Power Crushes Your Neck

Hey, anyone got a cheeseburger?

I’m a bit of a freak, so I don’t mind if my neck is being stepped on. So long as it’s a woman wearing military boots, and not some jacked-up washed-out loser with a badge. Hey, if I WANT a boot on my neck, that’s MY PREROGATIVE! The greatest disease of the modern era is this obsession with having another man (or woman, we’re gender positive here) tell you what to do. Especially a person who doesn’t even know us!

I find all of these laws, countries, and whatever else entirely disgusting. Not the good kind of disgust either, but the kind that makes you vomit. You cannot consent to the society you are born into; you can only make the best of what you got. The violence of the mob, the fascist, the tankie, or whatever else is imposed upon you because they deem themselves “legitimate.”

If they were more honest, I’d probably be less disgusted. They enshrine all the majesty into their systems of power. Courts, businesses, parliament, the senate. All of it has the pretty shine of gold, but behind it stands the long-dicked barrel of a gun.

At least that’s how I see it. Your own thoughts, feelings, and whatever else are disregarded. I know that the followers of representative democracy would say that you can influence the government. Even if I believed that my “representatives” were actually human and not slugs wearing flesh, my participation in their democracy doesn’t mean I’m “free.”

Yeah, there are famous philosophers who already talked about all this shit. So what can I offer? I’ll just give you my own stories, and you can decide yourself if I’m just some whiny spoiled Canadian brat (I am) or if I have something of substance to say (Editor’s Note: I do.)

If only I didn’t live in Canada. My suffering is immediately discounted because I live in the “bastion of liberal democracy.” Maybe if I got breast implants, lived in North Korea, and wore tight dresses on Joe Rogan, people would take me more seriously. Unfortunately, Joe Rogan would probably publicly execute me on his podcast.

Now that I’ve pushed that to the forefront of your mind, let me tell you what I’ve witnessed. I was morally assaulted by a police officer in the small town I live in. Crazy, I know. I was trying to get to work, as every good citizen does, when he stopped me.

He told me I had “avoided” his “RIDE program” and that he was wondering why. I was kind of pissed off, since I work nights and this guy was holding up my night. I also didn’t avoid his program. My car was parked on the street facing west, but I had to go east. Up the road was his little pathetic checkpoint, and I just turned down a road to go east. The sirens appeared behind me, and I groaned immediately. I guess to some bootlicking freak they’d say he was “just trying to keep the community safe.”

So I told him to blow it out his behind. Just because your checkpoint is up ahead doesn’t mean I need to go through it. He didn’t seem to understand. Most likely because most good little boys and girls never dare talk back to the boys in blue! Actually, maybe it’s good I don’t live in North Korea. I prefer not being worked to death on rice fields.

Anyways, due to the horrible power imbalance of the police in Ontario, he was able to force me to “blow into his device.” He seemed to get great enjoyment out of a man wrapping his lips around his little device. I guess it was a nice power trip for him. If I told him no, I would have been arrested on a DUI charge. I can’t go back to prison!

The worst part of it all was that he was well within his “legal power” to do that. Granted, that never stopped the police in Canada before. Hey, what happened to all those missing Indigenous women? I’m sure we should probably check out the hard drives of all provincial and RCMP officers operating in those areas. Unfortunately, us lowborn citizens could never dare investigate the police. That’s the police’s job!

I’ve had other interactions with them as well. Each time, they seem very surprised somebody is “talking back” to them. I think it’s telling that in our “liberal democracies” the police seemingly have so much power. At least in Canada and the United States. At least we can sue our cops up here when they mess up.

So, did his power crush my neck? Like a Darth Vader grip? Not really. I was able to carry on with my day. I also complained, and the local police department actually stopped setting up RIDE programs near my house. They had done so almost every day, and it was getting annoying. The “bar” that is near me (that is near where their RIDE program ends) closes at 9 p.m. Just saying. I think all the local town drunks were cleared out by 11 p.m.

When I mention this story to people, the division is pretty clear. Some people are sympathetic to the fact I wasn’t able to buy Wendy’s because of that jackboot. Other people tell me I’m overreacting. Hey, if I agreed to the coercive power structure, I’d be all for it!

The very nature of our society creates the “inners” and the “outers.” This obsession with legitimacy creates an asymmetry of power. If you’re not an inner, you’re an outer. All of the disenfranchised people, from immigrants, minorities, guys who dress up as dogs for their fetish, and anyone who is “not the rulers” suffer.

Imagine you’re some hillbilly that doesn’t wipe. You’re cutting a tree down on your property. You have no idea how things are “supposed to work.” The only thing you care about is cutting down your damned tree. Then some guy shows up and tells you that you don’t have the right permits.

Meanwhile, the State turns a blind eye to the inners bulldozing a forest to build…I don’t know, a giant data centre. Oh, if the slob is “partying with kids,” he gets the book thrown at him for some popcorn headlines. If a wealthy businessman parties with kids? Let’s vote him into office.

The same goes for my own story. I was speeding through town once. The cop pulled me over, and when they read my licence, they told me that I was free to carry on. She explained that because I live in town, she wouldn’t give me a ticket. Presumably, she only tickets those from out of town.

I was the “inner” in that situation, but is that truly fair? Well, I didn’t complain. I never agreed with the speeding laws anyways. GET OUT OF THE WAY KIDS!

So how can we claim something is legitimate when the system itself twists and turns its own ugly head to avoid the rotten truth? Its own power will crush its own neck and deform it in such a way that it’ll be unrecognizable. Unless you’re some authoritarian love boy, of course.

Laws are applied with such a casual disregard in our country that I’m surprised we even have a country. Yes, Canada Still Exists, but can any state last forever? Are any of its laws or moralistic meanderings actually sacred? I think it’s about as sacred as pissing your pants after you’ve drunk too much cheap gin.

The alternative is what, then? Some sort of anarcho-commune where everyone makes sweet delicious love and proclaims themselves free of all capitalistic thought? I don’t think it’s realistic. Even though I might love philosophical anarchism, I think we can all agree that it’s probably not going to happen. Humans love hierarchy too much; it’s impossible to avoid.

So, stop playing by the rules. Stop imposing some moralistic philosophy on yourself that prevents you from living. Stop thinking we’re animals capable of higher reasoning. Tell the cop to blow it, even if he has the authority to make you suck on his device. Even if he can coerce you through violence, you’re still letting him know that you aren’t a timid little animal. You’re a person with agency and adulthood, so take that!

I know some people might think I’m, like, a communist or something. The last communist died years ago. It’s over. We gotta get over the bygone era of what could have been. It’s been, like, almost two hundred years, guy. It’s probably time for us all to move on to something new. Something that balances the coercive force of power with the will of the individual.

Power is illegitimate without consent. That much I agree with. How much consent is the true debatable thing for me. I think if you have the actual engine in place to vote, legislate, and debate legislation in a public forum…then maybe that wouldn’t be so coercive. I’m sure many would disagree with me. At the end of the day, it’s still enforcing the will of the majority on the minority. How is that fair for the minority?

No matter what, we can’t get rid of that power imbalance. Just by the nature of the majority, they will always enforce their will on the minority. Be it with violence or laws. Sure, maybe if we forced anarchist literature down the throats of our youth for a couple generations, we could solve that. Why would a state ever do that, though? Nothing ever propagates its own destruction unless it’s something that feels good. The last I checked, states don’t feel anything.

There is one hope. A genuine hope that I do have. With the rise of technology, we might actually have a shot at direct democracy. Of course, we’d need to solve the rising problems of literacy. I don’t think I’d want some guy who can barely read voting on legislation beside me. We should probably aim to get our literacy rates back up to 99%.

I used to joke around and ask, “What the hell are the political scientists even doing?” All I see from the political nerds I know is them debating the same tired old bullshit with each passing year. Communism, fascism, autocracy, liberalism. Come on, guys, the people who invented that stuff didn’t even know what an air fryer was.

Liberalism? Sucks. Communism? Sucks. Fascism? That really sucks on police devices. Autocracy? Maybe if I was in charge. I really admire the people who can see everything going on and just shrug. They might actually be the smartest people in the room. They’ll gladly listen to a cop; that way, they can go buy their Baconator without being held up for just long enough that the place closes.

I could really go for Wendy’s right about now.