my inner thighs

​The old Muslim man at the end of our street liked to massage my inner thighs. He owned a warung, a combination of general store and roadside eatery, that served Halal foods and traditional beverages such as sweet iced tea and hot orange juice. A few blocks away sat the Canggu Permai local mosque, and on Sundays his restaurant would be filled with pious eaters still decked out in their sarongs and cylindrical black hats.

On a Thursday, I walked to the corner from my small efficiency apartment down the gang, saying hello to him on my way past. I got a take-away portion of rice, tofu, and vegetables and was headed back out when he padded the seat next to him, smiling invitingly. Uncomfortable with his physical intimacy, I had been avoiding him for many weeks, always claiming to be busy, but that day I decided to humor him. The left side of his body had been lamed by stroke, but his right arm was strong, the fingernails on that hand long, and sharp.

As soon as I sat down he leaned over and got to work. “No good, no good,” he said as he was digging his nails into the varicose veins that run up the inside of my right thigh. “You must come to me for massage, more often.” Wincing from the pain caused by his sharp nails digging into the tender flesh of my inner thighs, I looked up and made eye-contact with a group of Javanese construction workers building a house across the street. All four of them had ceased their labors to stare at the uncommon sight of a tall, blond, Ynki surfer getting his sensitives rubbed by an elderly, partially paralyzed, Balinese-Muslim restaurateur. A couple of hijab-clad young ladies perched atop a motorized scooter rode past, their eyebrows rising in apparent wonderment. The absurdity of the situation overwhelmed me; I started laughing. Such was my outpouring joy that Bapak Resto was soon laughing with me, our deep belly laughs shaking the makeshift bamboo bench upon which we sat.

Within moments, the old man’s son came running out, wide-eyed with terror. Apparently, he thought his father was having another stroke. At that, I took my leave, shaking hands with and bowing deeply toward my ailing masseuse, whom I visited at least once a week, thereafter.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

ye who yet

In the face of a hostile takeover of the U.S. federal government by a lackey of the banking-industrial complex, the People are beginning to rise up. Protests erupted around the country in the face of the supposed leader of the free world’s ban on Muslims entering the country. Presidents are forced to listen to the People only when the People make enough noise for a long enough time. This author salutes the brave citizens who are, as he is, sick and tired of this supposed leader and of the spineless career politicians who are allowing a proto-fascist to hijack America’s already weakened democracy.

Stand tall, ye who yet fight to stop the construction of a poisonous black snake; the hot core of America’s remaining virtue stands with you. Fight on, ye who see the sitting president for the fascist narcissistic hatemonger that he is; the eyes of Lady Liberty brim with joyful tears at the sight of your courage. By keeping pressure on this tyrannical fool, we may just force the greedy and the shortsighted to end their assaults on the core values of American democracy, which can be summed up as follows: inclusion of and respect toward all persons regardless of their race, creed, or sexuality; material support of all persons equally using the abundant resources found on Turtle Island, resources that all persons equally own; love for the weak, the downtrodden, and those who can but poorly defend themselves; and a firm dedication to the notion that all persons are endowed with the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Mahalo, huzzah, and om swastiastu.

JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑

rapid and furious

In the prayer room of a local hospital, a man was caught stealing and otherwise abusing copies of the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Accepting of most viewpoints and bursting with forgiveness, the chaplain in charge of the prayer room finally figured out who had been violating the sanctity of the sacred spaces in his care. Instead of having the offender arrested for the hate crimes he’d been committing, however, the chaplain merely alerted hospital security, who in turn approached the offender and gave him a stern warning, whereupon he pledged to cease his hateful, criminal assault. The man claimed he had been desecrating the translations of the Quran out of concern for the spiritual safety of his Christian neighbors. In his mind, it appears, the Muslim teachings promote only death and hatred - leaving no room for celebration, compassion, or love.

Imagine for a moment that this scenario had played out the other way around, that a non-Christian had been entering local chapels to steal, ruin, and similarly abuse the Christian holy books stored therein. Imagine he claimed he was doing it to protect the minds of children from the influence of Yahweh, the Christian god, who orders his followers to kill homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13); to murder people who work on Saturday, the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14); and to end the lives of those who don’t believe in him (2 Chronicles 15:12-13). Oh, how swift would be his likely judgement, how brutal the townspeople's reaction. Such an offender would probably rot in jail for months until he faced a hostile judge and jury; then, he’d go back to jail for the maximum period of time allowed by law.

Why did hospital security not take steps to prosecute the Christian who was abusing Qurans? Why did they not do everything in their power to protect the persons working in or visiting the hospital from the openly violent ways of a religious extremist? To this author’s eye, it seems that the original offender was given a pass because he was a Christian who chose to abuse the Muslim holy book. If this scenario had played out any differently, the outcome would have been one of rapid and furious action in the pursuit of justice. The area in which these hate crimes occurred is predominantly Christian; it is therefore not surprising that a person who would act in the manner of a Christian terrorist should receive not his due punishment but a mere slap on the wrist. When justice is kept blind, mankind has the chance to achieve greatness; when those who deserve her wrath are instead allowed to roam free, their minds poisoned by prejudice and hatred, the human race is doomed to wallow in fear-soaked failure.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on Trump’s win

To all of my non-American friends around the world: I did not vote for Donald Trump, nor do I support him now. I think Donald will make a terrible president. A proto-fascist with little regard for either the opinions of mankind or the notions of kindness and respect for others, Donald is the one person (out of nearly 330 millions!) whom the American people should never have elected. Riding to power on a wave of hatred-for-others and buoyed by a strong fervor of Eurocentric racism (that was brought to this land by Christopher Columbus in the year 1492), Donald in one sense embodies the idea that Americans of Northern European Descent are alone entitled to the promise and possibility of the American dream. In another sense, Donald is a genius for capturing the mood of the moment and exploiting the fears of working-class citizens to get himself elected to this nation’s highest post. He will not protect or uphold the Constitution, for he has apparently never read it and definitely does not understand what it is designed to do. He will likely trample upon the hard-won rights and privileges of the following communities: Latino; African-American; Muslim; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, & Curious (LGBTQC); living women of childbearing age; as well as free-thinking and independent writers and other artists such as this author himself.

To my brothers and sisters of the Muslim faith - when Donald’s Death Squads come for you, I will do my best to keep you from harm. To my brothers and sisters of Latino descent - when Donald’s Deportation Squads come for you, I will do my best to keep you in this country. Do not despair, fellow lovers of liberty, for if history is any guide, fascist dictators such as Donald Trump cannot hold onto power for much longer than a decade and a half before the weight of their crimes drags them down into the abyss. Do not give up hope, but let love shine in your hearts, for love is eternal and immutable, the one act we can do for ourselves and our misguided neighbors that will prove that a shred of humanity still exists within the American experiment. Now is not the end of our struggles but the beginning. Hold fast and stay frosty.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場

through quarters cramped

I've been to some death-camps and seen some mass graves into which were hurled chucked tossed innocent slaves; I've stood in the oven rooms smelling their reek and wandered through quarters cramped barren and bleak. The stories and tales of Survivors I've heard; did soak lap and sponge up each soft quiet word; did stand before mountains of shoes and shorn locks; did witness the stolen gold teeth and arm-clocks. I've been to Jerusalem's own Yad Vashem, examined the causes from which hatred stems, examined the lessons that our past imparts and struggled to understand cold callous hearts. This world we now live in is once again filled with racist small-minded and misguided swill – we see it in Europe and in the U. States where there are hot heated and brutal debates. These are though concerning the Islamic creed and ask if for tolerance there is still need and ask if the people who've made it their own should be whipped and murdered or just left alone. I know not the answers, my mind is too small, my intellect lacking in due wherewithal, I will though say one thing then leave well alone: Let he who's not sinned pick and cast the first stone.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

science & faith

People today who self-proclaim as faithful seem to be hypocrites. Instead of relying on their god to provide them with nourishment, for example, they go shopping at grocery stores and fill their larders with food; instead of trusting in their god's ability to heal them of sickness, they go to doctors and wash their hands with soap; instead of allowing themselves to waste away so as to reach their promised land that much sooner, they brush their teeth and go for walks and care for their own health. If these people were truly faithful, they would not even think of gathering food for themselves but would only eat what happened to fall dead within earshot, trusting that the Great Magnet would fell enough for their bodies to keep on living; if they truly believed, they would let their physical shells rot, caring not for tooth-ache nor for compound fracture nor for the deepest laceration, in the knowledge that all healing comes from that mystical power that cannot ever be named; if they were wholly pure of heart, they would sit quietly with neither attachment nor aversion as the leaves piled up around their feet and the stars wheeled by, high overhead, upon the vast and inky firmament.

I am among the greatest of offenders in these matters, a humble and worthless whorphan too full of ego and malice to still his soul of greed, too wrapped up in life's shiny trappings to focus on the gentle spirit bursting within his loins, blinded to the subtle majesty of the Universe by desire, selfishness, and discontentment. Some day, I hope to shed myself of this peripheral clutter and bask in the glowing rays of god's own pulsating sphincter, but not today, old boy, and certainly not anytime soon, for my faith is too weak, my ambition is too strong, and my adherence to the false parameters of life and death is greater than my capacity for Total Emptiness, known to the Chinese as wu.

Returning to my original point: To live in a house and to drive a car is to rely on science; a car runs on a liquid called gasoline, which burns at a certain rate if the pressure in an engine's combustion chamber is just right; a house keeps the pounding rain and the slanting sleet of off one's head because it has a sloped roof and see-through windows made of glass and wood. To bathe regularly with soap and to refrigerate food is to believe that science works, that its lessons and warnings are true; soap cleans because it is a mildly caustic mixture of animal fats and lye, and food spoils less quickly when it is stored within an air-tight box and blasted with frigid winds. To wear a coat in winter, moreover, is proof of doubt in the Supreme Deity's ability to keep a body from freezing to death, irrefutable evidence that a down-filled covering trumps the warming knowledge of a personal savior, any day. Therefore, the next time you see someone mount a high horse and start squawking about how pure and righteous is his god, remind him that his house, his cellphone, his car, and his clothes, are all proof of the failure of his personal faith; but beware, for religious fanatics – regardless of their faith, be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu – are dangerous people best avoided. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on public worship

Why do people go to churches in order to pray to their god? Why has congregating with one another in groups become the baseline method, the normal state of affairs for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Mormons, animists, and wiccans? I am merely a lay person, and an ignorant, worthless whorphan at that; therefore, I can only present here my own poorly-conceived thoughts, offering them up freely upon this, the altar of public opinion.

I believe that churches are a stubborn hold-over from earlier times during which the great majority of people could not read. During, say, the European Middle Ages, the individual had to physically enter a church in order to hear such words as he thought were his god's teachings, words which his under-educated and stunted mind accepted, without question, as Fact. Since our governments have forced their citizens to become educated to a certain standard, and since the literacy rate in most western industrialized nations (WINs) sits at nearly 100%, we should no longer need these bastions of foul old organized religion, as we can now all read our Bibles and our Korans and our Bhagavad-Gitas by ourselves, and in the privacy of our own homes.

Among the primary factors contributing to the survival of churches and other places of worship is the fact that these communities act as meeting-places at which different people can share resources with one another without going through the hassle of trawling for useful acquaintances among the general population; it is assumed that anyone who manages to stay within the church without pissing off too many people and who is witnessed to perform the community's shared rites and rituals is a trustworthy and generally good chap upon whom one can rely to accompany the kids alive on the biannual canoing trip. Another reason is that these communities are self-perpetuating, with new parents retreating to the bosom of Mother Church as soon as they hear their child's first screams, just as their parents did when they were born; having suddenly tiny people around – the sanctity of whose souls are, for some reason, in doubt – seems to drive both man and woman back into the clutches of organized religion, where they and their children become ensnared, so that when the children become adults and have kids of their own, they return to tug on the apron-strings of corpulent, silken-shirted charlatans who profess to know more about freely-accessible books than other people do.

I find it curious that people feel the need to worship in public, where they will be spoken to by the holy man and quietly shunned by their fellow parishioners if they do not perform their group's rites and rituals according to its rigid standards. It seems to me to be a very petty thing indeed, putting on expensive clothes in order to perambulate in the midst of other well-dressed people, everyone bowing and scraping and singing and tapping themselves on the head and torso in rigid adherence to a highly-ritualized ceremony meant to bring people, in some mysterious fashion, closer to the god that they think created them. If there were a god such as YHWH, the Christians' foul deity, an omnipotent, omniscient being that felt spited if it were not prayed to enough times or in the correct fashion, I think that that god would be able to discern whether its supplicants were performing correct rites in the correct way without them having to all get together and sing and wail and moan at each other in fancy, multi-million-dollar places of worship. In my opinion, it is by far preferable to pray in the privacy of one's own home, so that any mistakes one makes will not be seen as failures-to- adhere-to-policy, but, rather, as the steps that any fallible and self-aware creature must take on the path towards its own betterment and enlightenment.

In America, churches are built and refurbished and re-roofed regularly, financed by supposedly good people whose cash donations should instead be used to improve the lives of chronically poverty-stricken, perpetually hungry persons livingin the Third World; then again, however, I am little more than a spoiled, worthless whorphan – what the deuce do I know?

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

American theocracy - 2

  In my writing, I am often more critical of Christianity than of the hundreds of other religions practiced every day in these United States. America is not a Christian nation, nor is it Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or Taoist. This nation was not founded upon the principles of any one belief system. Therefore, we as a nation cannot allow one religious group, under any circumstance, to incorporate their beliefs into the laws of our land; we can ill afford to take sitting down the intractable religious rhetoric spewing from the orifices of our public figures.

  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 – that will drum up more controversy, boosting readership numbers on your blog in the process."

  I am loathe to attack Muslims because: they are not attempting to define legally the parameters of marriage according to their own religious texts; they are not attempting to restrict legally, again according to their religious texts, a woman's inalienable right to do to her property, her body, whatever she pleases (such as aborting a fetus), a right granted to all women under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; they are not attempting to claim for their own the reference in the Declaration of Independence to Nature's God, a moniker broad enough to encompass, in the spirit of true egalitarianism, the deities of all systems of belief, not a direct reference to one god in particular. (If, instead of Nature's God the Declaration read Yahweh, I would concede the field to the Christians, but it does not, so I will stand my ground.)

  In comparison, Christians are laboring to define marriage according to the books they consider holy (see here); they are trying to take from the women of this land the right to their bodies, their property, by making abortions illegal (see here); they claim that Nature's God refers to Yahweh, the god of the Christians, the father of Jesus (see here), when Nature's God could refer to anything from the Universe, to Chaos, to the Great Spirit once known to the Indian tribes.

  We hear in the news about the dangers of an Islamic caliphate arising in the Middle East. (For one example of this, see here.) Here in America, we face the dangers of an impending Christianity-based theocracy. Any system of government that rules according to the code of a specific religion will, invariably, subjugate those people living under it to its own laws; it will stifle freedom of expression by striking fear in the hearts of honest but non-believing citizens; it will, when challenged, resort to barbaric and unreasonable action to silence dissent; and, most crucially, it will render unattainable to ourselves and to our Posterity the Blessings of Liberty by coercing us into recognizing and worshiping a suicidal zombie who, being “one with god,” as the “holy spirit” impregnated his own mother.

  For an example of the horrors inherent to religious rule, look into life in Afghanistan under the Taliban. We, as a nation, must fight the efforts currently under way to further codify into law one religious doctrine in particular, no matter how long that religion has been practiced here or what percentage of the population holds it to be true. We cannot allow our fundamental principles to be made subservient to the beliefs of one specific religion: our republic, our rights, our liberty, and our lives are at risk. American flexibility and inventiveness will suffer under religious rule – these characteristics that we hold so highly will wither and die if confined in a closed and unchanging framework based on the writings of a desert people who lived in the Iron Age many thousands of years ago. To do any of these things would be to shatter fully our frail democracy, our tenuous republic.

  Future generations will cheer our efforts at maintaining a republic dedicated to the principles upon which it was founded, those being the general Welfare, a more perfect Union, the establishment of Justice, the domestic Tranquility, the common defence, and the Blessings of Liberty. If our nation were to fall under the sway of the religious zealot, even a supposedly pious zealot possessing of convincing fear-mongery, these founding principles would fall prey to the demands of righteous necessity.

  The Christians of America have not been subjected to a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations – thus, they have no Right, no Duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future Security: their communities are not under siege, their places of worship are being built regardless of location, they are not being attacked in taxi cabs, or in the streets. I believe in freedom of religion. I envy the faithful for their unfaltering belief. I support fully the right to pray to the god of your choosing in public or in private. I will not, however, stand idly by as born-again, my-way-or-the-highway, ultra-conservative types vie for this country's highest office with dreams of dominionism dancing in their eyes.

Fight theocracy in the U.S.A. Act now, for the forces of oppression seldom rest.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on paying the price

  During a recent conversation with a middle-aged woman of the conservative mind-set, she said, “The Europeans are paying the price for tolerating Islam.” When I pressed the issue, my counterpart explained that Europeans have been exposed to bombings (see here), murders (Theo van Gogh murder, see here), and extremist rhetoric (see here) emanating from the Muslim communities that have been allowed to flourish in their midst. I tried to explain to her that it was foolish to vilify an entire religion based on the actions of a few of its radical members, but she stood fast, her mind soon locked up in obvious Fear of an impending Worldwide Caliphate.
  She was reluctant to offer any kind of solution to this supposed problem, beyond the solutions I deduced by reading between the lines of her general outlook, those being either the forced emigration of any and all Muslims to places outside of Europe, or the sequestering thereof into controlled and separated communities (otherwise known as concentration camps).
  In response, I stated that America has suffered also from the decision to tolerate any and all religions, foremost among them Christianity, a religion that has spawned its fair share of murderous and extremists individuals. When pressed, I gave the examples of the 2009 abortion clinic murders perpetrated by a Christian extremist (Dr. Tiller murder, see here), the Oklahoma city bombings (see here), and the marked increase in religiously conservative and extremist rhetoric, including the widespread disillusionment that has lead many Americans (see here) to believe that this country was founded as a Christian nation (it was not – read my blog series No American Theocracy).
  I am not saying that Christianity is solely responsible for our country's woes, or that those who believe in it are necessarily bad or dangerous people, although it is true that much of the fear-based and xenophobic rhetoric heard today (see here) and a considerable number of attacks against innocent civilians (see here) emanate from the greater envelope of the Christian religion. What I am saying is that religion requires of the individual a relinquishment of his ties to clear thinking and to reason, and, with its frequent reliance on the belief that it alone is the road to the salvation of the soul and that all others are false roads that lead to eternal death and endless suffering, one can easily get carried away and do something foolish in the belief that one's actions are somehow providing pleasure or satisfaction for That Force Which Cannot Be Named.

  In these times of increasingly frequent political and economic crises, we have seen the rise of supposedly Christian politicos who loudly express their often extremist political views. When we read or hear the rantings of Islamic extremists, we are alarmed; the rational and clear-thinking American should be just as alarmed hearing some of the more radical Islamic rhetoric as he would be hearing the fundamentalist Christian views being expressed by prominent individuals such as Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin (see here). Any extremist religious opinion is a danger to society as a whole: weak-minded individuals are easily swayed by those they think are speaking to them the words of some unseen god, and the gullible will gladly participate in violence against innocents so long as they believe it might secure their place, after they die, in some fictitious realm of edible joy and eternal conga lines.
  If Europeans are paying the price for their tolerance of Islam, Americans are paying the price for our tolerance of Christianity. But to outlaw one religious practice or the other would be to destroy the fabric of our democracy and to trammel the most sacred rights granted by the Constitution, among them being freedom of religion and, more importantly, liberty of thought and deed.
  Pay the price we must, for violent acts by religious extremists will not end until religion itself has ended. To tolerate one religion is to tolerate them all; we are stuck with our extremists, Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Mormon. So if you are worried about Muslim extremists wreaking havoc over in Europe, remember that there are Christian extremists here in America who are wreaking havoc too.

  The next time some religious zealot starts screaming at you on the street corner, tell her to take a nap, and to practice her crazy beliefs at home, by herself.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp