Top 5 Reasons I Stopped Caring About Politics

July 3rd, 2013

Peter Nolan

by Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Recently
by Paul Rosenberg: Trashing
the Bill of Rights: Where America Stands Now

When I was
young, I felt a need to understand politics, and I spent time studying.
But as time progressed, I received diminishing returns on that investment.
And in the past few years, I have given it up altogether.

These days,
my concern with politics is limited to things like these:

Who is making
war, and where?
Where is
the crime occurring in my area?
Are there
laws that will force me to move my businesses offshore?

Beyond that,
I’m really not interested. I see the headlines, but I seldom
read the stories. And I’m very happy saying, “I haven’t
looked into it,” when people ask my opinion on the day’s ‘news.’

Here’s
why:

#5: It eats
up a horrifying amount of time and energy

Seriously,
start counting the number of hours you spend on this stuff. How
many hours listening to political radio, watching political TV,
and reading political newspapers?

Then start
thinking about the intense energy you spend on it. We all have limited
reserves of energy; do you really believe that politics is the highest
and best use for yours? What about using your energy to build your
business? Or to nurture your children? Or to help a neighbor? There
must be a dozen things that are more important than obsessing
over the votes of congressmen or Supreme Court judges.

#4: It’s
an addiction

If imagining
yourself dumping politics makes you feel bad, you probably should
dump it.

Try it: Imagine
your life, devoid of all politics. How does it make you feel? Empty?
Forsaken?

The truth is
that millions of us are addicted to politics. People can’t
pull themselves away from it – it’s the script that runs in
the back of their minds 24/7.

The political
addiction is so bad that even strongly religious people spend more
time on politics than they do on God. Politics is the obsession
of the age.

#3: It doesn’t
change anything

There was a
popular bumper sticker in the 60s that read: If voting changed
anything, they’d make it illegal.

Let’s
be honest and admit that the bumper sticker was true. Even the best
examples – such as Reagan on the right or Obama on the left – have
failed to change much. Government is bigger than ever, the US government
is involved
in more wars than ever, and the
Constitution is being trashed in more ways than ever before.
This is progress?

And what of
the vaunted elections that they always promote? Personally, I think
Alvin Toffler was right when he called them “reassurance rituals.”
But, that aside, it is certain that elections are tightly controlled.
In the US, two parties firmly control who gets on a ballot and who
doesn’t. Everything is scripted; everything requires approval
of the party. (The situation is slightly less bad in Europe.)

And please
understand that ‘the government’ is far more than 600
faces in DC – it is millions of people in thousands of offices,
all pulling together to get more of your money and to spend it upon
themselves and their departments.

But even while
politics doesn’t actually change much, it does keep everyone
locked inside the system and servicing it. To illustrate,
here’s a quote I never could forget, and that I hope you’ll
never forget either:

Let them
march all they want, so long as they continue to pay their taxes.

– Alexander
Haig, 1982

So
long as everyone obeys the government, why should it care about
their complaints? Americans are nearly 100% obedient, so why should
the government bother changing anything at all? There is no need.

Read
the rest of the article

July
3, 2013

Paul
Rosenberg [send him
mail] is the CEO of Cryptohippie
USA, a leading provider of Internet privacy technologies. He
is the “outside the Matrix” author of FreemansPerspective.com,
a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence
and individual privacy. Visit us at www.freemansperspective.com
to read more articles like this one.