John Titor's Story  

A Way Out

In the worst case scenario that JT's prediction about America soon evolving into a police state begins to come true, forewarned is forearmed, so we know what we must do: for there to be any hope of changing the timeline toward a favorable future it must be made to happen by consciously countering the tendencies that would otherwise push America in the wrong direction. There are several ways to do that:

• Work for political change to remove cold-blooded authoritarians from office and pressure the ones remaining to be loyal to American principles of liberty, freedom, and privacy.

• Absolutely not permit a police state to evolve, both by civilians adhering to nonviolence and hopefully for police to respect American principles and to treat people kindly and respectfully instead of assuming the worst and initiating violence.

• If you are a civilian you should pledge your nonviolence and never participate in or plan for any kind of violent confrontation with the police or military (they will soon be one and the same for practical purposes if Titor was correct). In Titor's future VIOLENCE DID NO GOOD, but fighting dragged on for years and only ended with nuclear war. Fighting police only escalates the violence they'll do back to you and others, and the police almost always have far better weapons and other resources. America's Founders gave us the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so that we could overthrow an oppressive government, and no doubt they fully intended that we should do so when needed, but they didn't anticipate tanks and armored vehicles and attack helicopters and laser-guided bombs and microwave weapons and everything else that our weapons industries have wrought, any of which may be used against Americans if our self-described "war president" continues to make bad decisions. He's backing his Education Secretary's branding of teachers as "terrorists", so there's no telling who's next or if they're already planning for more concentration camps or what. It's sure to be a surprise at some point, but by then it may be too late. Pouring resources into domestic surveillance and data mining can only result in a situation in which somebody's status depends upon it all being used more and more, especially if people wake up and start asking if it's really necessary. But the larger question we should be asking ourselves is, do we really want to forfeit our freedoms so horrificly earned by the blood of patriots? I know I don't. The threat of terrorism is so vastly overblown in comparison to deaths from tobacco and automobile accidents, all those routine unnecessary deaths that we seem to have become conditioned to so curiously accept with aplomb. Okay yes Osama bin Laden killed almost three thousand Americans in one day one time, but R.J. Reynolds and accomplices routinely kill a hundred times that many EVERY YEAR and have been doing so for many decades. Where is the scale of values here that we don't effectively deal with the far more dangerous threats to American lives? Couldn't some of the billions spent to save us from 1% of potential random deaths be far better spent attacking the far greater sources of the other 99%? Who is really benefitting here? Have we become such a nation of sheep that we can be so easily mesmerized into following a path that may not really be for our own good? We urgently need to take back our political process and restructure government so that it works for us instead of against us. We need a revolution at the ballot box though, not the armed insurrection Titor predicted that ultimately proved futile.

  Realize it is a losing proposition to fight against overwhelming odds and the vast resources of an American police state. This country's Founders meant well but they were thinking in terms of both sides being more or less equally armed with muskets, and today's American citizens are vastly outgunned by their government. The only hope to avoid Titor's future lies in nonviolent actions designed to paralyze an oppressive government very effectively without invoking too many lethal responses. Nonviolence is not passivity, we can and must confront our government and demand change! Nonviolence is the moral high ground, against which bullets and bombs do their greatest damage in the long run to those who employ them. We need to regain control over our government, not attempt to overthrow it violently, because a violent approach has no hope of success. Put away your testosterone-fueled reactions to "fight for your rights" in this case and do the smart thing instead: follow the examples of Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

• If you are in law enforcement (or if you are military and called upon soon to fight "evildoers" on American soil) we would all appreciate it if you would continue to respect American principles even if you don't actually have to any more. Please remember to treat people nicely instead of acting Gestapo. We really don't want to give up any of our hard-earned American liberties for a little security, thank you. Ben Franklin said it best a long time ago: Those who would give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security, and indeed we want our cherished American liberties that were bought with the blood of so many patriots. You are not a robot, compelled to do the bidding of your "superior" officers automatically, you are a thinking human being with a family and friends and responsibilities that transcend a paycheck. Please ask yourself, if you are called upon to ignore due process, would you want your mother / brother / sister / daughter / best friend treated that way? You have the power to do the right thing and walk away from any job that would trample American values and compromise your integrity. Go to the newspapers instead so that people can learn what's really going on behind the scenes that they should know about, and nobody will condemn you for having a conscience, you can be a hero instead of another cog in the repression machine trampling the Constitution and destroying American values. Some bullet-headed Fascists may not like you, but so what? They are the root of the problem! Please realize that you are responsible for your actions and the lame excuse of "I was just following orders" is no justification for violating people's human rights, any more than it was for Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. All that's necessary is for you to remember that you can choose to be a human being instead of a modern-day Nazi, and you will be a better person for doing so. You're supposed to be one of the good guys, not attacking and arresting Americans on flimsy pretenses without due process.

• Don't forget that if John Titor's story is true, he also said the timeline can be changed if we try hard enough. If it becomes obvious soon that Titor's story was true, we all have a responsibility to try to avert the ugly future he painted.