Sovereign Citizenry Ignores The Social Contract & Importance Of Our Interdependency

[joreth]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2016/01/my-time-at-an-anti-government-summer-camp.html

"Over time I came to understand that no citizen is truly independent of every other citizen, that we are all interconnected. I realized that even a private business owner living on their own land and homeschooling their children relies on government roads and government police forces, to scratch the surface. This sort of militia ideology ignores the social contract, the importance of our interdependency and the necessity of the government in providing for the public welfare. This is where the militia movement, and with its anti-government ideology, fails."

This very closely matches my conversations with people of these groups, including a man who, in his late 20s, befriended a bunch of high school boys and created a "role playing" group of sovereign citizens, where they all got dressed up as pseudo-medieval royalty (with himself as King, of course) and went through ritualistic motions designed to cement the group's loyalty (i.e. fealty).

The boys, having been recruited as teens, thought it was harmless fun, like Ren Faire. I, being introduced to it as an adult who had already dated several Libertarians who showed their lack of empathy in some pretty horrific ways, thought it was abhorrent.  Because, when they were done kneeling and knuckling their foreheads at his feet while his wife stood mute behind his right shoulder and both gazing down at their subjects while they patronizingly bestowed meaningless honors on them, the revelry started (with lots of beer, of course, only not *American* beer, but the "real" beer - don't get me started).

And it was during these revelries that he *really* held court. His rapt audience of now-30 to 40-something men and their eye-rolling but tolerant wives all sitting around a plush living room cooled by central air conditioning provided by the city utility company, having driven there in hybrid cars on city roads, educated by the public school system, listened to him extol the virtues of seceding from the union, drone on about how to avoid paying taxes, lecture on the illegality of a court verdict based on the position of a flag in the room at the time of pronouncement, and snarl at the law enforcement who had never once done anything to them - no harassment, no attitude, no arrests, nothing.

In fact, the person who introduced me to this group would take out a baton from his car door pocket and shake it at police cars when he passed them on the road, shouting "PIGS!" from behind his rolled up tinted windows where the cops couldn't see or hear. One night, we were walking home from an event, having taken public transportation most of the way, and we passed a police officer in the subway. He tensed up, ready for a fight. The cop smiled and nodded at us, and we both smiled and nodded back. As we got out of earshot, he exclaimed how amazing it was the the cop didn't do anything to him and how he passed some sort of cultural milestone by reaching an age that cops no longer think he's a threat.

I looked at him and said something along the lines of "dude, you're a young-looking middle-aged, blond-haired, blue-eyed white man in a suit. It's not age that made the cop treat you with respect, it's that you look like him or his superiors." Except for being a young man obviously causing "trouble" (like the time they bought out a convenience store's entire supply of glow sticks while having a pool noodle fight in the store, causing the cop inside to give them the side-eye - note, not shoot them 14 times in the back), he's never actually had any encounters with cops that weren't pleasant.

Now, I get being pissed at cops on behalf of those who aren't treated well, but he wasn't that. He wasn't irate at the injustice of black lives or the for-profit prison system (although he did eventually come to adopt those causes). He was angry because cops are pigs who want to take your liberty away just for fun. Y'know, like when you break the law, the cops come and bust you for it. The nerve!

This is now a long story. The point is that I've met people like this, and likely still do know people like this although I try to avoid these kinds of conversations with people I will have to continue to come into contact with after I find out that they're horrible people. There is no sense of irony, no self-awareness, and no real understanding of how the world actually works. In order to be internally consistent with their underlying premise, they would have to find unoccupied land, build everything themselves just with materials found on the land (and not with any knowledge gleaned from public schools or library books), and be completely self-sustaining. Nothing could come in from the outside because those materials would have to use public roads and other public services to get there. And / or anything coming in from outside would have to be negotiated with the US government the way that any international trade is negotiated between independent nations, complete with paying import taxes and customs fees all the rest. They want all the fruits of living in a democratic society with public works without any of the responsibilities that come with coexisting with other people.

And where are all those employees supposed to come from to run your small businesses if everyone is their own business owner?* Trust me, as someone who lives below the poverty line and still has to pay 4-digits in taxes this year (keep in mind that I already pay some taxes through those jobs I hold that use W2s instead of 1099), I definitely understand being frustrated at the idea that the government can just come and take my money that I earned with literally my own sweat and blood. And I certainly don't agree with everything my taxes are spent on. But I did survivalist camping as a kid - and I don't mean my dad and I took our arsenal of guns out to the woods in our SUV and our camo tactical gear and lived off the land and a case of beer for a weekend. I mean that I walked myself into the woods with no other people and no gear other than the clothes I was wearing (which were basic jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes), knapped a flint knife with rocks I found on the ground, cut branches off a tree to build shelter, and ate what I could identify as non-toxic.

Fuck that shit. It was an important lesson in survival for me, in case of emergency. I often went hiking alone, so these kinds of skills were important to know. But that's what it means to eschew everything the government has to offer and to be self-sufficient (although, I have to note that I learned these skills through a camp offered to me through a program in my public elementary school). The quality of life is vastly higher with running water and a sanitation system and food inspections and safe transportation facilities and the shipping industry to bring in a variety of food for a well balanced diet and medical supplies and *other people* performing a variety of jobs that aren't all providing materialist, capitalist goods who are all educated to a minimum standard of competency and who are all invested in helping each other out because its in everyone's interest to make sure their neighbors are still there to perform their functions and services every day.

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*This is a rhetorical question. I've already read something just today that addresses exactly the implausibility and irresponsibility and unlikeliness to succeed of the rhetoric of venture capitalism that only values small business owners so I'm not interested in more debate on the subject.