A Long Train of Abuses

16/09/2025

Listen "A Long Train of Abuses"

Episode Synopsis


I read a statistic that 72% of Americans think violence is never justified, with only 11% saying violence is sometimes be justified. The rest couldn’t be bothered to reconcile with the question.
It had originally perhaps been the threat that Americans could—by their own clearly-defined right in the Declaration of Independence—overthrow any form of government that wasn’t working for them that made the government work for its people. It is the nation’s founding principle.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
In the Declaration of Independence, the founders wrote a long train of abuses by the King to justify their actions. Some may feel …unfortunately relevant today:

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone [...]
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us [...]
[...] For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world

But even America—before and after its independence—has never worked for all its people. How could it, with its:

genocide of native people,
enslavement of Black people,
denial of women’s right to vote,
internment of Japanese-Americans,
police violence against people of color,
persecution of transgender people,
mass deporting of immigrants,
…own long train of abuses.

None of this started with Donald Trump’s presidency. He’s just taken advantage of the frameworks that allowed the US government to oppress people before him.
The amount of people that the US government realistically works for decreases every day. But unlike its earliest days, the United States government has now become far stronger than its civilians. Second Amendment be damned; even a well-regulated militia could not overthrow the US government at this point.
And so, believing that violence is never justified only makes you vulnerable to those who believe it is.
That’s how it’s always been. If the government successfully convinces civilians that violence is never justified, then it gets to maintain its own monopoly on violence, legalizing the atrocities it commits itself, while punishing everyone else for what civilians have always had the right to do.
It’s right there, in the founding document of the nation, that it is the right and duty of civilians to overthrow any government that systemically infringes on its rights.
All I glean from that statistic is that 72% of people are unwilling to fight if they have to. Only the government benefits from that.