on Safety and Happiness

  The Declaration of Independence, to use business parlance, is the mission statement to the Constitution's business plan. Without the Declaration, the Constitution is a merely an outline for civil government. With the Declaration, the Constitution is a malleable, living document whose purpose is to make real the few driving ideas behind the Declaration: that all persons are equal, that together they share the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that their government exists solely to bring about their Safety and their Happiness.
  We hear in our legislative bodies and in the press of great battles being waged along moral and idealistic lines, yet seldom do we hear this fundamental question: Will this piece of legislation bring about the Safety and/or the Happiness of the greatest possible majority of the population? Instead, we are told: that the rich will suddenly turn into magnanimous fountains of job-creation if their taxes are lowered further; that the elderly will somehow thrive when forced to purchase their own health-care plans in exceedingly complex markets; that our statue to the goddess of Liberty, she who stands proudly in New York Harbor, is a liar, her flame now extinguished, the promise of our land's vast potential reserved solely for the growing masses of native poor who already huddle here.
  We have lost sight of the essence of the American Dream, the idea that each person who here dwells may determine the parameters of his or her Happiness, and that as long as those parameters do not constrict or endanger the parameters set by other people, he or she has the inalienable Right to Pursue that Happiness. Without Safety, however, the parameters of Happiness are largely symbolic, and no attempt to Pursue Happiness can be successful. For this reason, our founding fathers distilled the myriad purposes of government into just two fundamental reasons for government: to effect, i.e. to create, to bring about, to make, the American people Safe and Happy.
  Does our current government expend every conceivable effort to make us Safe and Happy? I must applaud the extraordinary efforts of Director Mueller and the reformation of the FBI under his watch. Aside from my personal experience with the wild-eyed agents who targeted me in their desperate search for a scape-goat (see here), I believe the FBI is performing admirably in its efforts to fulfill the first promise of the Declaration - to keep the American people Safe. Furthermore, our police and fire departments (with some exceptions, of course) are also performing their efforts in this regard in admirable fashion.
  While the fulfillment of the promise of Safety is widely pursued and well-funded, the fulfillment of the promise of Happiness has been at best neglected, at worst countermanded. We have allowed an economic system (capitalism) to spread in this country, a system that rewards a few for the labor of all, a system that affords a few the capacity to Pursue their Happiness with wild abandon while denying the vast majority of the population the capacity to do the same, a system that reduces every year thousands of hard-working Americans to wage-slaves living one personal disaster away from abject poverty. Rather than allowing each American to consume whichever substances she deems most likely to affect positively her state of mind, her Happiness, we have: outlawed all but the most deadly, and mundane (alcohol and tobacco): routinely incarcerated individuals found to possess any substance other than these mundane and deadly few; funneled vast sums of money into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations that engineer and distribute street drugs under different names; deemed it wise to feed our children synthetic cocaine and synthetic amphetamines to help them succeed in school.
  Our government's efforts to live up the Declaration's promise of Safety are commendable, but without equally expansive efforts to bring about the Happiness of all Americans equally, the Safety efforts are for naught. In order for the American citizen to start down the Path to Happiness, three key requirements must be met: food, clothing, and shelter. Should these key requirements be in place, the individual will be able to determine the breadth of his abilities, which will then allow him to determine a way to support himself through the effortless expression of those abilities, otherwise known as Productive Happiness. Our current, capitalistic approach, is one that requires the individual to labor constantly in fields not necessarily optimally balanced against his abilities, thus keeping him from determining the parameters of his Happiness, from living a life of Happiness; capitalism in America therefore violates the second promise of the Declaration.
  For many reasons, this is not a desirable state of affairs. A tiny fraction of our population does not have the right to receive the fruits of the labors of a majority of that population. We cannot allow some drugs to be tolerated and others not. We cannot afford to waste the untapped potential of our citizens by providing them with no better place to express their abilities than from behind a convenience-store cash register. We cannot allow millions of American children to suffer daily from food insecurity (see here). We can and we must provide for the Safety and Happiness of all Americans equally.
  So, next time you see politicians fighting over whatever piece of legislation is on the table, write or call their offices and ask if the legislation in question brings about the Safety and Happiness of the greatest possible majority of American citizens. Together, we can realign our country with the dual promises of the Declaration of Independence. Together, we can unleash the great untapped potential that simmers within each of us. Together, we can fulfill the promises of Safety and Happiness first to each American equally, and then equally to all mankind.

Ultima Ratio Regum

John Paul Roggenkamp

on fishing

The saying goes, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life (or at least until he defaults on the loan that afforded him his fishing gear, at which point you confiscate his boat, rods, and tackle, and his boat and fishing grounds become yours).
It's just that easy.

war on drugs - caffeine

The Momentary Courier of Newsiness
08MAY2011

Des Moines.
  In their ongoing efforts to eradicate the distribution of deadly drugs throughout America, federal agents today raided the Sippy House, a coffee shop in a quiet neighborhood of Des Moines. After receiving a tip from an unnamed source concerned that children were being served drugs at the Sippy House, members of the ATF moved in just after the establishment opened at 8:30 am.
  "I was walking by on my way to get a bagel," said longtime Des Moines resident Enrique Sanchez, 39, "when I saw armed men clad in black and carrying automatic weapons kicking down the back door to the Sippy House." Agents confirm they have secured large amounts of caffeine in various forms, including finely and coarsely ground coffees, and teas neatly packed in small pouches that, agents said, facilitate the quick and efficient delivery and distribution of this drug. "We have seized all manner of this dangerous substance, including coffee beans coated in chocolate, and chocolate bars laced with caffeine," said Sergeant Allen T. Samuelson III, the commander of the raid, in an interview at the scene. "Caffeine is a drug," Samuelson continued, "and we need to make sure the American people cannot access this or any other drug."
  Georgette Bristol-Schmidt, age 11, was waiting to be taken into state custody after her mother, Henrietta, was charged with child endangerment and corruption of a minor for buying a small iced latte that she then handed to her preteen daughter. "I was tired this morning," Georgette said, "so Mommy bought me a coffee. I'm not tired now, and the nice police lady said I'm going to a nice place with nice people."
  Similar raids are taking place across the country. The Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, which is conducting these raids in conjuncture with the Centers for Disease Control and the Drug Enforcement Agency, said in an online statement, "No longer will Americans be exposed to drugs or stimulants of any kind. We are shutting down all caffeine distribution centers, all alcohol distribution centers, all nicotine distribution centers, any and all establishments that make drugs of any form available to the addict. We're just getting warmed up - you ain't seen nothing yet."
  The Committee for the Defense of Liberty in America, which according to its website was established, "To guarantee that all Americans, in accordance with the Declaration of Independence, can now and forever more Pursue their Happiness as they see best fit, so long as they are not restricting others from pursuing their Happiness in any way, shape, or form," did not officially respond to the widespread actions of the aforementioned federal agencies.
  "I didn't realize caffeine was a drug," Sanchez said. "I guess it's good that our government is protecting us from any and all substances that might cause us harm, or elevate our minds. I, for one, welcome the police state."

James J. Jameson is a reporter for The Momentary Courier of Newsiness

(This non-news article is satirical. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. None of the statements attributed to the various federal agents are intended to be taken as factual statements. This is a joke, in more ways than one.)

on belief

My beliefs, like the beliefs of any person, are complex.
  Foremost, I believe in the teachings of the Tao Te Ching, that simple and profound work that exalts humility, frugality, and mercy.
  I believe in the perpetual yet fragile nature of Liberty, that state of mind in which the pure deep essence of a person's innermost core bubbles out into the world unfettered and pure.
  I believe that goddess Athena visits me at times (when I am exhibiting qualities for which she is the patron goddess), instilling in me superhuman abilities and making me shine with a great, visible light.
  I believe that the birds are watching me, keeping an eye on me and reporting my actions to their respective gods, be those gods Wednesday or Athena or any of the other gods that use birds to spy on us.
  I apologize when I step on a young bamboo shoot, in the belief that my destructive action might turn the entire grove against me.
  When cutting the lawn here, I am in constant anguish, as I can see the tiny beasts, the insects and whatnot, scampering before the whirling blades of death, rushing to escape my descending foot; I weep for their mangled little bodies, for their lifeless husks, and ask for their forgiveness.
  I believe that each and every person in this world has the potential to do great things, to change mankind in fantastic and unprecedented ways, although most are too poor (in the developing world) or too lazy (in the developed world) to develop the method for unleashing this potential. (I also believe that capitalism stunts the flowing of true potential, forcing the individual to replace his search for Happiness with the scramble to merely survive.)
  I believe that a group of shape-shifting giant space aliens live in the dense foliage of the bamboo grove, that they flee at my approach, that they make a terrible rustling sound when I appear too suddenly and too close by.
  I believe that I am an embodiment of Loki, the Norse god of chaos, and that my purpose in life is to disrupt the standard methods and to bring change into the world, for good or ill.

  I believe all these things (and many others, such as the Pan-Human-Consciousness and the Ancient Alien Theory), and I believe none of them.
  Unlike a member of an established religion, my beliefs are fluid, ever-changing, never set in stone and never shoved in the face of the person I run into at the supermarket. At any moment I may believe in all of the above things or in none, in some part-way and in others fully (although I most always perform the whole practice of apologizing-to-living-things-I-accidentally-trample-or-kill).

  My beliefs are absurd, but I know they are absurd, and I cherish them for their absurdity. For the most part (except of course for this blogposting), I keep them to myself. I would never dare to berate another for his or her lack of belief in my beliefs. I would never approach another and ask if he has accepted the Flying Spaghetti Monster as his one and only living and ever-watchful Saviour, nor would I confront another and ask if he has accepted Allah as his one and only true god (mostly because I don't feel like talking to the FBI again and explaining to them, again, that I am not a terrorist).

  So, those are my beliefs, although they aren't, really, as I believe in that which cannot be named, that which is inexhaustible, that which has no form, that which has a name so powerful that to say it would be to rend the very fabric of the universe, that which has a form so subtle that it is the form of all things and no things.
  And yet, unlike a believer in an established religion, I will (and do) change my beliefs if presented with superior and logical evidence that they are wrong.
  My belief-systems are flexible, expanding and contracting with every stroke of the bellows.
  My beliefs will never convince me that the actions of another person merit persecution or death (unless said actions involve rape, theft, or murder). My beliefs will never convince me that they are superior to the beliefs of anyone else in the world.
  I yearn only to exhibit my beliefs through my actions, never by cornering of someone at the local home-improvement store or by yelling at strangers on a street-corner in Hollywood.
  My beliefs are my business; they belong to me alone. I will never kill for my beliefs, nor will I enslave another person, nor will I berate another person for not sharing my beliefs.

  So, for all those people who find it necessary to spread vocally the word of their god, stop. Keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us rational, flexible folk get on with our lives. Your rigid adherence to religious doctrine is sad, at best. Keep your religious observances out of our legislatures, out of our court-rooms, out of our public places. Keep America tolerant; keep her free.

  Vote NO on American theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum
Juliet Papa Romeo

drug-free America

  National organizations such as the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and Above the Influence are established to educate children about drugs, including alcohol, in the hopes that these children will not use drugs. Until the last doctor proscribes the last prescription to Addreall, which is synthesized meth-emphetamine, and until the last child pops his Ritalin, which bears close resemblance to cocaine, our children will not be drug-free.
  The positive affect of getting kids hooked on synthetic meth and synthetic coke is that the purity of the drugs they are taking is very high, and the dosages are easily discernible, thus lessening the likelihood that these kids will overdose or be poisoned by the drugs they receive from their parents and from their doctors.
  Until the last liquor store closes and the last pack of cigarettes is sold, we will not be free of drugs in America. Until the last parent stops taking the last pill to combat their probably obesity-related illness, we will not be free of drugs in America.
  The only way to show our kids that life is livable without drugs is to make all drugs in this country illegal and unobtainable. Otherwise, we are sending our young people mixed messages that they will misinterpret. Far better were it to make all drugs available to all people, educating them on the uses of the drugs and on their potential side-affects, and making them sign a waiver before they receive sufficient quantities of the refined substance they deem most likely to positively affect their Pursuit of Happiness. Far better were it to admit to ourselves and to the world that we all take drugs (be they caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or nicotine), that life in this country without drugs is virtually unimaginable, and that we are a people that love their drugs in many and varied forms.
  End the confusion. End the oppression. End the restriction of Liberty.
  Legalize all drugs, or ban them all.
  Let the people Pursue their Happiness as they see best fit.
  Remember the promise of the Declaration of Independence.

Ultima Ratio Regum
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

on private property

or, On the individual's right to the body, the ultimate and irrefutable private property.

  Humans have bodies. Without the body, the human dies. There is no way to separate oneself fully from one's body without killing oneself. Therefore, the body is the only truly private property that man possesses. His house can be destroyed; his land taken from him; his car can crash; his clothes will fade and turn to rags; but, throughout his whole life, his body is always his private property, which by right of irrevocable possession he may affect as he pleases.
  If an individual decides to destroy her house, to smash up her car, to tear her clothes to ribbons, i.e. if she decides to do with her external private property as she sees best fit, no government agency will prevent her from altering or destroying her property unless said destruction and alteration should pose a threat to other people.
  In the United States of America, the use of external private property does not fall under federal jurisdiction, unless of course said usage poses a threat to others. Yet, the use of the ultimate private property, the body, does. It is illegal to introduce a great number of substances into the body, substances such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin et cetera, substances that can create feelings of euphoria and that expand the capabilities of the human mind. Instead of these entheogens (see here), Americans are allowed by the federal government to introduce into their bodies a number of other substances that excite the mind to a lesser extent, substances such as sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and salt. It is not illegal to consume these substances, although over-usage of same can and very often does lead to addiction, physical disease, and death.
  Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine together kill tens of thousands of Americans every year (see here), yet their use is unrestricted, and the federal government does not raid the homes of people using these substances. If police officers suspect that someone is smoking weed, they sometimes conduct, in appalling violation of the Constitutional protections, what are known as a "no-knock warrants" (see here), in which the smoker's property (the door to his home) is destroyed and his peace is violated by the forced entry of heavily armed officers.
  Why is this individual's home being raided? To protect him from himself? To protect those who live around him from potential harm? On average, the marijuana smoker is not a violent person; his drug of choice makes him hungry, prone to conversation, and generally happy. The alcoholic is violent, abusive, and unpredictable, and would therefore be the person who is more likely to be a threat to himself and to those around him. But I doubt a single "no-knock-warrant" has been ever issued because someone was witnessed carrying a case of beer into his house.
  Americans must be allowed to choose for themselves which substances they want to consume. We are already allowed to buy drugs like alcohol and nicotine, drugs that destroy the body and that cause inestimable harm to individuals and their families. Perhaps the greatest harm ever caused by marijuana is the removal of the smoker from society to a prison cell. Imprisonment leads to criminalization. Imprisonment breaks apart families. Imprisonment forever reduces the individual to life as a second class citizen.
  Outlaw all substances or legalize them all. Anything else is hypocritical. Anything else violates the right of the individual to do with her private property as she sees best fit. Anything else violates the essence of the Declaration of Independence, the notion that government is established: "As to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
  The incarceration of non-violent drug offenders does not effect, or create, Happiness; it destroys Happiness.
  The prohibition on substances other than those deemed acceptable by a majority of the population is un-American. We must have the right to choose how we handle our ultimate private property, our bodies. We have the freedom: to eat too much sugar, too much salt; to drink too much booze; to smoke too many cigarettes.
  The freedom to consume these substances is literally killing us. Ergo, any argument claiming that the prohibitions on substances such as marijuana, cocaine, and opium exist to protect us from harm and death are completely invalidated.
  Outlaw them all, or legalize them all.
  Let the People find Happiness where they may.

Ultima Ratio Regum.

JPR 30APR2011

no American theocracy III

  "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 individuals whom we now call our founding fathers. Similar quotes were made by George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. We are not a Christian nation, not founded as one, not designed to become one. Never can we allow religious teaching to highjack our institutions of government. To incorporate religious teaching 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, and 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 Christian 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 values of the illustrious authors of Hellenistic antiquity, who wrote such works as The Republic (Plato) and Politics (Aristotle), informed them also. The notion of Reason - the fluid process of thinking and experimentation by which man masters challenge - 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 the time.

  And yet, when writing the Declaration, did he make mention of the Hellenistic pantheon? He made no more mention of them than he did of Yahweh, 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 choice cuts must be burnt to please Zeus, I would surely be laughed out of the room by all present.

  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. 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 any man or any woman. Efforts currently under way, however: to interfere with a woman's Right to her only true private property, her body, in matters of abortion; to delineate the right to marry according to the religious tract of one specific group; these efforts pose a great risk to the first Amendment, to our Constitution, and to the foundations of this American republic, for they are efforts to subjugate the rule of law to religious teaching.

  I applaud those individuals fighting against these assaults on our core principles.

  I applaud the judges hearing these cases, and know that they will approach the matter with reasonable thinking, sound logic, and foreknowledge 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 laws: we will have abandoned reason; we will have failed our founding fathers; and we will soon find ourselves in a barren and hostile wasteland rife with intolerance and ruled by fear. This cannot come to pass. We must fight - with patient voice and open mind - for the salvation of our nation.

No American Theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum.

John Paul Roggenkamp 20APR2011

no American theocracy II

  America is not a Christian nation. Nor is it Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or Taoist. It is a republic founded on the principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We, as a nation, cannot allow one religious group, under any circumstance, to incorporate their beliefs into the laws of our land. In this blog, I am more critical of Christianity than any of the hundreds of other religions currently practiced in the United States.
  Someone asked me recently: Why are you so critical of Christianity? No one will defend Christianity, so you are better off taking Islam to task, as that will drum up more controversy.
  To this I say: Muslims are not currently attempting to legally define the parameters of marriage according to their religious texts; they are not attempting to legally restrict, according to their religious texts, a woman's inalienable right to do with her body as she sees best fit (such as aborting a fetus); they are not attempting to define the reference in the Declaration of Independence to Nature's God as a reference to the god they consider supreme above all others, Allah.
  We hear, in the news, about the dangers of an Islamic caliphate arising in the Middle East. (For one example of this, see here.) Any system of governance that rules according to the code of a specific religion will, by necessity, subjugate those people living under its rule to its own laws; it will stifle freedom of expression; it will, when challenged, resort to barbaric and unreasonable action to silence dissent.
  For an example of the horrors of religious rule, look into life in Afghanistan under the Taliban. We in America cannot allow religious doctrine to become the law of the land. We cannot allow our fundamental principles to be made subservient to the beliefs of one specific religion. Our republic, our freedoms, our liberty, our lives, are at risk. American flexibility and inventiveness will suffer under religious rule; ultimately, these characteristics we hold so highly will be extinguished altogether. We owe it to future generations to maintain a country dedicated to the non-religious principles set forth in our founding documents; we cannot allow our republic to be destroyed by religious zealotry.
  No to theocracy in America.

Ultima Ratio Regum.

John Paul Roggenkamp

what to do when choked

This scene is found in many films: one individual is choking another, his hands wrapped around his victim's neck. There is a simple and effective way to take control of such a situation. Grab one of your attacker's pinkie fingers, and yank it to the side violently. This move should be done as soon as it is evident that your assailant is attempting to kill you by choking. It is as easy to snap a pinkie finger (I have heard) as to snap a good-sized carrot. Once your assailant's pinkie finger has been broken, he will no longer be able to maintain a firm grip; he will likely go into shock (especially if you grind the broken bones around a bit); he will also become enraged. His rage is his downfall, however, for rage, like fear, is the mind-killer, that state in which one is most susceptible to counter-attack and least likely to maintain composure. This advice is intended solely for use in self-defense. Do not try to solve your troubles through violent action. Remember - you can always remove yourself from the situation. Remember also that most people who fight are slaves to their ego; they cannot divorce themselves from their power of their ego, and will lie, main, and kill to maintain it.

on flat taxation

There is a simple solution to the problem of rich persons and mighty corporations failing to pay their appropriate share of taxes: tax everyone, all persons and all incorporated bodies, at a flat rate. A flat rate of taxation of fifteen (15) percent in America would assure that all citizens and all corporations contribute to the enduring feasibility of our society, our government, and our nation.
Too long have we allowed loopholes to persist that grant those individuals and incorporated bodies who possess the acumen and the audacity necessary for shirking their responsibilities to their nation to shelter their fair share of the cost of civil society through specialized and devious accounting practices. A flat tax rate would ensure the participation of all who here labor in the grand experiment we call the United States of America.
This concept is mere fancy, however, as federal and state governments employ armies of individuals versed in the ever-changing subtleties of our current system. With so many people employed, and so many millions staying in the pockets of those people who have a keen interest in making sure, through lobbying efforts, that the loopholes remain open, this antiquated and arguably unjust system will likely stand the test of time. Time to buy another five thousand square foot mansion on the good part of Long Island. Oh, did I say mansion? I meant to say tax-deductible summer home.

X

pie and more pie

another slice please, thank you. Just one more. I'll work it off at the gym tomorrow. What's that, dear, I am traveling tomorrow? Thanks, love, I'll work these extra slices off at the hotel gym. What, I'm booked solid for the next two days? No problem, I'll work out in the evening, or in the morning before heading off to my meetings. Oh, wait, there's coffee and doughnuts at the morning meetings, bagels at noontime, and finger sandwiches in the evenings? But I have a stipend for dinner, and if I don't use it, I can't charge large sums to my credit card for later reimbursement, which means I won't be able to get my company to pay for my frequent flyer miles, which means I might actually have to foot the bill for my next trip down to the Caribbean. So, guys, let me take you out to dinner, my treat, but you'll have to pay for your own drinks, and we can't go over four hundred dollars. Yes, miss, I'll have the steak. Sides? Macaroni and cheese aaaaaand... butter beans. Hey, guys, anyone see a gym at our hotel? No? Well, I'll just work these extra pounds off when I get home. Hey, doc, thanks for seeing me. What's that, I have dangerously elevated blood-sugar levels? And my blood pressure is too high? I wonder why - I work out all the time.

X

no American theocracy

no American theocracy - seimthingc

A dangerous effort is under way in the States of America - to bind the concept of marriage, and its societal and legal ramifications, to the code of a specific religion. This effort, if allowed to pass, will abolish the separation of church and state as mandated in the Constitution of our American Republic. This effort is an assault on the sullied concept of Liberty in this country. We cannot afford to further bind our fine nation to the concepts of one religion over the many others that here persist. Just as we would not affix to our most sacred documents (and I mean sacred in the strict sense of the sanctity of our concepts of Liberty and Freedom) the codices of the hundreds of other religions enjoyed by Americans today, we should not shackle ourselves to the strictures of just one set, albeit one more prominent and more widely practiced, of religious rules.
For if these efforts were to succeed in binding the concept of marriage to the code of one specific religion, it would logically follow that Yahweh's clearly stated mandates regarding the murder, in front of the father's house, of new wives found deflowered (Deuteronomy  22:20-21 NAB), would circumvent the forces protecting us from wanton and irrational actions, and our code of laws would become subject to the notion of a blood-thirsty and destructive being with a long and well-documented history of genocide and mass murder (see the Midianites, and the denizens of Jericho, Sodom, and Gomorrah).
John Adams said, and his contemporary Congress unanimously agreed, The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion (see here). These are more than idle words spoken in private, more than a backroom speech made to moneyed sycophants. These words were part of an official declaration made to a sovereign government in the notion of making peace, an attempt to placate the heated ire of another by stating that we as a nation do not, under any circumstance, under the guise of grounded rationality, assume to pass legislation based on the stultifying affects of a code of ethical behavior that does not propose to make us people intrinsically better attuned to the balance of our desires, our excesses, and our deep knowledge of a unifying and perpetual energy, perhaps called Primal Simplicity, at once terrifying and empowering, that lurks among the passions of our lives, but a code that proposes to bind us in strict adherence to the myriad rules of the Christian Bible, one religious book among many.
We are not a nation of one religion. We are a nation founded to establish Justice and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. We do this by guiding our country, through legislative act, executive lunge, and judicial rule, via rational and lively debate, toward the emancipation of Happiness and Security among the People, not through the rule of fear or codex, but through the application of our vast collective potential in service to all people, not a diminishing minority of the fabulously rich.
No American Theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum -
John Paul Roggenkamp

P.S. We really gotta start setting up Wardenclyffe Towers. But if we all had free energy, oil company execs and plenty of other folks would get mad heated.

Wednesday - day of Wotan

Father Odin, Wotan, Wednesday, you who send the crows to this valley to caw and flit about, sheltering me under their watchful gaze, praise be unto thee. I ask you now, Allfather, to give me wise and generous council on the state of things in my land.
The powerful men here have cast laws that restrict the labors of those who here reside, disallowing the sale of your blessed mead and mandating lesser workable hours during a day not your own, on a day sacred to a different, lesser god. This day they call Sunday. According to the word of their god, Yahweh, as recorded in their holy book, called the Bible, anyone working on this day must be put to death (Exodus 31:12-15 NLT), not in self-sacrifice to you, not dangling from the Worldtree with the spears in his side.
In your honor, oh wise Father, I am preparing to petition the powerful men of the state called The Woods of Penn, to banish labor from your day as well, as any labor on the day we have named in your honor, Wednesday, will reduce the ability of these fine people to sacrifice to you in the proper fashion.
Soon, oh great Wanderer, we shall string up the bulls and dogs and sacrifice them in your name, the mead flowing like water, the heavens stained with the soot of the sacrificial fires. There is a document here, called the Constitution, that was written to keep religious observation separate from the affairs of state. Seeing that laws have been already enacted that violate this fundamental principle, laws that forbid the sale of fine mead and good malted barley on the day of a god who is not you, and who therefore is a false and hollow idol, it only follows that on the day named in your honor, Wednesday, oh Allfather, God of War, great cloaked One-Eye, all labors should come to rest in observance of your power and unending glory.
Please grant me the strength to see this effort through. If the crows cease to frequent these dark and fertile soils, I shall know you favor me no longer.
Lusting for the waters of Mimir's well, my eye quaking for sacrifice, my hand recording the valor and glory of past and fallen heroes, I proceed with your tacit blessing.
All hail Odin, the Allfather, great Wednesday!

Ultima Ratio Regum
JPR

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

shilling

Jill is a shill,
She works on the Hill,
For this man or that man or he,
Who pays for her bill,
Her pockets doth fill;
The downfall of our liberty.

forsooth

forsooth, it was mother.
she, and no other,
who did instill
in me the will,
to treat men like my brother

name your god

I was very pleased recently to read about Mr. Newt Gingrich's efforts to protect the role of god in society. I am also very much looking forward to viewing this man's films about Rediscovering God in America. It is truly refreshing for a worshiper of Allah, especially one so prominent as a former speaker of the legislative house of the American republic, to boldly call for the protection of Allah's role in American life. Praise be to Allah. Please hold on, for since beginning to write again, I have received increased attention by the centralized state surveillance programs, and I want to be sure they do not find me typing and sell me to the Americans.

I just received a call from my brother-in-law, who lives in South Dakota, saying that I must stop writing about Mr. Gingrich and his love for Allah. My brother-in-law claims that, when the former legislative speaker mentions god, he is not talking about the one and only true God, Allah, rather the strange deity of a small and shrinking group of Americans known as Pastafarians, who worship their own god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Pardon. my battery died and I had to go get more diesel to run the generator. Once my computer booted back up, I found I had received an email from an angry man in South Carolina claiming that Mr. Gingrich's references to god were in reference to the Christian god, who has a name, and whose name is Yahweh, or Jehova, depending on how closely you adhere to the Christian biblical teachings that forbid you from using the name of your god in passing (see here) and that mandate that anyone who works on the seventh day of the week must be killed outright (see here). What strange and terrible ideas these people have.

I have tried to contact my brother-in-law, to clarify whether I should praise the former legislative speaker for his courage in openly championing the place of Allah in society, or whether I should write a letter to him condemning him for his poor choice in gods, as every intelligent person knows that there is only one god, Allah, and that Yahweh and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are false idols.

Ultimately, I think I will just ask Mr. Gingrich, and any other public figure in America, to name the god to which he is referring, because it is confusing for outsiders and foreigners who understand that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation (see here), who know that there is folly in strictly adhering to laws mangled and adjusted as they were passed down from the Iron Age, who hear some man praising a god, and, not knowing to which god he is referring, assume that his god is my god, when his god, and I am presuming by god he means Jesus, is, from one perspective, a cannibalistic suicidal zombie who impregnated his own mother.

What strange and confusing customs these Americans have. I hope they do not find oil here, for they would surely topple our democratically elected government and install straw men and dictators who would rob us of our natural resources and subjugate us in the name of regional stability.

Please stay at home, Americans. You have enough problems of your own.

Signed,
A. Randomarab

boast ye not

A very easy method exists for derailing any kind of personal development you might have gained from counseling, personal contemplation, or by surviving a significant event: boast about your success. Boasting about your accomplishments reveals them to the world incompletely, thus divorcing you from a complete understanding of the true meaning of your success (which can only come over time), and stunting the full effect of your success by forcing it into a definition that must and can only be incomplete (for it has been packaged into phrases and generalities so as to make it more understandable to others, a process which, similar to verbally describing Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field and Cypresses, inevitably ruins the fine and tender nuances of the original piece and renders it nearly impotent).

But, today, with few thinking before they speak and even fewer taking the time to contemplate a situation before beginning to ask questions (which I believe is a symptom of information-overload, an actual condition that short-circuits the brain and literally makes you stupid), we are expected to explain every single step of our day and every single thing we do, destroying whatever internal success we might have made by trying to explain that which cannot be explained to the world.

Lao Tzu says: He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak. (Tao Teh Ching #56)

What a strange and cunning little man.
X 

hemming and hawing

Our political culture has in recent years become quite aggressive. This is not our first period of vociferous and vitriolic politicking: in the 1850s, before the Civil War, there existed a similar environment of aggressive bantering and even outright, physical battle. We may just be heading for another internal struggle of similar proportions, for I do not see either side budging on the issues argued so passionately.
Part of the reason for the sharp divides being driven into the fabric of our society is, I believe, our nearly complete lack of political diversity. The Republican and Democratic parties are nearly indistinguishable on many issues, and, even though they claim to be more or less fiscally conservative or more or less morally sound, they are really just two sides of the same coin. We live effectively under a one-party system.
Nearly two hundred and thirty million Americans are eligible to vote. These hundreds of millions of individuals come from diverse backgrounds; they have diverse appetites; they dream many different dreams. Each one of these two hundred and thirty million Americans has a slightly different suggestion for solving the challenges our nation faces. And yet, they are give the choice between not two dozen, not one dozen, but two parties for which to vote. Two. Two hundred million people have the choice for one group or the other. There is certainly nothing holding individuals back legally from voting for a party other than the Big Two, but, given the capital, experience, and sheer mass of the ruling two parties, they have the capacity to all but drown out the voices of those groups looking to bring some diversity to the political scene.
If you were to go to the store today and you would have the choice between only two brands of everything, two brands that are so similar in taste and consistency and appearance, would you be happy? Would you rejoice in the nearly complete lack of choice? We have allowed our political system to stagnate. We have allowed two giant beasts to provide us with whomever they choose to lead us rather than forcing our system to stay nimble and diversified. Our legislative bodies, those organs that are supposed to represent the people as a whole, are nearly completely packed with red or blue, with two, only two, parties that are somehow supposed to represent the two hundred million Americans who are capable of voting. Have we become so homogenized that only two parties can possibly represent the millions of different opinions we commonly have? I think not. I believe that we can do better, that our political bodies should represent the diverse factions that exist within the people, that they should represent the cacophony of differing voices that exist in this country. We can do better.
To accuse one party or the other of being evil or disingenuous or out-of-touch or whatever is to miss the fact that they are both overgrown, plodding, and not truly representative of the great diversity that exists in this fine nation. The Republican and Democratic parties are like red delicious and granny smith apples, so close to one another in appearance and taste and substance as to be nearly indistinguishable. We can do better. It is often said that voting for a minority party, one that is attempting to bring new voices and new opinions to the political scene is to throw that vote away. This is true mostly because of the sheer power of the entrenched parties. We are not a people who can be truly represented by groups whose viewpoints are so overlapping at times that the tiny differences between them must be shouted from the rooftops, repeated ad infinitum until they seem so large as to be significant. Where to go from here I do not know, if I should join a minority party or found one or just try to change the system as a whole. Still thinking, still scheming, still writing. Can't nobody hold me down. Oh no. I've got to keep on moving.

UlRaRe.
JPR

not here nor there

Every single American president since World War Two has sent our country's military forces into battle. Not since 1941, however, has an American president actually declared war. An unchecked power-grab has allowed for the circumvention of the people's representatives (if one can still call them that) in Congress, so that our boys and girls can bleed and die overseas without any input from the citizenry other than massive, sustained, self-organized, and ultimately demoralizing demonstrations on their part. Instead of following a more democratic method and allowing such momentous decisions to be ratified or refused by those individuals who bear at least a modicum of obligation to the will of the American people (as intended by this nation's founders when they proclaimed that only Congress has the ability to declare war), we now allow one person and his or her close circle of advisors to make this decision. Vietnam was a police action, as is the Iraq conflict. We are not officially at war. This increase in the power of the executive branch of our government is threatening the stability of the tripartite system (executive, legislative, and judicial branches) our country's forefathers set in place, and will, unless it already has, bring our country to its knees.
    It has become a rite of passage for a president to go to war, to grandstand and to self-promote and, ultimately, to try to solve problems that exist in other countries rather than tackling the issues we face here at home. (Compared to the complex social issues that, among other things, make Americans poor and that have filled our prisons beyond capacity, military action is satisfyingly efficient, brutal, and final.) Roughly three millions of Americans live in poverty, with nearly one million American children, yes, children, starving every day. The richest four percent of our countrymen control over half of this fine nation's entire wealth, and tens of millions of our fellow citizens work themselves to exhaustion in order to barely scrape by.
    We have elevated the lure of money, the ever-damaging and ever-corrupting influence of cold hard cash, to the status of a deity, for which we sacrifice our time, our health, and our tears. Similar to the non-porcine animals in Orwell's book Animal Farm, we slave away by the millions under the impression that we are making our nation a better place for all, when we are only feeding the greedy, selfish, and bloated few at the top. This aggression will not stand.
    As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto, "Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion." Americans, awake! We have fallen into an Orwellian trap from which the only clear escape is an early death. We are wage-slaves, base and pitiful creatures kept quiet by old tricks the Romans pioneered, by bread and circuses, by fast food and television, deadly to the body and to individual creativity alike, soft and fat and unfulfilled we live, shelling out billions every year to trick ourselves into thinking we are happy while wallowing in a system (our brand of top-few-capitalism) that is specifically designed to separate us from the hard-won fruits of our most precious commodity, our labor. This aggression cannot stand, just as it did not for the Romans, who soon realized that the people are smarter than they appear, and whose empire eroded soon after the people had had enough of the panem et circenses.
    The Declaration of Independence says that government will bring our Happiness (and our Safety) into being, that it is there to make us happy and safe. Dear Washington, you must do better. You must change the system from its current configuration that funnels billions to the Few and alter it to benefit everyone equally.
    This is the obligation set forth in the Declaration. Waiting for the people, the masses, to act, to demonstrate, to tear down the walls and institutions we have all worked so long to build can only end in heartbreak, terror, and death.
    Dial back the executive powers. Realign our system of government to the promise of the Declaration, to the tender balance of the Constitution. It is not too late, but there is no time to waste.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp

federal browbeating, et al.

The events portrayed here are true. They have haunted me every day since they occurred. I find myself unconsciously running through the confrontation at random points throughout my days, repeating the things I said that kept me from being black-bagged and shipped off to Gitmo. This is a therapeutic writing to try to process them better, and more fully.

 The Thai Airways jet, on a direct flight from Bangkok to LAX, banks hard from the usual approach vector (with which I am well accustomed, having flown into El Peublo de nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles many times), heading over Whirlywood, around Downtown, and approaching the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense. The mood within has become hostile. We land well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along the big plane's long axis, and taxi for an unusual amount of time. It is nine fifteen in the evening, right on schedule. Sitting by the window, I can see our police escort, lights blazing, follow us to a darkened section of asphalt.
 For nearly an hour we sit. Roughly half of the passengers are south Asian. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man unbuckles and rises from his seat, the stewardesses, thin, elegant Thai women, scream at him to sit back down. People begin to ask questions, demanding to know what is going on, requesting a reason for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft, and have not used the restroom in nearly seven hours. Having purposefully dehydrated myself to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a somewhat rude older man whose English sounded a little too groomed, I am in considerable need of a good long piss. I get a funny feeling about my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), and reach inside to pull out my portable gaming device. A wave of enemy troops fall before my well-placed defenses, and I beat the level.
 Finally we begin to deplane. I thank the stewardesses on the way out, bowing to them and saying sawadee krap like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of officials line the mobile staircase, asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors overhead. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that will hopefully take us to the distant terminals.
 I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is long and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of sun and surf. My clothes, of which I only brought one pair, are ripped and stained with sweat. The tattoos on my arms and chest are clearly visible. My bag, a cheap Nike knockoff I bought in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed in tightly, with TSA agents sewn heavily amongst us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces, trying to figure out who is looking at whom, changing locations at times to get a better view of whomever they are trying to find. A man behind me asks when we will have the chance to use the bathrooms, as we were not allowed to on the plane, and as there are none on the bus. The TSA agents answer sporadically, sometimes not at all. Having no knowledge of what is going on, and knowing that asking questions to any type of law enforcement officer is a bad idea, I stand quietly wedged against a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control my need to void.
 After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus and to enter a terminal building. Shouting agents direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with departing passengers eager to board their flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a waiting area that has seen better days. As one of the last to enter, I have no seat, but I find a space against a wall where I stand at parade rest, my torn bag at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixed on the far wall, and do my own time, as they say in prison. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards, normal looking, sometimes down-right unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.
 A tall man with a hollow chest approaches me, sweating under his counter-terrorism wind-breaker. "Did you notice anyone acting strange on board? Was anyone visibly upset?" he asks me. "I can't say I did, sir," I respond. "Someone wrote a threat against the airline in one of the bathrooms," he says. "So I need to know if you saw anything suspicious." I tell him I was asleep most of the flight, and cannot say I did. He nods and walks away, and at that moment I realize that I am a suspect. The realization churns my innards, but the semi-trance holds, and I resume my patient waiting for whatever the fuck is going on to be over, but now I am seeing everything but looking at nothing, letting my peripheral vision do the work.
 A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass, then sneak a glance at her perfect ass. She talks with the agent with the hollow chest who approached me, and glances over as I am eye-fucking her through her immaculately tailored grey suit. "Would you come with me?" Hollow Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a sectioned-off area piled high with rows of discarded seating and introduced to a TSA agent whose name I will not here mention. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, if I have ever had any military training, where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions, and we begin to chat amicably. The lithe female with the perfect ass walks over and says, "Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" I tell her I wasn't, but refrain from explaining why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union cut boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, and consider myself a patriot.) "Why are you so calm, and why were you standing against the wall like that," she asks. I explain that my father was a Navy man who taught me how to stand correctly, and how to act the gentleman. I also mention that, as an unofficial American ambassador to the Thai nation, I had been on my best behavior throughout the trip. "Oh, well, sweet tatts," she says condescendingly.
 "Do you have any writing instruments in your possession?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. "Better sit down, get comfortable - this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close by, but I decide not to ask to use them. He asks if I have had any trauma in my life recently, and I tell him that my father died not long ago. "You must still be pretty upset about that," he says. I refute this gently, but he does not seem convinced. Hollow Chest and an airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.
 Rounding the partition, I discover a sea of faces staring at me. Everyone who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me, some with hatred in their eyes. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily down it. A door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly gentlemen sit along a far wall, elbows on knees, shooting daggers. "This way," someone says, and I enter a room with glass walls. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I am instructed to sit at a cheap folding table.
 "This is federal property," Hollow Chest says. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, sitting down. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I am in international waters, where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm, controlling my breathing. Inside, my mind is utterly still, focused to a razor sharpness. Every second bears tremendous weight, and as the eight agents lean forward to stare at me, pens poised above their notepads, I remind myself that I have done nothing wrong.
 Hollow Chest introduces himself and another agent, a short, ugly man who looks like a Tolkien troll. I have to force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the comparisons my mind is making to every spy flick I have ever seen and their portrayals of coiffed and dashing agents grilling a suspect. "Do you have a camera?" Hollow Chest asks. I produce it, and as he is rifling through my saved images the trollish man asks me about which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady characters, and if I participated in any sort of military training. I answer truthfully while forcing myself not to look over at the three agents emptying my torn bag and fingering its seams.
 "You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Hollow Chest says. "Thailand is full of amazing street art," I reply enthusiastically. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful stuff there." My zeal bounces off their stony faces. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I tell them I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I answer that I will.
 "Well, the thing is, we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts, we do see a fair bit of this sort of thing, and, again, we're going to have to run this past the handwriting guys, but the way you wrote the letters O and P on your customs form is very similar to the Os and Ps used to write the note," Hollow Chest says. "Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."
 "OK," I say, nodding, waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Hollow Chest says. Before I can answer, my TSA guardian produces my marker and hands it over. I can see the excitement in Hollow Chest's face. "So," he says, "we have the pictures of graffiti in your camera, and we have your marker, and we have the handwriting match on your customs declaration. It would be best for you to just get this over with now. If you admit to anything later on, it will be far worse for you. So you should probably just get it over with now." Variables flash through my mind, and I think, 'Shit, if I fuck up here, I'm looking at three to five in a maxsec federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.'
 I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Hollow Chest repeats himself, again telling me that I should just get it over with now before I reach a judge. "Look," I say, pointing at the items on the table, the camera and the marker and the form. "I realize that all these things probably indicate to you that I am somehow involved with the note..." Here I pause, for the agents have all perked up, straining to hear and thus indicating just how important is what I will say next. "That I am somehow involved in whatever happened on the plane, but I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit."
 "That is your right, here in America," Hollow Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?"
 "Absolutely," I say. "I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync, but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, eight a.m., I'm there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I didn't even set foot on the left side of the plane." I give him my seat number. "Sweep the bathroom for prints," I say. "You will find none of my prints in the bathroom where whatever happened occurred. You will find my prints in the bathroom nearest to my seat, on the right side of the plane."
 "Will you make these statements under polygraph?" he repeats. I again assert I will. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now." Again I tell him that I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit. "As a matter of fact," I say, "take my marker. Run a chemical analysis on the ink in my marker against the ink used to write the note. You will find they are not a match." I slouch back in the chair and stare into the faces of the assembled feds, forcing my breathing back to normal, willing the rising anger to abate.
 "Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you are staying in LA, so, we'll be in touch," Hollow Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says. I say I do not and rise also. "Thank you all for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I take a seat next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say. He laughs so hard he shakes in his seat.
 I take a bottled water from a passing pushcart and, after a few minutes, walk with the rest of the passengers over to customs. While I am waiting in line, the unpleasant man who had sat next to me gives me a strange look from across the way, but then I am called to the customs desk, where a stone-faced agent dutifully stamps my passport. Having no checked luggage, I walk calmly through the baggage retrieval area, but, halfway to the exit, my TSA guardian, he whose name I will not mention, stops me short.
 "You don't have any checked baggage?" he asks suspiciously. "You're traveling alone, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say; "it cuts down on time and removes the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough, and keep my answers short. It is nearly one in the morning.
 I face no hassle at the customs desk, and exit into the main arrivals hall. After urinating for a glorious eternity, I make some calls (to my lawyer and to my arranged ride, who has long since gone back home), get money for a cab, and, just for good measure, check if the Flyaway bus to Westwood is still running (it is not). Sick of being followed around the airport by uniformed personnel, I jump in a cab, and speed into the night.

FIN.
p.s. If any agent of law enforcement tells you to confess, claiming that it would be better for you to, "Get it over with now rather than later," he or she is more than likely bluffing and wants you to sacrifice your rights and to send yourself to prison because he or she has no tangible evidence. Do not do this. Do not give up your rights. Ever. Educate yourself about your rights, and do not give the Man an inch, for He will surely take a mile.
p.p.s. I never received a call, and have not been questioned further.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JPR

worth less

Most people in America are worthless. Their opinions do not matter. Their voices will never be heard. I am one of these people. I crow and I cry, leaving no eye dry, from rooftops and cellars and places loathed by all. I try to give my take on what is happening in this country, in this world, in this community, that runs counter to everything I think should occur in order to dredge humanity from the dark and dismal state we inhabit.
I look at the state of government intervention (on all levels of society) in the lives of America's citizens and weep for the loss of liberty, justice, and the right to do whatever the fuck it is you choose that makes you happy as long as you are not restricting another's right to do the same for herself.
I look at the cookie cutter communities, the endless small towns that have had their souls ripped out to make way for identical chain stores, eateries, apothecaries and hotels, their traditions falling before the heavy evening hand of corporate cost cutting.
I weep for the millions of adult Americans who have truly bought into the lies spread by fast-food advertisers, who have tasted the food packed with sugars and fats that is designed to be addictive, and who have stuffed that food into their pie-holes until they need surgery to get thin again, dancing on the precipice of immunological disorders avoidable entirely through change in diet.
I think of the millions upon tens of millions of our countrymen who have so lost faith in the system (if they had any faith to begin with) that they can not even manage to get to the polls once in four years, one tenth of one day out of twelve hundred days, in order to participate in the democracy for which they seem so proud.
My blood boils when I see people calling themselves patriots who desecrate and violate our living Stars and Stripes, who wear depictions of our living standard and suffer it to be cut into pieces and fashioned into apparel by people living across the oceans who will and can never understand the extent to which their illegal and condescending products are contributing to the ruin of the fabric of our country.
But I am not mad. I am not angry. Deep down, I know that my opinion matters not, that my words and my voice are only as strong as the number who hear them, that I too shall die, and that my actions now, every day, every damn step of ever cold hard day, will decide if I am remembered or not, if I have made a difference or not.
To the people who don't vote - get off your fat lazy asses.
To those calling themselves patriots who desecrate our flag - stop, now.
To the fat capitalists profiting from the annihilation of our national character - go soak your heads.

My love to all, and to all a good night.
Ultima Ratio Regum
JPR

Drugs, including alcohol

This post is to serve as a reminder to myself to address the use of the term, Drugs, Or Alcohol, commonly used in public awareness campaigns and commercials when referring to substance abuse. A simple change of the phrase to "Drugs, Including Alcohol," would reincorporate alcohol into its proper place among the intoxicating substances. The current usage is somewhat misleading as it implies that alcohol is something other than a drug. Take the appropriate steps to keep our kids safe.
UlRaRe
X

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

on rioting in oppressed nations

Since the fall of the autocratic government in Tunisia, there have been uprisings in other states in and bordering the African continent. Pundits and politicians point to efforts of past presidents or to wars of aggression waged in the region to explain this sudden increase in democratic expression.
I, however, will suggest different causes. I will suggest that the oppressed masses in a country ruled by a ruthless and authoritarian dictator (Egypt) who is supported by the United States of America (for purposes of the shadowy and ill-defined goal of regional stability) rose up on their own, without foreign intervention, for three reasons:
1) They are sick of living under the iron boot of a ruthless dictator who oppresses his population with America's tacit blessing
2) They do not wish to be invaded in another illegal war of aggression waged by the US when the American government decides that support of said dictator has become politically or economically unsustainable
3) They have decided that since American forces are bogged down in wars initially begun for self-serving reasons (control of Iraqi oil, punishment of terrorist in Afghanistan), and since America shows no sign of removing those regimes that truly oppress their people (most notably Saudi Arabia), any progress toward an open and democratic society must come from the downtrodden populace itself.
An old maxim reads: Something given has no value.
The Iraqis do not see the value of their democratic institutions because they did not ask for them in the first place.
The Afghanis do not see the value of democratic institutions because the system they have been running since Alexander the Great passed through over two thousand years ago worked; they saw no need to change their ways in order to accommodate an upstart political philosophy.
These uprisings are not signs of democracy's success; they are signs that, via social networking websites, individuals can change their world.
The United States is resembling more a police state, a society of rigidly enforced controls and widespread homogenization. What will happen when the people here, the millions upon millions of individuals who every year are extruded from the anus of the capitalist machine to wallow in a cold pit of washed-out excrement, what will happen when they call for change? Will our government welcome their demands with open ears and mind, or will it send in the riot cops and water cannons?
Democracy fails largely because people are not intrinsically equal. Simply put, some people are better than others. The way our system is set up here in America, those citizens with better connections or a better jumping off point will have better lives filled with more Happiness and greater Safety than those people without the skills or contacts or capital needed to excel.
Have we developed in harmony with the goals enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Is our government providing for the general Welfare and creating for all her citizens a world of Safety and Happiness? Can we honestly say that we live in a democratic society and not one run by the interests of the military-industrial complex and the massive intelligence gathering and law-enforcement communities? If there were riots in American streets, our country would eventually become more democratic. If there were masses of protesters screaming for the repeal of the Patriot Act, that foul and unconstitutional piece of legislation would be repealed. If our citizens risked their lives to speak, perhaps our senators would not fight so ferociously to maintain low taxes for the wealthiest three percent of all citizens.
We can only hope.
We can only read our founding texts and demand liberty, equality, and justice for all.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JP

an open letter to Gov. Rendell

Dear Governor Rendell of Pennsylvania.
I was very pleased to hear you use the "humans-have-been-doing-it-since-the-dawn-of-civilization" argument to justify expanding the gambling industry in Pennsylvania (a link). Yours is a valid argument based on sound scientific data, most notably the archaeological record (a link).
If all goes well with your efforts, humans in this fine state will be allowed to pursue two of the activities they have enjoyed since the dawn of time, most notably drinking alcohol (here) and games of chance.
Since you have used this argument to justify the expansion of gambling, the argument can now be used to justify the cultivation and consumption of cannabis, a practice that also dates to the dawn of recorded civilization (a link). The state of Pennsylvania is one of the largest volume drug dealers in the world, selling more alcohol, which is a drug, than nearly any other entity in the world (a link). Since the state is already in the business of selling drugs, it is logical to assume that it would allow its citizens (who are allowed to brew and self-distribute beer under license {a link}) to cultivate and self-distribute (under license) a fellow drug, cannabis, for their own consumption.
Access to alcohol is an ancient right of mankind.
Access to gambling is an ancient right of mankind.
Access to cannabis is an ancient right of mankind.
Please take steps to modernize the current cannabis laws (a link) so as to bring them into accord with the proud and ancient traditions that humans have been following for many thousands of years. Our society cannot afford its continued persecution of men and women enjoying this long-standing tradition.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
John Paul Roggenkamp

nipples

Every time I look at my shirtless self in the mirror, I get slightly aroused by my nipples. For a moment I imagine they are the nipples of a woman. Within milliseconds, however, my neural processors kick in and my growing excitement is squelched by the sudden and painful realization that these nipples, my nipples, are not, unlike the teats of a dame, objects of sexual desire.
But are a man's nipples really any less sexually offensive than those of a woman? Leading men in all sorts of films display their nipples proudly and without fear of censorship or retribution. Sportsmen remove their shirts in victory, flaunting their largely useless but invariably pert little man-teats. It is fact that a male's nipples are a byproduct of the evolutionary conservation of resources, their development only halted by a sudden explosion of testosterone triggered by the genetic code. Until the fetus decides what it is supposed to be, it develops male and female in identical fashion.
Sometime, it gets confused, and makes hermaphrodites.
Very few men indeed can produce milk from their breasts, although most of the plumbing seems to be in place. What I am trying to say is that man-teats are just as repulsive to some and arousing to others as the nipples of women. So why are men allowed to remove their shirts in America without fear of immediate legal retribution and vociferous communal outrage? Should not women also have the right to go shirtless, displaying their fine and shapely nipples for all who care to look? In our current world, women are not allowed to show their breasts because they are mostly larger than those of men, and because, in certain situations, they produce milk. But when was the last time you witnessed, in contemporary cinema or sport (outside of porn, of course), a woman with leaking breasts? I would hazard to say you have not. But as soon as a tiny bit of tender female teat-flesh is exposed, a film goes from PG-13 to R, while when Dan Craig emerges from the ocean all glistening and moist, his nipples cutting holes in the wind, the crowd gasps and applauds approvingly.
Get over your hypocrisies, America, and release women's nipples from their exempted status. The ladies didn't fight for suffrage in order to wear shirts all the damn time.
Release your nipples, and join the fight for gender equality.
The time is now.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
JP  

a dearth of differences

  Leave your house and drive three days and tell me what you see.

  If you are in America, you will see town upon town, city upon city, places resembling each other in so many ways as to approach homogeneity. The shops are the same, as are the drugstores. The houses are carbon-copies of one another; when seen from the air, the grids in which they are arranged are indistinguishable from the grids of the next town over. Sure, the people are likely to vary slightly in appearance and dialect, but will they vary to any significant degree? The people speak a common tongue, they watch the same shows, they bemoan in common tones the state of their lives, yet they seem to have lost the courage to break out of their self-imposed little prisons.

  Did we developed in this way because our parents came to age in the industrialization and normalization period of the post-war era? Did we reach this point because our parents' parents grew up poor and toothless during the Great Depression? Do we allow this homogeneity to spread because it is the path of least resistance, a path that nine times out of ten leeches the color from our lives, a path that leaves us with a weak and faltering sense of personal identity?

  Get in where you fit in, the saying goes, a saying that exemplifies the citizen's drive toward a supposedly perfect cookie-cutter life. Then again, if people are happy being clones, they should by all means homogenize, and shed any vestigial characteristics that might allow them to be picked out of a crowd.

  Conditions in our larger cities still appear good. Here, myriad tongues are spoken, the races mix, new culture blooms, the senses are stimulated. It is to these places that the young and the creative flee. Out in the sticks, however, out in the bumfuck boondocks, the distillation of our culture into a few scant and puny rituals progresses apace (these rituals include watching football, souping up cars, going to parades, and shopping). While these rituals seem desirable to those advanced in age, or to families seeking a quiet nest from which to grow, the erosion of the cultural diversity, nay, of our very cultural identity, this erosion bodes ill for our fine nation.

  I am not sure if the President's call to shop and the rapid cultural homogenization that followed in the wake of Nine-Eleven have anything in common, or if they even belong in this same piece, but here it stands, immutable and preserved for all time in the digital medium. I lost a large amount of respect for the people of this country when, shortly after 11SEP2001, then President Bush said, "I encourage you all to go shopping more," and an unanimous silence was heard around the country as citizens dusted off their credit cards dutifully. It is the job of our nation's leaders to inspire us to serve our country, to create programs that would allow regular people to do irregular things in an effort to make this a better place; it is not their job to call upon us to spend money simply for the sake of spending money.

  So, before you reach for the remote, before you browse the endless aisles without a clear purchase in mind, before you settle down to business as usual, ask yourself if there is something you could be doing to make a better place out of the little space call home, and out of the larger space you call country.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - JPR

on the subtlety of fear

I am just come from the shores of the Old World, that stalwart mass whence many Americans trace their blood. I arrived still entrenched in the cold and calculating mindset in which I have spent many nights in the past seven years, a mindset of constant vigilance and persistent distrust for mister John Law. There I strode through the cobbled lanes of Amsterdam, that fine city on her Graachten, crop-dusting smoke, always changing locations, the senses trained for any sign of police, trapped in a latent and deep-seated modus operandi that had kept me (relatively) clear of the law for some time. Only slowly and via repeated conversation did I shed this fear and come to look on the cops as many Europeans do, as a bothersome but largely benevolent force tasked with assisting and serving the population.
Do we look on the police in these fine United States in the same way? Would you, as a pennyless beggar or down-on-his-luck fellow approach the cops and expect a sandwich and a warm place to sleep at night? Would you do as you pleased, pissing in the street and making a ruckus at all hours in a residential neighborhood, if you knew a police station were within the radius of a thrown stone? In the US, people do such things, but, ere long, they find themselves approached, questioned, or apprehended by the police. In Europe (at least in the larger cities), all these things are done regularly, in broadest day and darkest night, freely and without a second thought.
For lack of a less grand statement: What have we done to ourselves and to our country? Why have we acquiesced to injustices stemming from the Patriot Act and similar legislation designed to make us safer, sacrificing our liberty at the alter of a delusional sense of security? I am a sounding board in some ways, a shape-shifter who changes according to the immediate social surroundings, adjusting myself to the situation at hand, taking on the mores, hopes, and fears of those around me; and a few weeks into my stay, I realized that I had taken on the subtle fears of the greater American population, adjusted to the suspicions that pervade our land, acquiesced to the notion that the police are something to fear, that they have some sort of power over my state of mind, over my Happiness.
In this, I have erred grievously.
Again, I have erred grievously.
It is not for us to live in fear of the police, to hide our passions, to refrain from doing the things which give us joy or satisfaction, always keeping out a watchful eye for the uncouth, reporting to supposedly higher authorities that which we do not understand. My hat goes off to the brave men and women who wear their hair differently, who have tattoos, who dress in colorful thread, for those who are stared at when they walk down the street or followed through grocery stores.
We speak of freedom in this country, but I suspect that all this talking stems from the fact that we know, deep down, that our freedoms are being taken from us one by one, that we conform to the drugs society wants us to take so as not to draw attention, drugs that our states sell to us and allow to be sold, that this once free land is no longer that, but has become something altogether different.
I weep for my country, for these United States of America, for I have drunk of the nectar of a truly liberal society, and, having done and ingested and worn and said what I pleased, I have returned and seen with new eyes an increasingly militarized society, armed soldiers in train stations, police on every block, even the small towns riddled with cops, their gazes hard and menacing.
Is this the country our forefathers envisioned, a country marbled with fear of the unknown and of the unknowable (the true extent of a person's mind), a country that forces grandmothers from their wheelchairs to be frisked, a country where sickness (addiction) is treated as a crime, where the consumption of a freely-growing plant can land you behind bars?
We speak of our freedoms. We speak of the greatness of our country. And yet our prison are filled to capacity, our police officers have automatic weapons, and our new national past-time is, of all the lame and pointless things, shopping.
Recently, federal officers, agents representing the state, attempted to force me into confessing to a crime I did not commit. Although they did not use physical force (beyond detaining me for a short period of time), only methods of coercion and intimidation, I fear now that was my last straw, that point at which I had finally had enough, the point at which I am ready to leave these verdant shores in search of more liberal pastures. For when a Son of the American Revolution, a man with the shield of the American Union inked indelibly into his flesh, a 9-11 volunteer, when that man, after a brief repose to foreign lands, upon his return no longer feels at home in the country he loves and yearns for those distance places, it is at that time that his government has failed him, failed the very people for whom they are supposed to bring into existence Safety and Happiness (according to the Declaration of Independence, our society's bedraggled and ignored blueprint).
Shining Liberty has been cast out into the darkness; Restriction and Suspicion have taken her place at the nation's table.
In our modern America, we are not free in the sense of true liberty, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves to the contrary. We have allowed our government to fail us, and have made a mockery of our once fine society, preferring a torn umbrella of supposed security to the cleansing downpour of freedom.
Woe is unto the world, our nation is dying at the core.
May we find some way to save her. Hold out, fair Columbia, for all may not yet be lost.

Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp