haiku 23 Aug 2018

Using kind loving
Storm-clouds lift, and greed abates,
Making the mind pure

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 16 Aug 2018

Hatred clouds the mind
Greed poisons people when such
Ignorance abounds

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ] 

declaration of corporate supremacy

  When in the course of pursuing Profits it becomes necessary to formulate the rules by which the people shall live, and to remind them for whom it is they toil, We, the assembled Capitalists and Corporations headquartered in but not paying taxes to these united states of America, ignoring of the opinions of mankind, declare that the economic well-being of our Executive Boards and Voting Members by far outweighs the people's constitutional right to safety and happiness. The original declaration of independence, that document upon which the united states was founded, those words that failed to grant mankind the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that scroll is a dead and worthless document – its declaration of unalienable rights is null and void, and its ability to define the role of government as the sole agent charged with making the American people safe and happy was long ago buried under heaping shit-piles of our Avarice and Greed.

  We enforce through police action the following Truths: that a few hundred thousand Americans shall receive the most of the profits generated by all of the other Americans working hard every day; that We have the right to speculate with and to put at risk of loss the monies entrusted to us by the people, and that We shall be safe behind our high walls when our speculations fail and millions lose their hard-won gains, our ill-begotten riches guaranteed and protected for us by the federal government; that our risky businesses shall in cases of bankruptcy and financial failure receive unlimited financial bailouts from the federal government; 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 that maim them by the millions.

  Additionally, We hold: that imprisoning individuals in for-profit prisons that We own and run for the crime of consuming drugs other than those that we sell is proper government practice; that the federal government should wage endless war against unseen foes (see the war on terror) in order for us to manufacture, develop, and sell it arms and weaponry, even though We know that the only sure way to win these wars would be to force everyone on Earth into concentration camps and to forcibly lobotomized them there; that We shall through unscrupulous and otherwise fraudulent advertising convince the people that unbridled consumerism and unchecked personal debt are the bedrock of the American dream, and that Happiness does not grow from within or that it is not a fragile state of mind that blossoms from patience and self-understanding but that it is something you cram into your wallet or pocket-book, something that you spend in our shopping plazas, something that you spend on useless items that are little more than clutter.

  Furthermore, We declare: that it was our patriotic duty to abandon the American manufacturing sector in favor of foreign shores, and that We served the motherland well by sacrificing the jobs of millions of our countrymen to boost our Profit-Margins; that We shall force children to work as slave-laborers in free-economic-zones located around the globe; that We have bestowed upon the unemployed American citizen the privilege of buying cheap goods that break soon after they are first used; that We have the Right, regardless of the complaints of tree-hugging hippies, to rape and to destroy the land for short-term gain, to poison the streams with runoff from our mines, to clear-cut the once-great forests for export, and to pump the animals We sell you as food full of steroids and antibiotics rather than to provide 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 keep the human rabble blessedly quiet and contented throughout its pitiful and mostly worthless lives; that We shall run our corporate societies not as democracies but as totalitarian fiefs while convincing our workers that through hard and dedicated labor they might reach the highest rungs of our bogus organizations, while, in reality, they shall, 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 by appropriating this nation's wealth we would violate the Constitutional directive of promoting the general Welfare, although, by funneling the collective wealth of all Americans into the pockets of our cronies and fellow oligarchs, We shall 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 the Insatiable Hag of Materialism, to those 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 comforting Shriek of Lies. We rejoice in the violation of the flimsy protections once but no longer afforded the America people by the Constitution.

  All this We pledge, and more: We have the means to lobby the Legislature for our own gain; We have the money with which to live comfortably for ten lifetimes even though millions of American children go to bed hungry each night; We have convinced the people that consumption is preferable to ingenuity, that watching TV is preferable to creative expression or the telling of stories, and that the formula for happiness starts with a dollar sign and ends in a decimal point. We, therefore, the capitalists and corporations headquartered symbolically 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 99% of all Americans shall toil ceaselessly to make us, those of the remaining One Percent, rich beyond reckoning, that government is instituted not to secure the Rights of the people but to satisfy the whims of the Few, and that the people may neither alter nor abolish the system of federal government that long ago forsook and abandoned them in order to satisfy the needs of its wealthiest few subjects, and that it is too late to change things now, because the people waited too long to act out against our blatant and flagrant transgressions.

  So suck it, you hard-working American fools, and while you are sucking it good and hard, remember that you long ago gave up those inalienable rights that your ancestors fought and died to secure for you.

  Signed, this Wednesday in 2012, by

  GFYS

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on the pagan power of capitalism

  Capitalism, with all its evil and all its ills, has had one definitely positive affect on American society: to rid our pagan holidays of religious contamination. Neither morality nor meaning matter in the eyes of capitalism – the only thing that matters is making more money. For example: capitalism has freed the ancient holiday of goddess Eostre from the clutches of biblical oppression. As a holiday that once celebrated that goddess who makes women fertile (and the land grow green again), the festival we now know as Easter was high-jacked by religious forces and co-opted for their own narrow uses. In the last half century, however, the ever-grasping paws of capitalistic greed have freed Easter from the Shackles of Scripture, so that we once again celebrate lustful procreation (symbolized by the rabbit) and the return of the teeming things (symbolized by daffodils and other such flowers).

  Similarly, the holiday of the winter solstice, an occasion that has been marked throughout the centuries with lights mounted on pine trees. This holiday was taken hostage by the forces of Christianity, forces that bastardized the logical marking of the passage of time and tied it to the fictitious birth of a fictitious god in a land far removed in time and space. The passing of the winter solstice was only recently liberated by the uncaring hand of capitalism – an emphasis on Santa Claus and the profuse giving of gifts has replaced, thankfully, the (biblically) unspecified day upon which a young lady gave birth, in a (biblically) unspecified structure, in an (biblically) unspecified place, to a male child. (The story of Jesus is a precise retelling of the story of Horus, an Egyptian god born of a virgin who died only to arise from death after three days.) Now, instead of worshiping some stagnant and foreign godhead, during the darkest days of winter we celebrate the coming-together of loved-ones, and shower them with presents as a sign of our affection. Gone are the days of the churchly mandate – capitalism has finally, and for good, removed Christ from Christmas.

  And, most importantly (to me, at least), the uncaring and voracious greed of capitalism has removed any shred of religiosity from the delightfully pagan holiday of Halloween. What started as a heathen ritual to mark the beginning of winter was commandeered by Christian forces, who turned it into All Saint's Day, on which day only the dead of that religion were praised (in effigy). After centuries of suffering under the cruel, stifling blanket of this biblical slavery, Halloween has been dragged from its prison by the ever-hungry maw of monster-capitalism. Gone are the days when Americans celebrated the Christian dead – arrived are the days when we Americans celebrate inventiveness and the ability to take a good scaring, when we shower upon the children of the land many sweet gifts, when we might, for one short night, become someone other than our boring normal selves. (The proliferation of Halloween as a national holiday was made possible by profit-hungry corporations that recognized in it a way to sell cheap, Chinese-made costumes.)

  While I generally abhor capitalism for its tendency to make only a small portion of the American people rich, I celebrate it now for freeing our shared and common history from the clutches of religious oppression. We can ill afford to live according to the rules of a lost tribe of desert people, so it is fitting that the forces of our chosen economic model are wiping our history clean of religious contamination.

  The next time you are carving up a lamb on Easter, remember horny old Eostre, and give your spouse a long, lingering kiss. When you find yourself stringing lights on a tree, remember to go outside and enjoy the longest night of the year. As you are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate and dazzling costume, remember that its job is to scare away the sickness-bringing forces of the impending long cold darkness. Thanks to the religious impartiality of our capitalistic system, you can enjoy these events without being forced to fear the wrath of some jealous, vengeful godhead.

  America is not a Christian nation, nor was it in any way founded upon the Christian faith. Neither easter nor the winter solstice were originally Christian holidays – these pagan rituals were commandeered in order to facilitate the spread of one set of religious teachings. Just how non-Christian is America? We honor the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. On Wednesday, we remember the Norse god Wotan, and on Thursday, his son-brother Thor. In the harbor of New York there stands a large statue of the Roman goddess Libertas (whom we call Lady Liberty), a goddess who holds in one hand the Torch of Progress, in the other a representation of our most treasured of documents, the Declaration of Independence.

  Everywhere in this great land we witness the chaotic jumble of different faiths and systems of belief, all tumbling together and jostling to retain the slightest shred of relevancy. May the uncaring grasp of our institutionalized greed continue to keep American society free of religious one-mindedness! Thank you, lustful and rapacious Capitalism, you old sport, for doing you part to keep America jumbled, confused, and oppression-free.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on rational egoism

  Much has been ado of late about the theory of rational egoism championed by Ayn Rand. Politicians have taken up the call, among them Rand Paul, stating clearly their opinions of the Lumpenproletariat, i.e. the growing segment of the American population that has little or no capital; the poor. According to the theory of rational egoism, the poor and the destitute are parasites on society, while the rich are the wise and money-generating hosts on whom these parasites prey.
  A small number of people in America have been allowed to amass large amounts of money and property, either by individual effort or through inheritance. Such vast quantities of capital are not necessary to house and to feed and to clothe the families and dependents of this tiny, monied elite. To protect their vast holdings, the monied elite has corrupted our elected officials, using the power inherent to capital to craft legislation favorable to them and theirs, thus becoming a plutocracy. To protect its vast holdings, this plutocracy has convinced the American people, using ingenious methods of propaganda, that the essence of the American Dream is to have capital, to be rich, to claw one's way at all cost into the closed ranks of the plutocracy, when these vast quantities of capital can only be brought into being by the united actions of all members of society, by the combined efforts of all people who labor in America.
  The Constitution of the United States of America does not establish a capitalistic system in this country. It does not anywhere mandate that a few hundred families are to receive the fruits of the labor of tens of millions of American citizens. Instead, it states that this country is established to promote the general Welfare, to insure domestic Tranquility, and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our Posterity. When the capital that is brought into being by millions of laboring citizens is funneled into the pockets of a few dozen, when whole populations are left to fend for themselves, denied quality schooling and medical care, when millions of Americans pass on to their Posterity not Liberty but enslavement to the ceaseless demands and empty joys of materialism, we can no longer honestly call ourselves the Children of the Constitutional Convention.
  America has abandoned the principles set forth in the Constitution. Instead of employing the enormous amount of capital created here every day in the interest of all citizens equally, instead of providing each American woman, child, and man with the basic tools (i.e. food, clothing, shelter) necessary to even consider a method for obtaining Happiness, instead of ensuring that we are and shall always be able to pursue: "Our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it" (J.S. Mill, On Liberty), instead we have allowed a small, selfish group to highjack our most fundamental principles and to convince us that money - dirty, ever-corrupting money - is a more important component of our lives than unadulterated Happiness.
  There is a storm coming. We have allowed those at the bottom (the poor) to go hungry for too long, and to grow too envious of those at the top (the rich). We have allowed the rich and the well-connected to escape Justice through presidential pardon and access to prohibitively expensive legal representation. We mock the concept of Welfare; we have reduced it to a pitiful and deplorable concept few self-respecting people care to support. Once the great swelling masses of the poor come to look past the smokescreen of propaganda, our domestic Tranquility will be shattered.
  The Randian notion of rational egoism only serves to further obfuscate the true, founding principles of this country - that all Americans are created equal, and that they all have the Right to an equal share of the capital that exists and that is created in this country. We spend billions of dollars preparing for potential future conflicts against foes that do not exist, yet we reduce funding to our educational system, thus ensuring the perpetual mediocrity and persistent under-achievement of our nation's youth. We cut the rates at which the plutocracy is taxed while it wallows in more money that it could possibly need to live comfortably. We hear a president call shopping our patriotic duty, and, instead of denouncing roundly this farce, we dutifully max out our credit cards.
  It is easy to blame the politicians for these failures, while We the People alone are solely to blame. We hear from our politicians that the richest few among us should not shoulder their portion of the national burden, and we accept this meekly and without complaint. We listen quietly as powerful forces attempt to elevate one religion (Christianity) over all others, and accept this brazen assault on the concept of religious freedom as inevitable and just.
  We, the People, are failing.
  We, the People, are watching with disinterest as the forces that guide this country are corrupted and bent to the will of those who have most benefited from our decline into capitalism.
  We, the People, cannot afford to allow the greed inherent to rational egoism to further erode our Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We must stand tall, and we must fight.
  Otherwise, we will have sacrificed Lady Liberty to the god of Greed on the altar of Consumerism.
  This aggression will not stand.

Ultima Ratio Regum,
John Paul Roggenkamp

no American theocracy

common

The only thing common to the common person is the capacity, kindled through schooling and set ablaze in the Pursuit of Happiness, to achieve the extraordinary. The State of California, by establishing and promoting the community college system, has proven this to be true, by elevating millions of her people to heights unknowable but a century ago. The exuberances of politically motivated, greed-based decisions that have cast her into dire straights aside, she has proven that there is little that ordinary people cannot do if given the tools with which to unleash the potential that lurks within us all.
To our elected officials: cutting school funding and waging endless war is not the way to make good on the pledge of the Declaration of Independence, that most supreme document that obliges you effect, or to bring into being, to create, the Safety and Happiness of the American citizenry. You must change you ways. Unleashing the power of learning on the populace is dangerous to any entrenched ruling class, for it fosters critical thinking and rational analysis; but, together, hundreds of millions strong, the Yankee can achieve an ecologically sound, sustainable evolution of mankind unlike anything you could, with your hearts set on monetary riches and personal power, possibly imagine. You have probably engaged us in wars to keep us in fear. You have likely funneled untold billions of taxpayer dollars into your pockets and into the pockets of your sycophants because you thought the People too stupid, too short-sighted to cry foul, but we have not been sleeping, nor have we not been watching. Revert now, reexamine your ways, and ask yourselves this: am I doing everything in my power to make the People Safe and Happy. Be honest. Squelch your money-lust, your rapacious need for material possession. It is not too late for the People, but you may well have gone too long without a taste of the blind rod of humility. You serve us, sirs and madams. Never forget that.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp

do not give in

A dire event has occurred: a lie has been told and so oft repeated that now millions of Yankee believe it. The lie: lots of money and lots of stuff is the culmination of the American dream. Do not give in to this lie - if you do, you commit yourself to the base and abject servitude to Lord Greed.
The true essence of the Declaration of Independence is this: that each person has the right to pursue his or her Happiness. Beware, for money and possessions do little to make one happy. In fact, they do the opposite, for they demand attention and strike fear in the heart of the possessor that they will be taken from him or her. I do not advocate a naked and barren life devoid of any and all possession (as that would be a short and miserable existence that would end in a cold and starving death), rather I say to reduce, reuse, and recycle, never allowing that which you possess to become your master. Be ready at all times to lose that which you own. Be always ready to burn and smash your most prized things. It will take discipline and time to reorder your mind in preparation for this event, but the closer you get to freedom from your possessions, from the ones and zeros that you call your fortune, the greater your chances of discovering the true extent of your Potential, the parameters of your Happiness. Do not give in to greed. Do not sacrifice your time for it. Do not believe the lie.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JPR

in defense of socialism in America

A war of words rages in the national press. Ill-defined and ill-used, the terms of this war are more often ill-understood. The two most lofty ideas thrust down the throats of those among us who gain their news solely from television, are communism and capitalism.
With fear in their voices and portending overtones, the talking heads hold aloft the specter of communism as the great reborn evil of our time, wholly ignorant of the actual aim of the socialist drive. They equate communism with some dim childhood memory of backwoods Soviet failure, conjuring images of dusty children in rags playing in muddy streets in the shadows of endless concrete housing blocks, a breadline forming on the corner in the wan morning sun.
Media pundits and politically conservative affluent white males (i.e. Tea-Baggers) fear communism through no real fault of their own; they are only reacting to what they saw and heard during the Cold War, to the dire pictures painted by propaganda-mongers and censors.

Communism, just like capitalism, or democracy, is an Utopian fantasy envisioned to improve intra-human relations and to bring peace and prosperity to one and all. But, as fantasies go, they are all flawed, in that in their attempted execution they all fail to account for the worst of humanity's traits: greed. All attempts at communism in the last century failed to a large extent due to the greed of certain individuals high up within the system who exploited the toiling masses to gain power, wealth, or prestige. Capitalism, and its bastard underling, the corporation, is failing for the exact same reason: Those individuals with the proper drive and access to power amass vast fortunes (in the U.S., less than two percent of the population owns over half of all wealth) while millions of American children live in poverty and suffering. Our quasi-democratic system is failing to a large extent due to the greed-fueled efforts of lobbyists, who siphon government capacity away from efforts aimed at promoting the general Welfare, diverting them instead into schemes and systems designed solely to feed the money-hunger of the richest corporations.

We as a nation have devised and implemented socialist endeavors in the past, endeavors that have vastly improved the nation as a whole. Our highway system (an idea pioneered by the National Socialists in Germany in the 1930s) brings us together while tearing us apart. Our public libraries enrich the minds of young and old alike, giving us access to an unimaginable volume of data. Our public lands, located on mountain, hill,  or plain, provide relief from our busy lives and allow us to retire to natural settings without paying exorbitant fees.
None of these three features of modern life would exist without the far-reaching gaze of the socialist. Under a purely capitalist regime, freeways would be tollways, libraries would be pay-by-the-page, and pristine mountain ranges would fall before the miner's pick.

In the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence alike, references are made to the people as We, to the defense as common, and to the Welfare as general, not specifically this person or that, one ethnic group or another, but to the citizenry as a whole. On the back of every dollar bill stands a bald eagle, his talons gripping the symbols of war and peace, his beak holding a banner that claims, E PLURIBUS UNUM. Translated, this Latin phrase means, Out of many, one.
Out of many people, one nation. Out of many dreams, one shining goal. (I would at this point like to depart on a tangent about the lack of freedom the American citizen has to do to himself as he sees best fit without harming others in the privacy of his own home, but that must wait for another time.)
If there has ever been a better slogan for a nation seeking the most noble aspirations of the fantasy of communism, I would like to hear it.

The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels a hundred and sixty odd years ago, is a simple document and a short read. In paperback form, the document runs to no longer than 25 pages. The objectives of socialism are very neatly and succinctly enumerated; they are explained in reasonable and understandable form. This is what makes them deadly, for it makes them accessible to the middling classes, to those with little education, to those toiling away their whole lives in honest labor only to see their ability to retire evaporate when the stock market wobbles.
We need socialism in America; it is our common destiny. The systems of commerce and government, as they have developed over the past century, have failed to provide the utmost for the common defense and to the fullest extent promote the general Welfare. Capitalism is not geared towards the betterment of the many, but toward the elevation of a few over all others. A more perfect Union will not be formed on television and cheap food, i.e. the new bread and circuses, alone.

We must reconsider the focus of our political leadership, and judge as a nation whether our government has become destructive of our Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Considering the monumental improvements to our collective wellbeing achieved by those brave leaders forging a socialist path in the peaceful period between the Great Wars, what unthinkable things could we accomplish together, as citizens united, a single nation of many millions of parts?

Remember - the socialist Utopia envisioned by Marx and Engels only arises from the ashes of full-blown capitalism. Perhaps we don't have to wait much longer.

If you are not convinced, at least debate. If you are still in the dark, read the Manifesto.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
X