Irreconcilable Differences
Situate yourselves accordingly.
People think the divide and conquer strategy is working.
People are wrong.
You don’t have to divide people to weaken them. You just find groups of people whose values are diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive and force them to be together, telling them you can make it all work out on their sole behalf if they just keep voting for you.
It’s how divorce attorneys do it every day. They don’t expedite things quickly to get you off on your own journey, amicably living your best lives. No! They keep the couples squabbling, fighting over their belongings, their children and their collective past woes always hoping their attorney will win them an all inclusive, one-sided outcome (their own side, of course). The attorneys meanwhile charge handsomely by the hour. The longer they play the game, the more times they can get to court, the more they dwindle away everything you have. In the end, each party often has a gigantic attorney bill and nothing to show for it.
I remember my parents playing the losing game. My mom hired 3 different attorneys, two of which my dad bought off. They went through 4 years of divorce court getting bled dry by the attorneys. Then, one day out of the blue, my mom came to her senses, and ignored her attorney’s advice not to contact my dad. She called up my father. Boy, was he surprised! They met in a Jack In The Box fast food restaurant off Beach Blvd. in Westminster, California with a pen and a pad of paper, and went through their remaining assets. My dad was shocked at how little my mom actually wanted. All the time his attorney told him that she wanted to have everything: the kids, the house, the furniture and their business. He was told she wanted to leave him with nothing. By the time they sold the house, the real estate market went belly up. They got less than half the value they could have gotten when they first went to court. A house valued at over $800k sold for under $400K. They owed all those attorneys’ fees. She didn’t want the business. She never wanted it. She just wanted the house and whatever standard child support for a couple years as I was 16 and soon graduating from high school, and my younger sister was 18 months behind me.
They took the agreement to an attorney to write up the contract, filed it, signed it and voila! They were happily divorced. Four years of hell they put us kids through. It was a never ending nightmare of using us as weapons against one another, and the whole fucking deal was inspired entirely by attorneys who said, “you need us or you’ll lose everything” while doing the exact fucking opposite.
Years later, my dad held deep resentment for my mom over how much loss he sustained. It was he who started the attorney war by hiring a long time family friend of my mom who was known as a dirty player to represent him. His loss, his fault. They could have gone out and talked over their separation amicably from day one.
So, imagine this long con on a grand scale. You’re not fighting over a toaster or a lamp. Instead, it’s 350 million people fighting over not just who picks up the tab, but how others continue to live their daily lives together-perpetually-for generations. It’s like some weird mediation of eternal matrimony.
Well, our country is in this very same position. And what professional background do these grand scale, benevolent mediators come from? Attorneys. That’s right! No wonder Shakespeare said, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Every day, we delay acknowledging our differences. We’re obstinately trying to win the whole pot from each other, trying to force our values and ideals on others while these politicians, most of which are attorneys, to bleed everyone dry. They continue to foster more hatred and suspicion of the others and hope for ourselves (only with them on our side, of course). They make people feel like they own and are owed the obedience of the whole country from sea to sea. It’s all fucking nonsense. We can’t get along with people who don’t share our values and aren’t a good fit for marriage. If we were honest, we wouldn’t want to share a plate of nachos with most people much less a country.
We refuse to separate for the same reasons marriages don’t end: pride, patriotism/allegiances, historical context, not admitting the founders (much like our younger selves) were wrong, not wanting to feel like we fucked up the dreams of our grandparents, their parents before them and feeling like we owe it to our parents and grand parents to keep their bad choices going. We cling to an illusion sold for centuries. If we just get the right lawmakers, we can make them others act the way we want.
No, we can’t.
Most the states have a strong base already of a particular value set. It’s time to acknowledge if you are surrounded by your people or not and situate yourselves accordingly.
“Popular anarchists said I don’t have to move.”
Yes, you fucking do have to move. No anarcho-utopia is going to make your neighborhood more inclusive if they find out your values oppose theirs. That’s fucking reality. I live next door to someone like this. Every day, just walking out of my house to get my mail, to weed my garden or to watch my kids ride their bikes, I think, please, God, don’t let her walk by. I tried being extra friendly to her. Nothing has worked. I don’t enjoy living here and worrying daily about the discomfort of seeing one of the very few people on the entire planet I know hates my guts. Sure, it’s my right to be here. It’s my home. So fucking what? That’s not the way I want to live. Luckily, I rent, and my lease will be up just in time for us to have the resources to buy something. I’ll be looking around neighborhoods, towns and regions with more like-minded people.
I know, I’m supposed to say, “a voluntaryist system would fix all this.”
No system can fix this. People need to find their tribes and congregate therein. I am not describing communism. I am describing living near people that share more of your values. I know some of you anarchists out there insist only other anarchists share your values. I can assure you that there are people that are anarcho-communists who share less values with you than a free market, rarely voting, sick of the system Republican. Get to know your core values. Anarchy isn’t a fucking value. Gay isn’t a value. Even your specific church congregation isn’t your values. People from any of these collectives could be a rapist or a murderer or a thief. These descriptive words say nothing regarding a person’s character. A collective might be indicative of certain values. It might show more of a propensity or tendency, but as I pointed out, it might mean fuck all.
This separation is coming. The question is: how much should we hemorrhage before we walk away?
That’s entirely up to you. Will you let your pride or allegiances keep you fighting the majority of people around you with conflicting values to yours? Do you still think the game of politics is something average people win? Or can you see the writing on the wall, suck up your losses (considering they will get a lot worse) and move on?
The way I see it, the sooner the better.
If you want help figuring out your core values and aligning them with your vision for your life, I am doing a weekend workshop on Finding Your Tribe by Saying “Yes” to Boundaries. You can have 100% loving, supportive, harmonious and enduring relationships in your life. I’m 99.999% there, and I am a very polarizing, disagreeable and contrarian person. There’s never been a better time to forsake loneliness and meet kindred spirits who will help you accomplish your dreams. After all, a big part of getting ahead is who you know. I know all the best ways for you to meet the who’s who to illuminate the best you.
Don’t wait until the country breaks.
Sign up here today.