Ignore the happy face it presents: Coercive state points a gun at you

By David McElroy · October 24, 2013

Have you ever heard of a “trusty” in a prison? It’s an inmate who earns the trust of his jailers and is given special privileges. Some are even allowed outside the prison for certain tasks. Before court rulings ended even more elaborate systems, some states — Mississippi, most notably — had elaborate hierarchies in which some inmates were even trusted with guns to guard others while they worked in the fields.

Although the trusty might be given certain privileges, he’s still an inmate. He has to “be good” or he’ll lose his privileges and be punished. He’s not a free man doing a job. He’s an incarcerated man doing something to make his time behind bars more bearable.

I’d like to suggest that most of us in this country are trusties, but we’ve been in this prison so long that we don’t even realize the bars are there.

It’s accepted as obvious among many of us that “government is force,” because without force or the threat of force, governments couldn’t compel anyone to obey their orders. So every piece of legislation is ultimately backed up by a gun that that state points at you.

As long as you’re obedient, you won’t directly see the gun — and this seems to confuse some people. When I mentioned to a friend a couple of years ago that the state is nothing but force backed up with a gun, he seemed genuinely surprised.

“I don’t see any gun,” he protested.

That friend is a very bright and honest guy, but he comes at politics from a progressive left point of view. It seems to me that most progressives have learned to associate the state with “fixing everybody’s problems” and pursuing “equality.” They see the state as generally good, because it’s the instrument of coercion that they favor using to change the world in ways they approve of.

But if you don’t see the gun, you’re not looking at reality. Behind every order you get from politicians and government employees of all types, there is the unspoken ultimate threat: “If you don’t comply with me, I have the guns to force you to obey.”

Do you really suppose most people would obey a bunch of politicians if that threat weren’t there?

A friend was having a discussion on Facebook Tuesday night and he mentioned that the requirement for us all to buy health insurance was ultimately backed up by a gun. The person with whom he was talking called that assertion “plain ridiculous” and said that there was simply a “legal penalty” for not buying the insurance. He couldn’t make the connection between the “legal penalty” and the gun, so let’s do it for him.

If you refuse to purchase the insurance you’re ordered to purchase, you will be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you will eventually be told to report to jail. If you refuse to report to jail, representatives of the government will come looking for you with guns. If you refuse to co-operate (or if you resist their aggression), you might very well be shot if you keep resisting.

Every order from government is ultimately backed by this aggressive use of force, but we’re so conditioned to obey that it rarely reaches that point. Some people obviously even forget why we’re obeying.

We’re taught from a young age that it’s patriotic to obey laws. One of the biggest purposes of government schools is to instill obedience to government. As long as this lesson is learned by the vast majority of people, the population is manageable. If the only people not obeying are criminals and those who don’t believe they have a moral obligation to obey, it’s relatively easy to control those malcontents in one way or another.

All government is force. Period. The ultimate backing behind any order from a government is a gun (or some similar weapon of force). If government didn’t use — or threaten to use — such force, its orders would be ignored.

Government has a self-given monopoly on the use of force — and that’s how it controls you. But it prefers to soften your mind, get your co-operation and turn you into a trusty, so you never realize what’s going on.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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