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The most lamentable feature of our current Age of the Weenie is the almost universal, slavish idolization of the U.S. federal government, and the delusion that either political party is going to save us.The government—no matter which corrupt party is running is—is NOT going to save us. Over 90% of the time, the government CREATES the problems. To put it another way, the government is the problem to the solution.For a long time my favorite American individualist was Henry David Thoreau, and when I was a college student in Boston I often went to the site of his cabin on Walden Pond and meditated on his spirit.As I wrote in my new book,Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions:In the 1840s, many American newspapers supported the Mexican-American War in an aggressive, jingoistic fashion, claiming it was an expression of America’s “Manifest Destiny.” A notable critic of the war—and the propaganda published to justify it—was Henry David Thoreau, who correctly believed that the US government declared war on Mexico due to the influence of a relatively small group of powerful southern men who used the government and military as their instrument to gain new territory for slave states. In his 1849 essay, “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau argued that when people acquiesce to immoral government actions, they become complicit.Nothing has changed since then. The business of waging war abroad is still directed by a relatively small group of men pursuing their narrow interests, while “We the People” are propagandized into playing along with it and paying for it with our taxes and US debt obligations.Because humor is such a good antidote to the negative feelings of anger and frustration, whenever I am feeling down, I watch the following video of John McAfee announcing his 2020 presidential candidacy from his yacht in an unknown location while fleeing the IRS. This strikes me as the most colorful and entertaining gesture of defiance in American history.John knew he was playing with fire, and a year later he was arrested in Spain on a US/IRS warrant and incarcerated for nine months before he died in his cell. The authorities claim he committed suicide, but I wonder about that, because he (an internet security pioneer) knew a lot about a lot of powerful people.John may have been the last great rebel, and his death in prison in 2021 may be regarded as the true beginning of the Age of the Weenie in which we now live.RIP John David McAfee (18 September 1945 – 23 June 2021).Subscribe nowShare