This world is not ours

[Doc]

Ghost, has the irony escaped you that anarchy is it self a form of social order?

Revolting Peasants - From the film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'.

ARTHUR and PATSY riding. They stop and look. We see a castle in the
distance, and before it a PEASANT is working away on his knees trying
to dig up the earth with his bare hands and a twig. ARTHUR and
PATSY ride up, and stop before the PEASANT

ARTHUR
Old woman!

DENNIS
Man!

ARTHUR
Man. I'm sorry. Old man, What knight live in that castle
over there?

DENNIS
I'm thirty-seven.

ARTHUR
What?

DENNIS:
I'm thirty-seven ... I'm not old.

ARTHUR:
Well - I can't just say: "Hey, Man!'

DENNIS
Well you could say: "Dennis"

ARTHUR
I didn't know you were called Dennis.

DENNIS
You didn't bother to find out, did you?

ARTHUR
I've said I'm sorry about the old woman, but from the behind
you looked ...

DENNIS
What I object to is that you automatically treat me like
an inferior ...

ARTHUR
Well ... I AM king.

DENNIS
Oh, very nice. King, eh! I expect you've got a palace and fine
clothes and courtiers and plenty of food. And how d'you get that?
By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist
dogma which perpetuates the social and economic differences in our
society! If there's EVER going to be any progress ...

An OLD WOMAN appears.

OLD WOMAN
Dennis! There's some lovely filth down here ... Oh!
how d'you do?

ARTHUR
How d'you do, good lady ... I am Arthur, King of the Britons ...
can you tell me who lives in that castle?

OLD WOMAN
King of the WHO?

ARTHUR
The Britons.

OLD WOMAN
Who are the Britons?

ARTHUR
All of us are ... we are all Britons.

DENNIS winks at the OLD WOMAN.

... and I am your king ....

OLD WOMAN
Ooooh! I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were
an autonomous collective ...

DENNIS
You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship,
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes ...

OLD WOMAN
There you are, bringing class into it again ...

DENNIS
That's what it's all about ... If only -

ARTHUR
Please, please good people. I am in haste. What knight lives in
that castle?

OLD WOMAN
No one live there.

ARTHUR
Well, who is your lord?

OLD WOMAN
We don't have a lord.

ARTHUR
What?
DENNIS
I told you, We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune, we take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

ARTHUR
Yes.

DENNIS
... But all the decision of that officer ...

ARTHUR
Yes, I see.

DENNIS
... must be approved at a bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority
in the case of purely internal affairs.

ARTHUR
Be quiet!

DENNIS
... but a two-thirds majority ...

ARTHUR
Be quiet! I order you to shut up.

OLD WOMAN
Order, eh -- who does he think he is?

ARTHUR
I am your king!

OLD WOMAN
Well, I didn't vote for you.

ARTHUR
You don't vote for kings.

OLD WOMAN
Well, how did you become king, then?

ARTHUR
The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite,
held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the water to signify by
Divine Providence ... that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur ...
That is why I am your king!

DENNIS
Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out
swords ... that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme
executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from
some farcical aquatic ceremony.

ARTHUR
Be quiet!

DENNIS
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power
just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

ARTHUR
Shut up!

DENNIS
I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some
moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would
put me away!

ARTHUR
(Grabbing him by the collar)
Shut up, will you. Shut up!

DENNIS
Ah! NOW ... we see the violence inherent in the system.

ARTHUR
Shut up!

PEOPLE (i.e. other PEASANTS) are appearing and watching.

DENNIS
(calling)
Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!

ARTHUR
(aware that people are now coming out and watching)
Bloody peasant!
(pushes DENNIS over into mud and prepares to ride off)

DENNIS
Oh, Did you hear that! What a give-away.

ARTHUR
Come on, patsy.

They ride off.

DENNIS
(in the background as we PULL OUT)
did you see him repressing me, then? That's what I've
been on about ...

Not all anarchists have to be bad people, or boogeymen. Look at Jesus and the story of his life. Sure, there is a bit of slant in that writing, but the point is easily enough made.

PBS of all folk ran a whole week of documentaries on American Anarchists. From Emma Goldman to what are called the Accidental Anarchists. These are people that become social reactionaries or revolutionaries because of circumstance or situation. For Rosa Parks, and the movement she indirectly started, it was because her feet were dog tired, and she wasn't getting up for nobody. Some people are labeled as Anarchists because the current ruling body needs a boogeyman to demonize.

I will give you that there is both a broad and a narrow sense of definition to the word. Some bad, some good, some sensationalism, and some hype. I don't deny that at all. The word it self has changed over time, changing, adapting, taking on and losing old meanings. From antiarch, to anarch, meaning one who slays a monarch, and now anarch means one who leads and organises an anarchy or anarchistic movement... Which is an oxymoron if I have ever heard one. And there is a modern day problem of confusing a syndicalist for an anarchist. Emma, for all her anarchy, was more of a syndicalist at heart. She was all for labour parties and unions controling as a ruling body. Which is in a very very loose sense, democracy. Or Marxism depending how you slice it.

For me, personally, I don't agree with all of the laws. If a governing body must use strongarm tactics to enforce the law, then it's probably not a very good one. Our Constitution is a good example of self evident laws and common sense. By it self it is a good document. I love it, hold it dear to my heart, and believe in it. But the mockery it has become is vile, making it worth little more than soiled toilet paper. It's so twisted and abused that it is rapidly becoming worthless. Unfair laws that only serve the law makers and not the public need to be resisted. They should not be followed. Unfair taxes, laws that go against the greater good of the public, laws that make no sense... All of these things and more should be resisted.

Our current tax policy is the worst. I have not paid taxes since I don't know when. I don't think I paid taxes when Reagan was in office... Might have been Carter. I make sure to cover my own ass and send money where it actually needs to be. I don't want my money spent in ways I disagree with. I do not wish to be taxed unfairly. And I don't want my hard earned dimes and nickles going into some slimy politicians pocket. So I spend into charities and worthwhile causes. I make sure that money gets to where it needs to be with out worthless scumballs taking their cut out of it and leaving scraps for those that really need it the most. And every year, I could get this money back and send Uncle Sham a bill saying he owes me. This year, for reasons I can not explain, I was cruely, and unfairly I might add, audited. It made my whole damn life a mess, it is a tactic of goonery and intimidation. They looked so hard to find something, anything, so they could commit strong armed robbery on me. Even tried to use a legal loophole to make me pay through the nose. My lawyers took care of that, and this year, I am sending a bill to Uncle Sham for the money he owes me... A seven figure bill. And my lawyers are well aware that that money will not be paid for quite some time... The government is making money off of the interest being generated while they glacially move the mountains of red tape it takes to get that kind of money out to me. Every single penny of interest generated by those funds will also be sent to me as well, I am making sure of that right now in court. Infact, I have just found out it is well within my legal rights to lay claim to all the backpay I could have asked for over the decades. I might just do that. I might just get a lot of other people I know to do so as well, people who keep money in tax shelters and do good things with their cash other than fund the current facist police state. I suspect such an act would leave quite a wound in the current financial situation of the US government. The IRS does nothing to actually tell people that they are fully entitled to the money generated in interest while the money awaits transfer. Infact, they hide it quite well, down in the basement...

"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available [and on display] in the local planning office for the last nine months."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

Oh look... I just turned this into a rant. Sorry. I hope it's been fun and somewhat educational. Some things are worth resisting simply because they are wrong. Does this make me a bad person?