Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
“The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th to 20th, 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. It was funded by a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps in order to determine the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned randomly. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the “officers” to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as “Prison Superintendent,” lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts made publicly available.”
The Stanford Prison Experiment was shut down because it violated the ethical standards of professional psychology resulting in psychological and physical harm to the subjects in the experiment. However, the exact same scenario has been repeated every day since before the 1970s on every military tech school in America with full immunity from the law and a deliberate disregard for the ethical treatment of humans.
Here’s how tech school works. Once a recruit graduates basic training, they’re sent to a “tech school” to learn the job skill they’ll perform for the rest of their military career. While life in tech school isn’t as rigorous as basic training, it is the last chance for the military to conform its troops’ thoughts and behavior to its standards before releasing them into “the real military” to succeed or fail at supporting real world missions. So the environment is designed to indoctrinate the students to embrace willful obedience and let go of their pre-military identity.
Troops live in barracks and are granted small freedoms (such as the right to wear civilian clothing and leave the base) in stages to decompress them from the totalitarian internment they experienced in basic training. Troops march to and from classes in uniform and are assigned some additional duties after school. Many aspects of life for the students are highly regulated in ways that serve no functional purpose other than to get them used to following rules without question. You can’t walk on the grass. You have to carry a flashlight at night. Your uniform must be immaculate. Your room must be cleaner than Martha Stewart’s dream home, etc.
So far, the standard operating procedure of military tech school exactly mirrors the standard operating procedures of a cult, because that’s what it’s based on, which is unethical in itself and would be shut down by the government if any other professional organization other than the government attempted to do the exact same thing.
The parallels between the Stanford Prison Experiment are found in the use of student leaders or “ropes.” The student leaders are responsible for policing their fellow students. On paper, these duties can be made to sound innocuous and clinical to the point of boredom. In reality, what happens is the student leaders have a tendency to mimic the intensity and righteous fury of the training instructors and drill sergeant they’ve been getting yelled at by for the past 6-9 weeks. The student leaders tend to feel and express genuine disappointment and anger over the smallest infraction regardless of how arbitrary the rule being violated is. They’ll scream at their subordinates for walking on the grass and accuse them in all seriousness, and with no sense of irony, for having no integrity.
This behavior isn’t an anomaly, and it doesn’t happen behind the backs of the senior military leader’s running the school. It’s actively encouraged and built into the tech school’s official operating procedures. In order for a student leader to advance to the highest level of student leadership, they must “host” “remedial military training.” When a student has violated enough arbitrary rules they’re assigned a day of remedial military training over the weekend. During that time they’ll be forced to exercise beyond the point of exhaustion and submit themselves to a full day of verbal degradation. The emotional abuse is overseen by senior ranking sergeants, but the details are run by the student leaders.
The military justifies this behavior by saying it’s necessary to instill discipline, but that’s just an Orwellian way to say, “brainwashing.” To be fair, it’s not like they’re taping troops’ eyes open, feeding them gunpowder and forcing them to watch snuff films. However, the end result of the brainwashing techniques used in tech school is that the followers of the military cult will someday kill another human being without question.
The “training” methods used by the military are literally in direct violation of professional standards of the ethical treatment of human beings. This exact same behavior has already been shut down by the government in the Stanford Prison Experiment. This isn’t an opinion. This isn’t said out of spite or ridicule. This is a cut and dried fact. If a professional civilian psychologist recreated the exact same environment that exists on military tech schools, much less basic training, their simulation would be shut down by the government for ethics violations. Period.
This raises a very serious point that deserves to be considered seriously and objectively. Soldiers, airmen, seaman, and marines are human beings. However, the government has written the Uniform Code of Military Justice to provide a loophole around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exempt military personnel from the same ethical protection guaranteed to everyone else.
Some say it’s necessary to subject troops to inhumane treatment in order to protect civilians’ rights and freedoms, but that argument is self-defeating. It says we have to strip the rights of one portion of society, legalize their systematic emotional, psychological and physical abuse, and literally enslave them, in order to prevent the rest of society from suffering the exact same fate.
I don’t support the unethical treatment of the human beings we’ve labeled “troops.” I don’t support the fact that they’ve lost their freedom. I don’t support the military caste system. I don’t support slaves being led to get slaughtered in wars their leaders can’t give proper justifications for. I don’t support the UCMJ that allows all of this to happen.
I do support ending the UCMJ. I support freeing the human beings we call troops. I support equal rights for all people, even those who have been coerced and misled into signing away their rights “voluntarily.” And I don’t believe the only way we can achieve peace and harmony on earth is to enslave one portion of society, strip them of their identity and reprogram them into unthinking killers. I believe the standard operating procedures of the United States military are in direct conflict with creating a peaceful and harmonious world. I believe that if you truly “support the troops” then you cannot support the UCMJ that allows the unethical treatment of your fellow human beings, especially those you claim to support and call heroes.
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
1. Many soldiers are victims of economic oppression.
Many soldiers didn’t join the military out of patriotism or the selfless desire to defend other people’s freedoms. Many soldiers joined the military for a job; they choose to lock themselves into a nearly unbreakable contract doing an extremely stressful and potentially fatal job because they were poor. They did a cost/benefit analysis of their options in life and came to the conclusion that the risk of dying outweighed the cost of trying to scrape through life in an economic system that shamelessly exploits the poor and limits upward mobility to those who can afford prohibitively expensive college degrees. Any honest military recruiter can corroborate this…though any drill instructor will tell you that there are no honest recruiters.
A military recruiter will likely try to spin this sad fact of life by saying it just proves how great the military is because it saves poor people from a life of destitution, but the only reason the poor are running from a life of destitution is because the political leaders that the military defends are too corrupt and unqualified to create a system where everyone has an equal chance at success.
2. The sole purpose of basic training is brainwashing.
Military personnel have heard that basic training is brainwashing, but they tend to dismiss this accusation as subjective liberal propaganda. It’s neither subjective nor propaganda. It’s a verifiable fact.
Professor Margaret Singer summed up the definition of brainwashing this way, “Coercive psychological systems are behavioral change programs which use psychological force in a coercive way to cause the learning and adoption of an ideology or designated set of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors. The essential strategy used by the operators of these programs is to systematically select, sequence and coordinate many different types of coercive influence, anxiety and stress-producing tactics over continuous periods of time. The techniques fall into seven main categories:
1. Techniques such as: Extended audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills, excessive exact repetition of routine activities, sleep restriction and/or nutritional restriction.
2. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends are abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered.
3. Prohibit disconfirming information and non-supporting opinions in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An “in-group” language is usually constructed.
4. Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject’s basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defense mechanisms. The subject is guided to reinterpret his or her life’s history and adopt a new version of causality.
5. Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person’s confidence in himself and his judgment.
6. Create strong aversive emotional arousals in the subject by use of nonphysical punishments such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, and manipulation.
7. Intimidate the person with the force of group-sanctioned secular psychological threats.
These tactics of psychological force are applied to such a severe degree that the individual’s capacity to make informed or free choices becomes inhibited. The victims become unable to make the normal, wise or balanced decisions which they most likely or normally would have made, had they not been unknowingly manipulated by these coordinated technical processes.” Source
Every single statement about brainwashing made here is systematically incorporated into military basic training. Military basic training isn’t sort of like brainwashing; it’s the deliberate perfection of brainwashing, and anyone who is brainwashed is a victim.
3. Soldiers are slaves.
When civilians sign up for the military they sign away most of the civil liberties guaranteed to everyone in the universal declaration of human rights. Many of those soon-to-be-soldiers weren’t aware of all the rights they were giving up until after they locked themselves into a legally binding contract. No military recruiter will tell you that you have to read the Uniform Code of Military Justice before enlisting.
Once you sign your rights away, you literally became the property of and wholly subject to the domination and influence of the U.S. government. That’s literally the definition of slavery. That’s not speaking metaphorically or bending words in any way. Soldiers are slaves. Period. Slavery is still legal in the “land of the free” because soldiers are slaves, and if living in bondage wasn’t unethical enough, the systematic brainwashing soldiers are subjected to manipulates them into loving and celebrating their slave-hood. So soldiers are mental slaves as well as legal slaves.
The fact that the military pays its slaves relatively well and are only subject to slavery for a few years doesn’t change the fact that they’re still slaves. Even if you disagree with the use of the term “slave,” the point remains that they still lose an inhumane, unjust and undignified amount of freedom when they join the military. Granted, some people actually enjoy this way of life, but even if they love and embrace it, that still doesn’t change the fact that they’re slaves and have lost civil rights that were supposed to be guaranteed to all human beings.
4. Soldiers don’t fight for the poor and oppressed. They fight for the rich and powerful.
Many soldiers sleep well at night believing they’re liberating the oppressed and protecting civilian’s freedoms even if they were once civilians who have now had their freedoms taken away from them and are now being oppressed.
To add to their peace of mind, the U.S. military has been involved in a number of humanitarian missions and will undoubtedly be involved in future humanitarian missions. So from a certain perspective, soldiers are at least inadvertent heroes…or they would be except for the fact that the U.S. military’s primary mission isn’t to liberate the oppressed, protect civilian’s freedoms or provide humanitarian aid.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the U.S. military is officially number one in serving mankind in airlift operations to flood victims, food supply, and rebuilding communities around the world. True as that may be, the U.S. military is currently number one in exporting war, destabilizing regions and killing civilians. A few token presents don’t make up for that fact.
It’s also arguable how much soldiers serve the American people. Every dollar spent on the military is a tax dollar not spent on education or social services. What do the American people get in return for spending all their taxes on fighting phantom enemies around the globe? They get crumbling schools and potholes in their roads.
This would be justified if it kept Americans safe and secure at home, but look at Osama Bin Laden. He said himself that the September 11th terrorist attacks were in response to America meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. America’s response was to jump into the Middle East with both feet and grow roots. I’m not going to argue whether or not that was the right thing to do, but I will argue that the more bases the American military opens on foreign soil and the more people they kill the more it will piss off the rest of the world and make terrorist attacks more likely.
And since the military is bleeding the American taxpayers out of vital civil services the military is creating ripe conditions for poverty back home, and with poverty comes crime and bloodshed. So even if the U.S. military kills every terrorist in the world it will come home to find a collapsed system where more and more houses have bars on the windows and the police are stretched thin dealing with violent crimes. Every soldier needs to seriously ask themselves if they’re really giving or taking more from the American taxpayers.
Conclusion:
Look past all the military propaganda about military patriotism, freedom, and liberation. Analyze the events leading up to every major military action taken by the United States of America. Analyze the outcome of every major U.S. military action and you’ll find very little evidence to back up the claim that the U.S. military’s primary mission is to protect freedom or anything else universally idealistic. What you will find is a consistent theme of war profiteering. Every time America goes to war the rich get richer and the poor get poorer…assuming the poor survive the collateral damage; there are millions who haven’t, and there are millions more who won’t if business continues as usual. If you’re skeptical about this claim (and you should be) then do your research. If you study the facts and not the propaganda you’ll find that everything said here is true.
So the question all of this leads up to is: If someone orders you to kill someone else and tells you it’s for a very, very, very good reason and you do it with the best of intentions but it turns out that you were lied to and actually killed an innocent person then does that make you a hero, a murderer or a victim? I know it doesn’t make you a hero. I don’t know if it makes you a murderer, but I do know that it makes you a victim.
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
Dear Active Duty Troops,
Stop for a moment, and take a second look at the oath you swore at MEPS:
“”I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
Did you ever notice that nowhere in that oath does it say anything about the well-being of the American people? The closest it comes is citing a secondary source: The U.S. Constitution, which gives a nod to the people, but the U.S. Constitution is also the legal document that politicians base their powers on….politicians who have given themselves the power to tag anyone, even Americans as a terrorist with no accountability. So this oath swears loyalty to politicians who don’t honor any parts of the Constitution except the parts that give them power.
The enlistment oath also swears unquestioning allegiance to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The Uniform Code of Military Justice is a legal document written by politicians that violates the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by outlining and legitimizing the operation of the world’s largest, oldest, most streamlined cult. I don’t say that as an insult. I’m objectively pointing at the writing on the wall. The UCMJ took everything psychologists know about the dark side of modern psychology and designed the quintessential cult. Before the civil rights movement of the mid-1900s there wasn’t a need for the UCMJ, but once enough precedence had been set that people have to be treated humanely, the military side-stepped this responsibility by creating a new legal system outside civilian law.
This is an unflattering critique of the U.S. military’s most sacred document, but the math adds up. It’s all right there in plain sight. Look it up. Or you can enlist and see for yourself or get a job as a civilian contractor for the military and see the outcome first hand. The field slaves answer to the house slaves, and the house slaves answer to the politicians. If you’ve ever watched the news or turned on the internet then you should be able to connect the rest of the dots yourself. The politicians answer to their campaign donors, and their campaign donors are the 1%. So the United States military is a death cult directly and solely accountable to the highest bidder. That’s not a conspiracy. That’s a paper trail the size of the Grand Canyon.
What does the highest bidder want? The highest bidder wants the politicians who represent them to control more of anything and everything in the world that will make them more money. One of the things that makes the rich richest is selling weapons and support to the military. War profiteers are making money hand over fist from both ends of the military, and the more money they make, the more certain they can make it that the only thing that will ever change is they’ll get richer…by waging more wars whether the world needs them or not. That and photo ops is what the United States Military was designed to stand for, and that explains every major military conflict America has been in since WWII much better than the overgeneralized-to-the-point-of-being-useless explanations the U.S. military’s public affairs department puts on its press releases.
That much alone should warrant a deafening public outcry for military reform and a boycott of reenlistments, but the situation is direr than that. Not that the oath of enlistment directly mentions protecting civilians, but any active duty troop who felt in their heart that their oath was to protect the rights, freedoms, and dignities of the American civilian population, has failed. The American people got sold out on the troops’ watch.
The troops fail every day a TSA agent touches a person’s genitals. The troops fail every time the government eavesdrops on citizens. The troops fail every time the police incarcerate another drug addict. The troops fail every time an American can’t see a doctor. The troops fail every time poisonous additives are added to the food sold in grocery stores. The troops fail every time a university raises tuition. The troops fail every time workers lose the right to form unions. The troops fail every time a presidential candidate is caught telling a lie. The troops fail everyday homosexuals and polygamists can’t marry. The troops fail every time an officer orders an enlisted soldier to choose between saluting them or going to jail. Every troop fails every time a single troop torture a prisoner of war.
On a wider scale, the troops fail every day the North Korean dynasty stays in power. The troops fail every time an Israeli soldier burns a Palestinian’s olive grove. The troops fail every time an African warlord rapes a child. The troops fail every time America’s political sanctions kill a child. The troops fail every time a drone kills an innocent person. The richer the rich get, and the poorer the poor get, the more the troops fail. For all the little signs of hope you see in the war zones you’ve created, the rest of the world is crumbling as a direct result of your actions and inactions.
The call to action isn’t for people to spit on troops. Troops aren’t villains, they’re victims. The call to action is for everyone to read the UCMJ. If you can’t understand it, go through it line by line with a lawyer, a psychologist and a cult leader. They can point out the sinister parts. Then talk to others about the need to reform the UCMJ. It took decades of everyone inside and out of the military screaming that gays should be able to enlist before the wheels of the military bureaucracy creaked around to allowing it. It’s going to take more talk than that to bring the entire UCMJ into compliance with the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights let alone pull the linchpin that connects military power to corporate profits.
Ignorance and silence are all the highest bidders need to keep big war profitable. Study the UCMJ and the U.S. military in general. If it has real flaws, the solution isn’t to take offense when they’re brought up. If you eat, sleep and breath military then your patriotism should motivate you to find and address the flaws in the military yourself, because as it stands, your leaders are undermining your oath. If you’re not in the military, and you live in fear of the U.S. military and/or the corporate interests it serves then study the UCMJ and the industrial military war complex and find a way to peacefully and respectfully let it be known that the UCMJ doesn’t meet the needs or moral standards of your generation.
Note 1: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
Note 2: The following essay is based on my experiences going through the United States Air Force’s enlisted troops’ basic training program in the year 2000, which might have changed slightly since then, but probably not by much. The details here will also differ slightly from other branch’s basic training programs, but from all the conversations I’ve had with people who went through those, I can say that they’re much worse.
The premise of my argument is that the United States military’s rules, customs, “courtesies,” and overall culture did not evolve organically. They were consciously and systematically designed using modern psychological research on mind control and are based on professional knowledge of how cults indoctrinate and control their followers’ minds. I can’t prove this argument by sourcing internal documents or training manuals, but if you compare how the United States military operates to how cults operate you’ll see that the similarities aren’t vague or coincidental; the United States military is the perfection of the cult model. If you want to start a cult you’ll have the best chance of success by copying the United States military’s rules, customs, courtesies, and overall culture as closely as possible.
It all starts with the recruiting process. All cults use deceptive recruiting methods. When they approach you on the street or draw you into their recruiting stations they promise you everything glorious in life and death you could ever want while dodging and skimming over the negative aspects of what your life will be like in their organization. They never explain in detail all the rules you’ll be subjected to or how they’ll manipulate you into basing your identity on your role in their organization. The United States military is no different. If you go into any recruiter station they’ll promise you money, benefits, travel, and glory, but they’ll never mention the U.C.M.J, and if you point out any negative aspects of the military they’ll make any excuse they can think of to dismiss your concern or glaze over it.
You’ll never get a military recruiter to admit that the United States military is a cult because they probably don’t realize it is. Cults don’t advertise themselves as cults. They don’t tell their recruits they’re joining a cult. They indoctrinate their recruits to believe that they’re joining the noblest organization in the world. Then they send their brainwashed followers out to recruit more recruits. So even if all the original, malicious leaders at the top of the cult’s pyramid-shaped authority structure die and there’s no one left alive who knows that the organization was systematically designed around manipulation techniques, the cult will still continue to function. Its brainwashed followers will run on autopilot brainwashing new recruits like a virus. There may still be leaders at the top level of the United States military who understand that their rules, customs, courtesies and overall culture are precisely cultish, but there doesn’t need to be. It is a cult, and it will continue to operate on autopilot in the absence of willful manipulation.
As a result military recruiters willingly volunteer to act like used car salesmen and wrangle poor people into joining by promising them that all their dreams will come true if they just sign a legally binding contract (something every other cult must wish they could do). What those recruiters won’t tell you is that they have a quota that they have to meet, and they get rewards for exceeding it, which is another reason the cult is able to continue to run on autopilot. Its recruiters must bring in new recruits whether they want to or not because if they don’t they’ll get in trouble, but if they do they’ll be rewarded with treasures of this world regardless of whether or not they’re true believers.
Once the military convinces the recruit to sign all their civil liberties away the recruit is taken to a hotel where they’ll be watched and kept from running away the day before they begin their indoctrination process. The recruits will be told that on the next day they’ll be taken to a training facility where they’ll learn how to be an adult and an efficient worker. But in reality, they won’t learn anything about being an adult, and they’ll learn very little about their job because that’s not the point of basic training. The point of basic training is to break down the recruits’ sense of identity and indoctrinate them to base their identity on their membership within the cult.
If the United States military has done its job right, then any prior service or active duty military member reading this will be screaming, “That’s not what basic training is about! It prepares you to follow orders because when the shit hits the fan on the battlefield you have to act without thinking in order to keep yourself and your fellow soldiers alive!”
That’s what the military tells its recruits to believe, and the argument sounds good on paper, but it ignores several very important truths. Firstly, the majority of the humans who go through the military’s indoctrination process will never see the battlefield. Millions of them will never even leave the continental United States. But they go through the same indoctrination process because the purpose of basic training isn’t to prepare you for the battlefield. Its purpose is to ensure that every recruit will always blindly serve the interests of their leaders, and the leadership hierarchy stacks up like this: Enlisted troops take orders from officers. Officers take orders from politicians, and politicians take orders from the individuals and special interest groups who fund their campaigns, give them bribes and employ them after they leave public service. Thus, military members are unwitting mercenaries for (and blind supporters of) the ultra-rich. The United States military serves the interests of the wealthy. Every major military campaign the United States military has been involved in has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And the gears of war and profit will keep turning as long as nobody in the military ever dissents or asks questions. That’s why it’s imperative that every recruit be systematically brainwashed to associate their identity primarily with their membership in the military.
The process of reprogramming civilians begins the second they step off the bus and set foot on their basic training base. The moment they leave the bus they’re descended upon by multiple drill sergeants or training instructors. Different branches call their basic instructors by different names. Each branch also has different names for their ranks, career fields and facilities. The reason for this is because it causes members of each branch to base their identity on their respective branch. This makes it less likely for military personnel to form a coup against their corrupt political leaders.
Differentiating the branches from each other serves another purpose as well. It’s standard procedure for cults to indoctrinate their members to believe that anyone who isn’t a member of the cult is inferior. Every military member is taught that civilians are untried, unproven and take their livelihood for granted while the glorious military sacrifices everything and is better than everyone else (regardless of the fact that many military members will spend their career sitting at a desk stateside for 20 years living rent-free, receiving free medical care and driving a Ford Mustang that they paid for with their reenlistment bonus). Pitting military members against civilians is a powerful mind control technique that the military reuses by pitting military members against each other.
Airmen (aka “Zoomies”) are taught they’re smarter than Marines (aka “Jar Heads”). Marines are taught they’re tougher than soldiers (aka “Grunts”). And everyone thinks the Navy is gay. Pitting each branch against each other doesn’t cause them to go to war with each other though. It causes each branch to be even more loyal to its own chain of command, and since the entire military falls under the command of the Department of Defense, whoever controls the D.O.D benefits from this manufactured infighting.
When recruits get off the bus their first day of basic training they’re immediately set upon by a flock of “training instructors” who throw hell at them. The instructors yell at them, insult them, tear them down, threaten them and tell them they don’t deserve to be there. The purpose of this initial assault is to shock and awe the new recruits. It makes them doubt themselves as well as accept the authority of anyone wearing the cult’s symbols of rank on their shoulders. All of this primes them to be receptive to the message they’ll be inundated with over the next few weeks.
Every year billions of people around the world enter employment in jobs that are just as dangerous if not more dangerous than what the average American military recruit signs up for, but they aren’t subjected to the mental abuse American troops are subjected to on their first day, yet they still follow orders and go above and beyond the call of duty often putting themselves at unnecessary personal risk. You don’t need to assault a human’s mind to convince them to do what’s necessary. But you do need to assault their mind if you want to reprogram their identity.
The next form of mental assault that the American government submits its military recruits to is less obvious but just as important to the indoctrination process. The recruits are filed into dormitories or barracks where they’ll live in communal spaces with up to 60 other people. They’ll have absolutely no privacy or control over their environment. Everything they own will be identical to everyone else there. Everyone will dress the same and looks the same. Everyone will sleep in identical beds and keep what few possessions they’re allowed to have in identical lockers. They’ll even have to shower naked in communal showers with dozens of other recruits. All of these factors dehumanize the new recruits and help break down their sense of identity and self-worth.
The lack of privacy breaks down the recruit’s defenses. You can’t hold up your guard when you’re naked in a shower with 15 other people and sleeping in a room with 30 other people. Under those circumstan, es you’re like a vulnerable child who has no home, no identity, no safe haven, no escape, no choices and no power over your own destiny. You’re nobody. And the only source of validation you can possibly experience comes from the cult, which makes the cult your mother, your father, your boss and your god.
If this doesn’t seem sinister yet, consider that the new recruits will be held captive within the confines of their dormitory. A sentinel will stand guard at the entrance preventing anyone from leaving, and if an escapee can manage to get out of the building they’ll still be trapped on base behind tall fences lined with razor wire as well as gate guards armed with semi-automatic assault rifles. The military holds a gun to its recruits’ heads and forces them to endure the indoctrination process, which is so mentally brutal that many recruits will attempt suicide.
The military goes through such dire lengths to keep its recruits locked away from the outside world because it’s much harder to break down and reprogram someone’s identity when they have access to their old support structures and/or the freedom to live life by their own accord. So you have to isolate them from everything they’ve ever known and inundate them completely with the rules, customs, and culture of cult. When the cult is all they know… then the cult is all they know. Once the recruits spend a few weeks eating, sleeping and breathing nothing but the cult’s way of life they’ll accept that that’s how life is. And why wouldn’t they? The reality of their day to day life is whatever the cult makes it. So they go about their day to day life experiencing reality according to how the cult defines it, and in no time at all they take the cult’s way of life for granted.
Isolating new recruits from the outside world also insulates them from dissent and freedom of thought. If the recruits go out on the town every night or even worse, go home, they might tell someone about all the new things they’ve been learning. Then someone with a free mind might point out how crazy they sound and convince them to leave the cult.
Another reason cult members are forced to live in communal quarters is because humans take cues from other people’s behavior and mimic it. You’d have a very hard time taking a lone individual to an empty camp and convincing them to change their behavior. However, if you take 60 people and force them to all behave the same way they’ll assume that since everyone else is going along with it then it must be okay. Plus, once you break the minds of the weakest members they’ll take it upon themselves to enforce the rules of the group.
With the stage set, the instructors can begin actively reprogramming the minds of their recruits. The daily indoctrination process begins as soon as the recruits wake up each morning. Loudspeakers in the ceilings of the dormitories blast a trumpet tune called reveille often times accompanied by training instructors banging trash can lids and shouting at the recruits telling them to get up and quit being lazy. The recruits will have a few minutes to get dressed, make up their bed and line up in formation outside.
The brain-rattling trumpet, combined with the frantic morning chores and the instructor’s insults throws the recruits off-center from the moment they wake ensuring that they won’t have the mental focus to resist the indoctrination process. The chores and routines also ensure the recruits are following orders from the moment they wake up even if the instructor isn’t even present to tell them to get dressed, make up their beds and file outside for formation. Thus the military controls every aspect of their lives and leaves no room for individual freedom of thought or action. The more the recruits accept that as the norm the less likely they are to question it and the more likely they are to embrace it.
There are very specific rules for falling into formation. Following those rules first thing in the morning continues to reinforce blind obedience to the group without questioning the purpose of orders. Standing in the group formation where everyone looks and acts identically also helps minimize the individuality of the group members. In case the recruits don’t pick up on this idea on their own the training instructors will tell them bluntly that they’re no longer an individual. They’re a member of the group, and their own identity and desires are worth less than the identity and desires of the group. Training instructors will tell the recruits to be proud of this fact and to look down on civilians who value their individuality and selfishly desire to fulfill their own destiny.
Any active duty or prior service members reading this will likely be screaming, “But you should value being a member of the group! That creates a stronger team and keeps the group together when the shit hits the fan! Anyway, we’re proud to put our own egos aside to help protect the freedom of civilians!”
Those criticisms aren’t wrong, but there’s more going on than just that. First, there’s the fact that the military isn’t upfront about the invasive methods of mind control it submits its troops to, and that’s unethical. Also, reprogramming recruits sense of identity eliminates their freedom to determine their own destiny. It makes mental slaves out of recruits who are so zealous that they’ll defend their own manipulation. This reprogramming controls all aspects of the brainwashed victim’s life, not just how they perform their job. Plus, reprogramming individuals essentially kills the person they once were and creates a new person. Once the old person is dead they can never come back to life as the person they once were. Doing that to another human being is no small matter, and no human has the authority and right to kidnap another person’s soul. Finally, it’s worth noting that everyone in the world will participate as a functional member of a team on an almost daily basis without being brainwashed. Sports teams are high functioning teams that coordinate plays selflessly without going through a brutal indoctrination process. Even civilian contractors in the military play by the rules and make sacrifices in war zones without going through basic training.
Once the recruits are lined up in their morning formation they sing their branch’s official song and chant an oath of allegiance to the military and the United States. This is cut and dry, unambiguous brainwashing 101.
After having sworn their daily oath of allegiance the troops eat breakfast, and even then they don’t get a moment to themselves. They have to file through the cafeteria silently standing heel to toe, staring straight ahead while instructors hover over them to punish anyone who breaks these arbitrary rules. When the recruits finally get their food they’ll be given as little time as possible to eat to ensure they can’t relax and mentally collect themselves.
After the meal they’ll take part in physical exercises and marching drills. They’ll perform their exercises and marching drills as a group, everyone acting in unison further conditioning them to base their identity on the group. Every member of the group will be punished whenever any individual fails to follow the arbitrary rules perfectly. This encourages the recruits to police each other. The more the recruits enforce the military’s rules on each other the more they take the military’s rules and authority for granted.
The military doesn’t leave this powerful mind control technique to chance. The instructors will assign recruits as element leaders. The element leaders will receive an arbitrary symbol of authority (a colored rope that attaches to the lapel of their uniform), and they’ll be tasked with policing their group. When the military leadership bestows authority on individuals it teaches every member of the group that the military has the authority to bestow authority on individuals and raise their value as a human being. Once the recruits take this for granted they will always respect higher ranking military members as if God Himself touched their leaders with His grace. Finally, it dangles a carrot in front of the recruits. They’re taught in basic training that their life is worthless outside of the military hierarchy and that elevation within the cult is the true path to elevation as a person. The use of “ropes” or element leaders sets this precedent from day one.
This is also why recruits are called “trainees” instead of Airmen, soldiers, seamen or Marines. They have to prove themselves worthy first before being granted a title in the illustrious group. Every cult in the world does this. The military just hides this brainwashing technique in plain sight.
At some point during the day, between eating, exercising and marching the recruits will be taken to classrooms where they’ll receive hundreds of hours of lectures on military history, rules, and customs. The point of teaching military history is to train the recruits to accept the military’s history as their own history. Once they come to base their identity on hundreds of years of history they’ve just learned they’ll always view themselves as a member of that distinct group.
If any troop ever complains about life in the military they’ll be told, “You knew what you were getting into before you signed up.” But the hundreds of hours of class time they’ll spend in basic training betray this lie. You won’t learn all the details of what you signed up for until you take these classes.
Those classes teach all the unique symbols, language, rules, customs and beliefs that make up the overall military culture. On the surface most of them are innocuous, but it’s standard operating procedure for cults to manufacture their own internal culture based on shared symbols, terminology, rules, and customs because you need to give the recruits a culture to latch onto and derive their new identity from. The whole point of giving recruits a new culture and a new identity is to tie it all into the group’s pyramid-shaped leadership hierarchy. All the other details are red herrings, but once you accept them you’ll accept your place in the leadership hierarchy that comes along with it. From then on you’ll always respect and obey any human being who wears the arbitrary symbols that represent authority within the cult.
After class, the recruits are filed back into their dormitories where they’ll spend the rest of their night cleaning their rooms, organizing their lockers, folding their clothes, and arranging their belongings to precise requirements. The purpose of these chores is to simply get the recruits used to obeying arbitrary rules. If you can get them to perform mundane tasks without question you can get them to perform any task without question.
It also gives the instructors more reasons to berate the recruits and tear down their sense of self-worth, and just as importantly, to reward the recruits for demonstrating obedience. In a stressful, totalitarian environment a simple bar of candy or a phone call home is worth a million dollars. Recruits will love their captors when given these small token rewards.
Throughout the whole indoctrination process, the instructors will find any reason in the world to make the recruits doubt their worth as a person and as a member of the group. As they tear down the recruits they’ll slowly build them back up with praise and rewards. Then, just as the recruits are beginning to feel good about themselves the instructor will find any excuse to tear them back down again. If the recruits are doing everything right the instructor will simply lie and tell them they’re all failing at their duties. This emotional roller coaster keeps the recruits doubting their worth, makes them yearn to win the approval of their captors and makes them feel more proud when they receive any sign of affection or validation. It’s a way to systematically induce Stockholm Syndrome.
By the end of basic training, the effects of the reprogramming techniques will have taken root in the trainee’s minds. They’ll sing their branch song with pride, gush when they see an officer and perform every task asked of them with gusto. In the end, they’ll take part in a lavish ceremony where they’ll receive the mark of the in-group and will be congratulated on their elevation to true worth as a member of the group cementing the effects of the indoctrination process.
After reading all this you may still hold firm that military basic training teaches discipline and trains recruits to act without hesitation as a member of a goal-oriented team. As true as that may be, and as useful as that may be, it’s still not the whole truth. The fact of the matter remains that the training methods used in basic training are the exact same methods used by cults, and they have the exact same results. They rob recruits of their identity and replace it with a willing mental slave drunk on loyalty to the in-group. The training methods used on military recruits are considered unethical and even illegal to do anyone else, and they’re so invasive and brutal that they cause the recruits extreme mental anguish in the process to the point that many even attempt to commit suicide.
I have never seen evidence to support the claim that is absolutely necessary to submit human beings to this form of unethical treatment in order to create a smoothly functioning organization. Even if it were, we still have to ask ourselves if the cost is worth it, especially since it contradicts the entire reason the military supposedly exists: to protect the freedom and dignity of the citizens of the United States.
The American government needs a new amendment to its constitution that states, no state or federal government shall pass or enforce any law that prohibits people from harming themselves or behaving in ways considered indecent unless the actions of the individual directly or indirectly hinder another person’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. You might also make an exception that people can harm others if the person being harmed has given full consent because there are some exceptions like euthanasia and selling tobacco where people want to be hurt.
Here are 6 reasons why we need this amendment:
1. Without this rule, we have no way to systematically limit what kind of culturally relative laws will be passed that will oppress people.
Look throughout history. People were locked in stocks for gossiping. Women have been killed for doing pretty much anything, including eating bananas. Today countless laws are enforced that don’t actually protect anyone. All they do is reinforce cultural norms to the detriment of the individual’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership, and happiness. Women still can’t take off as many clothes in public as men. Blasphemy is still a crime in many countries. Alcohol prohibition was a disaster, and marijuana prohibition is currently destroying countless lives. Censorship laws reinforce an oversimplified explanation of reality that debilitates people’s minds. People who just happened to be naked at the wrong place at the wrong time are being jailed as sex offenders. Curfew laws are blatant oppression. If you look long enough you’ll find countless minor local laws that are just ridiculous and only serve to fill the police coffers.
None of these rules should be brushed off as exceptions and mistakes. They were inevitabilities in a system that has no fail-safe to limit the control of moral fanatics, and as long as no fail-safe exists you leave open an avenue for laws to be passed in your country that legalizes oppression.
2. The cost-benefit analysis of these kinds of laws doesn’t add up.
It would be one thing if these laws actually protected society from itself, but as it stands they do more to tear society down and hold it back. What happens after a woman gets thrown in jail for smoking a joint on her front porch while not wearing her shirt? How is society protected? Since these are victimless crimes nobody has been protected. The only way society has been affected at all is this woman has been made to live in fear, been blacklisted with a criminal record and had her money stolen from her by the police to pay unjust fines. Now, what happens when this isn’t just one woman? What about when it’s 2 million people? That’s systematic oppression. That’s living in a terror state. There’s no cost-benefit analysis here because there’s no benefit. There’s just cost in the form of destroyed human lives.
3. Victimless crime laws waste resources.
Every time someone is jailed for a victimless crime the labor they could have devoted to improving society is temporarily eliminated, and the labor used to apprehend and incarcerate these people is wasted when it could have been used to apprehend and incarcerate actual criminals.
Everyone who knows anything about criminology knows that locking up criminals is an ineffective way of reducing repeat offenders. Rehabilitation would be more productive, but at this point, rehabilitation isn’t even an option because our resources are stretched too thin by apprehending, prosecuting and locking up people for victimless crimes. If we ever hope to reduce real crime it’s vital that we stop wasting our resources enforcing subjective, victimless taboos.
4. Victimless crimes contradict the Constitution of the United States and the Universal Bill of Human Rights.
These documents don’t place conditions and exceptions on the manner or extent to which people can choose to pursue life, liberty, ownership or happiness except to say that our actions may not infringe another person’s own pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. Victimless crime laws do.
5. One of the big arguments against the idea of legalizing victimless crimes is that society will break down; society won’t break down.
People do what’s in their best interest, and it’s not in anyone’s best interest to sleep with every whore in every brothel and shoot up heroin at work. The people who would do such things are in such dire positions in their lives that these actions appear to be in their best interest. If this is truly unhealthy behavior then the causes need to be addressed. These people need to be given what they’re missing in their lives and rehabilitated, not punished and have more of their life taken away from them. This will only push them further past the limit of desperation and increase the chances that they’ll actually harm other people.
Furthermore, most of the people who want to sleep with hookers and do heroin are already doing it. The only difference is that we’re wasting our resources and theirs by trying to stop them when we could just let them do what they’re going to do anyway and get on with solving real problems.
6. It’s not our place to play God.
If we allow people to disobey the various mythologies humans have created to explain God then we would be denying the sovereignty those mythological deities have over mankind. While atheists would applaud this step, others fear it. However, even if one of these mythological deities were the real one then by passing judgment for Him we’re playing God. Therefore, it would be more blasphemous to enforce God’s will than to leave judgment to God.
The way things work today, you reach certain ages where you’ve given certain rights you didn’t use to have, like driving, drinking, having sex, and voting. At some of these milestones, you’re held to a higher level of responsibility. At the age of 17, you can be tried as an adult in a court of law. At other milestones, you’re held to a lower level of responsibility. At age 18 you’re free to smoke all the cigarettes you want and watch all the porn you can because you’re all of a sudden mature enough to handle it. And then there’s the age of consent, which is just confusing. If you’re 17 years old you can have sex with all the 17-year-olds in the country. If you’re 18-years-old, it’s one of the worst crimes you can commit.
This is a broken system that isn’t based on any solid logic. The reason it’s still being used is because it involves taboos that nobody wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. Plus, it seems to be generally accepted that the system works well enough. So why mess with it? The reason is because the system works well enough…except for those it doesn’t work for.
Here’s what I propose. Get rid of all age restrictions as they stand. Then make it to where you can start applying for rights around the age of 14 or 15…because honestly, we all know what’s going on by 14 or 15. At that point, you can apply for the right to drive, the right to sexual freedom, the right to vote, the right to use mind-altering substances, etc.
There’s three catches though. First, you have to prove you’re responsible enough to use these rights. To drive, you have to pass a driving class. To vote, you have to pass a government class. To have legally consensual sex under the age of 18, you have to pass a sexual awareness class. To use drugs, you have to pass a drug awareness class. etc. etc.
The second catch is you’re held to a higher level of accountability. You can be tried in adult court. You’re no longer protected by statutory “rape” laws. The penalties for drinking and driving go up. Health insurance goes up. Stuff like that.
The third catch is that you can have your rights taken away if you demonstrate that you’re not responsible enough to use them…responsibly…just like how you can get your driver’s license taken away.
1. Hold all government officials to the same level of screening used when hiring school janitors and the lowest level enlisted military troops.
That includes a drug test and a criminal background check. If it’s too dangerous to have a janitor on drugs then why don’t we make sure our leaders aren’t on drugs? If it’s too dangerous to give a soldier with a felony conviction a gun then why give members of Congress with felony convictions the ability to control our troops? About two weeks ago Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska got convicted of 7 counts of felony corruption. Guess who got re-elected to the Senate two days ago? Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. Guess who couldn’t vote for Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska because he has a felony conviction on his record? Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. What the fuck? Is this any way to run a government? This is shit you expect to hear about in the Philippines, not the most powerful country in the world.
2. Make corruption a treasonous offense.
(Political) corruption is defined as:
“the use of governmental powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain.”
Treason is defined as:
“1. the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. A violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.
3. The betrayal of trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.”
If George Bush stole the 2004 election, then he overthrew the government. He’s also violated his allegiance to the nation by selling out our safety to big business, and by lying to us about the war in Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and 1 million Iraqis, he has betrayed our trust, our faith, and committed atrocious acts of treachery. It would be impossible to argue he’s not guilty of treason.
When a politician uses government powers to for illegitimate gain, treason is committed. The punishment for treason in America is death. I’m usually not all about the death penalty, but when George Bush lied to us and Dick Cheney handed the keys to our treasury to Halliburton, they both committed treason. Anybody who is given as much power over other people as our leaders on Capitol Hill should be held to the highest level of accountability, and if they abuse that power, they should be punished not only for the wrong they committed but also for the good they failed to accomplish. Once you have to worry about being killed for a bribe I’ll bet you’re not going to be likely to take it. At the very least, make corruption punishable by life in prison… and certainly don’t let people who’ve been convicted of corruption run for public office again.
3. Outlaw campaign contributions and lobbyists.
Our government already gives money to political campaigns. Take all that money and make a couple of websites/television stations devoted solely as a platform for campaigning. If it’s illegal to spend any money on campaigning you automatically accomplish two things. First of all, anyone can run for office. You don’t have be a millionaire or well connected. As it stands, those are the two most important requirements to run for office…as opposed to be qualified. Secondly, politicians won’t have to pay back their campaign contributors with political favors. If lobbying is outlawed then they can’t do under-the-table personal favors for politicians in return for political favors.
If we can do at least these simple, common sense things we can eliminate the vast majority of corruption in our government and begin to head away from the fate of Rome, Russia, and every other corrupt nation that has fallen from glory. Then we can begin to move towards Utopia and the glory that we ignorantly boast so loudly about having today.
It’s bullshit that gambling is illegal in most states. And I blame Nevada for that. I heard once that the reason online gambling in America was shut down was because the big casinos in Las Vegas were losing money and lobbied Congress. I don’t have any proof, and it’s not important enough to me to look up, but it sounds plausible. Anyway, here’s my reasons why it should be legal:
1: Freedom
This is a no-brainer. Don’t tell me we live in a free country is I’m not free to play or own a slot machine. Yeah, with freedom comes anarchy, and with anarchy comes destruction. That’s why they won’t get the lottery in Hawaii. People there are so desperate the government knows they’d all go broke buying lottery tickets if they could. That’s they’re fucking choice. Plus, if that’s your big hangup, ration the tickets. You could even enforce spending limits or time limits in casinos.
At any rate, if we make the choice to make gambling illegal for the Hawaiians or anybody else, then we’ve set a precedent to make other choices for them. Maybe if we didn’t have so many freedoms already taken away from us willingly, the Patriot Act would have never passed. As it stands, the Patriot Act wasn’t an anomaly. It was a step in the same direction we’ve been headed for years.
2: Economic stimulation
Gambling makes money, which stimulates the economy and creates jobs. A vote against gambling is a vote for a weaker economy and higher unemployment rates.
3: Tax revenue
I don’t want my tax money to go to busting illegal casinos. I don’t give a fuck if people play Texas Hold’em. We’ve got bigger problems in the world that all that tax money desperately needs to go towards fixing. Look around you. Our economy is a big pile of shit right now and gambling is illegal. Coincidence? I think not. If nothing else, just legalize gambling and give me back the money you would have spent fighting it.
4: Not being a hypocrite
Texas is so back-asswards. We have drive-through liquor barns, but you can’t buy liquor on Sundays. We have the lottery, dog racing, and offshore casinos, but gambling is illegal. I feel bad for children growing up today. Reality must be one big clusterfuck for them where nothing means anything and everything contradicts itself. Why don’t we just end the hypocrisy starting with legalizing gambling? It’s already legal. It’s just limited. We’ve already stuck our dick in. We may as well finish fucking now.
5: Progress or Crime? Take your pick.
When gambling legalized the money spent on it goes to legitimate businesses that can use that money to grow and actually provide a service to the world. Las Vegas casinos how major intellectual conferences every year. Casinos have contributed greatly to improving computer software hardware technology. In the states where gambling is illegal all that money goes to the mafia and petty criminals. Then it helps their crime rings grow. When they get big enough the branch out. Then you’re paying “protection” fees on your car in your driveway. Way to keep us safe by making gambling illegal.
Prostitutes need security more than a designer clothing store. So much so that illegal prostitutes get pimps who extort them. As horrible as that is, it’s better than not having a pimp. In Holland, the prostitutes get big, bad bouncers. One guy told me about a brothel he went to in Cologne, Germany where they had pit bulls. Now, who do you think has more dead hookers, New York or Cologne? But America doesn’t care whether or not a hooker dies because they’re immoral. Good ol’ Christian values at work there… that do more harm than good.
2. Sanitation
You’re more likely to get an STD from someone at a club than from a porn star or a Dutch prostitute. They get medical checkups so often it’d make a hypochondriac cream his pants. Seriously, abortion is legal and prostitution isn’t? The only reason abortion was ever passed in a country that won’t let you cuss on television is because too many women were getting backroom abortions and were dying from any number of medical problems.
That’s horrible seeing as how I suspect one of the main reasons prostitution is still illegal in America is because the American women don’t want the competition. Imagine this commercial for the brothel that may someday open up down the street from your house:
3. Women’s dignity
How bad would your life have to get to risk getting arrested for going to work every day, risking getting murdered, beaten, humiliated, and infected with a disease? These women aren’t immoral fluzies. They’re desperate. Their lives suck on levels you and I can’t even imagine. And be keeping prostitution legalize we’re supporting that. We spend millions of dollars a year oppressing prostitutes and destroying their lives. Their tears and blood on our hands. Fuck that. I don’t that responsibility laid at my feet. Somebody wants to make a little money, mutually consensually, making lonely people happy in a safe and sterile environment what do I care? I don’t want my tax dollars going to keeping those two people unhappy and unsafe. And quite frankly I’m disgusted at anybody who would.
4. Reduce rape
Why risk going to jail and destroying your conscience by raping someone when you can go buy a hooker with no hassle? A veto for prostitution is a vote for rape. Make a campaign button out of that.
5. Economic stimulation
Prostitutes make more money. Businesses make more money. The economy grows. With the economic problems we’ve got these days and the amount of people wanting a little relief now’s the perfect time to legalize prostitution. Here’s my campaign slogan: “PROSTITUTION: IT’LL DO YOU GOOD!”
This conversation should really be over after that one word. How are you going to argue with freedom? But people do. Just don’t tell me we live in a free country when I’m not free to grow a plant and consume it in the privacy of my own home. Freedom doesn’t get much more basic than growing a plant. And if we don’t have that simple freedom and we take it for granted that simple freedoms like that are okay to take away then we set a precedent for any other rights to be taken away. All the government needs now is a good sounding reason. A vote against legalizing marijuana is a vote against your children’s freedoms.
2: Reduce organized crime
Look at what happened in Chicago during prohibition. Politicians made alcohol illegal despite the wishes of the majority of the people. If you think of dollars as votes and cash registers as ballot boxes you’ll see that people voted for alcohol with their dollars. Unfortunately, since alcohol was illegal the only people you could get it from were criminals. And being criminals they did other illegal things to keep their business running, like killing people. Do liquor store owners today kill each other? No. Do people selling weed today kill each other? Yes. Do innocent people get caught in the crossfire? Yes. Do the owners of “coffee shops” in Holland that sell weed kill each other? No. Legalizing marijuana will put criminals out of business. Then they’ll have to get jobs.
3: Drug laws hurt people more than protect them
This is the warped logic of the laws. Using marijuana will destroy your life. Therefore, it’s illegal, and if you get caught using it then in order to protect you from yourself you’ll be thrown in jail, which will cause you to lose your job. You’ll be slapped with a huge fine that you won’t be able to pay because you lost your job, and you’ll get a criminal record equal to shooting or raping someone that will guarantee you never get a good job again. And you’ll probably get your ass kicked, raped, and possibly killed while in jail. So basically, the government protects you from destroying your life by destroying it for you far worse than smoking marijuana could have. Oh, and by the way, everybody knows that there are millions of people who smoke weed every day and live productive, not destroyed lives…until they’re arrested. So the government isn’t actually saving you by destroying you. It’s just destroying you.
4: Reduce stress that leads to hard drug use
That would be a good argument if it were true. The reason people use drugs is because their lives suck. That’s the real gateway. Legalizing marijuana would make life suck less. Therefore it would actually reduce hard drug use. Plus, who do people get hard drugs from? The same criminals they buy their weed from. If people didn’t need to buy weed from criminals then they’d never meet said criminals to know where to buy the hard drugs from. If marijuana were legalized, we’d probably see a drop in hard drug use.
5: The precedent has already been set
Morally there’s no difference between drinking alcohol and smoking or eating marijuana. The effects are slightly different, but the morality isn’t. If we can have one we should be able to have the other. Anything less is hypocrisy.
6: Reduce overcrowding in prisons
All across America right now there are ex-con rapists, thieves, murderers, and brawlers going about their business in quiet little neighborhoods like yours raping, stealing, murdering, and fighting when they should still be in prison. You know why they’re not in prison? Because the prisons are overcrowded with potheads who are guilty of victimless crimes. That’s how sick in the head America is. We can actually say the contradictory nonsensical meaningless phrase “victimless crime” with a straight face and pretend like it means anything less than, “You don’t live in a free country.” Let me tell you about a crime that has real victims. It’s a crime that the government and the police force allow real criminals to get out of jail early to hurt more innocent people. Plus, if the penalties for real crimes are lowered across the board because the prisons are full of pot heads then there’s less incentive for real criminals to obey the law. Let’s rob this gas station. Fuck it. If we get caught we’ll only do two years. Good thing there are too many potheads in jail. Otherwise, we might have to serve a real term that would actually discourage us from robbing this gas station. Ha ha ha.
7: Increase funding for addiction treatment
Someone once said that the war on drugs took a minor medical problem and turned it into a major legal one. How much money has the war on drugs cost the American taxpayers? We know the government lost that war. Even the government admits it. So how about we just legalize everything, give people the freedom to screw up their own lives if they want, and take all the money we’re flushing down the toilet fighting victimless criminals and spend that money on medical treatment for these people with a medical problem. Is there anyway possible that could work worse than what we’re doing right now?
8: Reduce wasteful government spending
Still not convinced? Still think marijuana should be illegal? Fine. But you’re going to pay for it literally. The potholes on your street aren’t going to get fixed. Your children’s school isn’t going to get new textbooks. Your public library is going to be closed. And your taxes are going to go up to build that big new prison on the outskirts of town. So you don’t like the idea of hippies getting stoned at concerts. Fine. I don’t like kids on my lawn. But I don’t think we should spend billions of tax dollars on a war on kids on my lawn when that money could be used for education. Shit. Just end the war on drugs and give the money back to the people. We’re fucking poor. We need money more than we need the kid who lives across the street from me not smoking out on his roof after his parents go to bed. If I paid you $10,000 would you support legalizing weed? I think most people would. Well, if marijuana were legalized and taxed we’d probably all see more than $10,000 in some form or another from the increased tax revenue and decreased need for taxation.
I think we should let children run our government. They call it like it is. If a lobbyist came up to a kid and said, “Instead of medically treating people with medical substance abuse problems let’s take away their jobs, give them a criminal record, lock them up with real criminals for a long time, and let the real criminals go free. At the same time, we’ll spend trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to cut off the supply and demand of the goods the people are voting for with their dollars and having huge protests about every year. And as long as we allow the war that we created to go on people will needlessly get hurt and killed by competing drug cartels.” Only an adult could have an idea that stupid and commit trillions of dollars and millions of lives to perpetuating this cancerous, destructive plan. Any child could see how retarded that plan is and how seriously, really, in real life hurting real people. And since children are going to have to live in the world we create they might pass laws that will take care of themselves in the future. Whereas currently, we make laws that fuck over our children’s future because fuck it. Our kids are going to have to deal with most of the consequences, not us.
The Wise Sloth 