It's funny how people will make excuses for their own actions and inactions, but won't admit the truth.

If you start pushing back on that your circle of friends begins to shrink -- and quite quickly at that.

But it's not because you're wrong -- it's because people are uncomfortable with reality, and you're refusing to put away the "real" card.  You're removing the Facebook patina of perfection, of hedonism, of narcissism and self-delusion.

What am I talking about?  The fact that each and every one of you reading this, along with myself, consent to all of the below list each and every day:

• Every single act of felony assault when a cop in Ferguson points a weapon at a peaceful protester and is not immediately arrested and charged with the crime of assault with a deadly weapon.
• Every single act of altering the timing of yellow lights to generate intentional bogus violations that cannot be evaded due to the laws of physics and, when you are entrapped by happenstance of your presence, you must pay not a legitimate fine for misbehavior but instead literally have funds extorted from you.
• The violations of your Fourth Amendment rights on the road, in the airport and on the sidewalk in NY, Texas, Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere.
• The refusal of our government to recognize your fundamental right to life, that is the right to self defense through the keeping and bearing of the only device known to man that is effective in that regard, everywhere and anywhere without permit, license or other constraint up until you actually commit a criminal act by misusing same.
• The bankster fraud games in Jefferson County Alabama that are still costing people doubled (or more) water and sewer bills and will forever into the future, featuring court-proved acts of bribery.
• The bankster fraud games on Wall Street (including selling securities they self-described internally as "vomit" to people just like you through their pension funds and elsewhere) that caused the housing bubble and subsequent collapse.  Despite literal trillions of intentionally-bogus securities being sold and millions of Americans being dispossessed of their homes and personal wealth not one bankster went to prison for any of it.
• The bankster fraud games on Wall Street that are still going on with derivatives, high-frequency trading and more, all of which has the effect of counterfeiting the currency you carry and spend on a daily basis -- in effect committing what should be prosecuted as felony grand theft against you and counterfeiting against the nation each and every day.
• Hospitals billing people $10,000 for a $100 test without disclosing the price before the test is given, in many cases because the patient is unconscious and thus can't give meaningful consent, then suing to collect a ridiculously bogus charge.
• Hospitals billing a woman $60,000 for two $100 vials of scorpion anti-venom while preventing you from getting that anti-venom from anywhere else through threat of criminal penalty.
• Being forced to buy an "insurance" product (Obamacare) that isn't actually insurance under threat of government force and confiscation of your funds (theft again.)
• Being sold ownership in property that you never actually own as you must rent it forever from the local and state government, and despite this fraud entire industries continue to use the word "sell."
• Having your constitutionally-guaranteed freedom to travel trampled by demands that you be "licensed" to simply move your person and personal property by the ordinary means of the day.
• Having your 4th Amendment right to be left alone trampled by a government agency that lied directly to Congress about what they were doing, falsified the justification for same (that it "caught terrorists" when in fact it actually caught none), got caught in both lies (which is a criminal offense, incidentally) and yet nobody went to prison nor has the program been stopped and the data collected under said false pretense been purged.
• Having 3-4% of your purchasing power stolen each and every year on a compounded basis on average -- sometimes more, some less, but never, not even once since 1980, has it not happened for as little as three consecutive months.
• Ridiculous bloat in the public schools you fund such that half or more of the money spent, and thus a huge chunk of your property taxes (which you pay either in rent or directly if you "own") is literally stolen from you and given to people who perform no necessary service.  In other words, you willingly allow yourself to be robbed each and every year.
• Ridiculous bloat in Universities such that your children get robbed again to the tune of 3, 4, 5 even 10x what it should cost to obtain a "post-secondary" education.
• Injury upon injury is also heaped upon your (adult) children, in concert with the previous point, through the inability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, declaring by statute that this "obligation" has literally the same status as child support before the law.
• A Federal Government structure that, in concert with the above and more, literally steals about 2/3rds of the funds that flow into it via taxes and doles them out as patronage.  In other words you have 2/3rds of any taxes you pay being not put to the use claimed but instead are stolen, and all of this is done only because the government implies the threat of using guns against you if you refuse to pay - an act that by any reasonable measure is a felony committed against every one of you.

Need I go on?  I could literally write a book on the outrages, frauds and thefts you suffer on a daily basis.  Hell, I have -- I've written close to 8,500 such examinations and instances since 2007.  Through all of this and more over the last decade you've seen your cost of living go up dramatically while the median family income has not improved at all.  Not only has the technological advancement of the last 10 years, which should have resulted in you obtaining more purchasing power been stolen the theft didn't stop there; it is in fact even greater!

We all know what the counter-argument is: I voted for someone and he or she may have even promised to change some of this, but didn't.  What am I supposed to do about it?

Ah, that's the excuse you see.  And it's probably a good one -- certainly it is in your mind, and it might even be objectively.

But that doesn't change the fact that you consented and continue to consent each and every day!

Here's the thing -- even if the alternative(s) involve either intentionally driving yourself into privation or taking illegal action you still consented.  That the alternative is distasteful enough for you to refuse to act on it, irrespective of the reason, doesn't change the fact that you have given consent to all of the above and will do so again tomorrow.  It does not change the fact that each and every morning you arise from your sleep and once again give that consent.  You did so intentionally this morning, you will do so of your own free will tomorrow, and you will continue to do so in all probability every day next week, month and year.

Do remember that in 1776 the alternatives to that very same consent -- an act of theft via taxation for the purpose of grift that was in fact less than 1/10th of what we consent to today -- were very illegal.  In fact the alternatives to that consent involved committing acts of vandalism, intentional destruction and theft of other people's property, arson and more, up to and including murder and treason.

You stand here in this place called America this morning because a bunch of people heard all the arguments you've raised about how they really should just go along with it because despite protesting via voting, writing letters to the editor, posting bills on trees and other forms of dissent they weren't getting anywhere, and the remaining alternatives that were available to them had potential (indeed, even likely) costs that were too high.  

Privation, prison, even death.

They did it anyway.

Many of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and those who took actions subsequent to it in fact suffered privation, imprisonment or both and some of them died.

This is not advocacy for violence, by the way.

It is, however, an insistence that you, personally, each and every day, admit that you, personally, are consenting to every one of the above outrages and more because you refuse to stop them.  It is an insistence that you be honest with yourself, your children, your friends and neighbors.  It is an insistence that you not call something rape of one's dignity, civil rights and finances when in fact what happened is consensual sex.  It is an insistence that you hold your head high and take credit for what you have in fact done and allowed to continue, each and every day.

Honesty is the first requirement of a civilized and rational people.

Are you ready to be honest with yourself today, or will you instead choose the worst sort of lie -- lying to yourself and those closest to you?