In the old times, before the Great Freeze, when there was still such a thing as “Indiana,” the tax man would come around, and we’d have to give him money. Then the state sold the utilities, schools and hospitals to private corporations, and we’d have to give them money, too. Then the state sold everything else. Though we didn’t know it at the time, that put us on the road to true freedom.
Now my family does things our own way, without the albatross of dependence dangling from our necks. My wife and I grow our own food, cut our own toilet paper and make our own TV shows. When our can opener busted, I began using my teeth to crack into my dinner rations. I also do my own dental work. In the before times, you needed a license for that. A laminated piece of cardboard that lets you do a thing just because some pointy-headed twit says you’re “qualified.” It seems so ridiculous now.
Tim Boyd, the former mayor of Colorado City, Texas, showed us how to live. He said: “Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out! If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal with out and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family. . . . Bottom line, quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!”
Mayor Boyd’s orthographically violent rant is more than just an homage to the Libertopia of feudalism. It’s a manifesto for our times. The Great Freeze taught us to depend on nothing, least of all the government, for things like, say, the basic infrastructure needed to stay alive in an industrialized society. Boyd is saying: Take your lives back. Embrace true freedom. Stop depending on the state for stuff like water and electricity, you socialist losers.
He was right. Electricity is the biggest handout of all. Any simpleton can grow potatoes, and one spud will charge a cell phone for 30 to 45 seconds. That should be all you need to send a text that says “arm badly infected, grow penicillium mold ASAP.” Of course, I’m not using some multinational corporation’s charity towers to send a text; I’m building my own cell tower out of old TV antennae and copper I harvested from an abandoned meth house. Until that’s up and running, I can toss a phone about half a block with my remaining arm. Someone usually finds it.
And water? Last I checked, all of us make our own H2O several times a day. A little charcoal filter, and you’re ready to stop sucking your liquids from the great teat of the welfare state.
Mayor Boyd himself betrayed the cause by going right back to Facebook to whine when his wife got fired over his post. Our wussified, codependent culture made us think we needed someone else to give us a job. If you want money, why not get off your ass and make your own? We did just that for a few weeks until Big Brother tried to shut down our printing operation. That was back when there was still an Indiana, with Indiana laws and Indiana cops.
Then we former Hoosiers realized what had been staring us in the face this whole time: A state’s laws are just another handout. This wasn’t a tough sell to the Indiana legislature, who had been trying to figure out a way to give up governance altogether for years. Thus, the state was summarily dissolved, and we all went our separate ways.
And I mean come on, anyone who isn’t an indolent leech can write their own criminal code. Don’t have a pen? Pluck a rooster for a quill and mash up some ants for ink. Better yet, chisel those bad boys into stone tablets so they’ll last 5,000 years or more. Now our laws are in plain English, easily understood by all. Don’t steal, don’t murder too much, don’t cheat at euchre. I do all the enforcing, too, unlike all those freeloaders who rely on professional police, though we mostly operate on an honor system for now. When more folks finally begin accepting CanonBucks, I’ll hire enforcers from neighboring sovereign states, which currently number around 10,000 here in New Albany.
A truly independent, Emersonian life takes some getting used to, but it’s worth it. We learned to tolerate, and then to love, the taste of raw squirrel brains, for example. Under the religion we invented, we believe that by consuming an animal’s thinking organ, we inherit its memories. There’s no objective evidence that this happens, but that’s only if you accept the definitions of “objective” and “evidence” that the government rammed down your throat. A truly free man makes his own reality, writes his own truths, discovers his own laws of physics. And sure, squirrel memories don’t amount to much. Eating, leaping and fucking, that’s about it. But that’s enough for us, for we are terminally self-reliant.
The alternative to this kind of living is base servitude. Look at the guy in Texas who relied on a corporation for his energy, and got a $17,000.00 bill for less than a month of heat during the Great Freeze. Look at the millions who relied on the state to educate them, and ended up sunk in debt forever. Look at the hundreds of thousands who depended on expensive medical professionals to heal their bodies, and died because they couldn’t pay the tab. It’s time to admit that this long experiment of depending on any institution, or any other person, or anything other than yourself, is an abject failure.
So cowboy up, slothbait. Figure out how to use your exercise bike to power a space heater. Read up on which icicles make good drinking water, and which ones are chock-full of salmonella. Learn to do a self-appendectomy or die on your knees. Our constitutional freedoms, which transcend even the Constitution itself, dictate that we the people are truly, finally and forever alone in the world. As Mayor Boyd put it, “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish.”
Dan Canon is a civil rights lawyer and law professor. “Midwesticism”is his short-documentary series about Midwesterners who are making the world a better place. Watch it at: patreon.com/dancanon.
