Kids are taught in school that it is not legal to own other people; that Abe Lincoln “freed the slaves.” But when those kids turn 18, they are required to “do the right thing” and sign what amounts to an indenture contract to “serve” as an unwilling mercenary, where they will no longer have any say about what they are allowed to do and will be told exactly what they must do. If they do not follow those orders, they will be punished – including physically – just the same as the field hands overseen on the plantations of the antebellum South.
The only difference is they don’t call them slaves anymore.
It’s a distinction with little difference. It’s also a barometer of the state of things in this country since Lincoln freed the slaves – from their owners – and asserted the federal government’s ownership over everyone.
The ex-slaves included.
We’re all on dey plantation now.
If you choose to be free, it’s a crime. Just as it was before Lincoln freed the slaves. If a person “bound to service” – the exact term used, which is interesting given it’s the same term used now that we’re all “free” – decided to run away from his “service,” he was a fugitive from the law and subject to punishment. Very little has changed since then. If anything, it is worse since then. Slaves in the antebellum South were not required to endorse their servility by signing up for it. The slaves today are. And if they fail to do so, it is a felony.
Herewith the relevant passage:
“Not registering” for what is styled selective service, by which is meant the federal government will at its discretion dragoon whomever it selects into its service – “is a felony.” As in a federal offense. One that entails “a fine up to $250,000 and imprisonment up to five years, or both.”
A slave in the antebellum South who tried to run away from “service” had it much better. All they did to him, usually, was drag him back to the plantation. He wasn’t expected to pay his massa hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Today, that threat – plus years in a federal prison – are used to intimidate every 18-year-old (now including 18-year-old women) to “voluntarily” sign-up for “service.” To agree that the federal government owns them as chattel, just the same as slaves were owned in the Antebellum South. It is not merely the product of their effort – of their minds and bodies – that the federal government lays claim to. It is themselves. Their entirety. Their bodies – and their minds – which must do as ordered (or else).
That they might not be “selected” for “service” changes nothing in terms of the fundamentals. The fact that the federal government can “select” any 18-year-old it likes, whenever it likes implicitly means it can select every 18-year-old, whenever it likes. Just the same as if it is accepted that the government has the rightful authority to take a penny of your money, it has implicitly laid claim to all of your money.
Whatever you are allowed to keep is by sufferance rather than right.
Just the same as you are allowed to retain possession of the home you will never actually own, no matter how many payments you make to the government as the cost of rent for being allowed to live in it. Just as you must register any vehicle you possess with the government. The word is italicized to make a point of the derivation. Reg being a prefix indicating king – and that’s not you. The “king” is no longer an individual (except as a figurehead in places such as what’s left of England) because it’s too easy to see the king. It is much more difficult for many people to understand they are slaves in the absence of one.
Instead, they believe they have a say – an indulgence they are permitted (though even that begins to wane). But what they say does not matter when the government says otherwise. At which point, you are legally required to do as it says – or else.
Including – if you are an eighteen-year-old kid – filling out your own indenture contract, which is exactly what you’re doing when you sign your name to the thing.
Aren’t you, per that maudlin anthem Trump loves to play at his rallies, “proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free”?
Cognitive meet dissonance.
. . .
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