The Imperial Presidency

What we need is not a new president but a new presidency.

There are few practical limits on presidential power. This is a key dynamic in the failed presidencies of G.W. Bush and Barack Obama.

If you're not familiar with the term The Imperial Presidency, here is an introduction:

Through various means, Presidents subsequently acquired powers beyond the limits of the Constitution. The daily accountability of the President to the Congress, the courts, the press and the people has been replaced by an accountability of once each four years during an election. These changes have occurred slowly over the centuries so that that which appears normal differs greatly from what was the original state of America.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. popularized the term with his book The Imperial Presidency (Kindle edition), originally issued in 1973 but updated in 2004 to include a discussion of the G.W. Bush presidency. Schlesinger summarized the "World War II and beyond" expansion of presidential powers thusly:

“The weight of messianic globalism was indeed proving too much for the American Constitution. If this policy were vital to American survival, then a way would have to be found to make it constitutional; perhaps the Constitution itself would have to be revised. In fact, the policy of indiscriminate global intervention, far from strengthening American security, seemed rather to weaken it by involving the United States in remote, costly and mysterious wars, fought in ways that shamed the nation before the world.When the grandiose policy did not promote national security and could not succeed in its own terms, would it not be better to pursue policies that did not deform and disable the Constitution?"

In general, the Constitution grants the Executive Branch few outright powers. The president is given extraordinary powers in wartime as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and he is given broad leeway to pursue foreign policy. Presidents have long "mixed and matched" the two, sending U.S. troops and Naval forces to intervene in other nations to suit U.S. policy objectives.

President Lincoln exceeded constitutionally granted powers during the Civil War but claimed the integrity of the nation was higher priority than obeying the Constitution.
The expansion of "war powers" to times when war had not been declared by Congress began in earnest with President Franklin Roosevelt, who invoked "emergency powers" before war was declared in December, 1941.

After World War II, presidents engaged the nation in full-blown wars in Korea and Vietnam without Congressional declarations of war. A "green light" of congressional approval for whatever actions the president deems necessary was put in place after the Watergate scandal. Events since then (such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003) have revealed how far an Imperial President could go with broadly granted war powers, "presidential immunity," "signing statements" (declaring which congressionally approved statutes he would ignore or refuse to enforce) and the increasingly popular "executive orders" which enable everything from imprisoning entire ethnic populations (E.O. 9066) to claiming extra-legal powers over the entire U.S. economy.

Presidents before G.W. Bush and Obama managed to perform their duties with a handful of Executive Orders--five per term seemed about average. President Bush issued 160 in his first term while President Obama has so far issued 139. Both of our most recent presidents also made heavy use of Executive privileges such as "signing statements" and other "work-arounds" to feeble limits on presidential powers: Obama’s Executive Orders(factcheck.org).

Imperial Presidency 101 - Unitary Executive Theory and the Imperial Presidency

Candidates Agree: Imperial Presidency Is A-OK

The implicit claim by defenders of essentially unlimited presidential power is that these broad powers are needed to run the American Empire. No Establishment figure would dare openly state that the U.S. operates a military, diplomatic, financial and commercial Empire, but that is nonetheless the case being made to justify the Imperial Presidency: an Empire requires an Imperial President with broad powers to act not just in the domestic economy and society but anywhere in the world.

What we need is not a new president but a new presidency. Unfortunately neither candidate has expressed any interest in limiting the powers of the Imperial Presidency. If the history of the past two (failed) presidencies is any guide, Imperial powers will only expand as crises offer new opportunities for extra-legal power grabs.

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The Center Cannot Hold: Kleptocracy Delegitimizes the Status Quo

The center cannot hold because it has failed the nation by defending the Status Quo kleptocracy.

Let's start with William Butler Yeats' (1865-1939) poem, The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Though the poem was penned in 1919, it speaks presciently to our era. If we take "the center" to be the political machinery at the gravitational center of the Status Quo, Yeats is suggesting the center cannot hold as things such as the economy and living standards fall apart.

As a case study, let's look at Greece, a nation that is the leading-edge of Status Quo delegitimization and destabilization. As I noted last week, ( In a Dysfunctional Status Quo, Reform Triggers Collapse), corruption isn't a feature of the Greek Status Quo: it is the Status Quo. Any reformation that eliminated corruption would dismantle the Status Quo and bring down the Elites who have been looting the nation at will.

Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked in Greece:

How can someone who has declared an annual income of €25,000 ($32,400) transfer €52 million abroad? What kind of supplementary income must an individual have who, according to his tax returns, earned €5,588 in 2010, yet still managed to move €19.8 million abroad? And how can it be that a Greek citizen sequesters €9.7 million abroad although he supposedly earned exactly zero euros?

The "Lagarde List" contains the names of 54,000 Greek citizens who have transferred major assets out of the country. The Greek Establishment is (naturally) doing nothing to investigate these 54,000 people, because the 54,000 are the Greek establishment.
I have long held that Greece Is a Kleptocracy (June 28, 2011). This chart is the acme of unsustainability.



By all accounts, these tax revenue figures are wildly optimistic, and so the actual current deficit is much higher.



To cut to the last act: the Status Quo of Greece is expending the last dregs of its legitimacy and cash defending its kleptocratic Elites from their fellow citizens and from the nation's creditors. As noted above, it is impossible to "reform" a Status Quo whose foundation is corruption, just as it is impossible to wean an economy based on debt and leverage for its "growth" of excessive debt and leverage: financialization isn't a feature of the economy, it is the economy.

The entire eurozone is a kleptocracy as well: 500 Million Debt-Serfs: The European Union Is a Neo-Feudal Kleptocracy (July 22, 2011).

Here are the key dynamics of delegitimization:

1. The consequences of austerity. The kleptocratic "fix" is to divert more of the debtor nations' national incomes to debt service. In other words, money that once went to labor (wages) and social services now goes to debt repayments and interest.

What are the consequences of this massive diversion of income? The economy shrinks. Less income means less spending, which means negative growth.

The Eurozone's "solution" of debt-on-debt depends on debtor economies "growing their way out of debt." If labor's share of the national income is falling, and both private and government spending and income are falling, precisely where is the "growth" supposed to come from? As private income falls, tax revenues fall, causing the government to raise taxes and junk fees. This further reduces private income, and so on in a self-reinforcing feedback loop of contraction.

Austerity sets up a positive feedback loop of less income and less spending. The people in these debtor economies can look around and see the consequences: everyone has less money, and less confidence that the "austerity fix" will do anything but put debt-junkies into fatal withdrawal.

Once an economy becomes dependent on debt that rises faster than the resulting "growth," then that economy is set on an unwavering path to implosion. (The Cycle of Dependency and the Atrophy of Self-Reliance).

When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008), institutions lose their legitimacy(The Three Ds: Delegitimization, Definancialization, Deglobalization July 1, 2011) and people naturally save more as insurance against an uncertain future. Fewer people are willing to risk their capital in new ventures, and as the economy loses vitality then these trends reinforce each other.

2. This loss of faith and confidence triggers hoarding and capital flight. As Ludwig von Mises noted long ago, the only way to organically "grow" an economy is for capital to accumulate faster than the population, that is, capital increases on a per capita basis. Capital means savings/cash, not debt, that is invested in productive assets and enterprises.

So what happens when you skim more of a nation's income to service debt? There is less capital accumulated, and thus less capital available for investment.

What happens when people lose faith in the financial institutions and their coercive "fixes"? They move their capital to less-risky, more productive climes. In other words, capital flight is another positive feedback: as people move their capital out of the country, then there is less available per capita for productive investment. Toss in a kleptocratic government which increases taxes while misallocating precious capital on crony Capitalism and corruption, and you get a death-spiral of capital flight and risk avoidance.

The irony of a loss of faith is people instinctively place their capital in non-productive savings: in gold, Swiss lock boxes, and so on. This instinct removes capital from the pool of investments in productive assets.

As the Status Quo fails to protect the national interests and the citizenry from the neofeudal kleptocracy, faith in the political center fades. The centerist parties cannot "reform" corruption because they are the embodiment of corruption. In desperation, people move from the center to the extreme left or right, seeking a party that is willing to overthrow the corrupt, failed kleptocracy.

This is of course the pathway to dictatorship and fascism: Love or nothing: The real Greek parallel with Weimar.

These were the men who tried and failed to use a mixture of austerity, tough policing and what we might now call "technocratic" rule to save German democracy. They failed.Horrified inertia is now seeping from the world of the semi-outlawed young activists into the lives of ordinary people.
On the streets of Athens there is already the answer. You can feel what it is like when the political system - and even the rule of law - becomes paralysed and atrophies.
The "hopeless inertia" begins to grip even the middle classes, as the evidence of organised racist violence encroaches into their lives.

My Greek sources report that the abandonment of the failed political center is well under way as austerity is tightened while kleptocrats maintain their grip on the machinery of governance.
The solution has long been obvious: Greece, Please Do The Right Thing: Default Now (June 1, 2011).

The same holds true for every nation ruled by kleptocratic Elites that has attempted to "grow our way out of debt" by piling debt on debt. Doesn't that include Spain, Italy, China, the U.S. and a host of other nations?

For more on this topic:

The First Dominoes: Greece, Reality, and Cascading Default (February 13, 2012)
Do We Really Know Greece's Default Will Be Orderly? (February 17, 2012)
Greek Theater Double-Feature: A Farce and a Tragicomedy (June 19, 2012)

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Part 25: Fire! (serialized fiction)

Here is this week's chapter of my serialized comic novel "Four Bidding For Love."(Those who find absurdist humor and adult situations offensive, please read no further.)


     Undetected by the blissfully engaged young lovers across the hall, the one candle Ross had failed to completely extinguish had flickered back to life, guttering wax onto a loose pile of papers on his desk. If the candle had been an ordinary one, Ross's hasty puff of breath would have easily blown it out. But having sacrificed his three stoutest candles to woo Vonda back to her darkened lair, Ross had been forced to scrounge together an assortment of mismatched birthday candles he'd found in his kitchen drawer.
     Congratulating himself on his keen ingenuity, Ross had bound a dozen of the candles with twine and set the assembly on a tin-can lid. The combined candles had given off a bright if short-lived light, enabling Ross to gather his camera and call Dewey to arrange a photo shoot of the newly acquired T-20Z. Hastening to leave, Ross had extinguished the Christmas candles on his desk and then blown out the bound birthday candles.
     But unbeknownst to Ross, one of the candles was of the trick variety which only appeared to fizzle when blown out. True to its design, this single small candle had sparked back to life seconds after he'd left, re-lighting the other eleven candles bound to it.
     If the wax had dripped on a stack of Sears catalogs, perhaps the fire might not have spread, for the dense catalogs had more in common with a fire-resistant post of wood than they did with highly flammable loose sheets of paper.
     Given that his desk was a clutter of paper—torn scraps of scribbled notes, receipts from online auctions and the like—Ross had placed the can lid on top of a seemingly stable stack of papers. As the candle burned down, wax flowed from the loose papers onto a pile of newspapers that he’d placed on a string-bound stack of Commentary magazines.
     When the candles burned low enough, their last flames licked along the molten wax to the paper, which quickly caught fire. The rivulet of wax provided a perfect pathway of ready fuel, and a scrap of burning paper fell from the desk onto the wax-dotted newspapers, which were soon burning with surprising intensity.
     These newspapers acted as kindling to the dense stack of magazines beneath, and just as small branches will eventually ignite a thick log, the magazines smoldered and then caught fire.
     The flames on the cluttered desktop found ample fuel to spread to the Christmas candles and thence to the other end of the desk, where the hot embers drifted into the rubbish can filled with loosely crumpled paper.
     All this happened in a few minutes; but once the quick-burning paper had been consumed, the fire seemed to die back. A hot fire which completely burns the fuel generates little smoke, and since the nearest smoke detector was in the hallway, there was no warning shriek or burning smell to alert other residents. But the fire had not died out; it was simply gathering its strength and heating nearby stacks of magazines up to the ignition point.
     Thus we must forgive the self-absorbed young lovers across the hall their inattention; for only when the fire arose anew, in a much hotter and more frightening incarnation, did sufficient smoke build up in the crowded space to pour out beneath Ross's door to the hallway. From there it seeped under Kylie's door and drifted up the stairs to Vonda's age-impaired nostrils.
     The young lovers were still catching their breaths from love's denouement when Kylie whispered, "Do you smell smoke?"
     Robin eased away from her embrace to sniff the air. "Yes. Something's burning."
     A door creaked open on the second floor and noisy footfalls clumped down the steps. A few seconds later Vonda's craggy voice filled the hallway. "Ross! Open up!"
     As Kylie bolted upright, Vonda's agitated shout came through her door. "Kylie! Ross's room is on fire!"
     The two lovers scrambled to their feet in the darkness just as Vonda opened Kylie's door and clicked on the light switch. The two splendidly naked lovers froze, blinking in the sudden brightness. "Are you alright, Kylie dear?"
     Kylie did not know how recently Vonda had updated her horn-rimmed glasses, but judging by her shocked expression it seemed her thick lenses corrected quite adequately for distance. "I'm sorry to bust in like this, honey, but the house is on fire," Vonda wheezed. As Kylie covered herself—an impossible dilemma, Kylie, knew, to have three spots to hide and only two hands to do it with—she sharply regretted not locking her door.
     Vonda straightened her saffron evening robe—her daytime one was light-blue—and said in an exaggerated tone, "I heard you were at home—" Kylie blushed a hot hue at this revelation—"and I'm just so happy you're alright, Dearie."
     Robin scurried back to the protection of the bedsheets, but Vonda had already taken in all there was to see, and her voice quavered hoarsely with a gossip's glee. "So that's your boyfriend. He's handsome."
     Kylie's voice was urgently stern. "Vonda, did you call nine-one-one yet?"
     "No. I wanted to make sure you and Ross were OK. I thought I heard him leave, but—"
     "Yes, he's gone," Kylie snapped.
     Turning to Robin, who was now clutching the bedsheet for protection, Vonda smiled brightly. "You're a lucky one, aren't you?"
     "Vonda, the house is on fire," Kylie barked. "Go see if anyone else is home and I'll call nine-one-one."
     Vonda's gray hair bobbed animatedly as she began a rundown of the other residents' whereabouts, and Kylie herded her politely out the door. "Make sure everyone gets out, Vonda," she ordered, and then closed the door. Running to her bathroom, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her midriff. As Robin struggled into his khakis and shirt, Kylie rushed to her purse and took out her phone. The masseuse had evidently called to cancel, but with her phone set on vibrate and buried in her purse, she hadn't noticed the call. As she punched in the emergency number, approaching sirens indicated that hers was not the first report.
     Scurrying to the bed, she snatched her panties and skirt from the floor, quickly pulled on her clothing and then grabbed a jacket from her closet. "Grab my laptop, will you?" she asked Robin, and then hastily retrieved her worn address book and single small box of jewelry.
     "Good-bye, room," she said in a low voice, and hurried out after Robin.
     The hallway was hazy with smoke and the fire crackled menacingly behind Ross's door, a sound weirdly similar to someone compressing sheets of fresh newspaper into balls; the blazing heat on the other side had caused the white paint to bubble off in huge blisters, and a weird light flickered in the crack beneath the door.
     Kylie and Robin exited to the sidewalk and watched the firefighters drag a hose around the side of the smoke-choked house, break Ross's window and began dousing the glowing interior.

Next: Tragic Aftermath: A Night on Vonda's Sofa 

To read the previous chapters, visit the "Four Bidding For Love" home page. 

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In a Dysfunctional Status Quo, Reform Triggers Collapse

You cannot "reform" away the dysfunction of the Status Quo without dismantling the vested interests and the ruling Elites that benefit from the Status Quo. 

The dream of every conventional reform movement is to rid the system of its dysfunctional features while preserving the Status Quo.

But what the reformers don't understand is that the Status Quo is dysfunctional not because of bad policies or a few corrupt officials--it is corrupt and dysfunctional from the ground up.

Dismantle the dysfunctional parts and you've dismantled the entire Status Quo.

This is why it is so difficult for countries to reform their dysfunctional regimes. Consider China, everyone's favorite example that trees can indeed grow to the sky and beyond:

Reform unlikely, says China expert Roderick MacFarquhar (via Maoxian)

MacFarquhar, a professor of history and political science at Harvard University, said the vested interests of the political elite were so entrenched in a corrupt system that an overhaul would amount to dismantling the regime.Despite hopes the regime can peacefully transform itself into a democracy with rule of law, MacFarquhar said he could not see such a transition, which would require the ruling elite to give up its power and privileges.
Although a political system's inertia often meant a fragile regime could exist for years, MacFarquhar said unpredictable circumstances could trigger its collapse. "You don't know what can unseat a fragile system," he said.

Doesn't this apply not just to China but to Greece, Spain, Italy, the E.U. itself, the U.S., Japan and a host of other developed nations all depending on financial slight-of-hand "extend and pretend" to prop up the dysfunctional Status Quo?

In every case, eliminating the source of the rot and corruption would topple the increasingly fragile regime. In the case of China, corruption isn't a feature of the regime: it is the regime.

In the U.S., financialization isn't a corrupting feature of our financial system: it is the system.

In the E.U., catastrophically misguided central planning isn't a feature of the Eurozone: it is the Eurozone.

In Japan, a stupified government propping up a zombie banking system isn't a feature of the Status Quo: it is the Status Quo.

Any reform that actually excised the source of the moral rot, corruption, malfeasance, fraud, malinvestment, moral hazard and self-serving vested interests would bring the increasingly fragile Status Quo crashing down in a nonlinear cascade of interlocking failed systems.

Here's an example of how unsustainable systems fail: the housing bubble. I prepared this "domino effect" graphic way back in July, 2006, when conventional wisdom held that there was no housing bubble: Housing Dominoes Fall (July 26, 2006)

Just as it was easy to predict the implosion of the housing bubble and the financial system that created it, it is also easy to predict the collapse of the euro: The European Financial Crisis in One Graphic: The Dominoes of Debt (October 24, 2011). It took about 2.5 years for the dominoes to fall:

You cannot "reform" away the dysfunction of the Greek Status Quo without dismantling the vested interests and the ruling Elites that benefit from the Status Quo. The same can be said of the Status Quo everywhere from the U.S. to China.

NOTE TO READERS: Though it may not look like it, I have decluttered the site and reduced the navigational links to three: my books, archives and recommended books/films. Everything else (video lists, etc.) is listed in the archives.

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NEW VIDEO: CHS and Gordon Long discuss The Constitution in Peril: the erosion of civil liberties and the emergence of a new Police State (25 minutes, 25 slides)

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The New Facebook Buttons: Promote, Despise, Abandon

How many people would click "despise FB" and "abandon FB" if those were offered alongside the new "promote for a fee" button? 

Just in case you haven't noticed, your Facebook activity may not be reaching the FB audience you enjoyed a few months ago.

If you want to reach your previous audience, you need to click that little "promote" button and pay the fee.

My friend Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds alerted me to a remarkable coincidence: shortly after Facebook's May launch of the "promote" option for business accounts, business users noticed an 85% reduction in their FB reach. Facebook: I Wany My Friends Back.

Like many other "stealth" revenue campaigns in social media, the "promote" revenue stream was first introduced as a marketing tool for enterprises and groups: Facebook's tempting 'Promote' button for business (CNET).

It was presented as a way to expand one's reach on FB, to friends of friends, etc. What was not highlighted was the "stealth" reduction in reach to "encourage" use of the "promote" option: Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right:

Many of us managing Facebook fan pages have noticed something strange over the last year: how our reach has gotten increasingly ineffective.How the messages we post seem to get fewer clicks, how each message is seen by only a fraction of our total “fans.”It’s no conspiracy. Facebook acknowledged it as recently as last week:messages now reach, on average, just 15 percent of an account’s fans.In a wonderful coincidence, Facebook has rolled out a solution for this problem: Pay them for better access.
As their advertising head, Gokul Rajaram, explained, if you want to speak to the other 80 to 85 percent of people who signed up to hear from you, “sponsoring posts is important.”
In other words, through “Sponsored Stories,” brands, agencies and artists are now charged to reach their own fans--the whole reason for having a page--because those pages have suddenly stopped working.
Facebook is broken, on purpose, in order to extract more money from users.

Does anyone else smell the stench of burning opium in the air? Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, for free access to exciting new marketing thrills--unlimited reach to a global audience!

Next, encourage them to depend more and more on your product for their marketing and thus financial survival.

Excellent! They're now addicted, and without really noticing the rise of their dependence.

Now reduce their reach. We're sorry to hear you're experiencing withdrawal symptoms; but unfortunately we've run out of the "free" good stuff. We do, however, have a substitute that will fill your need, but there is a modest fee, of course.

Yes, it's the addict-pusher model.

Since few addicts complained or refused the new paid substitute, Facebook is testing the addiction level of personal-account FB users: Facebook’s ‘promote’ button rolls out beyond pages to some personal accounts (9/18/12, Inside Facebook).

Facebook testing promoted user posts in the US.

The "promote" service is being, well, promoted, as a way to spread the word about your garage sale this weekend, for instance. With the promote button, all the friends of your friends in Ningbo, China, will helpfully find out about your garage sale in Phoenix AZ. Just how helpful is that?

And all for only $7, if you have a small audience. The price scales up along with your audience. Richard calculated that promoting all of his site's daily posts would require $672,000 annually. The price of that once-free marketing is now rather stiff.

I have always been skeptical of the entire social media phenomenon. I recounted some of my experiences in How I Friended a Dead Guy and Became a Social Media Zombie(February 22, 2011).

I have also opined that Facebook Is a Utility Which Can't Charge Its Users (July 22, 2010) for the basic reason that Facebook has the same customer satisfaction ratings as hated cable providers and the I.R.S. Users view Facebook as a free utility, and tolerate it because it's free.

I have also commented on the underlying dynamics of social media:

800 Million Channels of Me (February 21, 2011)

Are You Loving Your Servitude Yet? (July 25, 2012)

The Last Refuge of Wall Street: Marketing To Increasingly Insolvent Consumers(December 12, 2011)

What's happening is that Facebook is realizing the advert model of revenue is fatally limited. Adverts just don't generate billions of dollars in profit, even with 1 billion users. So it was inevitable that those using the FB platform to generate revenue in some fashion would be squeezed to "share" their revenues with FB.

Previously "free" distribution would no longer be free, and users would face a stark choice: either start paying for distribution or lose 85% of their audience.

The response depends on the users' level of dependence. Those who are well and truly hooked on the FB platform can either make ineffectual protests and end up paying to reach their former audience, or they can quit: cold turkey, baby.

The alternative FB hopes they don't choose is to do nothing, accept their reduced reach and audience, and move their social media energy elsewhere. Most personal account holders don't really care about their reach; as long as their inner circle still get their posts and photos, they're happy.

So FB will eventually have to decide if it can profit with a customer base in which 99% don't pay anything. They could try squeezing users in more "stealth" ways, for example, making the first 10 friends and first 10 posts a week free, and charging for useage above a low threshold. If it follows this revenue model, it will follow MySpace down the path to hosting tens of millions of zombie users.

Or FB (and Wall Street) could accept that it is fundamentally a low-profit utility and always will be. It could charge individuals $1 a month--a utility fee, in effect-- $10 a month for groups and small enterprises and $100/month for corporations and large organizations. This model would recognize FB is basically offering server space. If users aren't getting $1 a month in value, then why be users at all?

How addicted are we? It's a good question of all social media, especially the (currently) "free" stuff. How many people would click "abandon FB" if that were offered alongside the new "promote" button?

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NEW VIDEO: CHS and Gordon Long discuss The Constitution in Peril: the erosion of civil liberties and the emergence of a new Police State (25 minutes, 25 slides)

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Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution.Rather than being powerless, we hold the fundamental building blocks of power. We need neither permission nor political change to liberate ourselves. A powerless individual becomes powerful when he renounces the lies and complicity that enable the doomed Status Quo’s dominance.

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