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My first job in Security, I quickly realized, would not be interesting or exciting. Guarding an entry post at a nearly deserted business, the most challenging thing would be not falling asleep or going mad from boredom. Of course I still had to be observant but as I paced and scanned the vacant hallways I realized I would have to find some way to entertain my restless, idle mind.

Years before I had memorized a few of my favorite poems and thought that perhaps I could use the hours of solitude to memorize something of value. I had a pocket sized copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that my husband had bought, one copy for each of us and one for each of our children and I thought of all the documents it would be a good endeavor to commit to memory.

As I paced for hours I would glance down at the book, reading a line, repeating it back in my mind over and over as I watched my area. As the hours wore on I would add sentence after sentence lengthening the amount I could recite from memory.

Looking back now, I am struck by the metaphor. There was nothing so important that I would ever guard in that building that wouldn't pale in comparison to the concepts embodied by these words, which I used at that moment merely to pass the time.

As I read the words over, the profound meaning in them stirred me. I had always been a deep believer in the concepts and at times, especially during the Bush War years that I had serious anxiety about the destruction of our most basic rights. As a matter of fact, my husband had gotten the little books during those years and said we should call carry them at all times to remind ourselves about tyranny.

Being of Irish ancestry, I joked with him that I could smell tyranny. It was a sense that evolved in the Irish, thanks to the British, and I never trusted the government because to me it represented just another type of ruling elite.

But I thought the little books were a great idea. Everyone should carry these little books, not for ourselves as much as to wield against the tyrant, as a crucifix is wield against a vampire.

Still, as I committed the lines to memory the substance, the underlying philosophy and the way in which it was so artfully expressed was truly moving to my soul. Most people of course will recite the "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" when asked what they recall of the document but mine would be the lines that follow:

"That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

It has always been the dynamic that the elite, being small in number, must employ mechanisms of control over the masses. Throughout history the ruling class feared mobs and any large gathering of the commoners, because it was very apparent to them in these displays that rulers are vastly outnumbered by those they rule. If all of the masses rose up against the elite they would be overthrown and probably violently dispatched.

They used all manner to keep the populace in line, often controlling the press and thereby controlling public dialogue. When people refuse to be shut up, then government begins to become a police state, it becomes more authoritarian.

But in the end, when the elite ruling minority had oppressed the people too much, there would be an uprising, a revolution, to bring the power back to the people.

It is a common rule of physics that two unequal weights can be balanced if the base upon which they are balanced, the fulcrum, is moved from the middle to one side. It changes the leverage of the weights involved. The use of the fulcrum makes the heavy lifting easier. It's what makes a wheelbarrow or dolly work.

Teeter Totter
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In a sheer numbers game, the populace on one side of the teeter totter and the ruling elite on the other side, the fulcrum being in the middle, then the populace always had the leverage.

But the ruling elite have figured out the leverage game. They continue to move the fulcrum closer and closer to the populace until all of our weight feels like it can't move them.

Sometimes I feel powerless in the face of the empire that America has become. I have to remind myself of the times when human beings took back control. If and when it comes down to it, I will fight. But I hope that we can bring an end to this corrupt totalitarian regime without bloodshed.

But let's be real. We are on the brink. In many ways we have let our democracy go over a cliff. It's like we are desperately clinging to it as it dangles from a thin cord, as it threatens to fall into the abyss. Once it has gone this far we can not get if back without understanding leverage.

So let's start with the basics. Yes, there are more of us than there are of them. But right now they have leverage. For one, they own 95 percent of our politicians. We have to get them out. We have to demand that the money they have acquired through their corruption not be used to buy their way into more power.

The second thing we need to do is recognize that fascist ideology believes in dividing and ranking people. Hierarchy is extremely important to them. The elite create these hierarchies usually with white heterosexual males on top, often with exaggerated "ubermensch" characteristics, pro-violent, pro-war, more emphasis on virility. Women are a lower scale and can only be prized as good "breeders". Other races are considered inferior. Homosexuals are considered "deviant" etc.

By dividing people the elite pull some segments of the populace towards the middle of the teeter totter. White christian men get to come towards the middle. Of course they will never be in the elite class but they are closer than white women and by the time the elite are done ranking us, the lower classes, people of color, religious minorities, and homosexuals are at the very end of the teeter totter.

You see for all the right wing complaints about "identity politics" of the left they are the big dividers of people into classes. What they don't like about the left is that many of us have figured out how they use this ranking tool against us and by talking about it, by exposing it, we do some damage to their best tool

Aside from issues of race and gender, the elite divide us in other ways too. It's like a point system where you are rewarded with points for race and gender but also you can gain points for capitulating to "acceptable" ideas and denouncing "unacceptable" ones.

Religion is a big one. Choosing the "right religion" can give you a few points. Being "patriotic" gets you a lot of points. Advocating for ideologies such as capitalism, empire building and any ideology which at its core is a ranking system gets you points because it shows you understand and support hierarchy.

Any advocacy for a system which is egalitarian in any way, support for any idea which puts the interest of the group above the individual will cost you points.

People who find themselves at the far end if the teeter totter, minorities of any kind, whites who support socialism, they will be demonized by the elite. The elite wants to destroy these groups. As authoritarian movements gain steam they begin to use these groups as a whipping boy. They start to instigate discrimination at every level of society by encouraging people to look down on anyone below them on the scale.

Early socialists were keenly aware of this trick of the elite and were avid supporters of equal rights for women and people of color.

So yes the elite have money and power but they also have our own sense of hubris to divide us. This is something we absolutely have control over. The media if you notice, will focus on stories with a racial or gender based issue to try and drive a wedge between us. We have to be aware of and resist that.

The other way that hierarchy shifts the balance of power is in the devaluing of the voice of certain groups of people while giving more value to other people's voice.

This has become an especially important and more frequently used tool for a very good reason. The demographics of America are changing. Although white men still cling to their position at the head of the table, the country is becoming more diversified and all of those groups which used to recognize the white male as the apex of the power pyramid, many minorities have found their own voice and are ready to destroy that old paradigm.

In order to maintain the control of the masses they first divide us and try to get each level of the hierarchy to subjugate those beneath it. If we buy into their caste system they keep control and if we turn on each other they keep control.

He will not divide us.
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In any situation the evaluation of whose voice matters more has always been part of equation. If a white man kills a black man vs a black man kills a white man. If a straight man kills a homosexual man. If a police officer kills a citizen, and there is a racial element, well we've seen how that comes out.

People in law enforcement or the military, being part of the state are used as defenders of the ruling class and are symbols of the hierarchy and their voices are given more weight than the civilian.

We've seen it time and time again that these exalted positions are above reproach, like priests, judges, politicians, doctors who manage to have sometimes multiple victims because their voices are repressed, shouted down by those in power. And with every crime, every victim left in the wake of these powerful abusers, every time they walk free in spite of evidence, in spite of testimonies, the idea is reinforced that the victims voices are not given the weight that those having status are given.

Thus hierarchy not only desires and perpetuates oppression, it is literally sustained by it.

One recent example that stunned me and made me realize the level to which our society has become entrenched in hierarchy is the story of Edward Gallagher.

Edward Gallagher is a white male, blonde hair and blue eyed, a member of the military and specifically a member of the Navy Seals - an elite soldier. He is the clean of the crop. This is the persona of the Ubermale embodied. He would have passed with flying colors any purity test that Hitler could have devised for stature and health.

When allegations emerged that Gallagher had killed civilians, including a girl walking to school and an elderly man and a 15 year old prisoner, the hierarchy reacted and started circling the wagons.

Of course the victims in this case were Arabs and therefore near the bottom of the power spectrum. So we would normally see the debate over Gallagher's actions breakdown along the race and military lines. We would hear the racists tropes about muslim terrorists trotted out along with the usual berating of civilian voices and how we "just don't understand what these soldiers have to deal with"

But there is another layer in this story because the witnesses to these alleged atrocities were also Navy seals.

At first I thought that society, being confronted with multiple eye witness testimonies by individuals who enjoyed the same status that Gallagher held, would have to admit Gallagher was outnumbered and that all voices being equal, public support would be behind those coming forward to report these criminal acts. So when I saw that even the voices of other elite military officers were being brushed aside it was surprising.

Then I realized that Gallagher was a superior officer to those who were reporting him. Given this information I began to see that Gallagher not only outranked those reporting in him but he represents and is a psychological icon of hierarchical dominance and whenever a group of lesser voices tries to take on an individual at the apex of the pyramid of power, whenever all of the common folk move in unison to balance the teeter totter and begin to pull it back to the masses, it is frightening to those who want to prolong the hierarchical system.

This fear, hatred and demonization of the masses, of the under class, immigrants, black lives matter, etc. is because of the threat they pose to destroy the entire system. Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, people who expose the crimes of the elite and sway public opinion are truly dangerous to hierarchy and must be made examples of.

So the lesson in all of this is that we have to form an awareness of these things as the common folk. We have to recognize at every level this weapon of the fulcrum. There have always been more of us than there are of them. But we have to be united against this most basic tool of hierarchy to steal our power - to divide and conquer us. To use one group of us to "control" another group.

We must reject this division. Our very survival depends on it.

I was born in 1970 in Wheeling, WV and have lived here all my life. I come from mostly Irish Catholic coal miners and railroad workers. My original academic interest was in teaching foreign languages studying both French and Spanish in High School. After high school I married and had two children.

My first jobs were waitressing and hotel housekeeper and Medicaid Billing Clerk. I received my Associates in 2003 studying social services and child development. I took several years off from college to focus on working and trying to raise a family. I returned to school in 2006 and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice from West Liberty State College (Now West Liberty University) in 2008. I worked in the security field for 13 years.

My interests include politics, law, history, travel and language. I have been called a conspiracy theorist at times, but often remind my critics that often the only difference between a conspiracy theory and history is 40 years.

I believe it is the responsibility of every citizen to hold its government accountable and to push for the government to serve the people not the other way around.