Crimes of a Monster

Crimes of a Monster

“Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people,
or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of
fools?”— James Russell Lowell, 19th century American novelist

By John W. Whitehead
Real Independent News & Film
April 19, 2018

Let us not mince words.

We are living in an age of war profiteers.

We are living in an age of scoundrels, liars, brutes, and thugs.

Many of them work for the U.S. government.

We are living in an age of monsters.

Ask Donald Trump.

He knows all about monsters.

Any government that leaves “mothers and fathers, infants
and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air” is evil
and despicable, said President Trump, justifying his blatantly
unconstitutional decision (in the absence of congressional
approval or a declaration of war) to launch airstrikes against
Syria based on dubious allegations that it had carried out
chemical weapons attacks on its own people.

“They are crimes of a monster.”

If the Syrian government is a monster for killing innocent civilians,
including women and children, the U.S. government must be a
monster, too.

In Afghanistan, ten civilians were killed—including three children,
one an infant in his mother’s arms—when U.S. warplanes targeted
a truck in broad daylight on an open road with women and children
riding in the exposed truck bed.

They had been fleeing airstrikes on their village.

In Syria, at least 80 civilians, including 30 children, were killed
when U.S.-led air strikes bombed a school and a packed
marketplace.

In Yemen, a U.S. drone bombed a caravan of vehicles on their way
to or from a wedding, leaving “scorched vehicles and body parts …
scattered on the road.”

As investigative journalist Tom Engelhart documents, that 2013
bombing was actually the eighth wedding party (almost 300 civilians
dead) wiped out by the U.S. military, totally or in part, since the
Afghan War began in 2001.

“Keep in mind that, in these years, weddings haven’t been the only
rites hit,” notes Engelhart. “US air power has struck gatherings
ranging from funerals to a baby-naming ceremony.”

Then there was a Doctors without Borders hospital in Kunduz that
had 12 of its medical staff and 10 of its patients, including three
children, killed when a U.S. AC-130 gunship fired on it repeatedly.

Some of the patients were burned alive in their hospital beds.

Yes, on this point, President Trump is exactly right: These are,
indeed, "The Crimes of a Monster."

Unfortunately, this monster—this hundred-headed gorgon that
is the U.S. government and its long line of political puppets
(Donald Trump and before him Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.),
who dance to the tune of the military industrial complex—is
being funded by you and me.

The blood of innocent civilians is on our hands whether we choose
to recognize it or not.

It is our tax dollars at work here, after all.

Unfortunately, we have no real say in how the government runs,
or how our taxpayer funds are used.

We have no real say, but we’re being forced to pay through the
nose, anyhow, for endless wars that do more to fund the military
industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that
produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to
imprison us within its walls.

The only alternative to paying one’s taxes is jail, and there
are few people willing to go to jail for a principle anymore.

Still, while we may not have much choice in the matter of how our
taxes are used, we still have a voice and a vote, and it’s time the
American people made their voices and their votes heard about the
way our taxes are used and misused by this government of wolves
and thieves and liars.

Consider: we get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we
eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what
we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die.

Indeed, if there is an absolute maxim by which the federal
government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer
always gets ripped off.

This is true whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced
to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless
wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated
government agencies such as the National Security Agency with
its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits
against government officials who are found guilty of wrong
doing are paid by the taxpayer.

Not only are American taxpayers forced to “spend more on state,
municipal, and federal taxes than the annual financial burdens
of food, clothing, and housing combined,” but we’re also being
played as easy marks by hustlers bearing the imprimatur of the
government.

With every new tax, fine, fee and law adopted by our so-called
representatives, the yoke around the neck of the average American
seems to tighten just a little bit more.

Everywhere you go, everything you do, and every which way you
look, we’re getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided,
pick-pocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed
and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the
American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

Yet as Ron Paul observed, “The Founding Fathers never intended a
nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn
to the government.”

The overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the
increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the
United States government are all around us.

Warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private phone and email
conversations by the NSA; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes;
shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted
out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking
to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending;
militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps;
privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans;
fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans’
private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles
of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Meanwhile, the three branches of government (Executive,
Legislative and Judicial) and the agencies under their
command—Defense, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security,
Justice, Treasury, etc. have switched their allegiance to the
Corporate State with its unassailable pursuit of profit at all
costs and by any means possible.

As a result, we are now ruled by a government consumed with
squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly
unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

As with most things, if you want to know the real motives
behind any government program, follow the money trail.

When you dig down far enough, you quickly find that those who
profit from Americans being surveilled, fined, scanned, searched,
probed, tasered, arrested and imprisoned are none other than the
police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons
which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture
the weapons, equipment and prisons used by the American police
state.

It gets worse.

Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power
and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other
means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through
taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised
as tolls, tickets and penalties.

The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally
defraud Americans have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel
legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture schemes, the
modern-day equivalent of highway robbery, astronomical health
care “reform,” and costly stimulus packages.

Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the
government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations,
military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated
workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons,
biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons,
and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the
fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of
those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

Those football stadiums that charge exorbitant sums for
nosebleed seats?

Our taxpayer dollars subsidize them.

Those blockbuster war films?

Yep, we were the silent investors on those, too.

Same goes for the military equipment being peddled to local police
agencies and the surveillance cameras being “donated” to local
governments.

In other words, in the eyes of the government, “we the people,
the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more
than indentured servants.

We’re slaves.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes
to the government’s claims on your property and your money,
you’re not free.

You’re not free if the government can seize your home and your
car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes.

You’re not free if government agents can freeze and seize your
bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect”
wrongdoing.

And you’re certainly not free if the IRS gets the first cut of your
salary to pay for government programs over which you have no
say.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described
by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and
property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the
American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property
by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War.

As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led
to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its
own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in
1894.

Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional,
and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived.

Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax
the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a
constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a
permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to
the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913.

Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000
could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding
$500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance
its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld
the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to
pay their taxes.

All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy
taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly, wage
endless wars that make no one safer but fatten the bank accounts
of the defense contractors—with little thought for the plight of its
citizens.

Somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy
has given way to kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves),
and representative government has been rejected in favor of a
kakistocracy (a government run by the most unprincipled citizens
that panders to the worst vices in our nature: greed, violence,
hatred, prejudice and war) ruled by career politicians, corporations
and thieves—individuals and entities with little regard for the rights
of American citizens.

The American kleptocracy continues to suck the American people
down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution
is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry
is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal,
spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow
madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and
the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and
the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight.

It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one
particular president.

It has been a process, one that began long ago and continues in the
present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered
the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

By playing on our prejudices about those who differ from us,
capitalizing on our fears for our safety, and deepening our distrust
of those fellow citizens whose opinions run counter to our own,
the powers-that-be have effectively divided us into polarized,
warring camps incapable of finding consensus on the one true
menace that is an immediate threat to all of our freedoms:
The U.S. government.

We are now the subjects of a militarized, corporate empire
in which the vast majority of the citizenry work their hands
to the bone for the benefit of a privileged few.

Adding injury to the ongoing insult of having our tax dollars misused
and our so-called representatives bought and paid for by the
moneyed elite, the government then turns around and uses the
money we earn with our blood, sweat and tears to target, imprison
and entrap us, in the form of militarized police, surveillance
cameras, private prisons, license plate readers, drones, and
cell phone tracking technology.

All of those nefarious government deeds that you read about
in the paper every day: those are your tax dollars at work.

It’s your money that allows for government agents to spy on your
emails, your phone calls, your text messages, and your movements.

It’s your money that allows out-of-control police officers to burst
into innocent people’s homes, or probe and strip search motorists
on the side of the road, or shoot an unarmed person.

And it’s your money that leads to innocent Americans across the
country being prosecuted for innocuous activities such as raising
chickens at home, growing vegetable gardens, and trying to live
off the grid.

Just remember the next time you see a news story that makes
your blood boil, whether it’s a child being kicked out of school
for shooting an imaginary arrow, or a homeowner being threatened
with fines for building a pond in his backyard, remember that it
is your tax dollars that are paying for these injustices.

So what are you going to do about it?

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is
enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an
illegitimate government.

They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was
slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which
refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people.

Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would
follow.

Unfortunately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America:
The War on the American People, in the 200-plus years since we
established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and
number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the
accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler
doing as they please.

Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights
under a government which demands that the people march in
lockstep with its dictates.

And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching
or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up
to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?

What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned
dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how
it will be spent?

What if, instead of quietly sending in our checks, hoping vainly
for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own
and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we
refuse to support?

If we don’t have the right to decide what happens to our hard-
earned cash, then we don’t have very many rights at all.

If the government can just take from you what they want, when
they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim
to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.

This was the case in the colonial era, and it’s the case once again.

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