A Declaration of an Independent People

In the Nexus, among the Living and the Dead, assembled Drafted by the Spirit of Thomas Jefferson, for the Committee of the Reconstituted

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the bands which have bound them to their cellphones, and to resume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station of attentive citizens, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We are advised the modern attention span runs to eight seconds. We shall try to be worth a few of them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created for one another, and not for the shareholders; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that not one of the three has ever been found inside a phone. That to secure these rights, republics are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and not from a checkbox marked I Agree. And that whenever any power, whether a king or an app, reduces a people to distraction, division, and dependence, it is their right, it is their duty, to put it down. We overthrew our tyrant with muskets. Yours can be silenced with a thumb. There is a button on the side.

Prudence will dictate that habits long indulged should not be broken for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to scroll, while evils are scrollable, than to right themselves by deleting the accounts to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of notifications, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce a free people under absolute dependence, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such oligarchs, and to provide new guards for their liberty.

Such has been the patient suffering of this people, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to change their settings. In our day the tyrant was a king, and he required an army to subdue a continent. The present tyrants require none, for a people staring into a screen garrisons itself. They are called oligarchs, and by the age, tech bros, a title in which both halves mislead: the technology is aimed at you, and the brotherhood does not extend to you. Their fortunes make the robber barons of the last gilded age look like benefactors, for the robber barons, late in their guilt, at least built libraries. The history of these oligarchs is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over this Republic. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have amassed fortunes beyond any king we ever bowed to, and assured us it was merit.

They have bought the presses, and replaced the news with content.

They have built algorithms that study a citizen the way a pickpocket studies a crowd, and then serve him his own fears, warm, on a schedule.

They have set neighbor against neighbor by design, their machines having discovered that a quarrel holds the eye longer than a handshake.

They have placed in every pocket a device that promised to connect mankind, and used it to keep each of us alone, anxious, and scrolling at two in the morning.

They have harvested our attention without our consent, sold it to the highest bidder, and described the arrangement as free.

They have taught our children to measure their worth in likes, a currency the children may earn all day and never once spend.

And distraction was only the means. The object was always dominion.

They have purchased the public square outright, and appointed themselves moderators of the Republic’s conversation.

They have bought their way to the President’s shoulder on inauguration day, a proximity to the throne we last observed in the courts of Europe, where at least it had to be married into.

They have taken offices to which no citizen elected them, and dismantled by memorandum what the people built by law.

They have funded the candidates of both parties in a single race, and called the outcome the will of the people.

They have pronounced, from their conference stages, that freedom and democracy are incompatible, and have undertaken to choose for the rest of us which one to keep.

They have styled themselves founders. We are acquainted with the work. It requires the pledge of life, fortune, and sacred honor. They have pledged nothing, hedged everything, and kept the title.

They have made it their creed to move fast and break things, and they have. Among the broken things is the common life of this Republic.

And, having prepared the ruin, they are building rockets to escape the planet, bunkers to outlast it, and spending their surplus to escape death itself. On that last ambition we speak with particular authority: we have seen the far side of it, and the grave sells no premium tier.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: we have silenced the notifications, greyed the screens, and sworn off the feed each January. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by another notification. Nor is the character of these men in doubt. Their own ledgers call us users, and only one other trade calls its customers that. The King we deposed was born to his tyranny and could plead the accident of it. These men chose theirs, and the King at least wore his crown where a people could see it. Princes so marked are unfit to rule a free people, and these are not even princes. They are landlords of the human hour, and the lease is up.

We, therefore, the reconstituted people of these United States, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare: that we are, and of right ought to be, a free and attentive people; that we owe these oligarchs no allegiance, having signed nothing but their terms of service, which we hereby cancel; that all connection between us and the empires of the feed is and ought to be dissolved at our pleasure, and never again at theirs; and that as free citizens we hold full power to gather in person, to read at length, to disagree in peace, and to look one another in the eye, no login required.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of one another, we mutually pledge our attention, our presence, and our sacred hours.

Put down the phone. Look up. Rejoin, or die.

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A Note from the Printer

Mr. Jefferson composes with great heat, and it falls to the printer, as it did the last time, to sweep up after his zeal. I amended his draft once before, in Seventeen Seventy-Six, and was not thanked for it, so I shall let “no login required” stand exactly as written. It is true. No login is required.

It is, however, appreciated. At 76spirits.com your voice, once you lend it, will be respected, which is more than any of the empires of the feed have ever offered for one.

B. Franklin, Printer