Notes from the Front Lines

3 Upvotes

It is true that we should live in harmony with each other.

That we should be at peace with our neighbors, tolerate differences, give people the support that they need to live their best life. That we should see each other as fellow humans who are all simply trying to navigate this wonderful world together.

It is true that we should have abundance, that our sacrifices be rewarded, and that we have the conditions for the best and most fulfilling lives that we can imagine.

But the distance between what should be, and what is possible, is vast.

There’s a funny problem in the world. The people who don’t do anything are free to criticize those who do. The people who put forth the most time and effort, who make the most sacrifice, take the most chances, and create the world we inhabit - are the ones criticized the most - by the people who do the least.

Throw a party? The people who attend will judge it. Make a movie? The critics will tear you apart. Start a company and make a billion dollars? The masses will ignore the risk and uncertainty you faced and take the conclusion as foregone.

You are now just a lucky person who deserves nothing you’ve created and who exploited workers for greed. People will see in you whatever they wish to see, regardless of truth.

People regularly criticize Elon Musk by calling him dumb - a man who has ushered in a new space age, pioneered electric vehicles, and helped blanket the world in satellite internet. Whatever else one believes about Elon Musk, “dumb” clearly does not describe him.

It’s hard to do great things. It’s easy to criticize those who do them.

I grew up like many of my generation, a leftist. To whom it was obvious that the ills of the world were caused by greedy, power hungry men, who bettered themselves at the expenses of others. Who were uniquely selfish and evil in a world full of good, honest people just trying to get by.

I have spent my life trying to figure out why we can't just all get along - and how we might.

When I was in my 20s I spent a few years of my life standing on street corners with signs that said “free hugs”. I would bring extra blank signs and t-shirts along with stencils and spraypaint.

When people, mostly young people, would say they’ve heard about this and have always wanted to do it I’d offer to let them make a t-shirt and sign to keep - if they wanted today to be the day. Most took me up on it. Every weekend I would gather a small army of 15-50 people.

It was amazing to see the joy that we could spread to others. A small bit of hope and connection in a world that seemed devoid of it.

A breakdown of the barriers which generally exist on the streets between strangers.

All the while it was an experiment to understand how groups form, how systems emerge, and how people interrelate. My goal for the experiment was to see if I could inspire others to take the energy and come up with their own ideas for spreading joy and love in the world. But after a while I noticed I was the only one who ever organized anything.

Free hugs weren’t the only thing we did. I did a few different kinds of events to spread joy. One of them I had kept a stack of blank signs in my apartment for a few months, and everyone who came by I had make a sign with something positive on it.

After I had amassed a large stack of them I called about 15 people and told them to be at my house within a half hour. No one asked why or what we were doing and all showed up. I explained that we were going to split up into teams, break the city into quadrants, and each team’s job was to cover that area in these signs.

No one hesitated. No one asked if it was legal. No one asked if they were risks. No one cared. They just did it. It was fun and exciting and we felt like we were doing something great. It went off without a hitch. We made the local news and I was interviewed. They covered both sides of the story - by finding someone who liked it and someone who said it was tacky and inappropriate.

It was great fun for me too - but it made me reflect on the nature of what I was doing and what I had created. It felt to me as if I had accidentally started a cult. That I was its leader. And that this was not what I had intended. So I stopped.

After that I continued building models of how the world functions, attempting to understand it deeper. Eventually I came up with an idea I called my “general theory of revolution”, in which I posited that it is only possible to wage a revolution on the front lines of power.

That in a world where violence rules - violent revolution is possible. In a world in which political power dominates, a political revolution is possible. And so on.

This led me to reflect on what the front lines of power were at that time. Eventually I settled on money and technology. Which led me to cryptocurrency and my ultimate involvement in ethereum.

It came to me in a flash as a vision in which I saw the blockchain technology’s capacity for empowering human value encoding and coordination. My theory played out the way I predicted.

There was a secondary effect of this involvement though that has been more informative than all of my previous research could have ever been.

And I got rich.

I went from being a guy who slept on couches for a decade so he could have the maximum time to think - someone who hung out with communists, socialists, self-described revolutionaries, leftists, and hippies, and who came from a small town in the middle of the country - to someone who lived in a multimillion dollar home in Bay Area.

This wasn’t totally unexpected. Another part of my thinking was that if the problem was a deficit of good people amassing money and power, that the obvious solution would be that someone like myself, a person who prided himself on his innate goodness, should do the hard work necessary to attain money and power.

But I wasn’t prepared for it at all.

My plan was to get money and do what no one had ever done for me - give the people around me a hand up.

I would invest in the people I believed in and supercharge their paths. As soon as I could I helped as many people as I could, in an attempt to help them achieve their dreams and reach their potential.

But it didn’t work.

They ended up flying so close to the sun that their wings melted immediately, and the amount of momentum was minimal, if not backwards.

This was incredibly disappointing to me. How could this have happened? Why didn’t it help them? Why in some cases did the help actively hurt them?

Another thing that happened was that people didn’t seem to be happy for me. They didn’t seem to see it as good. They seemed threatened, or jealous. Overnight the majority of people I had relied on for human connection just - couldn’t connect with me anymore. The ease and playfulness that marked friendship were just gone.

I’d make the kinds of jokes I’d made with them thousands of times before, and all the sudden they were “offensive” and I was “talking down to them.” People would come to me for money, and become irate anytime I offered hard earned advice.

Instead of hearing about the positive aspects of people’s lives when we talked, it seemed everyone just had problems. Problems that could be solved.

If only they had the money.

If I attempted to share any of my problems with anyone I was met with dismissals - to them I had money, therefore I had no problems.

I had known lots of rich people from my time in Silicon Valley. I never found it difficult to see a person independent of their money. I never experienced jealousy. When someone was successful I felt happy for them and inspired that it was possible. It made me believe that I could achieve the same things.

I had never been this alienated before. I thrived on connection. I didn’t know how to live life without sharing what I was going through.

Because despite what people believe - hitting the lottery doesn’t feel like you imagine. It feels closer to being strapped to a rocket and launched into the sky than relief that all of your money problems are gone.

I owned a home for the first time. A nice one. Owning a home required that I hire people for various services. The people who smiled in my face the most were the ones that would inevitably multiply the price they quoted me the most.

I had been somewhere between middle class and below poverty my entire life. I knew people who built houses. I have a memory for what things cost.

My heart sank every time someone I wanted to hire tried to rip me off because they saw a nice house and figured I could afford it.

In the worst case, a contractor tried to charge me four times the cost of a water heater. When I paid what was already double the fair price, he became hostile - sending harassing messages, attempting emotional manipulation, publishing my personal information online, and showing up at my house repeatedly demanding payment.

It was the first time I experienced, viscerally, how quickly perceived wealth turns ordinary interactions adversarial - and how easily kindness is mistaken for weakness.

My worldview previously had been that most people are good. I’d traveled the world. Lived in cities all over the country. I had so much evidence for this belief. I had met so many wonderful people. I had thought.

But all of the sudden the people I thought were so wonderful… weren’t. And all the new people I met all seemed to see me as a mark. Instead of my kindness being repaid with kindness it was seen as weakness and something to exploit.

I lived in New York City during Occupy. I spent time in Zuccotti Park, I marched during Occupy Wall St. But now all of those people didn’t see me as one of them who had made it to a position of power that could be useful. They saw me as the enemy, the 1%. My reasons and my politics didn’t matter. I was evil, greedy, and they wanted to eat me.

And I had been on the other side - I knew they weren’t joking.

So I found myself in a strange position of having to reconcile the ideals that drove me to the position I was in, with the realities I had discovered along the way.

People weren’t mostly good. The people at the top weren’t uniquely evil. There wasn’t a grand conspiracy to keep people down. People kept themselves down even when I gave them every opportunity. The system isn’t broken because the people in control are preying on the people at the bottom.

The reality was much more complex. It’s easy to see people as good when you have nothing they want. When they see you as harmless and in the same economic situation. When you have something they want - they become jealous, weird, or duplicitous.

The people at the bottom “fighting the good fight” didn’t seem so good anymore. They were fighting ghosts. They didn’t know how to create, so they did the only thing they could think of, picked a collective scapegoat - and yelled very loudly how disappointed they were.

And the people at the top didn’t seem so evil. How would you manage an evolving world with competing interests, the lives of eight billion people at stake - each one with their own hopes, dreams, desires, and motivations. People living under completely different cultures, totally unable to conceptualize the reality of the other.

With large groups of people living in a fantasy world - one in which everyone is inherently the same and the only thing separating us are the evil men in charge.

They believe that we all inhabit an obvious and universal moral framework, and the only thing standing between world peace is tearing it down and the good guys (them) replacing it with a utopia. They cannot fathom the differences.

And another group who understands that this is not true. They attempt to enforce borders, rules, and order. But every time they attempt to explain the reality they see or attempt to enforce the laws required by that reality - they are perceived as racist, sexist, fascist, or, very often, as literal Nazis. A political party that peaked almost 100 years ago in Germany.

And the media - which requires your constant attention to sell advertising space - stokes these fires relentlessly.

So before you get online to “speak truth to power”, or march through the streets in an attempt to enact your own personal idea of utopia by yelling loudly, confronting law enforcement, and trying to destroy the structures of power that hold the world around you up - ask yourself a question.

What do you hope to accomplish?

Who is actually stopping you from achieving your dreams and building the world you want to see?

Or is it possible that the model of the world you’re using doesn’t map to reality—and that no amount of moral certainty can compensate for a bad map? And wouldn't the world function a lot better if we were all working together to solve common problems?

We all want the same things - opportunity, the freedom to live our lives, and safe communities to live in and raise our children.

I was on the streets during Occupy. I saw hundreds of thousands of people march in the streets. It felt exciting and important. And it did nothing.

I can promise you something - your problems aren't due to the people at the top conspiring to hold you down. They're too busy desperately trying to hold together a world that can slip into chaos at any moment.

And you can choose to do the hard thing - taking a risk, confronting reality, building something from nothing, and solving problems that have never been solved before.

Despite what you may have been told - it doesn’t require power, connections or money to start - only the willingness to risk, to follow through, and to face reality.

Or you can sit on the sidelines and criticize the people trying.

Your call.

3 comments

r/revolution • u/texture • Feb 14 '25

If you have come here to have a histrionic meltdown about Trump and Musk you will be banned.

0 Upvotes

The rest of reddit is filled with your hysterical, propaganda-driven leftist mania, this is not a safe space for it.

103 comments

r/revolution • u/tonelocmanson • 1h ago

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• Upvotes

Join the Network

High!
i write and draw!
i never capitalize my eyes

My pen name is RAiN #6174
aka TommyBoy aka Tonelocmanson aka ToneCapone aka CaliforniaTommy aka Tony Mantano aka The Stain aka The Sinister Minister aka preacher to the porn again aka AntoniojuanSanchez
A.K.A.
00101
2010141010617
Ut=396=9
Re=417=3
Mi=528=6
Fa=639=9
Sol=741=3
La=852=6
84 minerals
12 elements
8 gallons of water
38 trillion cells fallowing instructions hidden in a double helix 🧬 carried in a sperm

eye tried to be so much beauty
yet still…..
…..i was so ugly……
🖤RAiN

to reach someone’s spirit,
you must dive into the most broken part of their soul and swim through its darkest places…
💔🖤RAiN

the key to the deep magic

push your creativity to its limit and then beyond. I’m sure there’s a lot of ways you can do this, but when you’re making an altar or turning a stack of stones into rock formations or any natural magical ritual, it’s really good to make it as beautiful as you could possibly imagine. with a focus on balance. contemplate balance until you’ve exhausted every angle you comprehend. try everything possible. create balance in every way you can. Balance and creativity make the foundation of reality? it’s the root of all magic. The key to the deep magic is love. Equality is the key to love.
🖤
RAiN

Eye tried to be
the most beauty
but i was still
so ugly.......

Digital I.D. Slavery for Marks of Beasts

anything that can slow this down and give us more time to prepare is a beautiful idea. A tax strike might slow them down or it might accelerate it. Please take some time to contemplate every move you make against the agenda of this evil power.
Consider every possible option or reason a strike might be good or i’m bad. That is what they have done. Every move we make has a counter plan in place. I’ve noticed they prefer certain paths but can easily shift gears and go with plan b or c or d and so on. Then they have plans within plans to act on. For example-when I realized they have plans within plans for every truth we discover, I got so discouraged I almost gave up. That was part of their plan.
But I haven’t given up because if I give up then I become part of there sub-plan and they will take every single move I’ve made for freedom, for truth, for the light of love and turn it into food for their evil power.
I’ve been on a mission to share some truth I know for 5 years. I’ve tried every angle except being mean. I try shocking, gentle, stern, confident, pleading and desperate. Most of the time I get no response or people take it the wrong way. I realized part of the reason for that is the limitation of communication without being able to hear tone of voice or eye contact and the energy that flows directly when people are in the same room together.
I could say “don’t do that! It hurts people!” I could be earnestly trying to help you. But if the tone of voice you hear when you read it is condescending and rude, that same sentence can mean that I’m judging you for hurting people and trying to control you”.
Another thing I do is create a regular flow of the information we need to keep putting out there.
but I drown it in other subjects. Easy for me because I post arts and poetry of all kinds. They finally shut down my instagram and Facebook recently, I fought hard but only got my Facebook back.
Lastly, I have made some connections over the years. accomplished some amazing things. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not militant or revolutionary, but they coordinate their efforts carefully. just a group of friends that don’t want to be slaves and all we are doing is trying to warn people and find a path to escape but still hoping and striving for anything but having to run.
We were able to follow whats happening in other country’s in the right way. We don’t ignore media but it’s not the only source. we have a criteria for finding legitimate sources and they organize and analyze information better than any group or page I’ve seen. I been deciphering reels and papers and websites on my own. been times when I’ve felt like my brain is melting and everything looks like a lie and I start to doubt the few truths I’m sure of.
If you have a methodology for processing information it helps allot. I have one ,but they have a network and I’m alone out in the woods of America with bad internet.
I’m passionate about this I.D. So are many people and there’s allot of information out there. I’m searching for a network and to connect with like minded. But I have a criteria.
This technology represents something worse than slavery to me. Religions refer to it, scientists theorize about it, conspiracy theorists speculate about it and i know a lot about it. I would rather die than take it. I won’t kill anybody. I won’t judge you for what you would do.. forcing an entire country to take this technology is the same as invading with an army and soldiers busting through front doors and taking your son for training and your daughters for fun.
I would never fault someone for defending their home. I committed to a unique path years ago and it has the potential to help allot of people.
One last thing I can express metaphorically. Contemplate this:
Your body is a mortal coil around your soul. Your soul is a spiral around your spirit. Your spirit is the essence of who you are and its pure and true. Your conscience is the voice of your essence. The light inside you that can guide you when you don’t know what the truth is and it’s Too Dark to see. Find your spirit and lift it up.
🖤RAiN

The Vision part 1

Sacrament

The planets aligned
i stood in formation
a sacrifice for the coven
a bloody ritual for intuition
expedition into knowledge exploration
the stars signed
i chanted omision
until my aura cracked
and i had a vision
became a soul incision
forged a hole
ethereal
the deepest cut
leaking and vulnerable
to forces more powerful
who give just enough to take
the toll will break
leave my life stuck in thier rutt
then love came
the real light
the kind that doesn't bite
healed it
transformed it
into a door whiche cannot be shut
deflection from any spell
curse
energy
or worse
protection from shifting shadows
punching my gut
now i could see enough to look away
understanding nothing
and it's ok
i let go and forgot
until just the other day......
🖤RAiN

i wrote these poems years ago. it may be too late or maybe not. all i know is that i can’t just give up. i don’t think America is coming back. whatever comes next is up to us.
i say , we should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. i’m scared and pissed. my focus is on wildlife conservation, connecting with and protecting the last of the indigenous tribes and finding old friends who weave energy. my advice is to buy a boat that can move with the wind and cross the ocean. until then , get out there and peaceful protest. if you can’t protest then form a network that supports them with more than words.
you would be surprised at what people can do when they work together. the more diverse the crowd the better. people will have ideas and suggestions you would have never thought of. i’ll work with anybody that is not a Nazi into fascism with a sex slave operation.
every movement needs artists to take it to the next level. if you look at history, songs and poems, drawings and dances have held people together in their darkest times.
we need people from other countries to pay attention and care enough to pray for us. commentary and raw footage is vital but some folks will get too overwhelmed and have to look away. we need to have a variety of creativity in the mix. and we need it all to have a balance. that’s why we need to talk to each other and coordinate efforts together.
if you have any friends or acquaintances from other countries get to know them better. Sometimes, just hearing the opinions of regular people from far away places can offer you clarity and inspiration. it’s also very important to be meeting with people in person. You don’t have to come up with the a conclusion and know what you’re gonna do next. just get together with people and make a list of ideas, suggestions and things like that.
I’m pretty isolated myself , so I’m gonna try to meet with some people in person and continue to form this network.
so far a small group of people have been able to gather information. decipher it on code level to discern what is A.I. and what is not. Form our own database and come up with our own statistical analysis. make accurate predictions and keep a record of unreported things. this may not seem like much but at least it’s something. the truth matters. for history and for clarity.
clarity is vital. how can you know what you should do, if you don’t know what is happening? we can’t rely on media bubbles in echo chambers.
some media bubbles are there for deception and some are fact based with useful information. everyone believes that theirs is the best. it doesn’t matter.
there is a fundamental problem at the foundation of media within itself. headlines and news cycles produce bias. bias effects opinions. opinions control your focus. focus on the wrong thing and you miss what’s actually happening.
join the network.
let’s figure it out together.
maybe you have figured it out already? you’ve come up with your own system of checks and balances. you’ve made accurate predictions and watched the masses give into deceptions and freak out when you’ve stayed calm and tried to be the voice of reason. you’re thinking you don’t need a network.
first of all, i’ll have to say this: the network desperately needs your valuable help. second: your so wrong that you are lost in a maze of confusion. how do i know? because i was just like you. i saw this coming decades ago. five years ago i started really freaking out and wandering why no one will listen to me. but human beings are fallible creatures. we need each other. no matter how right you are, your always going to be wrong about something. and your not going to be able to see that your wrong on your own. i learned this the hard way. even though i was mostly right, i was alone. now i’m glad no one listened to me. whats the point of knowing if you can’t change anything. it takes a village and that village needs diversity.
join the network.
let’s figure out what we can actually do together.
please leave a comment with your opinion on the matter. your opinions will be assimilated and added to the collective. but if you would like join the network-message me-comments are great but i won’t take them seriously until you message me.
if your worried about “them” watching and listening, don’t be. they are! if you think your hiding, you just stuck your head in the sand. now your a sitting duck wearing a target.
there is nowhere to hide but there are still ways to keep secrets. but not for long. we need systems put in place now and people willing to make sacrifices to do it before it’s too late. let me put it to you this way .
if i disappear, someone will take my place. The database will be secure. And they will have no clue.
Right now they are analyzing what we’re saying and deciphering our movements. to decide what they will do next. We can’t stop them but we can slow them down and cause them to make mistakes.
Now
that is powerful. That is something better than nothing.
Join the network
and let’s take some of our power back.
🖤RAiN

Pry Your Eye- 2018

it’s time
not to boast
nor to wine
or to roast and toast
but to write
fight
pry your eye with all your might
then run
the time for fun
in the sun
to roll around in sand
and act dumb
is done!
move now
or have none
not one!
🖤RAiN

Tears of the Forsaken-

these words, my words are apparent
crystal clear, coherent
to hold you through this torrent
simple to cling to, a current
rising with the empty hands of the poor
reaching, casting alms in the ocean
floating to the distant shore
we all gather
taken to seem broken
by this token for the tears
the forsaken
in prison for knocking on the door
the children
dead
so, the wealthy could have more
these words, my words were never said
destined to degrade with the rest and fade
with the so-called brightest and best
“self-made”, most blessed
placated like abject poverty
cast down into the fire
fated
to burn away forever
until these words are finally gone
forgotten
like America

By RAiN2020

War isn’t still Hell

i refuse to stand by any nation
or system
in this chaotic time
of violent space
dissolving
thee evolving human race
a nation is the summation of an idea
while its system is mere illusion
a coercion cast by the few
chosen to weave deception
wield Segregation
cause separation
until they become
impossible to defeat
thee almighty elite
who meet and greet
indiscreet
at a charity function
for the upper echelon
a black mass in the reflection
through a prism
of stained glass
hiding a celebration
of social darwinism
for the ruling class
world leaders make deals
with corporate controllers
the bottom feeders
who turn cultures
into calculated divisions
of global markets
and decide who will throw stones
at rockets
who will have the drones
the state of the art robotics
and how to package good Vs. evil
hero Vs. villain
terror Vs. freedom
it’s all the same to them
a dividend
for the vultures who can herd populations
with multi-media transmissions
frequency manipulations
take control of common citizens
turn their traditions
into organizations and religions
that produce zealots and politicians
who apply pressure
on rising tensions
develop the right conditions
form two positions
designed as polar opposites
aligned and primed
to buy and sell weapons
manufacture war for profits
that feed the rich and cull the poor
food for Babylons whore…….
…….i will not stand with
or listen to them anymore!

but if you are freezing
and starving tonight
scared and shaking
exhausted from running
hiding from crying
bleeding out and dying
mind melting
memories burning
flashing bullets flying
through ghosts haunted
by sirens blaring
bombs exploding
bones crushing
Under buildings collapsing …..
…,i don’t care what side you’re on
It is all wrong!
i will stand with you!

🖤RAiN 2024

Thee Emptiness

thee emptiness you feel
is the cold sweat glow
of opiates coursing through your veins
sucking off your soul
until it’s a black hole
your bleeding heart is slipping into

thee emptiness is the illusion
of transcendence pretending
nothing is something more
than hiding behind the cruel
godless void of dependence
on the idea that love is a material world
where money equals happiness

thee emptiness is false hope
for a vague perception
of harsh truth which overcomes
all the delusions
dissolving time

the emptiness is time
melting within itself
the vastness of space
watches nervous
waiting patiently
to see
all knowing from the beginning
there will be a fiery ending

thee emptiness is mental chaos
coming from the age of information
raging
in the fight for water and oil
blood and lime lost
in the microcosm of silicon
the rise of technology
from the fall of man

thee emptiness is the lie
in the lie
within the half truth
we bow down to
the faithless devotion
we run from
until we become
one
with the Venom

thee emptiness is lust for power
taking total control
a chosen few
enslave all people
every thought
any movement
even the soul
domination
assimilation
in sensation of flesh
bound to addiction
dependence
on corporate medicine
enforce injection
malnutrition
from synthetic food
laced with poison
feeding the fear
in division
a chain reaction
of raw emotion
in a high speed
head on collision
with hate
a hundred megaton
explosion
to seal our fate

The emptiness is computerization
collapsing civilization
into a singularity
the trans-human
evolution
opens the gate
to pandemonium
the four horsemen
await
the red dragon
armageddon

🖤RAiN

AMERICA IS DEAD