Having had the luxury of growing up in the most prosperous nation on earth, in the most prosperous time in history, it was easy to inculcate a civic mindset. Holding the door open for the fairer sex, coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, and obeying the officer instructing me to stay back from an accident scene were natural, and not occasions in which I’d have considered any alternative. When I grew up, and where I grew up, I don’t think I came to understand that “cutting” in line was a physical possibility until I’d entered public school, and even then it was a rarity worth getting excited about. This is the mindset much of America is steeped in, and it is primarily these to whom this essay is directed.
In the presence of a functioning government that takes reasonable care to uphold the liberties of the people, while balancing such against the disruptive forces of evil, it is natural, good, and warranted to become personally vested in the civic ethic in affirmative compliance with civil authorities. You pull over and stop for flashing lights. You send your child to school on the bus with a packed lunch and completed homework. You pay your taxes on time.
But what if you didn’t live under an authority that took care to respect your God-given rights? What if you lived under a regime such as North Korea? As it turns out you may do many of the same things, but you do them for very different reasons. In such a circumstance you must not become personally invested in the civic ethic, as the ethic of such civics are perverse and evil, and you have a responsibility to resist.
Do you pull over for flashing lights in North Korea? Yes, you probably do, but you don’t do it because you respect the authority of the state agent – you do it because you fear they may hurt you, or you may be involved in an accident if not. Are there circumstances when you may not pull over? Certainly yes, there are: if you expect that you will be taken by the state agent and disappeared might be one such example. Would it be wrong to not yield, or to run? No! Not in the least would it be morally objectionable to run from evil. However, it may not always be wise to do so.
Do you send your child to school on the bus with a packed lunch and completed homework? Well, maybe. If you expect the state will hurt you, or seize your child, then you probably do send them to school on the bus (though if you can get away with it you probably don't send them). Do you pack a lunch? Probably, though if you can expect the larger children to take it and hurt your child perhaps not. Do you make sure they’ve completed their homework? I suppose you probably must in a society such as North Korea's, but you’d do well to make sure you sit with your child as the homework is being completed so you can explain why the regime propaganda is incorrect, and evil, and that they must lie to it to avoid punishment. You don’t want your child indoctrinated as revolutionary fodder after all.
Do you pay your taxes? Probably not if you can help it – funding the illegitimate regime isn’t a particularly dissident thing to do – but of course any such decision must be weighed against practical matters such as the risk of being caught, and of punishment. However, it may be worth going out of your way to pay taxes if you're engaged in some higher form of resistance that you must not risk through such paltry, risky acts.
On incarceration, the North Korean national would be morally righteous in viewing such captivity not as a moral blight, but simply as a practical harm. There’s nothing unrighteous in being locked up by a tyrant for resistance. Though, there’s often not much utility in being locked up, either, so it’s usually best avoided.
What you are seeing here is the shaping of the dissident mindset. This mind is marked out by being one of overwhelmingly practical considerations. Of course, moral considerations still exist, but those moral considerations are ones that stem from personal faith and conviction, and not civic duty, or regime expectations. In fact, the civic duty of a citizen of the United States of America is not to a regime, but to the Constitution of the United States, and to their State – an ethic that explicitly calls out not just the right, but the duty to cast off or reform a government perverted to its own ends.
I write this because I believe will all my being that we are now entering such a time in America. We are under a an illegitimate regime – tyrannical and bent towards perpetuating only itself to its own ends – and you owe it no fealty whatsoever. I could cite a thousand reasons as to why, but I'll give just one that stands out among them: this federal government attempted to kill tens of thousands of presumed political enemies in politically unfriendly states through interfering with the supply of monoclonal antibodies citing “equity,” and lower vaccination averages, and has succeed in killing some unknowable, non-zero number already for this equity. A leading expert has predicted this number to rise into the millions in the coming years.
This federal (and, perhaps, state) government has sought total, arbitrary control over you, and as such it has adopted a settled and sedate design upon your very life, and those of your loved ones. As such I am asking you to begin to adopt the dissident mindset as I am. This means that the priorities and considerations in our actions, strategies, and daily lives must change: the question must now be can I over should I. We must seek to master this mindset, and the weapons of political warfare, so that we might undermine this regime with every breath we take from here on out.
The state has, in fact, become The Party in America, just as it had been in the USSR before us. The Party is a source of fear and punishment to the righteous, but to those who bring evil into this world it is a comfort. The Party is not an authority; The Party is an anti-authority. As such the cooperation with and obeying of The Party is a matter not of ethical consideration, but of a purely practical nature. Can you? What are the consequences if you do not? What are the consequences if you do? These are now the questions to ask.
The Party is not merely those in offices of power. The Party, much like The Matrix, has many potential agents by which illegitimate power is exercised, and the exercising of such power on behalf of The Party marks one out as The Party. This has ramifications for societal relations and discourse. What cause have you to obey the diktat of a fellow citizen attempting to enforce The Party line on you? You have no moral cause at all. Such a citizen is, in fact, seizing for themselves the instruments of violence of The Party to threaten you with. The dissident must not only disobey those who hold office, but every organ through which the illegitimate power of The Party is exercised – the assertion of such power makes the person wielding it an agent of The Party, inseparable from it, and must be regarded, as with The Party, as an adversary.
Once you have decided with conviction that the regime – The Party – is illegitimate it is time to start acting like it. This knowledge should color every action with agents of the regime. This should cause your default operating algorithm to switch from one of cooperation to one of disruption. The considerations in doing so are, once again, practical. Can I? Will I be punished? What are the consequences of not acting? All actions going forward become a game of asymmetric power – power that you must begin to seize back, as it is rightfully yours. The way to win such games are not to “try hard,” nor by adhering to a doctrine of sportsmanship. The way to win is to take the power however you can, whenever you can, and wherever you can, and to likewise inflict a loss upon the enemy.
We are not in a shooting war. We are in an information war. We must invent a new method of non-kinetic, ideological insurgency suited to our times. The doctrines and rules of warfare must be translated to this modern context of asymmetric political and information war that currently threatens to drown us as land-lovers amongst its swells. We must learn to swim in it like fish.