Thread by @RealSpikeCohen

I became a neocon after 9/11, and remained one for years.

I advocated for wars around the world, and infringements on our rights here.

I was fine with countless people being spied on, tortured, put in prison for life without trial, even killed, in order to...make me feel safe.

That's not how I said it. I talked about "spreading democracy", "protecting our way of life", and other nonsense.

But I just wanted to feel safe, and to punish anyone I thought was even remotely responsible for making me unsafe.

I now see how I was guided into that kind of thinking: government and corporate media fed me a steady stream of lies to fill me with fear and hatred, then they leveraged that fear and hatred to make me a willfully obedient subject.

Thankfully I broke away.

Since then, I've watched the same pattern play out many times:

- Government causes or worsens a crisis.

- They foster fear of the crisis to push for more power, money, and control.

- As the crisis worsens due to their actions, they blame the less-obedient among us.

They take more, things get worse.

More theft.
More cages.
More poverty.
More control.
More death.

Rinse and repeat forever.

It's a vicious, ever-worsening cycle, and we can end it for good when we do 2 things:

1. Acknowledge the pattern.

2. Decide not to obey.

That's it.

Now, that's very easy to write out, but not nearly as easy to do.

There are consequences to deciding not to obey.

I'm retired. I don't have to worry about my professional career.

After my MS diagnosis, nothing really scares me anymore.

Everyone's situation is different. You have to decide for yourself just how disobedient you want to be, and how overt you want to be about it, if at all.

But it's more than that.

Deciding not to obey means knowing that people are going to do things you strongly disagree with.

You don't have to like those choices or associate with them, but you have to tolerate their right to do so.

In order to decide not to obey, we have to be responsible and tolerant.

In order to not be subjects, we have to decide to be adults.

And when we do, they can't stop us.

As I've said many times, government power is illusory. They can't enforce what we won't tolerate.

When we decide not to obey, it's all over.

The wars, the lockdowns, the threats, the robbery, the oppression.

It all ends.

I've decided not to obey.

Who's with me?