Stupidity, Fear, and Illness

There actually is an axis of evil. The axis comprises three things that keep those in power in power. Those three things are health, education, and fear.

Ill health results in poor decisions. If for example, you have no insurance, you will keep working and ignore those weird pains in your chest until you drop over, dead. If you cannot afford to go to the hospital, you cannot get over that cold you have had for two months as it slowly becomes pneumonia. If your insurance is poor, you cannot afford the best tests and the best doctors, so you do not find out about that lump in your breast until it is too far advanced. Poor health keeps you working long, stressful hours that can make you sicker after your loved one dies from something you couldn't afford... but are stuck with the insurmountable bills.

Poor education results in bad decisions. When you are uneducated, you cannot get better jobs. You are stuck, most often living paycheck to paycheck. And then something unforeseen happens, and you have to take a loan out. Maybe that loan is from a payday loan service, at 150% interest, and you can never get out from under it. Maybe that loan is from a criminal element, that breaks your legs when you cannot pay. Low education means you can get a taste of a decent job, but cannot go higher. So you are stuck living on the edge, never falling behind all the way, but never getting a head. The low-level work means you are always taking order and never giving them. The long hours means you are slowly working yourself to death, as the lack of sleep and constant stress build and build until you have a heart attack. No or poor education often means a person can be preyed upon by those with more education. An online college can promise them everything they need, and the person isn't smart enough to read the contract and see what little they get for all that money and time. Even a good education can sometimes have unintended negative consequences. A good education often means you are saddle with thousands, often hundreds of thousands, of dollars of debt when you need that debt the least... when you are just starting out and need every cent you can earn to start your life.

Fear results in horrible decisions. When people are afraid, they are willing to trade their most valuable assets for protection and security. They will trade their Constitutional rights for the illusion of safety. People will say things and do things things they would never normally do or say when they are afraid. They will listen to anybody who proposes a solution to their fear. Mob mentally often rules when people are afraid.

Does any of this sound familiar?

America has been waging a war on its people for the past 30 years. Those in power, either in the government or in commerce, have been doing everything in their power to stay in power. They have attacked teachers unions, driving educators out of the business and weakening the educational system everywhere but in private schools. They have driven up the costs of education every year. They have made it harder for people to get scholastic loans. They have cut corners in business and government so that more toxins are in the air, water, and foods, making people sick -- often with unintended side effects. They have slowly turned the news into a biased barrage of negativity and depressing stories that keep people afraid. They talk loudly about the "good of America" while voting against anything that actually improves the infrastructure, economy, or wages. They keep us so afraid that we allow them to make laws that subjugate our Constitutional rights and gather unprecedented data about us, all in the name of security -- which we don't actually have, as not one piece of data, not one airport body scan/screening, not one collected phone call has yet to stop a terrorist attack. They pass laws that enact absurd educational systems that keep people ignorant and uneducated. They give the power over the people's health to those least able to keep us healthy and who are most driven by profit -- and our health cuts into those profits.

And we allow them, because we are too sick, too stupid, and too afraid to stop them.

In this coming election, we each need to vote OUT any person who has been in office for longer than two terms. ANY PERSON. Find your representatives' voting record online and review what they say versus how they actually voted -- you might be surprised. After every Presidential debate, not matter which side you are on, go to sites like Politifact.com, FactCheck.org, major newspaper fact checking sites, and others, and review what your favorite candidates said and how much of it was actually true. Again, you'd be surprised.

In other words, do everything in your power to educate yourself. Because education will lower your fear levels and help you get healthy. And once you are no longer sick, no longer afraid, and no longer ignorant, your politicians will fear you.

John Basil Barnhill, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."