Are you opposed to secret societies that wish to govern?

Absolutely. Who can claim the right to rule over another man?

I mean morally. Can you claim the right to rule over another man? To order him what to do and kill him if he disobeys?

The nature of the power structure is that we all participate in the governance of other men. If you say that for you, it is morally wrong to rule over another man, how then do you gain the moral right to rule over another man when you form a collective, which we call "states"?

The power structure certainly benefits some of those at the top more than the rest of us, but it only works because the rest of us go along with it. If the people with the $$$ order the military and the police to round up the people and they refused, those with the money wouldn't have any recourse. If the truckers stopped moving cargo, and the farmers stopped growing food, and the workers stopped working, the rich people's money couldn't buy anything.

We don't need to hinder the power structure. We don't need to stop it, or defeat it, or end it. We only need to stop perpetuating it. Its only power is the power we give it.

What is the difference?

The difference is that TPTB's control over us is not something external to us, but something which we actively participate in and perpetuate. The government does not oppress us by force, we pay them the tribute by which they hire the men to oppress us.

There is a deep state, but we don't beat them by "exposing" them or "bringing them to justice;" we beat them by refusing to play their games.

I haven't laid out a strategy, just an endgame.

If you do not obey tax laws you will be locked in a cage.

I agree with you: tax evasion is a really poor strategy at this point in the game. It would just get us locked up and put out of any game. Running across the battle lines alone is not bravery; it's stupidity.

Being completely free of their game is the last step of the strategy, and certainly not the first. But just because we can't evade taxation doesn't mean we can't lessen our participation in the game. When we grow our own food, or buy from local farmers' markets, we lessen our need for governments and financial systems. If we live in smaller houses, purchase less luxuries, and build stronger relationships in our communities, that's less money which goes to the taxation and usury that funds our collective enslavement.

Why do you feel you have to be?

Is turning against the perpetrators really an effective solution? Violent revolution only begets a new violent state with a different set of rulers inflicting the same violence on the people.

Then from there they turn to the perpetrators themselves and begin to effectuate change in the real world.

Ah, I read this as "turn on the perpetrators," which I thought meant violence of some sort. Mea culpa.

How do you see change being effectuated?

And how is that not violence?

I think a lot of the division that we see online these days is due to the inability of text to replace face-to-face communication.

This is something I know, but it's easy to forget so thank you for articulating it.

When we communicate without those elements, we tend to fill in that missing information with cynicism and heuristics in a way that highlights our differences and makes us forget our common humanity.

And it's almost impossible not to use heuristics and cynicism online. We need heuristics. Because we cannot possibly have detailed knowledge about each person we speak with online, yet we must quickly decide how to respond, we must use shortcuts and make assumptions about other users which we cannot know. And we'd be naive not to be cynical, though I might say skeptical, about the people we see online because we know that users are not always, or even usually, what they appear to be.

But as you say we can turn it around- I don't know what that step would look like, that unites us and not just connects us, but it may be much closer than the current gloomy outlook would have us believe.

I think part of our problem, or at least part of my own problem, is trying to arrive intellectually at an answer to that question, when we all know it intuitively. There's not any one thing — one ideology, one religion, government — because these are all intellectual things. They are concepts and not realities.

If I ask my heart and not my head for the answer, it knows instantly that the answer is extending love and compassion to everyone. That's the end state we all want to be in, and all thrive in. If all of us, or even enough of us, are truly living with the aim to extend love and kindness to those around us, we can make it through anything, even those people who would seek to control and exploit us.

The answer is to take one step forward. One step forward to a loved one or a stranger to offer a helping hand or a kind word and a smile. One step forward to do something for someone else other than yourself. One step forward into the spirit of the gift. We don't get through this in one giant leap, by one deus ex machina or in one singular moment of collective awakening; we get through this by dozens then hundreds then thousands then millions and then billions of us each taking one step forward at a time. Together. Trillions of steps forward, taken by brave individuals like you and me, each taking a step forward together for each other. For Team Humanity.