It's Time to Reboot the System

by John Bottoms

When my Windows computer starts doing things which are even wackier than usual, to the point where my productivity and psychic well-being are threatened, I hit the restart button.  Now I’m finding more and more often that Windows 98, which I’ve been using for years, no longer meets my needs, and I’m looking into getting a new operating system.  When I reboot, my computer is still there, and so are my data and programs; only the management structures are renewed.  

I’m afraid we’re now in the same place with our government in Washington .  It’s way too wacky, grabbing power left and right with no long-term plan beyond a crazed desire to remake the world, threatening to kill mass numbers of foreigners, and imprisoning more and more Americans on silly paperwork charges and other victimless “crimes.”  Businesses, both small and large, are going bankrupt at phenomenal rates, due to the Fed’s disastrous boom-and-bust money manipulations, and the government’s ongoing police state policies.  Funds that used to pay for “good” (i.e., non-lethal) government services, like libraries, higher education, astronomy, and renewable energy, are being diverted to war and terror.  Political power is being transferred from state and local governments to Washington .  They’ve severely compromised our productivity by their policies of rewarding failure and punishing success.  It’s an understatement to say that our government no longer meets our needs.  

I say it’s time to reboot the State.  Turn them off and get a new operating system.  

There’s ample legal and historic precedent for this.  The American Declaration of Independence states that “to secure [the] rights [of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”  In other words, reboot.  History is on our side, too.  After the governments of Germany and Japan went rabid in the ‘30s, they rebooted, and their new governments are probably good for a little while longer before getting hold of more of that wacky weed that seems to affect centralized states every few decades.  Same for the USSR , exchanging the impossibly inefficient central planning of Communism for a slightly less stupid authoritarian police state.  They might not need to reboot for another decade or so.  

So how do you reboot the State?  Well, when enough people see the need, it’s a relatively simple matter, like in Poland , the Czech Republic , and East Germany .  Sometimes, an outside power does it for you, as the US and Russia did to Germany and Japan 50 years ago, but that’s not very likely for the world’s sole superpower, and is destructive as well.  To reboot the State, all you have to do is pull the plug, and watch it collapse like a house of cards, or a vampire with a wooden stake through its heart.  

The power that keeps it alive comes from our money and our belief in its legitimacy.  The State’s actions weaken its credibility every day; all we need to do is accelerate the inevitable “system crash” by pointing that out, and sit back and wait for the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD)^© to appear.  The loss of productivity they bring about with their wars and bureaucratic regulations drain them of real wealth, as the dollar falls on world markets.  Again, we can accelerate the inevitable by denying them as much of our money as possible.  Whenever possible, just say no.  My advice is to stay out of the path of this crashing leviathan by providing yourself with ready alternatives to their war zones, jobs, currencies, banks, protection, entitlements, etc.

The United States was a great idea, in its day.  It introduced the concept of federalism, or the sharing of power among semi-sovereign states which jealously guarded their respective political turfs, and guaranteed individual rights.  Those who rebooted their 18th century political system by booting out the Brits understood that the State is the biggest threat to freedom, so keeping governments small, weak and always at each other’s throats was the people’s best protection.  While the US no longer practices that ideal, and demonstrates every day the horrific consequences of its abandonment, the lesson is there for all to learn.  That lesson will be the legacy of the USA once it’s gone.  It will leave behind the farms, factories, cities and people which are the real America , to live on under one or several new and hopefully better political identities.

“But things might just get worse if we reboot,” some might argue.  Well, things are gonna get even worse if we don’t.  Think World War whatever, with lots of nukes.  “We might be invaded by a foreign power.”  Look around; we’ve already been invaded by the American government,  which has become the worst kind of foreign power.  So I say it’s time to say adiós to the dead past and embrace the future.

And to those for whom this is sedition, I say:  Hey, get a life, it’s only the government.