There’s a real lack of cars on fire, considering this is an Anarchist party, and it’s starting to wear on my already fragile nerves. Maybe I’m too early? I showed up a day late to Anarchapulco, and so, why not? Do Anarchists even believe in time? As it turns out, yes. There’s no free ride for a guy who’s drunk in Mexico City and misses his connecting flight.
This place has gone so far down the free market rabbit hole that they can actually intellectualize an individual fulfilling a commitment that he has made – commitments like hotel reservations.
My attempts to argue over paying for an empty hotel room were met with blank stares from the receptionist and groaning criticisms from the Hotel clients waiting in line behind me.
Even I knew I had no good argument to try and get out of paying, but someone trying to weasel out of a commitment, especially a monetary one, is like blood in the water to these sharks.
Lucky for me the hotel lobby is a grand, open-air architectural wonder and the cool, salty breeze coming in from the ocean kept everyone calm enough that I wasn’t in any fear of physical danger.
This leads me to ask: How many of these motherfuckers bought one of Elon Musk’s Flamethrowers? He did sell 20,000 of the things. I was doing the math in my head on the way down here. Let’s see, there’s 1500 people at Anarchapulco and 20,000 Flamethrowers sold, I didn’t buy one, so that means everyone here must have bought 13 or 14 each right?
Day 2 started with yoga at 7 am for those that were awake and some of us who were awake just stood on the sidelines. The juice and smoothie bar opened up around 9. This, and the fact that I have yet to smell seared flesh has me thinking no one here has a flamethrower.
Those who weren’t up for yoga were probably sleeping off the effects of a late night of entertainment at the Palladium. Buses were running every 20 minutes or so to shuttle the crazies back and forth. The entertainment was flown in on some sort of test flight for a block-chain run airline? And if you’re not impressed by the market driven viability of that project, the entertainment flown in was the WU TANG CLAN!
Yes. The Wu Tang Clan. Kicking yourself for not being here yet? Well those of us who chose to take it easy on a hotel balcony that evening are kicking ourselves harder.
“What about muh borders,” a heated debate between Miss. Lauren Southern and Larken Rose, was a real midday treat for politicos. The crowd heavily favored the opinions of Mr. Rose and were quite vocal about it.
There were cheers for his arguments on statelessness. Miss Southern made some valid points and was given credit from the crowd when deserved.
There are few subjects that divide the liberty minded like borders and their security, and abortion, another conversation that I wish we could just avoid. What’s the Libertarian position on not having an opinion though? It doesn’t exist.
Lauren Southern is a smart little thing, there’s no doubt about that.
However, she skillfully avoids to fully parse out the irony of a Canadian woman flying to Acapulco, Mexico to preach about America securing it’s borders against the very Mexicans that so graciously welcomed her; the Mexicans and Muslims of course.
The irony is in needing to secure borders to protect a culture which is established by free markets and the marketplace of ideas.
A few times someone had yelled out “racist” at her, the type of intellectual laziness that legitimizes her arguments. Guaranteed any statement from her afterwards on the debate will focus on her being unjustly accused of bigotry, and it is unjust, but it also works to her advantage.
In the back of the room, where I was standing, most people couldn’t be bothered to listen to the debate and commented that “the Libertarians give Miss. Southern a free pass because of her nice frame.” And there might be some truth to that, but it’s another lazy argument to discount her opinions. Like I said, she’s smart. There’s certainly no way I could debate her on that stage, she’d use me like dental floss so I’ll show a little respect.
Her strong stance on a heavily militarized police state-style border control didn’t develop out of any hatred for brown people. And her pretty face is only known as well as it is because she is an intelligent, articulate and a politically savvy young woman. And she is a capitalist, a very stringent one; and I would surmise that her “muh borders” argument arose just because of that, whether consciously or not.
If you’ve followed her for a long time, you can see that her progression from the open borders libertarian to the closed borders far-right and that path was laid by clicks and likes and twitter followers. Do more of what gets you the attention, if you want to make any money in this game, and currently she’s mining a rich vein of right wing animosity.
I saw her on the plane coming here, her in first class and the people paying her way in the back. Good for her; make hay while the sun shines.
But let’s get real here, what was she…like 3 years old when the US invaded Afghanistan? Does she remember a whole lot of Islamic extremism in those first 3 years?
In my opinion: end the war on terror, end the war on drugs, and end the welfare state. There. Immigration problem solved.
The list of speakers yesterday was excellent, although I couldn’t be bothered to sit in that room for a full day. The sun is out after all. When reading the day’s itinerary, it’s hard not to be a little overwhelmed by the amount of talent on the list and to have a good laugh when reading that Vit Jedlicka’s (the president of Liberland) talk was titled ‘Hasn’t returned email’.
He spoke midday, but I was restless and snuck out for some fresh air, sunshine, a cold beer and to admire the flamingos, who casually graze on the immaculate grass.
I had gone to my room to get showered and dressed up for the Anarchapulco Gala Dinner titled “Here’s to Ending the Fed,” with the great Ron Paul.
At 5:39 When stepping out of the shower…should the room be shaking? Now, truth be told, I had been drinking and I may have even ingested some other illicit substances, but given my tolerance for these things the shaking seemed odd. And when pieces of plaster started lightly sprinkling from the ceiling, I realized “Oh shit! This is it! This is how it all ends…with me at the bottom of the rubble of a goddamn 50-year-old beach hotel surrounded by a bunch of dead anarchists!”
A 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the place pretty good. The epicenter of the quake was 17 km from Santiago Amoltepec, Oaxaca, about 400 km southeast of us.
Some of the resorts along the beach were evacuated, but not us, and the clientele of the Princess Mundo this weekend could not be shaken. Some of the more paranoid, survivalist types were even prepared for it and had been wearing backpacks containing the tools necessary to endure a natural disaster under the most severe circumstances. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary.
When I got downstairs to the conference hall everything was as it should be and according to the official schedule “Some One” was just finishing up their talk entitled “It’s a can of Awesome.”
The main conference hall is usually about half full, as many of the guests pick and choose the speakers they want to listen to and spend the rest of their time working on their tans and obsessively checking in on their crypto investments. But the place was packed wall to wall with most people standing close to the front so they could get a better view.
The building anticipation did not disappoint as Dr. Ron Paul took the stage to a long, heartfelt standing ovation.
Many people were visibly moved, even tearful, and the nostalgia of a 2012 Revolution rally was thick in the air. The guy beside me had the tattoo, the revolution with the capital L and evo in bold red and backwards to say “Love,” he was looking at it and softly caressed it with his index finger.
It’s hard to measure the impact the man has had on the liberty movement because it was on such a grand scale. 99% of the people at this event were in that room when he walked on stage, and very small number had more than a few degrees of separation between their political alignment, or lack there of, and this man. Even most of the real “Crypto Bulls” were in early because they had read “End the Fed.” The man has been saying the same things for 40 years and he’s never used the same words twice to say it. He’s always been a principled and disciplined advocate for the for the cause of freedom.
Only time will tell if the Liberty movement will see another leader so unifying anytime soon. It would be hard to imagine anyone having the same heated discussion over border security in 2008 or 2012 that we saw today, and I do emphasize the same.
Despite the divides in the liberty movement, there’s hardly a reason to be pessimistic, as part of a luxuriously catered gala in beautiful Acapulco does a lot to mend old wounds and build new bridges.
– Darcy Gerow
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