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Becoming ungovernable

One of Bill’s classic topics is “Parallel Structures,” in which he advocates working around the stupid mandates of the nanny state by complying with the minimal requirements and then “doing our own thing.”

If Zombie Joe and Commie LaWhorish are sworn in and take over the Executive Branch, I think we can do more than build parallel structures.

What if we became ungovernable?

We are a creative, mischievous, anti-authoritarian tribe. Imagine the million subtle ways we could gum up the works of our benevolent overlords. Imagine the fun of puncturing their overinflated egos and their unearned moral superiority, ridiculing them and their ideas in ways that they can’t squelch.

Sarah Hoyt is on to something here:

“Their biggest flaw is their self importance, their utter seriousness, and their stupid inability to see that others are different from them.”

Hoyt recommends we become an army of Sabos and Hong Kongers, flowing like water around their regimented hivemind and causing them to have nervous breakdowns.

Go read Hoyt’s post, browse through Sabo’s artwork, and ponder the strategy and tactics of the Hong Kong protestors. Then come back here and get creative. What are your ideas for messing with the Borg and monkey-wrenching their efforts to control us? Sound off in the comments!

7 replies on “Becoming ungovernable”

This resonates with me in a big way, as Bill’s ideas about building “parallel structures”, per “A New Beginning” and “Where do we go now?”, played a big role in fishing me out of my gloom in 2012.

I don’t have a complete answer, but I have many ideas to share that have helped me maintain perspective and think in a better direction.

Whether or not you share or find any useful value in my long-term conclusion that it is time to go elsewhere (choose your sci-fi-made-real frontier of choice), I think we do need to fundamentally shift our thinking, strategy, and tactics away from what has not been working, and I’ve found that the mindset that a long-term goal of this sort brings about may have real usefulness in the here and now.

Main thoughts:

Remember that we are dealing with terrified control freaks, who can only win by consistently and repeatedly painting all the windows black. The more they try to tighten their miserable grip, the easier it will be to slip through their fingers, and the more determined even non-political people will become to escape their tedious, relentless demands. Their cult of submission and subservience has its hypnotic appeal, but it sure ain’t rock ‘n roll.

Remember that progress is what happens while Progressives are busy making other plans. Their vision of the future is fossilized and unable to flex when reality defies it. Their attempts at central planning and control are doomed to fail. Enough of us want to be free to cause them serious inconvenience, and we are way faster in the OODA loop than their lumbering Goliath of a state.

Remember that culture leads, and politics is downstream. Think of the culture you want to live in and live it now. Have the joyful attitude that it is assured, it is real, it cannot be taken from you. For me, and perhaps for others, the most onerous burden is not what is happening but the pervasive notion that we’re supposed to want it. I dismiss that notion with joy in my heart.

Reject false premises. Take it easy. Spend your time among friends. Enjoy life. Be cheerful. Laugh openly at the absurdity of Wokeness and all the rest. It’s good for you, and it drives the earnest scolds who demand 24/7 seriousness up the wall.

It is comical and absurd to live in a country whose current governing ideas have become intrinsically incompatible with its founding ideals and the way of life we desire. It cannot be so, and therefore it shall not be so, no matter how insistent the control freaks are to the contrary.

“Be an American,” indeed. “[B]ecome so American they can’t hold us, and have to vomit us forth whole” is great advice. Per Captain Malcolm Reynolds: “I aim to misbehave.”

Make new friends, and build alliances. Consider what skills we have among us here, and how we can pool them toward a common goal (Ejectia lives!). Build together. Trade. Facilitate a thriving Culture of Competence.

Learn about technologies that can help decentralize institutions, and consider ways we can employ them.

Think about what you love, and put more of it out there. I mean to rekindle my podcast, “The No Fear Pioneer”. I’d love to work with others on similar projects. I’ve been thinking for a while about a “Stratolounge Mingler” podcast, where we could get to know one another and start building those crucial alliances while having more lighthearted fun than some think should be legal. Maybe there’s a way we can make stuff like that happen in some lightweight, decentralized way?

Also:

Be a sheepdog.

Never give up.

Moreover, we need to stop playing defense and thinking like a stationary target. “Hold the line” has proven to be a losing game. Things have gotten to where they are because Progressives have played their incrementalist game for the past 100 or so years with long-term goals. We need to think bigger, be active rather than reactive, have our own long-term future constantly in mind, and show them something they aren’t expecting.

I think we do have to confront the fact that the places to expect to live the life we want are where people haven’t gotten overly comfortable. We need to plan accordingly in our long-term thinking. At minimum as a “Plan B”, we need to make preparations for a hard reset where we will reignite American Individualism in new places — be they beyond Earth orbit, on the seas, in remote places they can’t be bothered with, or all of the above. Space colonization in particular is a long game, and is going to be a ton of work and toil, but the results will flip the board for those who yearn to be truly free.

From my 2019 self-intro (misattributed by the site to another user; long story):

Progressives demand “Change” with great urgency. We will show them Change far bigger than they are prepared for — “radical” change; a hard reset to a free-wheeling, fun-loving, individualistic culture that will thrive just as the USA in its beginnings thrived. We will pioneer a reignition of the American experiment in harsh and hostile but wide-open new worlds, and those who fear uncertainty will be loath to follow.

I won’t blame anyone for dismissing this crazy talk as crazy talk. But think how crazy the idea of leaving everything behind and crossing the Atlantic in wooden ships to colonize a dangerous and unknown frontier must have seemed to people hundreds of years ago. Think how crazy the idea of taking on the world’s strongest army and navy must have seemed to those who scoffed at their descendants. Their indomitable courage freed us. Now it’s our turn to do what must be done.

Seeing that destiny above and ahead of us has made a huge difference in my thinking in the here and now. It has reminded me that we are not a stationary target, and that, one way or another, everything we have worried about is an escapable condition.

I have finally in the past decade or so caught up to where Bill announced himself to be long ago: I no longer care what others say or how they may try to vilify or destroy me. I am ready to walk toward the fire. I am willing to be a public target. My love of this magnificent, free Civilization of ours is stronger than their hate, envy, endless scorn, and small thinking.

I’ve been planning my exit from the big tech company I work for, to return to entrepreneurship, and I’m looking to build alliances with trustworthy others in support of that. I’ve grown bored of wasting time on the unimaginative work I’ve been asked to do in recent years, when there are so very many things worth doing that will contribute more toward a freer and more exciting future for us all. My Dad’s passing last February (article also misattributed) reminded me that the clock is on, and always has been, and my present employer’s growing pandering to the left’s sacred cows isn’t exactly helping me want to stay, and reaffirms for me that they’ve lost direction and are adrift. Go where you are wanted and valued, I remind myself. Do what needs doing. I may start by trying to help catalyze free-speech self-publishing and voluntary, decentralized movement away from Big Social. My HTML editor/WordPress client, TypeMetal, taken in new directions, could do more help with that, I imagine, by helping people to own their content. I’ve also wondered about better tools for helping people take command of their finances, and see their losses to taxation more clearly, which could help promote awareness of the long-term opportunity costs and maybe influence popular opinion back toward shrinking the state. Many, many more ideas where those came from.

There is so much to do, and I am tremendously excited to have the chance to be a part of it with all of you.

Take heart and stay focused. The best, I truly believe, is yet to come.

One of the most effective ways to deal with any sort of unjustifiable conditions being forced upon you is to comply.

Yes, comply.

BUT…

You have to comply precisely. Give them exactly what they want, following their demands literally to the most minute degree. This will show the flaws in their position every time.

An example from my own life:

When my now ex-wife was trying to justify her leaving me, she said during one argument, “You contribute nothing to this marriage!”

So I agreed with her.

I said, “You know, you’re right. So here’s what we’ll do. You stop doing everything that you do for this family, and I’ll do the same. You stop keeping house and leave your part-time job, and I’ll stop maintaining the yard and car and such, and I’ll quit my job. Since I don’t contribute anything, we should see a huge loss in your area and all but none in mine. What do you think?”

Suddenly realizing that me leaving my job would mean no money for mortgage, food, car payments & insurance, clothes, doctor visits, and other such major items, she fumbled for an answer, eventually muttering, “Well… Um… Er… I didn’t mean that.”

(It didn’t stop her from leaving me and our kids. She preferred sleeping with the entire town to being with us. Never even brought up custody during divorce proceedings.)

So, comply literally literally. Given any order, say, in effect, “I am unable to do that.” What you mean is “I am unable (i.e. I refuse) to do that under the conditions you’ve imposed,” but they’ll never figure that part out. It won’t take long for their system to come crashing down.

Creative divergent thinking backed up with action—What a delectable idea. That is a parallel structure in which we could become very effective at disrupting our “ego-soaked” (term used by Marlin Newburn, Lake Superior State University Professor} leftist overlords. Beside the obvious the bonus could be preservation of our Republic and our Constitution.

The way things are now if I had some really good ideas I would put out my own manifesto and copyright it. Putting out creative and effective strategies on the internet just gives the opposition time to mount a counter offensive. But as it is, I like the concept a lot because of its practicality. Why aren’t we all better at sabotaging these leftist numbskulls?

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