haiku 17 Jan 2019

Only be afraid

Of the dangerous monster

To which you grant teeth

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

dreamstate writing 11 April 2017

I had climbed into a rail-mounted, bullet-shaped carriage in order to visit a subterranean Harry-Potter-themed attraction. With me in the carriage was another entity, a male figure who has been for the last couple of nights leading me through massive hollow structures that are poorly lit and full of shadows. The structures remind me of abandoned airport terminals. I encounter few other entities in these massive structures. The shadows, however, are often alive with fearful and stunted figments that follow me, tracking my movements.

The carriage had stopped at the door to the attraction. A backlit panel displayed the logo and name of the attraction as well as a clock showing the minutes left until we could enter. Feeling confined and cramped in the suddenly tiny space (my head and torso had been bent backward on the way into the narrow tunnel), I had jumped out, whereupon I found myself on a flat plain lit as if by a full moon shining in the sky on my right-hand side. Dead trees and ruined buildings stood upon the plain, their outlines at times pixelated, at times clearly defined. To my left was a three-storey building, dark, decrepit, scary.

A few hundred meters in front of me was a line of tall buildings that appeared to form the boundary of the plain. A shadow moved there, jet-black eyes winking open in a jet-black body. It oozed swiftly my way, flitting from shadow to shadow. As it came closer it took the shape of a giant dog. Panicked and full of fear, I cast about for a way to escape the bounding beast’s gnashing jaws. I noticed an open door in the collapsing building to my left but resisted the urge to leap through it. Instead, I lifted my right arm. The shadow-dog grasped my right hand in its mouth but its teeth found no purchase, and no matter how hard it whipped its head around, it could do me no harm.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

nary a meter

He worked furiously to keep the balloon afloat, rushing about here and there gluing on bits of canvas to the many holes that riddled its exterior. Inside the balloon was only hot air, of course, agitated gases he replenished frequently using a burning brazier tethered to the underbelly of the ungainly airship.

He dared not stray too high, into the realm of the gods, where the strong and mighty winds live, out of fear they would rend the balloon fully and send him plummeting to the ground. He avoided straying too low, however, into the realm of demons, where the base and greedy urges wallow, out of fear he’d heed the siren-calls of booish pleasure and forfeit the sacrifices he’d made to lift off in the first place.

For a brief moment, his airborne mount stayed level, nary a leak sprung, nary a meter gained or lost. As he loosened the knots and closed the gates, the contraption in which he had for so long ridden suddenly vanished. And he floated there - serene, unmoved, filled with nothingness.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

Santander announces new FEAR card

Santander & Sovereign Banks announced today (from their subterranean bunkers outside of Washington D.C.) the newest credit card to ensnare unwary, consumption-crazy customers: Fear. Get afraid today with high rates, hidden fees, inexplicable cancellations, and an ever-shrinking credit ceiling. With Santander's new Fear card, never again must you be afraid of past-due payments or of collections calls from angry, third-party creditors: the only thing you must fear is us, your bank, because we shall act swiftly and with righteous fury to repossess anything you might own in order to recover your outstanding debts to us. Sign up today at one of our inconvenient locations that are sure to be staffed with disinterested customer service representatives who shall be more likely to put up their feet on the employee room tables than to get off their asses and attend to customers. Fear, today, with Santander / Sovereign.

p.s. The author would like to point out that the new credit card's name is not Fear, as he initially suspected; rather, the card is called Sphere, although he applauds the logic behind using a name that sounds exactly like “fear” when referring to credit, a horrifying state of self-imposed slavery to Big Bro Bank which is sure to terrify any self-respecting, self-sufficient American.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on LA, briefly

  I love LA. My fluids suffuse her soils, yet she always provides spoils. Too easily she drags me in, enticing me with perfect asses, teasing me with furtive glances, breaking my heart a thousand times a day, my own insecurities and fears amplified against the foul tympanum of her heaving cracked pavement. Within her envelope I walk and wander gladly, casting about clumsily for the dim remnants of tenacious glory, my eyes grating like those of a madman, my soul zigzagging between high elation and base surrender. She knows me as would my mother, yet she denies me all but that which I might truly obtain.

  Bear with me, courageous readers. I am not yet over my culture shock, and shall resume my regular posting schedule when it has abated.

  Sincerely, JP

on my loss of faith

  My parents were both Lutherans. My father was a pastor, my mother a devout follower of the same religion. From birth until my fourteenth birthday (at which point I rebelled more openly) I was for most of my life either in a church, on my way to a church, or otherwise engaged in some sort of churchly activity. Among my earliest memories outside of wild animal encounters as a toddler take place in churches. I sang my first public solo, (at the age of ten years) on Christmas Eve, to a packed house, at a church in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

  All around me were devout and loyal Lutherans who all sang the same songs in the same fashion at the same times of year, their practices unchanging from one decade to the next. While I, in general, have no problem with people engaging in religious practice, I realized recently (after deep and introspective thought) that I had abandoned my own faith at a very young age. My belief in an invisible god, as well as any respect I might have had for the doctrine of the Lutheran church, those things faltered as early as the age of six or seven; by my teens, they were long gone. It is well that I was a shy and quiet child – if I had told anyone about my doubting, they would likely have forced me into re-education classes, so as to keep me enslaved to The Church. (I have never believed that thinking “bad” thoughts, doubtful thoughts, would get me in trouble with a godhead whose main message is love, forgiveness and compassion; thankfully, I recognized at a comparatively young age my fellow Lutherans' fear of eternal damnation for what it truly is: a thinly-veiled effort by the church hierarchy to keep the people in the pews hating themselves for sinning, and begging the pastor to do something about it.)

  I was a young boy standing in a front-row pew watching my father perform the service. I can remember looking at all the people around me, their heads bowed, their lips moving in unison, and I thought they were all going to look up at some point to spring the joke and laugh. I can recall looking at those docile individuals standing in that wood-paneled church, looking at them and bouncing the backs of my legs against the dark wood of the church's benches while laughing to myself quietly. I have since that time not stopped laughing at and mocking any organized religion that happens to cross my path. The complexity and self-contradictory nature of the thousands of different teachings found in the Christian bible had become overwhelmingly foreign to me at that young age, so foreign and confusing that I knew, in my deepest of knowing-places, that they could not all be true. At that young age, for some reason, I was able to see through the smoke-screen of canon and verse, and pluck from the brambles of dogma the few tender fruits of pure and honest meaning. In time, I have been able to utilize these fruits outside of the framework of the artificial, and inherently corrupted, structure of organized religion. (I wish sometimes that I had not lost faith, that I could somehow become faithful again, and believing, that I could abandon perpetual doubt, that I could once again with impotent fury shake a fist at the sky and curse the god who made me, but I do not believe in an external god, only in the Majesty of the Human Spirit – I hold myself responsible for my place in the world; I fix my problems instead of bitching about them.)

  Of course, standing in that church and doubting quietly, I feared Yahweh, that terrible and jealous god whom I had been taught from birth to fear with abject and abiding terror. Once I had in my own mind mocked him and laughed at him and shown him my young and tender behind, however, I realized that the might of His Wrath (an emphasis on paternalism pervades the Christian bible to the point that I am shocked that any woman would practice that faith willingly) existed only in myth, or in the tales of old. I knew at the age of seven years that religious indoctrination was very much a form of mental slavery, and I was abhorred by the fear-mongery and intimidation used by most organized religions to perpetuate their existence.

  Now, many years later, I am so very happy with my young self for his brave and clandestine decision to rebel quietly against the culture within which he had been so enmeshed. That seemingly simple act of doubt, along with Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching, has helped me to find the path to inner peace, to primal simplicity, to a life without need for self-aggrandizement or self-justification; now, the action is the goal. I let the chips fall where they may, no longer constrained by the stultifying and stagnant framework of a desperate and failing religious organization. Now, my mind is free and elastic, while my heart is empty and still.

  Three cheers for doubt, and for quiet and patient rebellion.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on the necessity of union

  When the Declaration of Independence was written, and its sister document, the Constitution, the need for Union among the States was great. Joined in Union, the States proved better able to effect their independence, and to stand strong collectively, a dozen-odd entities working together against the many pressures that faced our young nation as it fought to make a place for itself in the world, and to prove that its shockingly progressive ideals had staying-power.

  Then, halfway through the 19^th century, divergent forces and interests among the States compelled them to split apart into two separate nations, one seeking to maintain a slave-based economy, the other seeking, officially, to maintain the Union. Whole populations that no longer felt that they should be following the same path rose up in conflict, two seemingly foreign peoples that understood that they had grown simply too far apart in thought and in method to be able to stay together. In those times of relative national weakness and persistent internal turmoil, the Union held; it has held through two world wars, scores of other police-actions (including Vietnam, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003), and rapid and widespread cultural and societal transformations both here and abroad.

  Today, however, we have witnessed the ascendancy of a federal supremacy over the states, and within that supremacy the elevation of the executive branch (in clear violation of the checks and balances built into the Constitution), as well as growing divergences between the citizens who live in roughly the same areas as those that split asunder in the 1860s. Two loose but still recognizable camps have formed in this nation, with millions of voters hovering at varying degrees around the edges of each, one camp calling for more punitive and dogmatic responses to our problems, a camp that relies on the gullibility of the masses for the propagation of its conservative views on religion and society, the other camp one that strives at least superficially for rational debate, the reinstatement of the constitutional right to liberty, and a more compassionate and socialistic view of the role that government and society must play in the elevation of the American People and in the bringing about of our Safety and Happiness. (It would be convenient to suppose that I am here referring to Republicans and Democrats respectively, but as these parties have become the necessary repositories of most anyone seeking political office, their ranks are as varied in their opinions as is the greater population, which is split roughly between liberals and conservatives, i.e. between those who seek to propagate liberty through rational debate and those who seek to maintain the status quo through Fear Of The Unknown and an inflexible mind-set. In my opinion, open debate and rational thinking are essential to the propagation of liberty, for the concept of liberty presupposes that the individual is capable of deciding for himself how best to lead his life: it demands of him that he understands the consequences of his actions while allowing him to live a virtuous life devoid of willful violations of the life, liberty, or property of his fellow persons.)

  Perhaps it would be best, then, in this time of America's military supremacy around the world (when no danger is clear and present enough to enact our total destruction), in this era of seemingly irreconcilable rhetoric and clear societal, moral, and religious divergence, to conclude with this chapter of our experiment and, as the Union of all States is no longer absolutely necessary for the basic preservation of our nation, to allow those portions that wish to pursue their own course to secede.

  Since our country's inception, we have added a good number of states, in locations sometimes far-flung from our original borders, states that by their isolation are seen even now as distant lands and foreign peoples whose primary binding characteristic is the feeble, cancer-like presence of the homogenized corporate retail location. In the interest of DomesticTranquility, it would be better to allow those who wished to establish a socially conservative nation based on a particular religion where they might better keep the ignorant in Fear, a place where the individual might not have the right to decide for herself how to affect her body (by tattoo, weight-loss, or abortion), where the benefits of the joining of individuals in marriage or civil union would be bestowed only according to the writings of a specific religious text (and not to homosexuals or to couples of different hues), where a specific language might be declared (the USA haveno official language), and where a specific system of beliefs might be recognized by all, unanimously, as the state religion.

  Perhaps the citizens of America should be asked directly if they feel that these two clearly divergent populations should become separate nations, an official poll to gauge the possibility of such a split, even an outright vote for their fragmentation and reintegration as separate nations according to the wishes of the respective majorities. (These new nations would have to be well-established, sovereign states with clearly demarcated borders, their constitutions well-written, with provisions in place for the unobstructed movement of goods and people between them, especially people who decide, within a set amount of time, that they had made a mistake and would like to switch nations.)

  The essence of liberty that flowered in America and in the world during the 1960s was stamped out in this country for a number of reasons, among them conservatism, Fear of the Unknown, war-mongering, and racism. Chief among these reasons, however, was the passage of legislation prohibiting the use, possession, and distribution of mood altering substances such as marijuana, legislation that to this day continues to violate the liberty of the American People by restricting their ability to obtain and use legally those substances that they deem would best assist them in their pursuit of Happiness.

  Until such time as the citizens of America are granted their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property; until such time as their right to abort unwanted fetuses and to use whichever substance they decide are best and to marry whomever they please; until such time as the citizens are entrusted fully with their unalienable right to choose for themselves how best to lead their lives and they regain the right to pursue their Happiness as they decide is best; until that time, liberty does not abide in these United States, and the rights enumerated in the Constitution are null and void. (If any one portion of the Constitution becomes null and void, the entire Constitution must be considered null and void.)

  Certain constitutional protections (against unwarranted searches and seizures) continue to be violated courtesy of the Patriot Act. Similarly, enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act violates the individual's fifth and fourteenth Amendment right to property, because her body is her only true property, and she can do with her property whatever she wants, so long as she is not harming anyone else's property. Since some of the most fundamental rights and protections our Constitution was supposed to have provided continue to be withheld from the American people, we must assume that our Constitution is no longer functioning as intended, that is has been so abused and mocked that it more resembles a nice thing to read on a sunny afternoon than a bedrock legal document. With this our finest document already torn, tattered, and violated, with our most basic rights and protections reduced to the theoretical, we would do well to allow those seeking liberty to break off from those seeking to cling fearfully to the mistakes of the past, that a new Union based solidly on the principles set forth by our nation's forefathers might be formed, a new nation that would not rest until the Blessings of Liberty were guaranteed to ourselves and our Posterity, equally and without undue restriction.

  Let the religious zealots thump their holy books and legislate according to their morality, in their own nation, while they funnel the wealth of their people into the pockets of the richest one percent. We rational, progressive, compassionate few, we who yearn for liberty, we who would like to affect our bodies and to pursue our Happiness as we see fit, our Safety protected by the might of the Declaration, our rights as enumerated in the Constitution immutable and unalienable now, and forever.

  Only through constant vigilance and rational foresight can we ensure Liberty and Justice for all. Stand up. Speak out. Demand your constitutional rights. While this struggle may seem nearly over, we have not yet begun to fight.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

American theocracy - 3

  The following are quotes from the founders of the United States of America:
   "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." James Madison, 1774;
  "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson;
  "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac;
  "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson, 1787;
  "And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Thomas Jefferson, in an 1823 letter to John Adams.

  The above statements were made by the individuals who created this nation. Similar quotes were made by George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. The content and general message we can take from these quotes is that we were founded by men who shared a love for reason rather than men seeking the elevation of a particular religion. Never can we allow religious teaching to highjack our institutions of government: for to incorporate religious teachings amongst the laws and constitutions of our land would be to destroy the efforts of our founding fathers to create a nation of equal, rational, free-thinking, exceptional human beings.
  During a recent discussion, my counterpart stated that, The founding fathers were informed by Christianity; they drew from a common value system that was prevalent at the time. While this theory of osmotic religious indoctrination has some merit, I propose a theory that has perhaps equal merit. In the statements by Thomas Jefferson quoted above, we find two references to ancient Greek notions, namely Reason, and Athena (Minerva).
  If Christianity informed our founding fathers, and Jefferson foremost among them, then the polytheistic teachings and value systems of the authors of Hellenistic antiquity, who wrote such works as The Republic (Plato) and Politics (Aristotle), also informed our founding fathers. The notion of Reason – the fluid process of evaluation and decision-making by which man masters adversity – can be found in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. The notion of goddess Athena – patroness of art, craft, guile, justice, strength, civilization, and wisdom – can also be found in the writings of these two men of old.
  Thomas Jefferson, an educated and well-read individual, in his crafting of the Declaration of Independence, drew upon the writings of the ancient political philosophers, and was sure to have been exposed considerably to the polytheistic notions of ancient times. And yet, when writing the Declaration, did he make mention of Zeus, or of any other gods from the Hellenistic pantheon? He makes no more mention of them than he does of YWH, the god of the Christians. If I were to stride into the Chambers of Congress and announce to those assembled that, since Greek deities informed our founding fathers, rites must be performed regularly to placate Poseidon, or to please Zeus, I would surely be laughed out of the room by all present. Congruently, any individuals entering said Chambers and demanding the observance of Christian rites is to be drowned out with raucous jesting.
  Our Constitution, in the first Amendment, states that no laws shall be passed that restrict the practice of, or that establish officially, any religion. This amendment gives the right to all who here dwell to practice their religion without fear of government repression or coercion. In my opinion, a person should be able to decide which god he or she should worship, which religion to practice, and what beliefs, however outlandish and outmoded they may seem to me, to hold. I rejoice in that freedom; I do not wish to see it ever taken from the people of this land. Efforts currently under way, however: to interfere with a woman's right to abort things growing in her private property, her body; to delineate the right to marry according to the religious tracts of one specific group; these efforts pose great risk to the first Amendment, to our Constitution, and to the foundations of this American republic.
  I applaud those individuals fighting against these efforts to abolish our core principles.
  I applaud the judges hearing these cases, and trust that they will approach the matter resplendent in the mantle of reason, their minds broad, their logic sound, knowing well of the dangers inherent to state-mandated religious doctrine.
  America, as a country, as a nation, as a concept, can only remain viable if it is founded on reason, justice, and the notion that all persons, regardless of class, creed, or color, can here find fertile grounds on which their dreams and aspirations may grow. If we allow even one snippet of religious code to find its way into our law, we will have failed our founding fathers by abandoning reason, and we will soon find ourselves in a barren and hostile wasteland rife with intolerance, and ruled by fear.
  This must not come to pass. Let us continue to fight – with patient voices and open minds – for the salvation of our nation.
  Stay true to our founding fathers: say NO to American theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on acting like a bitch

The mentality of the average American voter bears certain resemblance to that of a skittish dog rescued from the pound. No matter her physical size or how well she is treated by her adoptive family, the canine will likely never shake the Fear put into her by her abusive former master(s). If when out walking she is spooked, she at times will shake off her leash and bound away at high speed, her face seeming to express an exuberant anxiety. Gracefully eluding all attempts at capture, one of the few options for bringing her back under control is to trick her into entering a vehicle (an action that normally means a trip to the park or some such thing). Once inside the vehicle, she forgets the potential for freedom unbound that lies but a quick tug of the head away, and allows the leash to be bound around her neck once again.
  So it is often with voters in this nation, especially with those who were so scared by the events whose ten year anniversary we will soon mark that they sat quietly by, cowed by Fear-driven propaganda into allowing the Patriot Act to pass unopposed, believing of the lies spewing forth from the suck-holes of power-hungry politicians desperate to expand their base, cheering as we joined the short-list of nations guilty of initiating a war of aggression, re-electing a president who forever tarnished America's long and honorable traditions by valuing the paltry benefits of enhanced interrogation over the unalienable and immutable Rights of the individual.
  A dog raised to fear is unlikely to shake its burden; an individual provided the opportunity to fear will settle gratefully into the welcoming cocoon that fear provides, forever ignorant of the beautiful savagery inherent to mankind, never doubting the actions or the rhetoric of persons claiming to have all the answers, forever trusting any individual who stokes the fires of that fear and who makes skin-deep promises that evaporate immediately upon re-election.
  When the conditions seem right, the voter is likely to break free and to dash about wildly, demanding changes in the status quo through the implementation of untested strategies championed as the solutions to our economic and societal woes, believing with exuberant anxiety in the clever deceptions of the heads shouting on TV, scrambling madly for the first door that promises even the faintest hint of Happiness only to succumb instantly, wild-eyed and out-of-breath, to fear's soothing grip as the shackles of ignorance and repression are calmly reapplied to the cardinal points of the soul.
  It is without question easier for the People to accept the oppressions to which they have become accustomed than for us to venture forth, without a backward glance or the slightest hesitation, in search of new Guards for our future Security. Unlike a tortured and skittish bitch, however, once we have broken free of the chains that have held us in check, we have the capacity to maintain that newfound freedom by consuming news from various unrelated sources, by being wary always of the power of propaganda, and by not forgetting for an instant that, as Frank Herbert said best in his book Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”
  Fear in itself is a sufferable Evil, but fear employed by the highest powers as a tool for controlling the hearts and minds of the People is an Evil that has ceased to be sufferable. Freed from constriction, the mind is capable of feats far-reaching and grand, while a mind hobbled by perpetual paranoia functions similar to that of a broken, groveling beast who understands only the bite of the lash.

Speak freely. Stay vigilant. Spread liberty.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

declaration of corporate supremacy

When in the course of pursuing profits it becomes necessary to remind the People for whom it is they toil, and to formulate the rules by which they shall lead their lives, we, the assembled capitalists and corporations headquartered in these United States (but not necessarily operating here), only occasionally and perfunctorily respectful to the Opinions of Mankind, declare that the economic wellbeing of our executive boards and voting members by far outweighs the Right of the People to Safety and Happiness. The original Declaration of Independence, that document upon which the United States was founded, those words that might have given mankind the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, is, and has for some time now been, a dead and forgotten document, its declaration of unalienable rights null and void, its formulation of the core principle of the role of government - to bring about the Safety and the Happiness of the People - ground to dust under the jack-boot of our Capitalistic Greed.

We hold these Lies to be enforceable through police action: that a small percentage of Americans should by rights reap the profits generated by the labor of all who work in this country; that we have the right to speculate with and to risk the invested monies of those Americans stupid enough to have entrusted us with their savings, and, when our speculations fail and millions of Americans lose their hard-won gains, to be safe and secure in our gated communities, our ill-begotten money protected by the federal government, our risky businesses kept from failing by the taxes paid by the very people whom we had hoodwinked originally; that we shall profit from the sale of drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, that are legally available to the People, drugs that kill them by the hundreds of thousands and maim them by the millions, while supporting the persecution and the imprisonment of the People in for-profit penitentiaries owned and run by us, for the crime of consuming drugs not to our liking, such as marijuana, drugs that have no discernible negative affect on their health or on their Happiness; that the US government should wage un-winnable wars against faceless foes (see the "war on terror") so that we may continue to manufacture, develop, and sell arms and weaponry, wars that might be won only if every person on Earth were placed in concentration camps and forcibly lobotomized; that we have the Right, through unscrupulous and down-right false advertising, to convince the People that unbridled consumption and unchecked personal debt are the bedrock of the American Dream, that Happiness does not grow from within, that it is not a fragile state of mind that blossoms from patience and self-understanding, but that it is something we cram into our wallets and pocket-books, that we spend in our shopping plazas, that we waste on useless items that supposedly make life easier but that are little more than clutter; that it was our patriotic duty to abandon the American manufacturing sector for foreign shores, sacrificing the jobs of millions of our countrymen to boost our profit-margins, allowing children across the Pacific Rim to work as slave-laborers in free-economic zones so that unemployed Americans could buy cheap goods that break soon after use; that we have the Right, regardless of the complaints of tree-hugging hippies, to rape and destroy the land for short-term gain, to saturate the lands with chemicals to make plants grow instead of learning from the soil, to poison the streams with mine-tailings, to clear-cut the once-great forests for export, and to pump the animals we slaughter for food full of steroids and antibiotics instead of providing them with clean and open places in which to live out their short and pathetic lives; that we have willingly and to vast personal profit rejuvenated the methods of the ancient Romans for controlling the lower classes by providing them with bread (fast food) and circuses (television), methods that poison the body and the mind but that keep the rabble blessedly quiet and contented throughout their pitiful and mostly worthless lives; that we will run our corporate societies, not as democracies, but as quasi-totalitarian states, while convincing our workers that, through hard and dedicated labor, they might reach the highest rungs of our bogus organizations, while, in reality, they will, after infighting, backstabbing, and reckless self-promotion, find themselves flung out into the cold, the pathways to our fleeting and hollow ranks closed to all but a most rapacious and lustful few.

  At no point in the long yet subtle Process of making a mockery of this once great Nation did we pause to consider that our hoarding of the nation's wealth would violate the Constitutional directive of promoting the general Welfare, although we will, by funneling the collective wealth of all Americans into the pockets of our cronies and fellow oligarchs, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our Posterity, not to all Americans equally, but to those who have, as we have, dutifully sacrificed their sacred Honor on the altar of Capitalisic Greed, who have shat, as we have shat, upon the once-grand notion of Liberty and Justice for All. We have stopped our ears to the Voice of Justice, preferring rather the Shreik of Lies, preferring rather to profit from spying on the People (through the sale and maintenance of the materials necessary to the surveilance society), under the falsely-titled and unpatiotic Patiot Act, rejoicing in the violation of the flimsy protections once, but no longer, afforded the People by the Constitution.

  All this we pledge, and more, for: we have the means to lobby the Legislature for our own gain; we have the money with which to live comfortably for ten lifetimes while millions of American children go to bed hungry each night; we have convinced the People that consumption is preferrable to ingenuity, that watching TV is preferrable to creative expression and the telling of stories, that there is a universal formula for Happiness, a formula that starts with a dollar sign. We, therefore, the capitalists and corporations headquartered in these United States, Assembled, appealing to none but our majority share-holders, by our own authority and the might of our wrongly appropriated wealth, brazenly Publish and Declare, that this Country belongs to Us now, that the dream of a more perfect Union has no place in the world of top-few-capitalism, that ninety-nine percent of all Americans shall toil ceaselessly to make us, those of the remaining One Percent, rich beyond reckoning, that governemnt is not instituted to secure the Rights of the People, and that they have neither the Right to alter nor to abolish their governemnt, even though it long ago abandoned them to satisfy the needs of the most monied few, as it is too late, and they waited too long to act.

  So suck it, you hard-working American fools, suck it good and hard.

no American theocracy

on using certain epithets

If you should find yourself in a conversation with a person of color, and that person uses an epithet to describe someone of his race or the race of another, it is then perfectly acceptable for you (regardless of your sub-race or racial identity) to use said epithets.
Example: an African-American (AfrAm) uses the word "nigga" in front of a European-American (EurAm). From that point forward, said EurAm can use said racial epithet freely in that conversation.
The reasoning: if said AfrAm decides to say nigga, it would be racist of him to prohibit said EurAm (whose sole disqualification for using said word is the color of his skin) from using the term.
Conclusion: if you don't want people to use racial epithets, don't use them yourself. If you use a racial epithet and are offended subsequently by another's use of same, another who may not share your inherent characteristics, you are acting in racist fashion.
Ultimately, we are all of one race. One single race. Any man from any group of people can mate with any woman from any other group of people and have live, viable offspring. Arguments contrary to this stance are not based on fact, but on lies, fear, and hatred.
One love, people.
Don't use terms like kike, squint, nigger, honkey, or spick unless you have an elastic and deep-rooted sense of humor and an equally deep-rooted sense of inferiority.
Buck up. Stay safe. Be true.
Think about it.
JPR

mechanism: fear

Few mental states are more dangerous than that of fear.
A person living in fear of threats real or imagined will make decisions not based on rational, systematic analysis, but on preconceived notions that act as a lens through which reality is seen as full of terrible things.
I have used a simple phrase many times in the last decade to calm rising fears and thus, I hope, keep a clear and open mind. Lao Tzu, in the Tao Teh Ching, says: Must I fear what others fear? What abysmal nonsense this is.
Indeed, people are disposed to be afraid of things, a condition most likely inherited from our distant ancestors who needed that fear to keep them on guard from beasts and wild men, and whose memories of hunger and months of freezing winds propelled them to store food and to weatherproof their lodgings.
American society is a safe and peaceful one: we crack down on slight infractions and wage our wars overseas, allowing us to live our lives in relative quiet. But, like many other holdovers from our past, like obesity and blood-lust, we cannot shake our fear, and we sometimes become its victim.
Take our current political discourse. Starting with 9-11 and the release of the federal fear-meter (which was always kept near the highest level), and continuing into today's fear-mongering punditry, fear has become as ubiquitous in our national conversation as the shadowy, largely misused demand for freedom.
Streamlined fear-mongery is dangerous because: it is exhausting; it provides no clear solution to the given problem, rather highlighting the danger and thus giving it power; it gradually seeps into every chambers of a person's mind, crippling them by turning them into a purely reactionary and weak being.
Fear is with us to stay. We cannot control this ancient tool once necessary for survival, but we can reach out to those among us who operate out of fear, people who kill doctors and try to blow up abortion clinics, people who believe that our president is both Muslim and foreign-born, and let them know that their aggression will not stand, that their fears are unfounded and that they have an obligation to those around them to unwind their twisted brains and calm the fuck down.
The fearless man is he who can embrace his fears and thereby understand them.
We are not a nation of fearful, reactionary weaklings. We are a strong, intelligent people who can (and must) work together for the benefit of the human race, who do not swallow the loudest man's snake oil and proclaim it good, but who read the label, think for a moment, have a sniff, and toss it unused to the ground.
So, the next time someone starts ranting about all the scary things he sees in the world, turn off the TV and go face your fears head-on.
Ultima Ratio Regum
JP

what difference, loss or gain

I have just finished reading The Death Ship by B. Traven for the second time. Many years have separated the readings, and I am glad I have waited so long.
For anyone who has not read The Death Ship, do so, but only if you have a sound emotional and spiritual foundation - this book will shake you to the core. Anyone reading this blog will know that I am not easily shaken, and do not lightly post such things as "shake you to the core," so take heed.
Beyond the overt anti-authoritarian and anarchist leanings of the book, it underscores the worthlessness of the human cogs in the wheels of the global capitalist machine and highlights the evil that permeates the world of those wretched people whose god is money.
Give me the Yorrike any day, a fine ship on whom all are equal in their pain, suffering, and lack of statehood, a foul tramp whose every surface seems designed to rend flesh and to sear it from the bones. Her bowels so much resemble the world in which some modern fools toil, those too smart to sell their soul for pennies, those who refuse to break themselves for a shiny pair of shoes or to adjust to society's accepted standards, those who have rejected all and become outcast and shunned, abandoned, hanging onto life by a thread but happier than the banker sitting in his high and shining home.
Most shocking for me this reading around was the progression of the Yorrikkan sailors from living souls to walking dead, a process I realize I have also undertaken in the years following my father's Great Speech of Paternal Punishment, during which he tore from me the honest and deep-rooted will to live.
I am dead inside, a bunkmate to Pippip and Stanislav. Now I know why people fear me, why women instinctively grasp the hand of an errant child at my approach, why I am looked upon with sheltered fear and resignation, why I can only maintain the lie of life for so long before people become wise and seek company other than my own.
Thank you, Yojimbo, for staying with me as I cried, for being too young to ask me why, for allowing me to accept my broken inner state in pitiful silence, for not trying to soothe the pain, for loving me when I had lost the strength to love myself.
Although I may seem to walk past you, dear reader, on the street, there is forever a death ship rolling beneath my feet; I am resigned to this state, and begrudge not the Universe for the way things have turned out.

numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
X