Thinking readers (people), I know many of you are dismayed at the spectacle of watching the country careening towards a veritable billionaires-funded total-information-awareness police state oligarchy, while millions and millions of people are totally unaware, indifferent, or supportive of it.
There are a thousand reasons for this, but those reasons are actually not that much different than anything that has happened throughout the entire history of human civilization.
People have always been divided by social stratification, when it comes to their worldview... No matter how brutal, corrupt, and inhumane the system, those who benefit the most from it will usually support it (unless they are people of principle, or have the heart and mind of a rebel).
When it comes to the masses (all of us, myself included), we are not much different than the masses of the Middle Ages. We are still controlled and manipulated through superstition, propaganda, induced economic insecurity, and bread and circuses.
Throughout human history, those have been almost fool-proof tools of control available to the ruling classes of the day. This was true 1,000, 750, 500, or 100 years ago.
Finally, as you read this, whether you're in a nice office, surrounded by nice environment, and nice people, or whether you're at the library, or at a café in Paris using an iPad, or in a small and crowded room in one of the fast-spreading ghettos, any thought of taking on "the system" seems not only overwhelming, but impossible; too daunting to even contemplate.
Don't feel too bad about that either. Actually, in the face of a seemingly omnipotent corrupt system, it is normal to become an apologist of it; to try to position yourself in a way that allows you to survive (and sometimes thrive) within it; to numb your mind with fantasy, with reality TV, and sport-watching, with all sort of entertainment.
For those who have fallen through the cracks, well, it is obvious why you've lost hope and become invisible and impotent against the brutality of the system. After all, nobody can blame you since once you fall off the hamster wheel and stumble into homelessness and abject poverty, you become one of the most hated and derided human beings on earth... But if there is any consolation, know that a lot of that hate from your fellow human beings is driven by (induced) fear.
As the middle class continues to be crushed (by careful design), apprehension and fear spreads through its ranks, and the system (through propaganda) helps channel that fear into contempt and anger against the most destitute people in society. In a way, they don't even realize what they're doing...
The rebel knows all this; it's as if this historical awareness and understanding has been passed from generation to generation. Yes, when you, a "normal person," watch the rebel do what she does, you may even wonder about her mental sanity.
You know that the system is too powerful, that people are too apathetic, that it is very hard to motivate the masses to rise in opposition to tyrannical oppression because people usually don't react unless something terrible happens to them (lacking a developed sense of empathy). That "at this point" because things are not really "that bad yet," it makes more sense to play along, to not make too many waves, to keep your head down. That's normal...
The rebel cares not one whit about any of that. The rebel cares not about the chances of "winning," or about being popular and accepted and fitting in, especially when that fitting-in relates to corrupt and tyrannical systems.
Once the rebel becomes aware (awakens) of injustice, corruption, oppression, the rebel rebels; it is in his nature. The rebel doesn't stand up against the system only after having ensured popular support. The rebel stands up against the system by himself, if he has to; he would stand up in front of one thousand tanks if that's what it takes.
The rebel doesn't try to look the other way when he sees others being oppressed, victimized and abused; to the contrary, the rebel seeks to empathize with them, to "feel their pain," to feel the same sense of injustice those who have been brutalized by the system, feel. That fuels his resolve...
Something else that fuels his resolve is to witness the spectacle of watching people like Pete Peterson, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, James Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Henry Paulson, James Clapper, Keith Alexander, and the 10,000 others of their ilk, and the myriad of think tanks and propaganda outfits, and the political establishments of both corrupt parties, control the levers of power.
These shifty, fast-talking, corporatist hucksters, behind ALEC, and stand-your-ground, and union busting, and for-profit total-information-awareness police state, and MIC/Surveillance profiteering, and induced "austerity," and so-called "double-tap" drone strikes (a war crime), and the tear-down of democracy, of the public sector in favor of crass privatization and profiteering, and the media conglomerate/propaganda machine...
The rebel doesn't rebel in opposition to such a debased, crass, and rapacious greed and debauchery because he feels he has any chance at removing them from power; the rebel rises up in opposition to that type of corporatist parasites because it is the right thing to do.
And so the rebels will keep on doing what they do; the apologists and the unawares will do their thing, as they have always done in every era--until the tide turns.
For each tyranny that has risen, it has always been taken down by a united people. Always!
P.S. Lately I feel the need to write these little notes for the benefit of system apologists, just in case... I advocate for people coming together in peaceful opposition to the rising total-information-awareness for-profit/corporate-controlled/owned/run police state. My position is that all we need is to revive a real progressive movement (free of the corrosive and paralyzing influence/cooption of corrupt third-way Democratic party establishment) by becoming highly focused, organized, strategic, and cohesive. I do not advocate violence or law-breaking of any kind, and will never do.