haiku 17 Aug 2018:

How does one survive
In these open-source markets
When cash don’t return?

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

system of systemic

No amount of talking no volume no book will change the behavior of blowhards and crooks; they are but a symptom of systemic rot; they are not anomalies by a long-shot; they sprout up among us like vermin to feed on our insecurities worry and greed. It seems that their coming could not be avoided that we on these lower rungs must be exploited and lied to by rich fucks who stand up and claim that though they reaped profits their hands are unstained. These slags hide their monies in offshore accounts yet when caught red-handed do not then pay out or feed public coffers or give their fair share; that cash is all their own - not yours or mine, theirs. Each day they take more from us, these plutocrats; they drain us like leeches then hoard like pack-rats then convince their buddies in the Congress hall to bail out and shield them when banks they own fall. It’s simple enough for a dummy to learn: most of us will toil rejected and spurned whereas there’s a handful of blokes so wealthy that theirs is America, sea to bright sea. This here situation is not new but old; it’s found in plays the ancient Greeks themselves told; it cannot be fixed for that’s just how man works - he steals from poor children and gives to rich jerks.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on riding coach

Helen Keller, a famously blind and deaf woman, said: “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.“ How happy, then, can today's rich people be? One percent (1%) of the U.S. population controls roughly sixty percent of this country's material wealth; the same one percent also wields political and economic power disastrously greater than ought be held by such a small cabal. With almost no hardship in their lives, and with few checks on their growing might, this group is helping to morally and spiritually bankrupt the nation while also condemning itself to a life devoid of joy, drained of color, and soured by the foul stink of cash. In the course of his own life, the author has closed his mind to certain ideas, including the notion that the goal of human existence is to make as much money as possible before dying; if a prosperous life is one devoid of struggle, sacrifice, and want, he will gladly stay poor, and ride coach.

A few ten thousand Americans are richer than a hundred and fifty million of their fellow countrymen, combined. With enough resources to hire good lawyers and weather long trials, they rarely receive full punishment for their crimes. Do we see Justice, here? We do not. Is this what our Founding Persons meant when they spoke of securing the Blessings of Liberty, forming a more perfect Union, or promoting the general Welfare? It is not. Instead, we see the theft of power by a small cluster of moneyed plutocrats who corrupt the halls of government and call for armed conflict while profiting financially from the wars they call for. The insatiably greedy few who caused the poor of France to storm the Bastille and the stubborn of America to toss tea into a bay are back in control; once more, we suffer the petty aristocracy.

The American republic was founded on a handful of simple principles, some of which are listed above. Today, millions of children in America regularly suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when they cannot be sure where their next meal will come from. Tens of millions more Americans wallow daily in wage slavery brought about by high levels of student debt, their hearts gripped by fear of increasingly militarized police forces. Poverty, hunger, and police brutality are hardships we could master, together, if our political leaders weren't constantly stroking the shafts of their financial backers and if deep-pocketed lobbying groups weren't incessantly plugging their own pet projects (and if a hundred million misguided Americans stopped paying to be brainwashed into abject docility by compelling television programming). Rich people experience monumental successes frequently; they have forgotten the abiding joy that comes with infrequent enjoyment of small successes. If we downtrodden masses could only convince the 1% to be happy with having completed a daily workout routine and remembering to floss before going to bed instead of standing idly by while they celebrate trillion-dollar federal bailouts of their failing banks, America might resemble her old, egalitarian self, once more. Heavy is the crown, but not heavy enough to dampen the avarice of they who wear it.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on ambitions in cash

  During a recent conversation about the merits of socialism, my counterpart argued that ambition, ingenuity, and creativity would disappear in the absence of monetary remuneration for labor. In other words, he claimed that people would stop working if they stopped getting paid money to work, that ambition would vanish if the potential for gain were to also vanish. If this theory were true, fathers would stop showing up to coach their kids' little league teams, our interstate hiking trails would become overgrown for a lack of volunteers to keep them cleared of brush, and nothing would transpire within the walls of churches other than those tasks performed by paid clergy.

  Unknowable man-hours of labor are performed every year in the United States for which the laborers are not paid. This labor is performed to satisfy an ideal, to give back to the community, even to calm that deep inner need to do something positive with which the unlucky among are burdened. I believe this zeal to provide for the common good is inherent to all persons (although most of us have it stamped or beaten out of us at one point or other in our lives). I also believe that our current economic system has ensnared this zeal, and subjugated it to the fleeting, hollow satisfaction of conspicuous consumption.

  It is not as if the people are bad, or shiftless, it is that we have unlearned to cherish those things that are precious beyond their monetary value.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

daisy cutter

Lady Liberty, tunic askew and breast revealed, stepping inadvertently with right foot on a snake, standing in a clear-cut forest, balances on a shoulder-beam (whose left side is cracked and banded with irons) the symbols of money and war against the symbols of peace and the Declaration of Independence. She is trying to lift the heavy symbols with her left hand, while her right hand has lost its grip. A tiny man (representing the richest 1% of the American population) is sawing through the beam on the right side, thus attempting to cut off the symbols of peace and the Declaration of Independence. Above all the words: DAISY CUTTER