Michael Ruppert on activism

FTW: SNAP OUT OF IT!

Michael Ruppert is virutally unknown outside activist and academic circles. But you better believe Congress knows who he is, as 35 members subscribe to his news service, From The Wilderness. Ruppert is the guy who exposed the connection between the CIA and crack cocaine. In addition, Ruppert amassed piles of evidence on the 9/11 attack, showing both possible government foreknowledge, as well as obvious intra-agency intelligence failures.

Being the disillusioned activist, I focus much less on traditional "let's make THEM change" activities. I focus on bottom-up social change and lifestyle. In addition, I believe there is a basic moral component, which many activists take for granted and don't utilize as a weapon. Instead of fighting the moral battle, we play by the rules of Machiavellian elite power struggles.

Successful resistance and revolutionary activity has always found its greatest strength in bottom-up resistance, especially when accompanied by moral and spiritual enlightenment. Justice and liberty are mere obstacles in the Machiavellian worldview. But in a moral or spiritual battle, they can be the most powerful weapon. And this is how Islamic terrorists are able to bring the heat. I'm not saying I agree with the morality of Islamic warriors, but it certainly illustrates the power of a moral outlook.

A lot of people might say my focus on lifestyle and morality is naïve, utopian, or idealistic. But looking at the last century, much social change can be attributed to our changing lifestyle, technology, science... and morality. Very rarely has the public "forced" significant change, or won battles against the mythical "powers that be". Those Powers That Be can also be seen as an endless supply of immoral people willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder.

How often we complain that the evil 1% at the top is exploiting us, yet few take the time to examine the role of lifestyle in maintaining that order. Who is patronizing these companies? Who is commiting discrimination? Who is guzzling all that gas from the Middle East? Who is gobbling up the world's natural resources?

Well, I can tell you it isn't merely the politicians and corporate executives who comprise the top 1% of our country...

It's us. Almost every single one of us, with very few exceptions.

We The People are the ones destroying the earth and our own civilization because we haven't learned to step back and resassess our cultures, our philosophies, and our lifestyles. Most of us want to believe it is someone else's fault (always "Them, them them"). The conservatives blame the liberals. The Democrats blame the Republicans. And most of us naïvely and idealistically believe a few lawmakers could somehow make things right with a slight majority. But the reality is that until we change our lifestyles and our philosophies -- willingly, voluntarily, individually -- no amount of laws are going to change them for us. And it is our lifestyle and our philosophies that are killing us.

You got to change your evil ways, baby.