Adam Rice
Over the past several months, I’ve written countless articles in the hope of achieving a peaceful revolution here in the United States. I’ve come to love writing the truth and, in my own way, educating people about what is going on in the world without any political agenda. It did dawn on me recently, however, that I’ve never written any of this from my personal perspective. As I see it, the system is working exactly as it was designed to. In short, the system favors the elites over the people, and to make this a nation of the people, by the people and for the people, it must go. This can only be achieved by the people. The politicians do not answer to us. They answer only to those who bankroll their election. In France, they know what must be done and have taken to the streets.
The Yellow Vest Movement in France is about returning all power to the people. It is also a decentralized movement that is neither left nor right, and bears no allegiance to either politicians or parties. To achieve what this movement’s members seek, they are aware that the system that currently exists cannot continue. They fully understand that their present system cannot be fixed from within the established halls of power. In the United States, the entire system works only for the wealthiest Americans – the economy, the judicial system, and everything in between. Fighting for a “living wage” in this nation is a fruitless task, and corporations like Amazon and Apple literally pay no taxes while we live in servitude. We wage slaves here in the United States have only one option left to get our power back, and it is not going to happen in the voting booth. We need a non-violent revolution based on continual civil disobedience – our own Yellow Vest movement. Until our government fears us, we have no leverage. I have come to this conclusion not only from living in the present, but from my past “lived” experience.
Some of you who read this piece will know me, some won’t. For those who don’t, I am 30 years old, and I am lucky to have survived this system. In elementary school, the teachers decided that I couldn’t focus and I became another cog in the ADHD wheel, and was prescribed Adderall in spite of my protests. It is now pretty much understood that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, was invented by big pharma. By the time I reached my mid-20’s, I had liver and kidney damage as well as hyperthyroidism from taking the medication, and was placed on dialysis. As an adult, I was faced with a difficult choice: I could either stop taking the medications or, because of my inability to pay for dialysis, stop receiving that treatment. The one thing I could do was have myself re-evaluated as an adult. I finally had the validation I wanted: I never had any mental illnesses or ADHD. My behavior stemmed from the fact that I was abused as a child by adoptive parents, had told my teachers (whom I obviously trusted), and the end result was my misdiagnosis and mistreatment. Essentially, I was a victim of the system for my entire youth and I am not the only person who has experienced this. It took years to fix the damage that was done to me, but I overcame it. Surviving was not enough, however. In the last few years, I have tried to do something about bringing down this system.
So, to be clear, the system literally would have killed me by the time I was in my 40s. From my perspective, continuing to support and legitimize this system would be no different than giving bullets to a person who had previously shot at me. From the time I was granted the ‘right to vote’ I laughed and asked my friends why I should bother when there were no good choices. I had never even heard of radical non-voting at the time. I just knew it was all bullshit and no matter who won, the people continually were in the loss column. Looking back, I never blamed the teachers or the doctors entirely for the dark times caused by the pills. I also blamed the system they were dealing in. The only way so many moving parts can work in tandem to exploit everyone is if the system itself was designed to work that way.
The first time I exercised my ‘right to vote’ was in 2016, when several candidates called out the system and ran on platforms to fix it. By the end game, it was clear that the entire system – particularly the election portion of the program – is rigged in favor of the elites. It was this election that reaffirmed for me that we live in a corporate state, not a democracy, and that the only people who win elections are the ones backed by the puppet masters and corporate interests. Positions of power over the people are sold to the highest bidders, and our meager contributions as citizens cannot outvote the elites. Ever. It does not matter what we the people want. However, I still hadn’t learned the most important lesson of all: Refusing to participate.
In spite of what I saw in 2016, my idea in 2018 was still to participate in the system. Perhaps if I got involved, I could help to get ‘a good guy’ elected. Essentially, I still somehow believed that electing the right person was the solution to our problems. I learned valuable lessons continuing on here. I discovered that when someone runs a campaign in Maine and refuses to take the big money, the candidate’s own party won’t support that campaign. I also live in the only state with ranked-choice voting that was supposed to remove “the spoiler effect.” At best, this is a band aid on a system with a gaping machete wound. Money continues to reign supreme, despite this supposed solution to our problem. Allow me to explain. A majority of Mainers are upset they are cutting down the forests to construct a new power corridor, which also happens to be a huge fire risk. The company financing this project also funded the campaign of the woman who now governs our state. Likewise, big money helped to secure our U.S. Senate seat. The cycle of corruption and bribery continues. It wasn’t long after this election that I caught wind of the Yellow Vest movement in France. Something just clicked that day, and I realized that the only way anything is ever going to change is through activism and revolution.
Getting involved in the Yellow Vest and Anonymous groups rekindled something in me. For a few years it was almost as if the system convinced me that it could fix itself by dangling these charlatans in front of me. The powers want to keep us entrenched in the system so that we don’t actually organize or become activists seeking self governance. Politics is a distraction, a cyclical dog-and-pony show.When we vote we are literally giving our own power away, not exercising it. Your vote means nothing when elections are sold to the highest bidders. All you are doing by participating is legitimizing it. No matter who wins, we continue to perpetuate a cycle of giving power to common criminals and bottom feeders. The French absolutely have it right, and it’s time we get it right also. We have ceded power to the elites, and they will never voluntarily return it to us. The system won’t fix itself; it will only trick people into thinking it will.
The term anarchy is something I misunderstood most of my life, and learned a lot about its true meaning through the activist community. It isn’t about being out of control. It’s about being out of their control. The powers-that-be have taught the masses that anarchy means desiring chaos and destruction, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It actually means truly having no rulers, a stateless society where the collective makes decisions democratically. The French “RIC” is one of many examples of how society could abolish politicians and function better. I saw so many similarities between anarchists, libertarians, and progressives by being involved in the French Yellow Vest movement. As long as the system continues so will the problems. It is the system that gave us two of the worst candidates ever to grace an election cycle. We cannot afford any more magical thinking about the solution to our problems coming from those who support this system. A lot of this experience for me has been education. There are seemingly infinite numbers of potential ways to run a society without “authority” or government that are truly free. Wanting to get rid of the current system will never be about hate or destruction. It is about building a system that works fairly for everyone.
I don’t want my government bombing civilians across the globe, but voting literally co-signs this violence. By supporting this system, I’m consenting to our role in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. If I vote in this system, I’m giving it the green light to cut down forests and build pipelines. I’m deciding the government has more right than I do to decide how conscious we are about environmental regulations. If I want free speech and transparency in government, then I must stand up for Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. I can’t continue to support a system that locks people up for decades for marijuana possession while rapists walk free. We live in a system where you’re killed if your enough of a threat, legal propaganda keeps people fighting each other, and militarized police victimize people of color (and it only starts with people of color; it will not end there). I’m done with the heartbreak of seeing humans die homeless on the street because landlords’ profit margins are more important. I’m sick of paying for everything I don’t support through this fraudulent tax system.
Everything that is wrong with society is the system. We thought we lived in a free society where we voted for public servants who would carry out the will of the people. In fact, outside interests buy the elections and own the officials for their term. They influence legislation through their lobbyists. The pharma cartel keeps us on pills and works the system for vaccine mandates, even though none of these vaccines are safety tested. We have corporations like Monsanto poisoning our food and making us sick, while fossil fuel companies poison the water. The banking elites exploit nearly every nation in the world through central banks and fractional reserve banking. HUD and landlord associations collude to maximize profits in real estate via gentrification, and drive thousands more onto the streets each year. Through Child Protective Services children are stolen nationwide while others profit from the process. Our court and prison system operates on two different levels, one ensures no accountability for the elites, and another continues to disproportionately punish the average citizen. As long as we continue to pay taxes, purchase from large corporations, enable corporate media, and vote we will nothing but superficial change.
We need to vote with our wallets. We need to start with consumer boycotts. We must stop purchasing from Amazon as a priority. Perhaps many are not aware that Amazon has a $600 million contract with the NSA and the CIA to store surveillance information on us in perpetuity. You have literally made the man who enables the government to spy on us a billionaire. He is now in line for billions of dollars in our tax dollars from a Department of Defense contract. We need to get rid of cable. There are options out there that do not require you to support these corporate entities, who also enable the government to spy on you. It is time to take what we have out of the big banks and move to credit unions, where fees are not crippling. We need to tune out the mainstream media, whose sole reason for being is to perpetuate the fallacies of the corporate state. There are other conduits who are telling you the truth.
None of this alone is successful without our presence on the streets. No successful movement in this country – whether you study the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, or the anti-war movement – has ever achieved anything without street action. Our government has no impetus to change unless they fear us. There is no fear being generated by a complacent society which sees its sole responsibility as getting out the vote in 2020 and returning the very party that gave you Donald Trump to power. Getting to this point was a long process for me. The system stole my childhood from me and nearly cost me my life more than once. Once I realized I was not alone, it empowered me to stand up. Never again will I be ‘tricked’ by the system.
I believe in due time we will absolutely see revolution here in the states. This is not Hollywood. These things take time, and many here are still waking up to the realities of these dystopian times. The fact that infiltrators attempt to destroy our efforts confirms that we are doing something right. Advocating elimination of the whole system is absolutely extreme for many who are just becoming aware of surface-level issues. We must teach others that it is not us, but the system that is chaotic, violent, and unstable. Abolishing it is the only way to keep ourselves alive. As more people do their own research and think freely, I hope they will decide to join us. Revolution is not a spectator sport, and it will happen when enough people realize that, not only will the system not fix itself, but also that we will never be able to fix it either. It was designed this way.
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