The Slippery Slope Toward Tyranny

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert, and today's date is 04/11/2020. And we are in the midst of the COVID nineteen crisis still. Things seem to be lightening up a little bit, but there's still this kind of sense of government overreach.

The government is is turning the screws, and I'm not talking about necessarily the federal government. It seems like local governments are turning the screws a little bit harder on on what they can do. And in the midst of this, I thought it fitting to pull an old book off the shelf. It's a it's a book I haven't read in a while, but it's one that I think we can get a lot from from here. I'm gonna read a segment from it to you now.

It's from a chapter titled arrest, and it reads, how do people get to this clandestine archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it, but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination, And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists, the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They knew nothing, and they've never heard of the archipelago as a whole or of any one of its innumerable islands. Those who go to the archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers.

Those who, like you and me dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest. Arrest. Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you. That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity. The universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it.

Each of us is the center of the universe, and that universe is shattered when they hiss at you. You are under arrest. If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, both of the most sophisticated and veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience, can gasp out only, Me? What for?

And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer. Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another. We have been happily born, or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way down the long, crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding.

But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, 200 yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well disguised doors and gates in all these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one. And all of a sudden, the fateful gate swings open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor, but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack. And the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.

That's all there is to it. You are arrested, and you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamb like bleat. Me? What for? That's what arrest is.

It's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality. That's all. And neither for the first hour, nor for the first day, will you be able to grasp anything else. Except that in your desperation, the fake circus moon will blink at you. It's a mistake.

They'll set things right. And everything which is now comprised in the traditional, even literary image of an arrest will pile up and take shape, not in your own disordered memory, but in what your family and your neighbors in your apartment remember. The sharp nighttime ring or the rude knock at the door, the insolent entrance of the unwiped jackboots of the unsleeping state security operatives, the frightened and cowed civilian witness at their backs. What function does this civilian witness serve? The victim doesn't even dare think about it, and the operatives don't remember.

But that's what the regulations call for. And so he has to sit there all night long and sign in the morning. For the witness jerked from his bed, it is torture too, to go out all night after night to help arrest his own neighbors and acquaintances. And that text is the first two pages of a book called Gulag Archipelago, and that's by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And this book has gotten a lot of press over the past few years.

It was brought back into the public spotlight by professor Jordan Peterson. And the story of Solzhenitsyn is one that I think we all need to take note of. He was a Soviet Army officer who fought in World War II, and then for reasons beyond his explanation, he and his men were placed under arrest. Could have been because they were exposed to too many Western ideas. But he spent years upon years in a place called the Gulag Archipelago.

And then he was forced into exile into the West where he wrote this book, which professor Jordan Peterson describes as a scream of rage. This book was something that discredited anybody who was trying to claim that the system of socialism and communism in the Soviet Union was somehow superior to the West. People couldn't claim that after this book. Solzhenitsyn gave in gory detail what happens in those types of societies. It's a book you should all read, particularly during this time.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because, well, we're in a time and place where there is an increasing amount of government overreach, like I said at the beginning of this. Currently, the mayor of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti, is actually giving rewards to people who snitch on their neighbors and on local businesses who are not practicing social distancing. Now listen, I understand there's a lot of people who are scared of the coronavirus, COVID-nineteen. I understand that we want to keep people from getting sick. But when it comes down to arresting people for walking in a park, or handcuffing a man in front of his six year old daughter because they were playing softball on a softball field.

That's where I think we all need to take a step back and take a look at what's really going on here. Because what's happening in Los Angeles and in other cities across this country is an extremely slippery slope. You see, this constitutional republic that we're all in, and I've said this before, is still an experiment. We've been in existence for what? Just around two fifty years, right?

The concepts of giving your oath to a constitution rather than to a government or to a person is is very new. It's never happened before in history until it happened here in The United States. The concept of having a bill of rights that limits government, that is still extremely new. The baseline for us as humans is authoritarian. If you look at history, if you look at the way the world has been since human history began, the vast majority of that consisted of autocratic, ruthless governments that suppressed the citizenry, that kept the citizenry from doing things.

And yeah, sure, COVID-nineteen is dangerous. It's deadly. What's more deadly, what's killed more people throughout history since the dawn of time, is government overreach. It is the oppression of governments against their own people. It happened prior to the twentieth century, but most significantly, it happened on an industrial level during the twentieth century in places like Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea, and it could happen here.

You might not think it could. You might think that somehow our freedom of press and our right to gather is somehow going to keep that from happening. You might think that our increased communication levels across social media are going to keep that from happening. But the one thing that truly keeps this from happening, that truly keeps The United States from turning into hell on earth, from the greatest country ever to exist in the history of man is us. It's us as citizens.

And when I start seeing citizens applauding the idea of turning people in for doing nothing more than walking together in a park, or not maintaining their social distance on the street, or not wearing an article of clothing to a store. That is an extremely bad sign. We're not too far off from authoritarian government. And it might not happen at the federal level. You know, maybe people are are too skeptical of the federal government, too skeptical of president Trump for for good reasons or bad reasons.

But in this federal system that we have, it can happen on a state level. It can even happen on a municipal level. And I don't think anybody's thinking about that right now. A lot of us are just too concerned with our own safety and too concerned with how they're going to take political shots at the president or the administration, too concerned with what the media is telling them and taking that at face value. And we're willing because of our fear to give up those rights and to turn our fellow citizens in.

I'm sure there's a lot of you out there that disagree with me on this. And I have avoided wearing my politics on my sleeve for a long time in the midst of doing this. But there comes a time when you can't. I can't sit here and tell you that I believe in America, that I believe in freedom, that I believe in the Bill of Rights, that I believe in the oath that I took when I enlisted in the Marine Corps, without talking to you about my concerns as to what's going on right now. The walking back of our individual rights and our own individualism.

If you've been paying attention, this has been happening for quite a while. University campuses have become increasingly restrictive. City governments, mainly in New York and Los Angeles, they've been issuing laws that have curbed individual freedom for quite a long time now. And what this brings to mind is an old adage that I heard a long time ago when I started studying politics. And that is that all politics is local.

A lot of people like to pay attention to these presidential elections. They think that that's the one that counts. Right? But the people you're putting in charge of your city, the people you're putting in charge of your county, the people you're putting in charge of your state, they have far more impact on you than what you realize. Those people, the people who take over in these situations, yeah, they can change the laws on a dime.

They can restrict you more so than the federal government can in many capacities. Because the federal government raises more flags when it tries to do so. When your town or your city tries to do this, there's not as many red flags that get put up. Mainly because people aren't paying as much attention. So I'll say this again, and I've said it over and over and over again on this podcast.

You know, the veteran community is the sleeping giant in this country. You are capable of so much. You're capable of leadership. You're capable of getting things done. You are capable of looking at an immense task, breaking it down into doable steps and then accomplishing the mission.

A lot of you might not think that these things are within your control. But what I would love to see in the aftermath of this crisis is for more you to step up in your own communities. The reason why we see government being the way it is in places like California and in New York isn't because there's a lack of Americans there. I live in California, I live in Southern California. I can tell you there are many people here who believe in America, believe in the Bill of Rights.

The problem is that they've been silenced. And it's not only that they've been silenced, it's that they've failed to speak loud enough. And so what I would love to see is more of us stepping up. And maybe I need to heed this advice a little bit more myself. I would love to see those of you out there who feel like your your local governments are not working for you.

They're starting to work against you. I'd love to see a lot more of you stepping up to run for city council. I'd love to see a lot more of you speaking out, letting people know on social media where things like this are happening. I'd love to see a lot more of you stepping up and becoming leaders in your communities, Showing people the good in your heart and the capabilities that you wield. I think this can happen.

And I think that this crisis is something that could be a spark. A spark for a couple of different things, either good or bad. It could be the spark for us to descend more and more into an authoritarian place like which Solzhenitsyn describes in the Gulag Archipelago. Or it could be a spark that leads us toward greater freedoms, toward greater prosperity, toward a place that resembles the America we all love. And that's my opinion.

That is what I have to say. You might feel differently, and you are welcome, welcome to debate me on any of this. You can reach out to me on social media. You can reach out to me on Twitter. My Twitter that seems to be where people debate a lot of this stuff.

You can reach out to me at Warrior Soul Gear is my handle. You can reach out to me on Instagram at warriorsoulagoge. You can come over to my Facebook page, tell me what I'm what an idiot I am. But I'd love to get us talking about this. And once again, I want to tell you I'm not telling you to to stop social distancing.

I'm not telling you to stop your precautions that you're taking. You should be washing your hands. If the law calls for it in your area, you should be wearing your face masks. I don't want any of you getting arrested, but I also don't want you to be silent. I want you to speak up.

I don't want you to be intimidated. I don't want you to feel scared. Because the more we're out there, the more we're speaking out about this, the more we are going to be able to prevent things like this from happening. So I want to thank you guys for listening. Please share this episode out if, you know of anybody who can benefit from hearing it.

And please let me know what you think. You can head over to iTunes, you can write me a written review for the podcast. And I hope you're all staying safe, healthy, and I hope that you are still determined to keep this amazing country the best country in the world. This is Chris Albert, the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am out.