A Mule

A shiny new car encourages a thrall.
Credit bubbles pop; troubles stop his smiles.
The dusty used car's returned.
His daily commute shoots directly into the city center's main vein.
Public buses transport this metropolitan citizen to the last bastion of commerce in a storm: civic service.
Reforms, curses on prosperity spoke by suit&tie wearing wizards, transform billions of debt-units into trillions, workers into criminals and beggars, the starving into the dead.
In his head, the costly ride lost to wage freezes was an escape from daily mediocrity.
Free from the media's opiate glamor, eyes open, he'd see: without the liberty to hold the reins of his property, the most luxurious sports car is an injurious slave ship.

There Oughtta be a Law

During the commute home I drove behind a truck laden with dry grass and/or some other vegetable matter. Behind it a trailer swung with a tree. It didn't really swing but the description reads nice, yeah?
I was wary of this truck. It was leaving alotta space infrontof itself so I wanted to pass it anyway but also, nothing strapped these plants down. The back end of the truck was open, ungated. With only their weight keeping them on you gained the impression a sudden enough brake or acceleration would throw a tree and company at the left lane behind this truck. Pileup.
To amuse myself (gotta do something during traffic) I thought, "there oughtta be a law..." implicitly against such a situation. That the trucks shouldn't be allowed to drive except in the right-most lane. Those people drive too slow to be looking forward to living.
In summoning this thought I became conscious of an association I already had: laws are the refuge of people uncomfortable with the awareness of their own decisiveness. Despite the fact I preferred not being behind cargo suspect in its' security I remained in my place. If I believed a crash a likelihood rather than a distant possibility I would leave the lane. The options were available to me and I had chosen. Speed and danger go together. Better both than neither.
Such a situation can't be relegated out of reality by legality. No motion by congress will relieve the populace of being aware they have made discomforting decisions. But by externalizing the process of decision-making people are more secure within themselves.
In a way, preference for a stronger state is a preference for a prominent external division versus an internal one. Part of us wants one thing, another part of us wants a different thing, our motivations clash and we're not sure what's the optimal decision. Will we regret doing this? Would it be better if we had? And the option, the ability to switch, perpetuates this state of unease. So long as we could do something different the way currently untried is a temptation. Some men love the state, even as they hate it, because it settles arguments in themselves.
The want to silence opposition is similar. However outlandish or wrong an idea is: once you have taken it in, it's in you. An oppressive rule muffles certain opinions, making it easier to remain ignorant of beliefs contradicting your own. States prevent communication. I mean not person to person as much as segment to segment, clique to clique. States let us understand each other less. We feel finalized.
The consensus is that freedom's a burden and bondage a relief.

Indirect

Republics are bad for government and good for society. The more men are involved in deciding what's to be done the more the enaction of laws is retarded. Slowing government processes grants subjects more time to be efficient and prosper before the next stumbling block is placed at their feet. Similarly, shareholders are good for competition.

Camp Infiltration

When Americans were better they lent the Federalist party so little support it died. But its' corpse moved on and corrupted the Democrat-Republicans. The party split in two and both new factions were more pro-federal than before.
A problem in America's political system was that as no one's killed the wicked men moved from their sinking ship like rats. They brought the plague of federalism to the parties they joined. So where there was an anti-federalist party there became two federalist parties.
Likewise more recently this process repeated when conservatives became neo-cons. Warmongers in the Democrat's camp were ignored by their brethren, content to oppress their countrymen. So these warmongers broke into the Republican's house and now live there. So we've two Democratic parties. One which prefers hurting locals and one which prefers hurting foreigners.
When men set rules between themselves someone/s in the group is lying. The only rules to life are physical laws. When someone seems to cheat the game, like Clay in the corrupt bargain, he should be made to quite the game. No more political involvement for him under threat of death. But then we'd be back to settling everything by violence. Well, that state is the state of man. If good men don't kill evil men, evil men will kill good men. As Lincoln invaded the Confederacy (named for what America was before federalists like Washington, who lost most of his battles and promised soldiers the rest of America would pay them (no taxation w/out representation), took control of the gov.) and knocked the union from its' feet.
It's inevitable that the men w/the least integrity, who value the lives of their fellow man the least, will rule. They'll deal with anyone b/c they've no compunctions. They'll commit any abuse to ensure their power. Righteous men are handicapped by conscience. So long as they're the dominant in a group most men w/in the group will prosper, as man tends to prosper and left to his own devices will produce wealth. But wicked men will rob all others in a group as well they can and as more noses close with the grindstone men can no longer see the conflict between the kinder and meaner men who'd rule them. As more men become uninvolved in these conflicts the evil are left to destroy the good, the greatest obstacle to their perversion of labor.
I see no aversion to this pattern of development. For a man to kill he must become somewhat meaner. A man will not stay balanced. As he kills he'll harden, killing for less, minding death less, sympathizing less. So for the good to halt the progress of evil they must poison themselves and then some among them will act as the dispatched did. As the world has been united in one system of thieving (banking), subjugating more men to one rule than ever before, the collapse of this rule is unprecedented. It is larger than the bucking of any empire past. We can only vainly speculate on what we're in the midst of.

linealأمة

A conquered people is marginalized. As it blends with the conquerors, peoples from further away see the ruling people and subjected people as one. The subsumed and dwindling subjugated become a quirk -a subculture- within the wider victorious culture. There's habit-drift: defining traits of the subjects join the practices of the masters and vice versa. Traditions are shared and connect people in an amalgam culture.
Take the name of any nation. Where did its' people come from? One assemblage of tribes conquered others. Both blend together until they forget the names of their clans. Borders are islands where enemy garrisons sit across from one another in an ocean of peoples.
Sometimes the newborn culture takes after its' father, the conqueror, and bears his name. Like Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad became Volgograd. Sometimes the amalgamation takes after its' mother, the subjected people/s, like England stayed English after the Norman Conquest.
A conquering people are carriers. They harbor fragments of other peoples' personalities in their psyche. Over time some fragments spread, transforming the host from the inside out. Like Romans became Greek then Christian.
People who know themselves to be a separate culture but don't know their ancestors ways have a tabula rasa to be iconates. Like America's freedmen buying clothes it'd take years to grow into.

Rebel Rules

The tyrant weakens his rule by weakening what he rules with his rules. The rebel is as evil as the tyrant overthrown but until he is maintaining enough institutions to cripple other people as much as the tyrant did there's a period of freer living which allows greater prosperity. If there's a boom and bust cycle it's the rise and fall of states. Humanity's booming then cancerous elements grow their unneeded tissue, disrupting healthy processes, until the body they keep with them decays, they're removed from the larger human society, and with healthy forms of laborers left the pace of man's ascent quickens again.