The simple answer: I’m not a libertarian because I’m not part of any political party. Though, as simple answers go, this one might be complex enough to need its own explanation: I’m not a libertarian because I’m not in a political party; and I’m not in a political party because I refuse to outsource thinking. Does that make sense, or…? No? Okay: I’ll expound….

There are two ways to look at any political party—any political ideology. One’s the idea of strength [?safety] in numbers: the need for millions of other people to agree with you in order to effect whatever change you might be after. And, in procedural terms, that’s probably a pretty good idea. I can sit here and argue that Americans have the inalienable right to perform abortions with Armalites; I can be incontrovertibly right about that, as seen in these flowcharts bolstered by whatever thinkiness; I can have a tolstoyan argument prepared that attritions people into giving me what I want in the vain hopes that I’ll shaddup about it once I’ve got it. But, if it’s just me alone, without millions of other people onboard to agree with me, then my first opportunity to argue my ideology will be in court after I’ve been arrested for filling countless uteri with two-hundred-twenty-three-calibre lead. So, that may not be optimal.

If I want to secure my right to fullauto foeti in advance of getting in trouble over it, I can do one of two things: I can launch the Armalite Party and try to get millions of people to join me; or, I can just join a party already containing millions of people, and try to agenda my stupid idea into its preexisting rhetoric.

The latter option isn’t impossible. It’s how we lost the republican party over the last few decades. What was once the party of slavefreeing and civil rights and just leaving people the hell alone until they committed some existing crime has, in the last thirty-odd years, degraded into this fascistic religious reich LARPfest theocracy rejecting the theory of climateshift because it doesn’t blame hurricanes on gay people. So, really, the question is whether anything about Armalite Abortions sounds in any way kookier than the fact that there were people entrusted with chewing their own food who voted for Pat Robertson in 1988.

Having a party—whether that’s joining and coursecorrecting an existing party, or upstarting a new one and getting people to join in—is marginally good an idea on two conditions:

1. You want to change something
2. You’re okay with what other people want to change

This will come as a shock to people under the age of dead, but: there are other people. Not everything is about you. As totally as you’ve impressed yourself with your cunning plan to replace the national anthem with kale, you’re actually the only one who cares; other people have equal and opposite stupid ideas, and their purpose in joining a party—if any—is to get their stupid ideas into the lawbooks while—possibly—tolerating yours.

I say if any, above, because…really, from what I can tell, nine in ten people join a party because someone told them that they’re sposta. Because, when someone asks you coffee, tea, or milk, you’re not sposta ask for DoctorPepper. Apparently. Look: I want the caffeine, but I also want the kilocalories; plus, the carbonation kinda peroxides the seven layers of Troy outta my throat, so…you know what—nevermind—I’ve got a case of DoctorPepper within reach of Minecraft, so I’m just gonna go home and roll my eyes next time you ask why I never wanna do anything with you people.

When those nine in ten people join a party, it’s usually for one of two reasons:

1. They hate their parents, who are established members of the other party
2. They like their parents, so they just join the one whose bumpersticker is already on the FamilyTruckster

So. From my simple answer, above: I’m not that guy. Much. Recently.

There was a time, long ago before whiteman come to land, when I registered as a republican. Partly because Dad had pretty much all the money, and wanted to keep some of it; partly because, at the time, in 1988, the next president was gonna be either Vice President Broccoli or Mike Dolmades, TankGirl. And, at the time, Reagan’s argument that the impending collapse of the Soviet Union was no time for onthejob bragging endlessly about being the son of Greek Immigrants wasn’t a bad one.

Pictured: Kesslee’s Eutopia

Really, that didn’t last all that long. Somewhere betwixt Vice President Broccoli’s [Ten] Thousand Points of Light, his No New Taxes, his hilarious public refusal to eat broccoli, his edict that ‘I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens’, and his complete ignorance of the fall of the Soviet Union in favour of waging Desert Shield two years later…somewhere in there I noticed that the republicans were basically morons. So, when he launched his vanity campaign for reelection in 1992, my position was pretty much What Have You Done for Me Lately.

But, now, there’s this other problem. The thing where the democrats, despite being not technically the republicans, are basically morons. Or, to be more accurate: basically fools. There’s a difference. Being stupid is opposite being smart; being foolish is opposite being wise; thinking that those are interchangeable is opposite being erudite. The Moar You Know.

So becoming a democrat was never really an option for me. I know: the democrats are the smart ones; that’s obvious, because the democrats say so. Also because, statistically, the average democrat beats the average republican by six IQ Points. In much the way that a Honda Accord beats a Subaru Outback by six miles per hour*

*I can’t back that up, but it sounds likelyish

Me? I go for musclecars. Sportscars in cases. Things that go zero to sixty in under six seconds. Because I beat the average democrat by ninety-odd IQ Points, and zero to sixty in the time it takes me to factor sixty to the sixth* in my head is boring.

*46,656,000,000

So, insofar as there are two reasons [or zero reasons] to join a party, neither is important to me. I sure as hell don’t wanna join a party bragging about is progressive agenda to replace the national anthem with kale, because that’s stupid and I couldn’t care less; also, really, I just don’t personally wanna change much of anything.

By popular definition, resisting [read: fearing] change is still a republican tenet. Because the popular definition is hilariously wrong. And, if you can’t see that it’s wrong, it might help to note that the republicans weren’t teabaggers a decade ago, or theocrats a century ago. Trust me: the GOP are all about change; becoming worse is a change.

I don’t really need to change anything. And, to the degree that changing for the worse is just being regressive, the democrats have tainted the concept of regression.

To my thinking…well…two things:

1. America was once great and could be made great again
2. Donald Trump is an idiot

In a real way, there was nothing particularly wrong with this nation in 1789. If you happen to be an idiot, just pretend I called that 1776. Surprise: the span of the Revolutionary War, from declaration through ratification of the constitution, happened to take a little longer than an episode of Storage Wars.

In 1789, America was approximately as great as it ever really became. Sure: later, there was the industrial revolution, and the US singlehandedly eventually helped put an end to World War Two, and you were importing scientists from smart countries the whole time that Indiana Jones was surfing the nuke in a fridge; but, ideologically, this nation was where it oughtta be by about the time you guys noticed that electric cars were stupid and threw all your chips onto Petrol.

Pictured: Regressive Thinking

This nation was, and could be again, great in its simplicity: Don’t Do Dumb Things, and We’ll Leave You Alone. Okay? That guy you wanna kill? Maybe don’t. That thing you wanna steal? Bad form. That black dude you wanna own? We’re…we’ll stick a pin in that for a few decades….

Not illegal when this nation developed its definition as the Land of the Free? Doing drugs. Owning the same guns that the army had. Saying whatever you fucking liked. Having a national anthem instead of kale.

The democrats are obsessed with change. One day, they culturally appropriated the republicans’ emancipation of the slaves, and never again stopped blathering for change for change’s sake.

It’s not needed. Everything you think you wanna progressivate into reality is already here.

‘Well, don’t you think that the transgenderific GiBLeTs should have the right to use any restroom that Xe want to or are you on the wrong side of history because PapaSmurf always says—’

Yeahyeahyeah; shaddup. It’s not illegal. It never, ever was. Got a house? Go into the bathroom; tweet how progressively insurgent you are. No one will care; no one will arrest you. Own a business? Decide for yourself what your restroom policies are. Target did that, you know. Sure: it flunked pretty hard, because them thar antitrans regressive racist people done didn’t wanna own stock anymore; but no one called the police. Because Target arbitrating that Stefonknee can make its own decisions in leaktaking matters didn’t break any laws.

Pictured: The Cultural Appropriation of Ernest Borgnine in a Dress

Your little Party of Change? It isn’t changing anything. It’s clamouring for the actualisation of things we’ve already got in the hopes of taking credit for them. It’s a party of slactivism, fecklessly ordering us to progressively do what we’ve been doing all along.

‘Ermagerd we need progressively forward thinking in America because it’s illegal to be black here!!!1’

It’s not illegal to be black.

‘Well, no; because, it’s called: it might as well be, so I want moral currency for saying so!!!1’

Hang on. I had something prepared for this when I wrote News of the Smert last year….

Pictured: Participation Award

Then there are the republicans….

The republicans want to convince you that the democrats are trying to take their guns away. Fine. Here’s the thing: I’m not gonna bother arguing that the democrats don’t wanna ban guns; it may be true that they don’t wanna ban guns, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is that the democrats can’t ban guns. And, that the republicans think that the democrats can ban guns? That may well be the most disappointing thing I’ve ever heard, ever. Because the republicans are halfway right: keeping and bearing arms is a right defying infringement; it can’t by the definition of the nation ever go anywhere. At least, not without an amendment to the constitution, ratified by at least thirty-eight states, and for the first time in the history of America officially hitting Undo on a Bill of Rights right and finally proving Carlin correct in his assessment that: ‘[R]ights aren’t rights if someone can take them away; they’re privileges.’

That republicans are somehow capable of ascribing to democrats the power to rescind rights tells me—thirty years after I’d given up on the little retards—that this is not a party of people I wanna know. Telling me that the left can and will just decree that guns are no longer legal is conceding that your party serves no purpose.

So. I can’t be a democrat, because I’m not a fool [one assumes]; and I can’t be a republican, because I’m not an imbecile [that one’s backed by Wechsler]. I can’t be a member of what we’ll call for the moment a major party; neither is really a group of my peers.

What’s that leave? Theoretically, it leaves Libertaria. But there’s a problem with that….

One’s that Libertaria isn’t a thing. Officially, it’s libertarianism. Because, I’ve heard, Libertaria is unlike the right and left, which are just flavours of Authoritaria; they’re not ideologies unto themselves. And that may be true; it may be true that we haven’t got republicanists [or conservativists] or democratists [or liberalists], because those aren’t isms. Because only Libertaria has people emotionally retarded enough to be ismists.

That counts me out right there. I’m not an ismist; never have been; never will be. Everything I am, that has an ism in it, is a reaction to my omission of action. I’m atheistic because I’m without theism; it didn’t take a lot of thought: one day, I didn’t believe in deities simply because no one had told me about them; another day, I didn’t believe in deities because, once someone had told me about them, I didn’t fall for it. I remain the same atheist today that I was back when my excuse was the simple tabula rasa absence of theism that a rock has. That is to say that I’m not an athe-ist so much as an a-theist. I’m not an apostate, having recovered from theism; I just never cared either way.

So, I’m not a libertarian-ist. I’m not isming my way into Libertaria. It’s not really a place I strive to end up.

More on the topic, I am, in precisely the way that I’m an a-theist, an an-archist. Which sounds really bitchin because Anarchy in the UK, my droogs. But that’s not how it works. It works the other way, in which I just don’t acknowledge rulers.

Pictured: Words Meaning Things

I know: your emotionally motivated fear circuits have convinced you that anarchy is by definition the wastelands beyond Thunderdome in which only people more competent than you will ever survive. And I’d give you that: a postapocalyptic holocaust of anarchy isn’t gonna starsticker you for wanting to replace the national anthem with kale; it’s gonna eat you without catsup.

Pictured: Two Guys Play Chess by Candlelight in a Basement after the Governmental Infrastructure Collapses

But that’s…later? I guess? If at all? For now, I just don’t recognise masters. I disacknowledge authoritarians with delusions of monarchy. I don’t pretend that anyone in a government of and by and for the people could ever by definition outrank me. Which gets me into arguments with the copworshipping modern republicans who swapped positions with the formerly copworshipping democrats just to confuse me: somehow, the left, who once saw cops as useful tools in the absence of owning guns, traded positions with the republicans, who now see cops as useful tools in their fear of black animal thugs being not shot for being in proximity to an autist with a toy truck.

Yeah: it was the republicans who freed the slaves; but, apart from reminding us of that niggling fact? They seem to kinda regret that these days.

Make America Prate Again.

So, I’m not a libertarian, because I’m not okay with outsourcing thinking. I’m not okay with being a member of a party which could, anytime it likes, change gears and strive to replace the national anthem with kale. It’s a matter of trust. And I lack trust. I’m not a trustist; I’m an a-trustist.

The simple fact is that I know what I want. And what I want is for guns to be legal, and for abortion to be legal, and for Target stefonkneeing their restrooms to be legal. And the simple fact that I can take Stefonknee to abort a gun right now? That tells me that I don’t need a party. I don’t even need Libertaria to argue for me that I enjoy the right to bear national anthems and abort kale. Because it’s just a matter of fact. And I’m the sorta guy who’ll sit here, playing Minecraft and drinking DoctorPepper, safe in the knowledge that, if anyone tries to arrest me for an Armalite Abortion, then the existing laws are definitively on my side: I have no interest in change for the sake of change, because this nation definitively acknowledges my freedom to do not only what I might wanna do, but the freedom of people I don’t even care about to do what they wanna do. Stefonknee is an absurd circusfreak of a nonstarter issue; and it can do whatever the hell it likes, because the Bill of Rights prevents the congress from passing any laws infringing on its right to be a selfimpressing lunatic. Can it kill people while stealing their cars? No. Meaning: totally; but then we’ll get revenge while misspelling revenge as rehabilitation. But, a few pesky laws on the wrong side of history attempting to marginalise my sociopathy aside, there’s really nothing preventing me from doing whatever the hell I want. I can burn flags; I can burn kale. I can abort foeti; I can walk around Denver with my Uzi. None of these things is actually outlawed. And, if some overreaching authoritarian manages to convince a majority of morons to infringe on these rights, I can walk into a courtroom with a copy of the constitution and my patented prove it expression. And then sue the cop who arrested me. Not his department, backed by taxfunding to be rerouted from sustaining libraries by paying me many millions; the cop himself, paying me thousands. Because I’m not greedy; I just like impoverishing authoritarian dickweeds who’d presumed to outrank me.

I like the libertarians, Alex Jones aside. I like Penn Jillette; I like Gary Johnson; I like anyone whose ideology is pretty much Leave People Alone. The ideology that hurting people’s flesh is measurably different than hurting people’s feelings. The ideology that your rights are your rights. That you can do whatever you like, short of preventing other people from doing whatever they like.

Try to prevent other people from having an abortion? You’re an authoritarian dickweed. Try to prevent other people from having a gun? You’re an authoritarian dickweed. Try to prevent—you know: the operative word here is prevent. Stop preventing things. Stop outlawing the capacity to break a law. The means to commit a crime is not in and of itself a crime.

You wanna know what I’m okay with outlawing? Despite being an anarchist? Because I’m okay with laws meant to preserve my rights; I’m just not okay with laws preventing my rights. Here’s what I’ll let you outlaw; here’s what I’ll agree you can come after me for having done:

1. Assault
2. Theft
3. Fraud

If you can think of something, that you’d like to outlaw, that can be accomplished without breaking one of my three laws, then you’re wrong. Either you think there’s a way to murder someone without A) assaulting him and B) perpetrating a theft of life, because you’re a moron; or you think that smoking weed should be illegal, because you’re an authoritarian dickweed.

Just…stop trying to control everyone. You’re not even good at it.

Oh. One thing I should mention. It’s done. That thing where, yesterday, someone broke one of my three laws? Too bad. Don’t care. It’s over. That thing where you stole your land from the injuns? Go team. It’s over. It’s done. We don’t care. That thing where you owned a buncha black people? Bad you. It’s over. We’re done. That thing where you want moral currency for knowing that you suck? Your starsticker is above; beyond that, we’re done caring. Dead people stole land from dead people and owned dead people on it. It happened; it’s over; it’s not happening anymore…in this country…where the white slave trade is less…large; it doesn’t matter anymore. Shaddup; don’t assault; don’t steal; don’t defraud; everything’ll be okay.

So: I’m not a libertarian. Because I’m too anarchic to throw in with a party that could in the aggregate decide to outlaw kale. I don’t need a party to know that my three basic laws are what we need, and that anything else is a shabby attempt to exact authoritarian control over the people of and by and for which the government was ever even a thing.

Have a webcomic:

More later….

Gremlin has 21191 followers and 7910 tweets.