as a criminal, even by people in your family, etc. The reasons for this? There are many and honestly, I don't pretend to even understand them all. Sometimes, I continue to wonder, but one thing I'm pretty certain about is any efforts you make to push yourself into becoming a stronger and better person will cause you to intimidate many people. This happens because clear efforts you make to improve yourself represent an understanding and acceptance on your part that you are fallible. Doing this requires a certain level of humility that requires character. Many people lack any amount of character and the fact that you do will intimidate them. As a result, instead of being the inspiration to their lives that you should be, they will see you as a threat and they will treat you accordingly. This applies equally to any sincere efforts you make to be honest, vulnerable, and willing to admit wrongdoing. Instead of all of these being symbols of your strength to serve as inspirations to others on how to do the same, they will most often be met with contempt by those who are afraid that if you realize how to look deeper into yourself, there's a strong possibility you will also learn how to look just as deep at them. And, the thought of people being able to do that frightens many of us since capitalism's greatest hold over us is its ability to convince us that we are never good enough. This system works day and night telling us that the minute we are exposed for what we are, no one will love us. And, instead of helping us learn how to process through that dysfunction in healthy ways, this system feeds on this insecurity by telling us there is no need to improve ourselves (because doing so is impossible - recall the so-called Christian belief that you are born in sin?). What they teach us is we need to instead get very good at covering up our shortcomings.
The results of all of this is the more real you become, the more some people will distrust and mistreat you. The more many people will be uncomfortable around you. And, the more it will become increasingly difficult for you to escape being alienated, but there are ways to overcome this phenomenon. First, its important to properly understand the political education piece. The better you understand why you are doing the things you are doing, the more equipped you will be to absorb the attacks against you. In fact, you will learn to be empowered to some degree by the attacks because they will serve, in your eyes, as proof that you are doing something to advance yourself into becoming a better human being. You will understand that by doing so you will be making a contribution towards making the world a better place and in time, you will even begin to be able to detect the inspiration you have on people around you. The better you use political education to create your own healthy perspective of the world, the more you will be able to create a value structure that feeds your spirit instead of depleting it. The way you do all of this is by focusing on being true to yourself and the truth. Not your truth, but the truth. Some people want to act as if objective truth is impossible to find, or at least interpret properly, but truthfully, its not that difficult to find. Two plus two equals four is a universal truth and most universal truths are just as easy to find if your senses for what's happening around you are functioning properly. The best gauge for ensuring this is happening is by teaching yourself to engage in critical self analysis. Teach yourself to identify what you need to improve about yourself and practice working on making those improvements. If you learn to do this, you will also learn to feel so much better about yourself because the more you try to do better, the better you will feel. Achieving this progress will do so much to strengthen you with doing this work because seeing the truth in yourself helps you see the truths in everything around you. I have developed many successful techniques to do this, but its much more than I can explain in a blog post (if you want more information, contact me). And seeing all those universal truths does wonders at redefining your world vision, thus making it much more positive. Much more willing to see us as having the capacity to win. Once we begin to start thinking about that, we will win. And this is exactly what the imperialist system wishes to destroy. That's why it seeks to alienate you and make you believe victory against it is as impossible as it is to breath in outer space. This is what this system has done. It has made organizing against it, not organizing to reconcile with it, but organizing against it, to overthrow it, as unlikely in people's minds as inhaling in space. Consequently, if you talk and act towards organizing against it, you will feel that isolation. And when you do, hopefully, these thoughts on how to prepare yourself will help you to not be overcome by it. If you prepare yourself properly, you will create a snapshot on the world you want and deserve. Once you do that, you will want more and you will weaken their hold on you. I am with you and I can't wait for us to organize together.
The super rich who navigate this system and all its institutions recognize that their best weapon is to control the thinking of the masses of people in the world. They realize that when they do that, as Carter G. Woodson taught us, they won't need to worry about our actions. Or in other words, for all of you who continue to mistakenly claim that ideology has no practical application, the ideas in your head completely dictate what actions you will take. Or, what actions you won't take. Either way, the imperialist system learned in the 1960s that it must prevent people from receiving correct education. That's why the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were/are carried out in a completely different fashion than the Vietnam war. No visuals of U.S. service people being shipped back to the U.S. in body bagged are aired today. This way, people in this country are prevented from seeing the consequences of these unjust wars and as a result, a non-conscious and dominant state where any price that needs to be paid, whether it be thousands of lives, is ok if it sustains your level of comfort. Effectively removed from the actual results and reasons for any of this, people are steered into becoming unknowing propagandists for imperialism. And, this reality is where the largest and most taxing challenges are faced by those of us who choose to fight against imperialism. By making this decision, you choose to position yourself in 100% opposition to everything this system represents and in doing so, you will be consistently and relentlessly discredited, dogged, disrespected, and dismissed. In fact, these things will become such a regular aspect of your day to day life that you will become forced to either develop a method of dealing with it or you will risk becoming overwhelmed by it.
Here are some examples. No one can honestly and articulately argue against anyone who stakes a claim that the U.S. Military is a terrorist organization, but that doesn't matter in this current world where truth and justice are completely disengaged from the dominant narrative that serves as normal discourse in this society. If you speak out forcefully and truthfully about this clear reality about the U.S. Military, you will be attacked from all angles. You will be threatened with violence and you may even become the victim of violent attack. And that would be tolerable if those types of attacks were the worst you experience. What is even more difficult to swallow are the subliminal attacks against your sanity. What I mean is any effort you make to structure your life with discipline, organization, and principled existence will be met with suspicion, disrespect, and even anger. For example, if you choose, as I have, to protest this system's stranglehold on people's consciousness by deciding to do basic things like change my name to an African name, refuse to drink, smoke, get high, etc. - as my single effort to protest this system's mind control, you can expect to be treated as a criminal, even by people in your family, etc. The reasons for this? There are many and honestly, I don't pretend to even understand them all. Sometimes, I continue to wonder, but one thing I'm pretty certain about is any efforts you make to push yourself into becoming a stronger and better person will cause you to intimidate many people. This happens because clear efforts you make to improve yourself represent an understanding and acceptance on your part that you are fallible. Doing this requires a certain level of humility that requires character. Many people lack any amount of character and the fact that you do will intimidate them. As a result, instead of being the inspiration to their lives that you should be, they will see you as a threat and they will treat you accordingly. This applies equally to any sincere efforts you make to be honest, vulnerable, and willing to admit wrongdoing. Instead of all of these being symbols of your strength to serve as inspirations to others on how to do the same, they will most often be met with contempt by those who are afraid that if you realize how to look deeper into yourself, there's a strong possibility you will also learn how to look just as deep at them. And, the thought of people being able to do that frightens many of us since capitalism's greatest hold over us is its ability to convince us that we are never good enough. This system works day and night telling us that the minute we are exposed for what we are, no one will love us. And, instead of helping us learn how to process through that dysfunction in healthy ways, this system feeds on this insecurity by telling us there is no need to improve ourselves (because doing so is impossible - recall the so-called Christian belief that you are born in sin?). What they teach us is we need to instead get very good at covering up our shortcomings.
The results of all of this is the more real you become, the more some people will distrust and mistreat you. The more many people will be uncomfortable around you. And, the more it will become increasingly difficult for you to escape being alienated, but there are ways to overcome this phenomenon. First, its important to properly understand the political education piece. The better you understand why you are doing the things you are doing, the more equipped you will be to absorb the attacks against you. In fact, you will learn to be empowered to some degree by the attacks because they will serve, in your eyes, as proof that you are doing something to advance yourself into becoming a better human being. You will understand that by doing so you will be making a contribution towards making the world a better place and in time, you will even begin to be able to detect the inspiration you have on people around you. The better you use political education to create your own healthy perspective of the world, the more you will be able to create a value structure that feeds your spirit instead of depleting it. The way you do all of this is by focusing on being true to yourself and the truth. Not your truth, but the truth. Some people want to act as if objective truth is impossible to find, or at least interpret properly, but truthfully, its not that difficult to find. Two plus two equals four is a universal truth and most universal truths are just as easy to find if your senses for what's happening around you are functioning properly. The best gauge for ensuring this is happening is by teaching yourself to engage in critical self analysis. Teach yourself to identify what you need to improve about yourself and practice working on making those improvements. If you learn to do this, you will also learn to feel so much better about yourself because the more you try to do better, the better you will feel. Achieving this progress will do so much to strengthen you with doing this work because seeing the truth in yourself helps you see the truths in everything around you. I have developed many successful techniques to do this, but its much more than I can explain in a blog post (if you want more information, contact me). And seeing all those universal truths does wonders at redefining your world vision, thus making it much more positive. Much more willing to see us as having the capacity to win. Once we begin to start thinking about that, we will win. And this is exactly what the imperialist system wishes to destroy. That's why it seeks to alienate you and make you believe victory against it is as impossible as it is to breath in outer space. This is what this system has done. It has made organizing against it, not organizing to reconcile with it, but organizing against it, to overthrow it, as unlikely in people's minds as inhaling in space. Consequently, if you talk and act towards organizing against it, you will feel that isolation. And when you do, hopefully, these thoughts on how to prepare yourself will help you to not be overcome by it. If you prepare yourself properly, you will create a snapshot on the world you want and deserve. Once you do that, you will want more and you will weaken their hold on you. I am with you and I can't wait for us to organize together.
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