Influencers – Popularity vs Credibility

If government is legitimate, merely tell me whence it derives its legitimacy, a celebrity endorsement? "Influencers" are heavily recruited to give credibility to even the most useless of products, services and ideas. Popularity has become a substitute for competence. And subscriptions, views, followers and cyber 'friends' have become credentials for expert opinion.

Social contract is currently fashionable, in the ebb and flow of on-line political debate. This is a contract I never signed, that I've never seen, that has no terms, that is binding upon me but not upon the other party, that can be dispensed with at will by the government but must be submitted to by me upon pain of incarceration, whose terms may change on-the-fly or even retroactively, from which there is no escape clause, which is binding in perpetuity, which binds my ancestors and descendants, which requires fealty but guarantees no consideration.

And it's bullshit on its face. But that's not the interesting thing. There are a thousand intricate dodges designed to cover the ass of statism, and refuting one of the lot isn't that fun or that illuminating, at least if you've been surfing the Internet for a while. There will always be another transparent cloak for the Emperor to wear.

What's interesting is that there are a thousand cloaks, but there aren't a thousand-and-one. Here's the thousand-and-first, and you'll never hear it from a statist:

Because they have guns and if you don't obey, they'll shoot you.

I'll come clean. I'm not writing to The Woke, I have no hope of showing them anything, because I think they're determined not to be shown. But for those who aren't solely concerned with building dungeons out of cards, this is useful.

Statism can't be justified. I can give you a list of minds bigger than mine who wanted it so badly they were willing to torque their own brains, and a longer list of folks who didn't know any better.

None of them said it, because all of them are beehive-busy trying to find another reason for this: "If you don't obey, we'll shoot you." That's not legitimacy, so they had to find another way. Social contract. Consent of the governed (probably the most opaque self-contradiction of the millenium). Will of the majority. Threat of descendence into chaos. Greatest good for the greatest number. Progress. Good of the Motherland. Throwing off dominion of the ZOG. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If government is legitimate, merely tell me whence it derives its legitimacy. Why does it need so many different justifications?

If government is legitimate, why does it need guns?

Mathematicians don't need guns. We think they're legitimate. Physicists don't need guns. Musicians don't need guns. Tool and die makers don't need guns.

Government needs guns because it isn't legitimate. It cannot persuade you, and it cannot base its appeals in reason, because there cannot be a basis in reason for an appeal to dumb savagery.

I don't care whether it claims to be instituted by my consent, or for the sake of my welfare, or as the product of some non-evident contract, or in response to the prospect of mass starvation, or for the protection of life and liberty and property. None of that matters. It cannot be justified in reason. It has not been justified in reason in four thousand years, despite all the effort of all the courts of all the despots of all the centuries. And the hand-waving of your next encounter with yet another electronic acolyte in the cult of the State will prove this yet again:

Government is not legitimate. You can tell by the effort people must go to to make up rationalizations for it. And if you descent even a little bit you are deplatformed, demonetized and fired.

Now, here's the dirty little secret. I said, all their rationalizations are a veneer, all their happy-babble is cover for what's really going on: "If you don't submit, we'll shoot you." That's true, but to any proposition there is a converse.

The converse to the propositionThe Legitimacy of Government

by Ernest Hancock

 in question is this: If they could compel you, they'd have no need to convince you.

Government agents with shiny badges, clipboards, fine hats and the always available gun somewhere supporting their efforts really cannot control or compel anyone. So they have to brainwash people, program them like robots, to believe and obey. Above all, they must brainwash their victims into believing in the "legitimacy" of The System.

If dumb savagery were all it took, statists would have it made. They could simply announce, "do it our way or we'll smoke you. We have an army." And that would be that. We'd be wandering around in loincloths carrying digging sticks and speaking Chinese,… if the Chinese Communist Party/Biden-Harris Administration get their way.

Governments throughout human history have employed a procession of yes-men long enough to circle the moon. A plethora of Prime Ministers, a rick of Rasputins, a cord of courtesans. Why bother with all that, when all it takes is weaponry? If militaries were enough, we'd have had no emperors and no Presidents - and if simple brutality were enough, we'd have no militaries. Write this in your notebooks:

They do not seek dominion.
They seek legitimacy.

The Legitimacy of Government

by Ernest Hancock

Why is 'authority' more likely to repress contrarian speech, not less. This is because they seek legitimacy, seek it above all things.

This is what spin control is about: Pretending to be right. This is what posturing is about. If force of arms were adequate, there'd be no need to waste time on spin-control, but think about it: the world's most repressive regimes were those with the most insistent "education" programs. Witness the Soviets, witness China, witness Cambodia, witness the Plandemic.

There's only one state of nature, the only one that ever was. And in this state, people can go wandering around doing whatever they want. With impunity! This is the nature of the human organism: we are each exclusively self-controlled.

Nobody else can control you. However, if you're like most people, you've been brainwashed to believe that the "government system" controls you and the only way to escape this "control" is to change or remove the "system."

But freedom is unavoidable. Discretion is the nature of organisms; we are individuals by the very way we are made. We are exclusively self-motivated; we have no other way of operating. We can be coerced, but we cannot be enslaved without our consent. And this is why General Public Opinion is so important. And why I believe credibility is increasing in value so rapidly.

Credibility isn't always associated with popularity, but when they overlap you can expect a great deal of change.

Ernest Hancock
Publisher – www.FreedomsPhoenix.com
Host – www.DeclareYourIndependenceWithErnestHancock.com
This article was heavily plagiarized from a 1994 article Ernest wrote when 33years old