Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of "democracy."
Is your "democracy" (or republic) actually a Totalitarian State? That is, is it a "democracy" or "republic" in name only? To find out, take this quick quiz.
1. Does your government (federal, state and local) seize citizens' assets without due process? In other words, the rule of law is dead; the state is the law. If the answer is yes, Your "democracy" is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive "yes."
2. Does your government impose tyranny by complexity? If so, the average citizen lacks the wealth and connections needed to fight the seizure of private property without due process or recourse. In the USA, the answer is "yes," the government is a tyranny by complexity.
3. Is your government essentially "for sale" to wealthy elites? If the answer is yes, Your "democracy" is already a Totalitarian State--or more accurately, a fascist Totalitarian State.
4. Does your government spy on its entire citizenry? If the answer is yes, Your "Democracy" is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive "yes."
Well, you have your answer: the USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of "democracy." Please read the following links if you seek documentation of these systemic abuses of centralized power.
Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your Money--"Legally," Of Course (March 24, 2015)
Government in the USA is expropriating the private property of its citizenry without due process on a vast scale. I have provided documentation of this extraordinary reality many times over the years.
The various levels of government have a variety of "legal" (haha) means to steal your property without due process or recourse: civil forfeiture, absurdly expensive traffic fines that lead to jail sentences in the local debtors prison-gulag, forfeiture of assets, including land, should government agents find the marijuana plants they planted on your property (surprise!), the state steals your money in a bank account and notifies you after the fact that the state suspects you owe it taxes, though they have zero evidence of that claim--and on and on.
The courts place no limits on the central state's power, for they are simply one side of the same statist coin, and so we have a totalitarian kleptocracy that in true Orwellian fashion claims it is a functioning "democracy":
Criminalizing Poverty For Profit: Local Government's New Debtors Prisons (October 20, 2009)
"Upholding the Law" or Simply Theft by Other Means? (October 26, 2009)
Theft By Other Means II: When the State Steals Property, Is It Not Theft? (November 10, 2009
State Over-Reach: Stripmining the Citizenry for Fun and Profit (November 13, 2009)
Death of Donald P. Scott (Wikipedia); (source):
"In October of 1992, millionaire recluse Donald Scott and his bride of two months, Frances Plante Scott, lived in a storybook wooded valley in the mountains high above Malibu, Calif. Trails End Ranch is almost completely surrounded by state and Federal park land, and the neighboring government entities had made numerous attempts to buy out Scott and annex his property.
Stymied in their attempt to buy the Scott ranch, government officials hit on an alternative plan. Contending an officer had seen "marijuana plants growing under the trees" during a drug-seeking overflight, agents from various jurisdictions gathered quietly outside the locked gate to the ranch in the morning mists of Oct. 2, 1992.
After greedily studying the maps of the 200 acres of prime land they were told they'd be able to grab under federal asset seizure laws should they find as few as 14 marijuana plants, they cut the chain on the gate with bolt-cutters and raced a mile up the dirt drive to the ranch, complete with police dogs.
Frances Scott was in the kitchen, brewing her morning coffee, when dozens of men in plainclothes and brandishing guns -- no badges or warrants in evidence -- came swarming in. Understandably, she screamed for her husband, still asleep upstairs.
Donald Scott, 63, came hurrying down the stairs, a handgun held over his head. The officers shouted for him to lower his weapon. He did. They shot him dead."
Your government in action--completely legally, of course. I hope you approve. The irony of tragedies like this is that when young Americans faced similar "law enforcement" tactics in the late 1960s and early 1970s via COINTELPRO and other blatant violations of constitutional rights, we were written off as radical hippies who were a threat to something (certainly not democracy, but "something." Like perhaps an illegal war and an out-of-control secret government?)
Now that average citizens are facing similar tactics, they might find it interesting to study the COINTELPRO campaign of the FBI and other "law enforcement" officials against the anti-Vietnam War movement three decades ago.
According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:
1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.
I've published many first-hand accounts of the kleptocratic predation of the state of California. I invite you to read this carefully:
Welcome to the Predatory State of California--Even If You Don't Live There (March 20, 2012)
First the state steals the $1,343 and authorizes its parasitic predatory bag-"person" Wells Fargo Bank to steal another $100 for handling the state's theft.
A week or two later the citizen is notified of the theft as a fait accompli. Now the onus is on the law-abiding citizen to attempt to reclaim his own money from a distant, all-powerful Kafkaesque state agency. How can this be legal in a nation supposedly operating under rule of law?
Let's be very clear about what happens here in America on a daily basis:
1. The state (or other agency of government) steals citizen's money without due process.
2. Then, in a move akin to the executioner making the condemned buy his own death bullet, the state authorizes the "too big to fail" corporate bank which received billions in taxpayer bailouts to steal $100 from the citizen for the digital theft of his money by the state.
3. If the citizen needed that money to pay rent, buy medication to stay alive, etc., tough luck, Buckwheat, the state of California has your money before they notify you of the purported tax liability and now you enter the Kafkaesque insanity of pleading for a "refund" of your own money from an agency designed to thwart transparency and the reclamation of your own money.
So if you get evicted and are living in a cardboard box and pass away due to inability to buy your meds, hey, the State of California's political class and special interests could care less: they want your money and the rule of law doesn't apply to them.
If you understand that a purported tax liability is one issue and due process is another far more important issue, then you understand that we now live in an totalitarian nation where "rule of law" is only invoked at the convenience of the political and financial Elites for propaganda purposes.
The state of California has three basic methods of looting law-abiding citizens:
1. The old "you didn't pay a $25 filing fee, the fine is now $499 which we took from your bank account." Never mind you have the cancelled check endorsed by the state, proving they received it and cashed it; the Board of Kafkaesque Authority claims "we didn't get the check" and loots your account for the $499 (true story.)
2. "Fishing expeditions" where companies and citizens are dunned for taxes and fees they might owe, though there is no evidence they do in fact owe fees and taxes. I received many emails describing these fishing expeditions, for example, merely having a license is "evidence" that you must have unreported income.
3. Enforce all sorts of dubious claims, most importantly:
A. That anyone collecting a pension from work performed while residing in California is liable for California taxes on that pension, regardless of where they live;
B. Any income resulting from something invented in California must be reported as income in California, regardless of where the income is derived from or where the inventor now lives.
In other words, residency has no meaning. Any income remotely connected to California--for example, you had the idea while residing in the state--obligates you to pay California income tax on that idea in perpetuity.
You know the dominant emotion that the government at every level generates in law-abiding, taxpaying citizens? Fear. And for good reason.
Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 1: Our One Last Chance to Preserve the Bill of Rights (March 26, 2012)
Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 2: Law-Abiding Taxpayers Are Treated as Criminals While the Real Criminals Go Free (March 27, 2012)
"I received a letter last year that we owed the state of California's Franchise Tax Board $90,000 for taxes in the year 2008. We replied to the Franchise Tax board in a similar manner as RT stating that:
-- Did not reside in California in 2008
-- Did not file a State income tax return in California in 2008
-- Did not have any outstanding tax issues with California in 2008
-- Did no business in California in 2008
-- Owned no property in California in 2008
The CA Franchise Tax board responded by putting a lien on us in the state - fortunately, our banks and assets have no business in CA or I am certain our accounts would have been robbed as well.
After a great deal of uncertainty and angst, I found an accountant in CA who advised us that we needed to file a complete CA tax return for 2008 even though we did not owe any tax. We filed the return and received a response that we owed the state $625 to cover the State's collection fees. We paid the fee and within two weeks received a "refund" check for the $625.
On reflection, we felt as if we had been "held up" by some powerful gangsters and if it had not been for an honest tax accountant we would have suffered much financial damage."
Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 3: We had to Destroy Democracy in Order to Save It (March 28, 2012)
Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 4: "Consumer Protection" Just Another Federal Reserve Power Grab (March 29, 2012)
The Dodd-Frank bill, like Obamacare, is tyranny by complexity. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act, at 37 pages in length, and the 2,319-page monstrosity of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
If you still doubt the government is the tool of elites, please read this:
The Purchase of Our Republic (by Y. Falkson) (June 5, 2014)
Centralization and sociopathology are two sides of one coin: the central state:
Centralization and Sociopathology (May 21, 2013)
At the lower levels of the kleptocracy, employees of the government enrich themselves by legalizing their own looting.
Pay Our Pensions Or We'll Throw You in Jail: the Legalization of Looting (March 19, 2014)
"Improving Public Safety" and Theft By Other Means (January 15, 2010)
What happens to once-legitimate governments that devolve into totalitarian kleptocracies? They lose their legitimacy ("the Mandate of Heaven") and fall.
Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.