In the movie The Dark Knight starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, Michael Cane's character sums up the Joker's actions with a single, iconic sentence, saying, “Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn.” To some degree, my desires mirror those of that green-haired maniac; on some level, I think that the most expedient and the simplest way for us to return balance to our world and to curtail mankind's dangerous over-expansion is to stop trying to control things that are wholly out of our control (such as human economic and moral behavior) and return to a state of blessed anarchy.
Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.
Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
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