I’m not entirely sure what you are asking, so I’m sorry if I don’t successfully answer your question here.

If you look at representative democracy as a corporation (which in many ways, it actually is, especially since we, particularly as Americans, are under the rule of what most closely resembles a plutocracy), it makes the most sense to, in a way, boycott it. After all, as with most abstractions manufactured by the institutions and systems that rule us, democracy and the election charade is only as strong as our support and participation in it is. Without us, there is no election; without us, they can no longer continue continue to operate the way they currently do, or at least would no longer have the facade of the vote to base their promise of choice to us on.

Theoretically, unless they want to admit that voting has always been rigged and mediated by the government (which they very well might be comfortable admitting should we all give up voting), if we all stopped voting, then no one would be elected. Since all elections consist of a series of characters (all specially pre-chosen by the ubiquitous forces already and indefinitely in power behind the scenes), all of whom are essentially representing the evils this world faces and the corporations that own them and those problems rather than us, the people, we can perhaps express our refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils any longer by not voting at all.

Representative democracy has never worked and never will work. All people, even those not within the majority, deserve to be represented and their needs met. If we do not vote, we are no longer supporting representative democracy and the myth that it benefits us on the whole. As long as we’re voting for the lesser of two evils and compromising our values and true concerns, we are directly responsible for the problems caused by those who ultimately wind up “elected”. I have decided I do not want that on my conscience.

After all, if we’re only winding up selling ourselves out when we vote for someone we don’t even really like or whole-heartedly support, what’s the point in democracy and voting? It’s like having someone holding your loved ones at gun point and asking, “You get to choose which one of them dies and which one of them lives!” Choices simply do not matter when the options are being controlled by someone else.

I do whatever I want and/or can. I guess that’s ultimately what anarchism is all about: taking the reins of your own life and pursuing one of happiness and freedom on your own terms. I’m currently back in my city, which is incredibly boring, culturally devoid, semi-dangerous, and empty, plus it’s winter, so I’ll admit that I haven’t been doing much with myself the last couple of months. That’s how it usually is when it’s this season and I’m trapped in my city, though. Lately, all I’ve been doing is reading, watching films, eating, writing, using the Internet, and making plans for the spring/summer.

In general, I do a lot of things. I like traveling and being outside, so I hitchhike around the country for extended periods of time; I hang out with friends as often as I can, though most of them are unavailable due to living lives as members of “society”; I make zines and sell them on the Internet or at festivals in other cities and states; I go for bike rides without destinations just to get some exercise, blow off some steam, and listen to loud music on my headphones; sometimes, I book my own concerts for touring bands that I love; I’m always trying to sew, cook, draw, and write music more; writing is my passion and I try to do as much of that as possible on here and on my other personal blog; I try to talk to people, listen to people, share thoughts and ideas with people.

This is my only chance at living the life that I want to, even if it requires me to live in a society I wouldn’t want to. So, honestly, as important as activism and working towards a better tomorrow is to me, enjoying myself will always be my top priority.

Besides, I know that I as an individual cannot bring about legitimate change on my own. Even if I were to gather a large group of people, the only form of protest that actually works is direct action, which would entail the destruction of private property, wars with cops, and other illegal acts that could potentially result in me losing the freedoms I do have. The best I can do within my comfort zone is continue writing and publicizing my ideals and the sharing with others the tiny changes they can make in their own lives. Ideas are very powerful and I know I have already impacted several people positively just by updating this stupid blog. There first has to be a complete shift in the social consciousness, so I take pride in my individual reduction of harm and complicity and the word-of-mouth activism I partake in (although I am admittedly often ashamed that I do not go as far as I could go).

My resentment compels me to not be a part of the problem and to continue living my life to the fullest, so it’s very crucial, despite broadly appearing pointless and directionless. I’m trying to make the best of a shitty situation, I guess.

Thanks for the kind words!

I oppose any and all institutions that directly support and assist in the goals and protection of the government and capitalism. The police are a gang and are one of the strongest forces with which authority, fascism, and rule are pushed on us. What many people fail to understand is that the primary purpose of the police is not to serve and protect the people, but is to serve and protect property, maintain order, and enforce the rule of the powers that be; this is why there is no law whatsoever requiring a police officer to respond to your call.

Anyone participating in these institutions is part of the problem and deserve no special treatment or consideration. The fact that the police are one of the most powerful and violent groups helping maintain the status quo and stamp out opposition, along with the frequency with which corruption, violence, and murder take place at their hands with little to no consequence, rules out the rationale for approaching the subject of the police with a ‘benefit of the doubt’ mentality, as well as diminishes reason for viewing these cases at an individual basis.

Do I believe that every cop is awful? To an extent, yes. I think it is awful that anyone would sign up to enforce law for a living, allow themselves to be assigned a level of importance above their fellow brothers and sisters, and be open to the potential of harming, killing, or imprisoning another person. Even with the broadest of reasoning, anyone who becomes a cop is at least a little awful in this respect. Do I want every cop to die? Absolutely not. I do not believe in capital punishment, nor do I believe in an “eye for an eye”; I do not in any way support violence or murder. However, I do believe that pacifism is a privilege that not everyone has and that if we as a people are going to live in a society where police can steal our freedoms, physically harm us, and in many cases kill us, all while committing the same crimes they arrest us for, it is our responsibility to retaliate appropriately. Self-defense is self-defense, even in—and especially in—cases of police violence and brutality.

I don’t care about the one cop you know who, “isn’t like the rest,” and is, “a really good guy.” I hear this all the time. Of course individual cops are capable of being decent human beings outside of their uniforms. That’s not the point at all. These decent guys still go to work every day and enforce the fascism of our current system; they suspiciously carry a belt of weaponry, as if violence is the only method they know of to maintain order; they put people behind bars and strip them of their freedom as people for petty so-called crimes. Even the best possible cop is part of the problem. If someone truly wants to help people with their career choice, they should become firefighters, EMTs, doctors, nurses, charity operators, volunteers at soup kitchens, or anarchists.

All of my clothes are old, hand-me-downs, or are purchased from thrift stores. Other than my sneakers, which were purchased as a last resort from Zumiez and honestly likely were manufactured in a sweatshop somewhere (I couldn’t verify where they were made, but they are vegan), I have not purchased clothing from anywhere that wasn’t a thrift store or band in several years. Nothing I wear comes from animals; I do not wear leather, wool, silk, or anything like that, even if I didn’t pay for it. I have a pair of Nike socks, but they were given to me used by a kid at a college I stayed at.

I refuse to buy clothes that come from sweatshops. The truth is almost all clothes sold in America, and especially in chain stores, come from them, though. So I decided to just cut it out of my life completely and now make the clothes I already have last for as long as possible and choose thrift stores in the rare instances that I go out and buy new clothes for myself. In a plutocracy, our purchases become the only legitimate means of voting; every time you buy something, you are voting not only for that brand name, but the means of production, environmental impact, and social implications associated with it. I am totally against any and all human exploitation, so I could never in good conscience give my money to a brand name that uses sweatshops.

Anarchy is a belief in total, uncompromised personal freedom for each and every individual; a rejection of any and all government, law, representation, class, and hierarchy; a system of living where people live communally without leaders or currency, resources are distributed equally, decisions are reached by consensus, and everyone lives according to their own definitions of happiness and freedom insofar as it does not interfere in the personal happiness and freedoms of their neighbors.

It is achievable in many ways, but it seems that in our current situation, the only way we could achieve it is by 1.) shifting the consciousness of the masses to a mindset that values and considers equal human rights and environmental sustainability over capitalism and status quo; 2.) overthrowing the current powers that be either through mass non-participation or force; 3.) transitioning towards a world without law or class by learning how to survive together in grassroots communities that rely on the individual skills and concerns of the people within it. Easier said than done at this point, but it is possible, no matter what people say. The powers and systems that rule over us are only as strong as “we the people” allow them to be: Politicians can’t exist if we do not vote for them; authoritarians cannot exist if we do not obey them; jobs cannot exist if we do not work them; capitalism cannot exist if we don’t work, sell, and buy for it.

It would be far better than whatever life you may be living now. I don’t know your personal situation, but as far as the majority go, people would be able to focus more on their personal passions because they would no longer have to work monotonous jobs irrelevant to their own interests and special skills in exchange for the bare necessities to survive; bigotry of all kinds would no longer exist because we would all finally need to see each other as equals if we had any hope of our species to progress; violent crime and war would become obsolete because there would no longer be monopolies, borders, flags, and people in power to fight over, nor private property exclusive to certain groups to steal; personal happiness and the survival of our species, as well as the planet we all live on, would become the top priorities.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone should be killed, really. But I acknowledge that pacifism is a privilege not everyone has and that self-defense is crucial when you’re a victim of violence of any kind, whether it be physical or oppressive.

The reason I usually add, “Can we kill cops yet?” to my posts about police corruption and brutality is to make a point: At what point will we fight back; at what point is it finally okay to stand up for ourselves? For some reason, even self-proclaimed activists will defend peace to their own deaths and make up excuses for why weakly enduring their own injuries and oppression is the only or best means of responding to it.

I refuse to defend pacifism, though. The reality is that violence sometimes must be met with violence. Many people on the frontlines don’t have any other choice. We need to start looking at police officers not as mere people “doing their job”, but as military men and gang members whose primary purpose is to protect property and the powers that be by any means necessary.

A lot of my conclusions in regards to anarchy have been come to through mere contemplation and internal debate. I first found out about anarchism in the 6th grade and it’s just made more and more sense as I’ve gotten older. Each and every concern I’ve formed since I was thirteen can be remedied by an anarchist society. So I unfortunately cannot offer too many solid resources.

However, my personal beliefs in anarchism and what the world should be working towards becoming can be credited to and summarized by two different groups’ resources.

1.) The CrimethInc. collective, whose books Days of War, Nights of Love, Expect Resistance, and Work changed much about my life and reaffirmed other parts of it. There are also a ton of really great articles, essays, and zines for free viewing on their site.

And.

2.) The Zeitgeist Movement, an online grassroots global movement started by Peter Joseph, a personal hero of mine, whose DIY documentaries also changed much about my life and reaffirmed all the rest. You can see all three of the documentaries for free online here.

Any revolution requires struggle, sacrifice, and difficulty, though. All the important social movements that have preceded the current sociopolitical climate were initially met with harsh criticism, aggressive opposition, and extreme doubt, but today we can all mostly agree that they were necessary and those hard times were well worth it. The movement that freed black slaves and eventually lead to equal rights for all races; the movement that lead to women being able to vote and work beside us; the fight for legal, safe abortions for women; the battles for unionists and workers’ rights; the overthrowing of dictatorships and oppressive regimes like the Nazis; the ongoing fight for more environmentally sustainable means of energy. Some things are still in the works today, but nothing worth fighting for comes easily.

Anarchism and/or socialism are just the most obvious next phase, as far as I’m concerned, especially as it becomes more and more clear how fed up even the most common of people are becoming, how out of control our institutions are getting, and how impossible it’s starting to get just to survive in these systems. So, yes, of course any kind of transitional phase will be incredibly difficult, but nothing as overbearing or traumatic as another century in this fucked-up system we’ve allowed to take over our world, our land, our fellow brothers and sisters, and our lives.

You’re wrong about one thing, though: We would not necessarily need everyone to be on the proverbial “same page”. That’s actually one of the reasons anarchism is so much better and accommodating than representative democracy. You see, in an anarchist society, people would coexist peacefully and communally, but would branch out into different structures based on their own personal concerns, preferences, and desires. The only real conjoining factor would be that leadership, hierarchy, and government would no longer exist to mediate this.

Anarchism would work based on a system of group decision-making known as consensus. Rather than holding semi-annual voting ceremonies where only the voices of the majority are heard or considered or represented, as in a democracy, communities would make mutual decisions together while resolving disagreements and coming to agreements on things that concern their community. Unlike in a democracy, where those who are not the majority are left to merely endure a world they must live in but whose conditions they had no say in, people who are unable to agree or find peace in a community have the option of finding a community where they will. The branching off of different cultures, ideologies, and styles of living would happen naturally as time went by and hostility like we see today would be greatly reduced to being nearly non-existent by the fact that people would finally have options to choose from. People would live autonomously and communities would only be as strong as the consensual peace and solidarity in their community is.

Technically speaking, laws are what create crimes. A lot of the harsh realities of our current system and society that you mention are mere symptoms of the system itself. A lot of these symptoms would become obsolete in an anarchist society, though. For example: No one would have the motivation or need to steal from anyone because everyone would have access to all that they wanted and needed, equally and without any kind of monetary or physical exchange; with the absence of capital, competition, currency, and property, the crime of theft would no longer exist. Considering how often conquest, theft, and desperate means of survival come into play as motivators for murder, imagine how rare violence would become in our world; no one would shoot people in convenience stores anymore, no one would fly buildings into planes anymore, no more wars over resources and capital gain would occur, violent drug cartels would disappear, drive-by shootings in turf wars wouldn’t go down anymore, cops wouldn’t be killing people to protect property, et cetera, et cetera.

As for other violent aberrant behaviors, such as senseless murders, child molestation, rape, and stuff of that sort, they would no longer be viewed as mere crimes that can be stopped with imprisonment or death, they would be viewed exactly for what they are: aberrant behavior. Biologically and evolutionarily speaking, violence as we know it today is not part of our species’ makeup, despite what many people believe and want you to believe. This behavior is not, as they say, “human nature”. If you look at the backgrounds of those who perpetrate acts of violence, rape, and murder, you will find that most, if not all, of them have some sort of history of abuse, neglect, and psychological problems themselves. It takes mental illness or conquest over property to cause these uglier aspects of mankind; it’s not something that runs in our blood. So when dealing with people who will act out in violent ways, we would treat them as ill, not as subhuman monsters. This sort of method is used in Norway and they have one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Meanwhile, countries such as America with high prison populations and heavy use of the death penalty have some of the highest instances of violent crime in the world. Fact is, prisons, the death penalty, and laws have never been effective deterrents or preventions of violent crime (or any crime for that matter).

Lastly, I wanted to explain how all of us people, all with different ideas and desires and attitudes, would live together peacefully despite differences. This would be a free society, not some cult where everyone would have to assimilate to the same exact ideals. You see, without capitalism turning us against one another in a constant competitive cycle over money and resources, without government controlling what we can and cannot do while violently forcing our life-long subservience, and without the institutions that operate within it segregating all human beings with useless abstractions like race, gender, orientation, religion, class, border, nationality, et cetera, we would only have each other to rely on. In a communal society, as I said earlier, our respective cells would only be as strong as our solidarity with one another and peaceful coexistence within them. To act out against the community, to try and enforce authority over others, to do something that interferes with the freedoms of another, to live in a way that harms the environment or your fellow man; these things would be not just harmful to the individuals involved, but to our society as a whole. Therefore, we would all be joined together in solidarity at all times with a new, more focused and sensible goal: to live together peacefully while maintaining a respectable and non-destructive relationship with our world. The consciousness would eventually be shifted by necessity; if we as individuals failed, our society would fail.

We would always have the alternative to this utopian society in the backs of our minds. I mean, look at where we are today with capitalism and democracy: environmental devastation, wars, drugs, government corruption, institutionalized bigotry, sweatshops, rape, corporate colleges, record-breaking unemployment, animal slaughter, religiously motivated terrorism, people stabbing homeless people, war veterans homeless on the street, bees disappearing… the list goes on.

But how is it disgraceful? What is so honorable about disregarding one’s true passions and dreams and selling themselves short to become wage slave automatons who live a life of monotony in exchange for some pieces of paper, some coins, and the distant promise of some white picket fence? What is so prideful of working your ass of for someone else’s benefit in exchange for mere survival? We have one chance at living the lives we would like to live; this is all we’ve got and there is no rewinding time or getting a tax return for your finite time on this planet. So how can you or anyone else logically defend equating one’s worth to how well they contributed to a system that ultimately does not exist with their benefit in mind? While most people are working, there is someone on top who is getting paid significantly more for your efforts and progress. How is participating in a rigged game somehow something to be proud of?

Ya wanna know how I can be happy and maintain my self respect? By knowing that I don’t answer to anyone else but myself; by knowing that if I get the urge to do something with myself, I can just up and do it without running it by someone else’s schedule and asking for permission; by knowing that I am not enslaved by schedules, currency, and other human abstractions that distract us from the blood running in our veins and the experiences and opportunities that are passing most of my peers by as they sit in class five days a week in a college that is digging them a debt-built grave; by achieving street smarts, independence, total freedom, and a better appreciation for human life—my own and others’. I’m not trying to knock everyone who works. Obviously, plenty of people have jobs that actually do fall in line with their passions and morals; but that is a privilege the majority do not have. In my eyes, my self-respect is the very reason why I cherish my life and my potential or freedom and happiness enough to totally refuse and reject any system that tells me what to do, when I can do it, and who I should be. It is truly sad that you are so far gone that you honestly believe that life begins and ends at how much you’ve worked.

And don’t you dare try to simplify the lives of the poor, you scumbag. You don’t know what they’ve gone through; you don’t their individual stories or why they have kids. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself that, in the same paragraph that you profess the importance of being some mindless employee for a system that doesn’t give a shit about whether you live or die tomorrow, you say that people should be murdered just because they’re unemployed. Many of these people would kill to have a job like you do and even more feel ashamed of being on government assistance because of pompous nobodies such as yourself. I hope you get fired and wind up on the same streets as the people you spit on. You’re so ignorant and co-dependent on the gateway drug that is the 9-5 that you wouldn’t stand a fucking chance.

Do you honestly think that people who work, like yourself, came to employment, school, and being law-abiding citizens voluntarily? You’re where you are because you have to be in order to survive. So get down off your handmade pedestal and realize that you’re nothing more than a slave. Fabricating pride and over-compensating for your mundane lifestyle of servitude, obedience, and banalities isn’t going to negate the fact that when you’re on your last breaths you’re going to swell with regret over a life that you never actually spent living. Go ahead and continue masturbating the government who look at you as nothing more than a machine. Keep running on that treadmill and get that pension! While you’re spending forty hours a week on whatever it is that you do, I’ll be out exploring and reaching my full potential while following my dreams and immersing myself in all life has to offer.

Just another politician who has no stock in the interests of the public, human rights, or progress towards a more equal and environmentally sustainable future. He’s a Constitutionalist extremist, a bigot, and another evangelical lunatic. I don’t believe he has any chance of winning, but the amount of support he’s getting from my stupid generation is astounding and very disappointing.

I wrote this about him, if you would like a more in-depth explanation on my opinions of Ron Paul:
http://uglyuglyugly.tumblr.com/post/16797315543

Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Not to be too shameless about plugging my own work, but I actually just recently released a zine all about this sorta thing, which you can consider purchasing here.

In my opinion, the best way to “get back” at the government, although there really is no way to legitimately impact the government as an individual (we need mass armies of opposition in order to do something like that), is to be an active non-participant.

Use whatever resources you can find that don’t require you to directly support the government and capitalism. There are plenty of loopholes and cracks in the system to exploit. The two most important parts, in my opinion, are the reduction of spending/consumption and a total refusal to pay taxes to the government. So first and foremost, do all in your ability to not work or otherwise exchange your time for currency. If you must work, try to find a job that is under the table. Steal things and sell them on Craigslist; rob banks; defraud government welfare programs; return bottles and cans; panhandle; scam Walmarts and grocery stores; apply for credit cards and live off of the advances without any intention of ever paying them back; try to make money off of a hobby (like playing music in a band or publishing zines). There are many ways to make cash without selling your soul or helping fund the government and their wars and institutions.

Need to travel for free? Hitchhike or hop trains.
Want to live somewhere indefinitely without paying rent? Sleep on the streets, squat an abandoned building or foreclosed home, move into a punk house.
Want to eat for free? Dumpster dive, shoplift, dine and dash, apply for food stamps.

Obviously, this lifestyle and these choices are not for everyone, but there are other ways to take into account when wanting to live a little bit further off the grid.

This just goes to show how far gone you are, anonymous. To base the worth of one’s existence on his contribution to capitalism; to suggest that because I am not doing everything I could be doing that the something that I’m doing is irrelevant. It’s truly sad.

There is nothing wrong with “living off of” a system that you hate, as long as you’re not directly supporting it. Taking money from the government is no different from getting food from a corporate grocery store’s dumpster, finding shelter in a city’s abandoned building, downloading a movie that was produced by Hollywood, shoplifting something from Walmart. Don’t you get it? It’s not about becoming independent of the system just yet. Since it’s still here and certainly not going anywhere any time soon, we might as well make a positive of a negative and exploit it for all its worth. As long as we’re not participating in its injustice or directly helping it continue, I do not see anything inherently wrong or hypocritical about it.

I agree that I am definitely not doing everything I could be doing to bring about the change I would like to see in the world. It hurts my heart every day that I’m not. But in a society like America, where they have meticulously crafted a system that is almost impossible to ever completely break free of, one most always make compromises. There is a very thin line between living according to your principals and living according to the urge to survive and all of us, even revolutionaries, battle the conundrum that is being an anarchist in a police-run plutarchy every day.

Besides, I have no interest in living in the woods. I love camping, but I like cities and towns and industrialization. A lot of the luxuries we enjoy today aren’t inherently evil, after all. It is the careless and destructive methods with which we produce and distribute them that is really at fault. That is why I find a lot of joy in being voluntarily homeless in unfamiliar cities for weeks at a time.

And I don’t see this as wasting my time. I enjoy doing it and if I enjoy doing something, it’s definitely not a waste of my time.

What’s wrong with wearing them? They’re almost always made of leather and/or petroleum.

What’s wrong with buying them? They’re assembled in third-world countries by workers as young as teenagers for illegally low wages and and illegally long hours.

Of course, these standards are not exclusive to Nike; almost all mainstream outlets for footwear and clothing of any kind come from overseas and from sweatshops or conditions that otherwise have no regard for human rights, safety, or life.

When you wear shoes made of leather, you are wearing the tanned skin of what was once a living creature, whether you paid for it or not. When you purchase footwear that is made from petroleum, you are funding oil companies and by association the environmental devastation, human rights violations, and rampant oil-motivated wars around the world.

Every time you make a purchase within a capitalist system, you are making a vote. When you purchase a pair of Nikes, or really any other name-brand shoe or clothing, you are voting for animal slaughter and torture, utilization of environmentally unsound and finite resources, and sweatshops that exploit children and their families in impoverished countries all over the world.

This is why I absolutely will never purchase clothing from anywhere that isn’t a thrift store or passed on to me secondhand. Although, unfortunately, it was impossible to find a pair of basic sneakers this past year that were both sweatshop-free and vegan, thus leading to me settling for sneakers from Zumiez that were vegan-friendly but still manufactured in unconfirmed conditions.

It just doesn’t make sense, and you have repeatedly avoided attempting to rationalize, why you can make the “tough” choices but at the same time refuse to also make the simple ones. You’re either 100% for the cause or you’re not.

I’m not trying to be morally pure. As I have admitted, I am not perfect and I, just like you and everyone else, are all to an extent currently responsible for some form of harm or at least the perpetuation of harm. This egocentric mindset you have is an unfortunate one that in many ways is very responsible for the problems in this world that you are ranting against. To suggest that all the species on this planet are more important than our species is just as bad and unjust as suggesting the opposite. Why don’t you see this glaring contradiction in your ideology?

If your idea for a better world were implemented tomorrow, billions of humans would die. You have admitted to this. So whether you mean murdering people yourself (which you do, as long as they qualify in your book as “guilty”) or murdering people by abolishing the very way we currently survive as a specie,s is irrelevant. You have also expressed that we should “hurry along” our extinction. So while you may now suddenly have revised your criteria for who is guilty and deserving of death and who is not, you are still combating human existence along with the “civilization” of it.

I hope you do take it to the end. I don’t really believe you will, though. Legitimate saboteurs and activist extremists such as the character you’re portraying in these comments would not come online to spell out their missions to some stranger on the Internet. Anyone with any basic understanding of direct action and security culture knows not to do this. However, it will not be tragic if you do go out there and try to kill someone and wind up dead yourself. Consider a kamikaze mission, perhaps?

Anyways, good luck!