“Mother should I trust the government?” ~ Roger Waters; The Wall, 1979

I’m hoping that some of you have heard the saying, “The house never loses”? What that saying refers to is the statistical probability that when you visit a casino you are more likely to walk out with less money than you had when you walked in. It doesn’t matter what you play, cards, craps, roulette, or the slots, the odds are that they are going to relieve you of your money. They don’t call it gambling for nothing, and there’s a damned good reason they call the slots, one-armed bandits; it’s because they’re good at taking your money from you! Sure, people do win from time to time; but that isn’t the norm, and it happens just often enough to entice people to keep coming back; hoping that next time it will be them that hits it big.

Regardless of how the odds are stacked against people, casinos are doing a thriving business; gambling fever is alive and well; both in the U.S. and in places like Macao and Monte Carlo. I read recently that Las Vegas gets over 100,000 new visitors to the casinos each and every day of the week. Think about that for a minute; that’s 36 million new visitors to Las Vegas alone…every year; all coming with the hope that they’ll be the one who hits it big. Most never do.

I’ve never understood gambling fever; the near pathological addiction people have of giving away your money, hoping to hit a big jackpot in return. When I was a military contractor I was sent with another guy, an air conditioning tech, to Las Vegas in support of the Air Force’s annual exercise at Nellis AFB; Red Flag. The guy I went with had gambling fever; he would not go see a show, wouldn’t go to a decent restaurant to eat, wouldn’t even go to a strip club with me. All he did was sit in front of the progressive jackpot slot machines; feeding roll after roll of quarters into it; hoping he’d hit it. We were there for 30 days, and every night he dropped between $300-$500 trying to win. I hear his wife almost divorced him when her returned and she saw the bank statement showing his ATM withdrawals.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to Vegas, Tahoe and Reno; as well as a couple of the local Indian run casinos; and I’ve fed a roll of quarters or two into them hoping I’d get lucky. But it’s not an addiction for me, and if I win, I walk away without trying to double or triple my winnings. The last time I was in a casino was 3 years ago, on my 60th birthday when the whole family went to Reno for a couple of days. I think I ended up spending more eating steak dinners than I did on the slots; that’s how little they interest me.

The funny thing about people who are addicted to gambling is, if you ask them how much they had to spend before they hit a jackpot, they get angry; as if you are trying to spoil their victory. To them, that one big payout is more important than all the money they’d spent trying to get it. Gee, if people honestly feel that way, why don’t they just give me a thousand dollars, and I’ll give them $100 of it back and tell them they just won?

The reason I bring this up is because I see that attitude somewhere else as well, and it has nothing to do with gambling; I see it in regards to the income tax. I’ve never understood why people get mad when I ask them if they wouldn’t be happier if they could just keep their money instead of having Uncle Sam steal it from them, then give them a portion of it back if they had too much withheld. I know I’d be a whole lot happier if the government wasn’t dipping its greedy hands into my income; hoping that it will give me some back at tax time. If that makes me a greedy bastard, so be it. Why shouldn’t I be, I worked for that money, I should get to keep it; not hand it over to the IRS so they can spend it as they see fit. I forget though, they’re the government, and it is my patriotic duty to contribute my fair share in order to fund it. I must be a selfish son of a bitch; I should get down on my knees and thank them for returning a portion of what they stole from me in the first place; how ungrateful of me! What a crock of bovine manure!

As puzzling as all that is to me, there is another phenomenon that is even more baffling; that being voting; or the belief that YOUR vote actually makes a difference. Name one instance, over the last 100-150 years, where voting has held the government to its intended purposes and restored any of the rights and liberty it had previously stolen from the people. I’ll wait; and while you’re at it, you may want to formulate an excuse explaining why that hasn’t happened.

If you want my honest opinion, voting makes even less sense to me than gambling; at least when you gamble you have a chance of winning; however miniscule that chance may be. When you vote, regardless of who you select, the house [government] wins. The reason for that is twofold. First, they wrote the rule book by which they operate; you have no say in that. Secondly, if they cheat, or violate the rules, there’s nothing you can do to punish them; and voting someone out of office does not count as punishment; at least not in my book.

They can certainly punish us if we don’t play by their rules; look at all the federal agencies, law ‘enforcement’ officers, and prisons they have to do just that. But try punishing them and see how far you get. They have you under their thumb, and there’s no escaping their power and authority; the system was designed that way intentionally; which is a fact that most people refuse to accept. Most believe that our government is simply not adhering to the Constitution; that if they could elect the right people to office, all would be well again. That’s the hook they use to snag you, keep you enslaved; believing that your vote is going to make a difference. Voting is just like gambling, except instead of losing your money, you end up losing your rights and liberty; regardless of who ends up winning the election.

I find it ironic that people will stand behind, and defend a document most of them have never read. Even if people have read the constitution, it was probably a precursory reading; skimming over the words without any attempt to try and discern what their implications are. I don’t necessarily blame people for this, they simply weren’t taught how to exercise the kind of thinking required to understand a document like the constitution. That said, that skill can be acquired if enough effort is put into training the brain to think critically. Unfortunately, most do not have that kind of motivation; most are content to believe that the constitution is great, that it was written by great men, and anyone who says anything different is unpatriotic; regardless of how much evidence they can provide to support their position.

The problem is, even if you could find someone who was willing to accept the possibility that the constitution sucks, explaining how and why it sucks can’t be done with a few Facebook memes, or a couple of 30 second advertisements during a commercial break on their favorite TV show; it will take years of study to understand how we got to where we are today. That’s simply something most people do not have the time, or inclination to devote their efforts towards. Yet even James Madison, (one of the scheming bastards behind the constitution), once said: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. What that basically says, is: Those who know the truth will always rule over, and control, those who don’t, and if you want to be free of such men, then it’s your responsibility to learn the truth.

We did not get to where we are overnight, and thinking that voting a handful of new people into office will undo over 200 years of damage to your rights and liberty is ludicrous; at best. To understand how we got to where we are, you have to know what the constitution says; you have to know how it came into existence; you have to know why there were those who felt it was necessary to abolish the existing system of government at the time; and you have to know how those in power have used the document to exponentially increase their power; while diminishing your rights and liberty.

Voting isn’t going to change a damned thing as long as the system exists; because the system was designed to eventually become the system we have today. They couldn’t bring about these changes suddenly; they had to do it incrementally; but the system we live under today was their ultimate goal nonetheless. That means the design of the system, and the men who designed it, suck, and are not worthy of the support of anyone who claims to love and cherish their rights and liberty.

To be continued…

July 1, 2021

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross, Student of history, politics, patriot and staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Send all comments to: bonsai@syix.com.

If you liked Neal’s latest column, maybe you’ll like his latest booklet: The Civil War: (The Truth You Have Not Been Told). Life continues to expand for this prolific writer and guardian of TRUE American history.