Jesse Ventura Explains Why Governments Are Like Gangs

By on June 14, 2012 in News 26

The Governor (everyone still calls him that) unloads at Forbes:

It’s a Monday afternoon in Minnesota and Jesse “The Mind” Ventura, as he was known when he ran the state as governor, is surprisingly more content than he is angry. The 60 year old star of the former World Wrestling Federation, though, has not lost his fire in the belly. He’s just as fed up with the government as Ron Paul (one of his favorite politicians) and the Occupy Wall Street crowd (which he prefers over the Tea Party).

He’s currently starting his fourth book tour. This one’s based on his latest, titled “Democrips and Rebloodicans”. That’s right. The Crips and the Bloods, the famously 80s West Coast naughty homies that taught white kids how to throw a gang sign and made wearing certain colors illegal in public schools. As dangerous as those brothers are, and were, says Ventura, the Democrats and Republicans are much, much worse.

“If you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, you get what you deserve,” he says in that signature Ventura vocal delivery, the one fitting of a pro-wrestler. Lights up. Cameras flashing. Little boys and their dads cheering in the stands.

“We’ve got an entire political system based on bribery. It’s obscene,” he says.

It’s something Ventura, an independent, has been talking about for more than a decade now. Today, that view is mainstream. What’s congress’s approval rating? Ten percent? Fifteen? Whatever it is, it is at historically low levels. And the most popular Democratic president since Bill Clinton has struggled to top a 50% approval rating for most of his four years in office.

We all believe the system is somewhat rigged, bought and paid for by a handful of important corporations — ExxonMobil for energy policy — and lobby groups — the American Bankers Association for economic and fiscal policies. With the creation of political SuperPACs, the non-profits that donate tens of millions to politicians, a handful of wealthy individuals also are given more sway in national, and state level politics.

Everyone knows it. Including Wall Street…

[continues at Forbes]

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  • Yerbitz

    The average disinfo dolt will read this and nod going “oh yeah, he’s so true – right on, Jesse – governments are gangs – you tell  ’em!” — and then the next post say “we need to stop cutting spending and raise taxes so we can have all enjoy a range of government services.”

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

       Which disinfo site do you go to?

    • Bestseller

      yeah i never heard that here. I think you mean some mainstream news site.

    • emperorreagan

      I guess you didn’t bother to read the article and just wanted to complain that dozens of different commenters don’t have a consistent editorial voice?  Maybe disinfo should require all discussion to be submitted and edited prior to being posted on comment threads?

  • Calypso_1

    This implies that such a description somehow denigrates the status of government.  If we take however that the converse is true, that gangs are like government, it can provide a clearer understanding of organizing principles that exist at all levels of executive power.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/DMD7L4C7KPS45GBLJG54X543VQ M B

      no, that makes the situation less clear; Ventura’s analogy was more ontologically correct

      • Calypso_1

        You do realize that you’re in an Ontological Anarchy Zone?

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

      Yeah, people simply don’t understand the nature of government as a group which is “legitimately” allowed to initiate the use of force and has a monopoly in that regard.

      I think they’re afraid to teach that sort of thing in public school for the obvious reasons.

      And as far as the discussion of what is “legitimate” goes, I always recommend Wolff’s _In Defense of Anarchism_, which clearly details the dearth of logical legitimacy for any type of government other than a Unanimous Direct Democracy.

      Gangs merely suffer from the same deficiency of legitimacy that all existing governments suffer from.

      • Calypso_1

         
        Precisely – The fundamental issue is one of governmentality – the citizenry has been conditioned, groomed and inducted into the constantly sustained reality of the prevailing power structure as an emergent phenomenon of high moral achievement and manifest destiny. 
        Here we have an apparent ‘opposition leader’ to the status quo pointing out the obvious corruption that is endemic the very nature of power structures.  By comparing the degenerating status of state functionality to a gang he is merely affirming the constructs of state legitimacy while playing to the fears and assumptions that people have about the nature of gangs as governing institutions in their own right…which are fundamentally no different than the state albeit on a smaller scale. 

        • Jesus

          Very nice posts. Jesus approves 0:) 

      • charlieprimero

         No.  Big Daddy Government only hits us because he loves us.  He has our best interests at heart.  He cares about us.  We must support Him.

      • http://twitter.com/Cynthia_Burkey Cindi

        The one thing gangs have is that they are locally based.  They are not people who fly from one end of the country to another meeting with power brokers.  They stay in their neighborhood and their feet are on the ground.  They are communities in the sense that they are people who actually interact face to face, where in this white professional government culture, people talk on the phone, send emails, and do not interact personally on a day to day basis.

  • howiebledsoe

    Do the hammerlock, you turkey neck!!!!

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    not that Jesse isn’t right-on or anything
    but I have noticed that recently, the last few daze or so
    more high-profile elites are now pointing out the obvious
    that the game is rigged and that average ‘Merkin is getting screwed
    not enough to effect any change
    but just enough to mollify those of us that are disgruntled with the status quo

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

      You’re right about that being addressed. I heard someone talking about that on NPR/local radio today.

      But anyhow, it’s not nearly enough to mollify some of us. 

      • http://twitter.com/Cynthia_Burkey Cindi

        At least it’s being talked about.  Before 2007 everyone was still saying the economy was strong.    I mean it’s kind of obvious now that it’s not, but for the longest time it was tanking and no one said a word.  

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    government is an outgrowth of the war lord state
    it has always been a protection racket
    the Platonic forms of government are a rather new innovation
    designed to put the war lord in subjugation to a wealthy, intellectual elite
    the US innovation on that
    was to make it appear as if real power had been transferred to the people
    while retaining the old system of government
    the next innovation will be
    the real transfer of real power back to the individual
    in symbiotic relationship to the community
    which will be accomplished after the next worldwide disaster
    or on Dec 21, 2012
    or after hell freezes over and all humans are extinct

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Phillip-Schmitt/1590026226 James Phillip Schmitt

    I’m pretty sure Timothy Leary made a similar observation about Folsom Prison and Harvard University.

  • CIAoperative

    Of course they are gangs.  Tell us all something we don’t know.  Taking down a gang is not easy , even street gangs have a hiearchy.  The so called leaders are just the poster boys and attention whores.  The real power in any efficient gang is usually a small group of underlings who keep a low profile.  The ‘brains’ always stay out of the limelight. In a world economy it would be much harder to track these guys down.  But that is the idea, to confuse everybody as to who runs the show.  Jamie Dimon….some of his minions are easy to find they wear suits and punch into to work at the HOR.  Another example: the Bilderberg group,  very few people know that they were founded in Poland. The focus is always on who’s attending the annual con fab. So chances are there are some very powerful very low key people in Poland. Smooth and silent, the way to conquer the world. 

    • http://twitter.com/Cynthia_Burkey Cindi

      What’s so terribly sad is that otherwise intelligent people like LA civil rights lawyer Connie Rice seem to genuinely see the “official” gangs like the ones who run Hahvahd and fly Gulf Stream jets as legitimate and superior, while categorizing neighborhood-based street gangs as a “disease” and sponsoring an epidemiological study of “gangs” in South L.A.  

      Epidemiological study..of an anthropological subject.  If an otherwise intelligent person can be influenced to do such a thing, categorize the social structure of another society as a disease, the problem is deep in our language..

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  • Jane

    I heard the interview and sadly he makes sense!   The whole thing is based on lobbyists – who bribe . If you work in purchasing you cant accept anything that would even be close to such a thing  as that is considered  unethical  - yet  here is a whole govt that does exist on bribery by lobbyists and its ok.  Ive always pondered this myself.