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Jefferson wrote in 1787
And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348
We’ve moved so far from this country’s original ideals, and people like trump personify the final fall.
To think that Trump holds the same office as Jefferson is truly mind-blowing. How far we have fallen.
He is the opposite of every single virtue we have aspired to. He has none of the qualities a nation or a people should want in their leaders, and all of the ones you don’t want.
Professor Larry Lessig has outlined at length how elections are corrupt, and we’ve watched the courts get so corrupt, well that Citizens United, Loper Bright and Trump v. US 2024 were able to be ruled without intervention from a psychiatric ward.
The thing is, courts are an alternative to settling civil and social disputes with violence. And elections allow for the peaceful transfer of power (e.g. without violence).
So if both the courts and elections are subverted (they are) violence becomes the default way by which regimes are ousted and laws are changed.
The reason we tried to set up democracy in the first place was all the Game of Thrones shit. It seems the ownership class never got the memo how bad it gets.
They haven’t forgot, they’re just pushing it as far as they can, and a frustrated, exhausted, pacified populace has let it happen.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
–Frederick Douglas
You know, they should have been teaching interesting stuff like this in US public schools growing up. I would have been way more engaged. This was an intriguing read. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Soap box: free speech, ballot box: right to vote, jury box: right to nullify convictions of unjust laws, and cartridge box: right to fend against corrupt gov’t. I think society is close to the cartridge box more often than not.
Interesting read. Although:
the Anti-Defamation League noted that it is frequently used by anti-government extremists to justify violence to gain their ends on the grounds that all else has failed
Aah, right. I mean, I can see anyone using this to justify any violence.
