How the State Raised its Minions - and how to Break Out of it

Collective Resistance in the Face of American Exceptionalism and Obedience Training

Americans have been trained to believe they are the greatest probably from the day they were born. The greatest country on earth. They sure had the potential for it, but they never became it. Horrible education, even the “elite” Ivy League universities are more name than substance, no healthcare even though they're paying health insurance, abysmal childcare, sickening working conditions. But if it's drilled into your head that you're the greatest and you don't get any days off work or money to afford to experience the world or reflect, you believe it.

1. Actively Educate Yourself. 

You have the knowledge of the world at your fingertips - but in an age of censorship and book bannings, you need to take the time to find it instead of comfortably scrolling in the belief that the important shit will just find you.

This does not work when the algorithm is pitched against you.

Hardly anyone has “free” healthcare. We pay insurance and we get healthcare. It's not socialism and also socialism does not mean what you've been taught it means. 

Find answers to these questions:

• How do other nations function? 

• What rights and duties do their citizens have?

• What do they think is weird, bad, wrong about the US? (accept that criticism and check if maybe they're right)

• What do other nations learn? 

• How do they take care of their kids and the disadvantaged? 

How did it get this bad?

Being maliciously misinformed and uneducated, even when you have formally, on paper received a degree, is already dangerous. 

As of the 2024/25 term, 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level. Reading and understanding texts, especially at government level, is close to impossible, let alone reading between the lines, analyzing subtext. 

Which is why politicians and their associates that barely string together sentences let alone coherent ones, talk in simple words and repeat themselves so the messages stick, work. Ring a bell? Same goes with really short texts, a sentence or two, that can be packed into 280 characters. 

When asked “In high school, did you have an opportunity in class to reflect on media messages, such as advertising or on TV programs, & how they might affect people’s thoughts, beliefs, feelings, or actions?” only 38% of students in a national survey from 2022 responded “yes.” 

Add to that the prioritization of STEM educations and the inflated importance companies, employers, universities and schools have given them over the humanities – and you have a crisis where no one has learned about philosophy, ethics, literature, cultures, languages – in short everything that makes us human, artistic and compassionate, as well critical and abstract thinkers. 

Combine that with indoctrinating your citizens into blind obedience and worshipping your military and you have created a people who will do as they are told, not question much, and respect authority above all else - no matter inflated it may be, or how hated.

Sheep being herded by wolves that now have come to bite them. 

2. Dismantle Your Obedience Training Through Education and Resist

Stop being so obedient. Yes, it's been drilled into you ever since your tiny child voice vowed you'd die to protect a piece of multi-coloured cloth. 

Burn it. 

How do other people live? How do they define freedom? What even are other concepts of freedom? What does it mean to put the good of community over the good of the individual? What do other people find inhumane about the US?

Keep following that path of curiosity, and keep an open mind. Don’t block out everything that goes against your conditioning of ‘The US is the greatest country on Earth. Freedom!’ Discard it.

But as I’m writing and editing this, you are running out of time. Resistance has become urgent.

How to resist under capitalism, where you’ve been overworked, overstimulated and estranged from your fellow humans and community?

Arm yourself. Group up. Protect the forests. The parks. The wildlife. Your community, that you must build. Talk to your neighbours, buy or occupy land together, get doctors on board, get FARMERS on board, get plumbers, and electricians, and internet techs and scholars. Learn how to grow food and make it last all year. Your labor now feeds you. The doctor's pay? A roof over their head, and food.

If you've been fired by the administration, go to “work” anyway. 

You were a park ranger? You ARE a park ranger. Arm yourselves, go back, occupy the parks, never patrol alone and do everything publicly. 

What are they gonna do? Make martyrs out of nature's protectors? Possibly. Are they gonna try to turn it around and call you “armed”, “dangerous”, “aggressive” – even though you weren't? 

Yeah, that's a part of what you could've learned from what Black and POC Americans were telling us all along. Just because the media or officials say someone was dangerous, doesn't mean they were. 

But yes, they are almost surely going to brand you as the Wicked Witch of the West, like the Wizard did with Elphaba. Therefore, you must make sure that the public knows you are not dangerous. Publicly, to cameras, state who you are, what you're doing and under what conditions you are doing it. “Resume regular park services, test trees for diseases, help wounded, lost, exhausted visitors, conserve nature, protect animals, … and we will stop everyone who tries to stop us or hinders us in our duty to this untouched piece of nature.”

Make them film and publish your daily work. Nature's guardian. 

Find ways to take care of yourselves, your food needs, your shelter needs. Harbor people that need help. Protect them with your life. 

Stop being obedient. Question things. Make connections and don't draw lines where there are none (proof & facts over feelings & coincidences).

You cannot afford to just continue working your job and bringing home a paycheck to feed your kids. You need to organize. Get your neighbours together, form collectives, get out of our comfort zone, create a village. Remember that a village requires work, your work and everyone else's. The idea of ‘I don’t owe anyone anything’ does not apply. You gotta help your neighbours and loved ones, and go out of your way to do that, like they need to go out of their way to help you. There will be phases where one of you does more than the other – that is not abuse or an excess of emotional labor. It’s community.

Tech companies, CEOs and your boss have worked tirelessly to keep you overworked, overstimulated, addicted to new, useless stuff, and alone. Break out of that.

And remember: If the click of a button can disconnect you from your people, you don’t have a community. You have customers on a platform where you are the product. 

Long live the revolution. Good luck.