our enemy – television

Television is the creative person's bane, a threat greater than most others are. Watching TV feeds the human need for companionship without ever really satisfying it and crushes creative capacity by tricking the brain into thinking it is doing something and being productive when it is just sitting idle. Creativity, power, assuredness, and passion all reside in the 2nd and 3rd chakras, the lower half of the torso that extends from the breastbone to the genitals. Look down at your own belly for a moment. Can you see your belt-buckle or waistband as it sits atop the pelvic bone? Can you feel and move the abdominus erectus, that muscle that runs from the bottom of the breastbone to attach to the top of the pelvis? If you cannot, you are not alone – more than a third of all Americans are obese, and many of these individuals carry a large portion of this additional weight in the lower halves of their torsos. The decision to sit down and watch television has disastrous consequences on the 2nd and 3rd chakras – it numbs and dulls them, confusing and stifling the free flow of energy through the regions of the core, an area central to living the best of possible human lives. Man is a gullible animal; after seeing just a few commercials related to food he will get food from his kitchen and eat that food (without focusing on what he is eating) while staring longingly into the beautiful bright lights of his TV set. If he repeats this sequence often enough he will get fat, and his increased girth will further stifle the free flow of energy through the region of his core and exacerbate the unhealthiness that stems from a lack of regular exercise and from a preference for prepackaged foods ready to eat over meals carefully and consciously crafted. Persons who wish to lead lives full of creativity and passion avoid watching television; they know that there are more constructive ways to fill their time than by staring at an electric light-box; they paint, draw, dance, or write; they make educated and intelligent decisions about what to eat and what to put through their orifices of eye and mouth and ear instead of numbing out the intestines by shoveling in as much sugary and salty and fatty foods as the gut can handle without bursting; they lead happy lives untethered from groomed and glossy but ultimately vacuous material. Downtrodden and passionless masses of the world, awake! Turn off your television sets! Humanity, and Mother Nature, need you now more than ever. Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on the lack of a bogeyman

For a good portion of the second half of the 20th century, the United States had a clearly defined bogeyman, fall-guy, and nemesis: the pinkies, reds, and commies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (CCCP). Then, in the early 1990s, the CCCP crumbled, unable to keep underwriting the avarice and greed of its ruling class, unable to enforce its will upon an oppression-weary populace, and unable to keep up with the sheer might of consumption-centered capitalism coupled with the rapid mechanization and robotization as was taking place in such nations as chose to oppose it. All of a sudden, after decades of silent struggle against a highly demonized foe (see the inclusion of the phrase Under God in the pledge of allegiance that was added to show what godless heathens were the commies), America found herself without a clearly defined enemy.

Into this gap came the 9-11-2001 attacks, after which the branches of the U.S. government that were charged with defense and intelligence focused their various highly-sophisticated and well-tuned apparatuses for covert surveillance, espionage, murder, and sneak-thievery not onto an external foe but onto the very individuals whose Safety and Happiness they were supposed to bring about: the American people. We, the People, are now the enemy. We, the People, are now spied upon, listened to, and watched more closely than any terrorist or friend of terrorist who might yet be foolish enough to use means of electronic communication such as radio, cellphone, or Internet. Worst of all, however, we, the People, as a whole, do not seem to mind this oppression, preferring rather to walk the walk we have always walked it, dutifully participating in presidential elections (over which, because of the electoral college, we have little power and less influence), dutifully watching five hours of television a day, dutifully reporting to work and then, as if we were mindless automatons hardwired to strict obedience, spending our hard-earned cash on such superfluous bullshit as we were told – in multiple, exquisitely-crafted television commercials the previous evening – to buy.

There is a balance that the federal government must strike between keeping us, the People, Safe and Happy; but that balance has tilted (and not just during the Obama presidency, but also during the Bush2 and Clinton presidencies) drastically to the side of Safety at the cost of most of our Happiness. We, the People, must find a way to regain the balance that our nation seems to have lost; but, since we are rotting our minds by watching TV, and racking up consumer debt because we cannot control our own impulsive materialism, there is, I think, little hope that we might accomplish much of anything beyond become more fat and more lazy. So, with Osama Bin Laden dead, the regime of those pinkie-commie bastards long since withered away, and our worth as a people plummeting daily, perhaps we truly deserve our bogeyman status. Hrm.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

a federal browbeating, et al.

The following story is true.

Thai Airways flight 794 from Bangkok banks away from the approach vector that planes coming from the west usually take when landing at LAX. It passes over Hollywood and around Downtown to approach the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense, and the mood is hostile within the plane. It lands well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along its long axis. It is nine fifteen in the evening. We taxi for an unusual amount of time as police cars escort us with lights blazing to a secluded section of asphalt.

For nearly an hour we sit. About half of the passengers are from south-east Asia. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man threatens even to rise 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 an explanation for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft; I have not used the restroom in more than seven hours. I am in considerable need of making water since I purposefully dehydrate myself during flights to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a strange older man whose English sounds non-native. I find myself digging around in my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), but not knowing what is going on, I pull out and switch on a portable gaming device.

Finally we begin to deplane. I bow to the stewardesses on the way out, thanking them in their native tongue like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of U.S. federal agents line the mobile staircase asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me as he scans my documents rapidly. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors low over our heads. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that we hope will take us to the distant terminals.

I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is poorly kept and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of Thai 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 purchased in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed tightly in the bus with TSA agents sewn heavily among us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces with wide and greedy eyes, looking frantically from person to person as if they were trying to puzzle out who is looking at whom, changing location 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 speaking unsolicited to law enforcement is a bad, bad idea (because it is the job of law enforcement officers to punish citizens, not to help them), I stand quietly between a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control the pressing need to void my bowels.

After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus for a terminal building. Agents shout angrily as they direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with other passengers who are eager to board their departing flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a seemingly long-abandoned waiting area. 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 (legs shoulder-width apart and arms clasped above the buttocks). My torn bag is at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixated on the far wall. I do my own time, as they say in prison, minding my own business as would a good boy who has learned his manners. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards and generally stirring the mood into a lather. They are normal looking, often unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.

A tall man with a concave 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 that I cannot say I saw anything. He nods and walks away. At that moment I piece together that I am suspected primarily for having done whatever was done on the plane. The realization churns my innards but the semi-trance holds, and I resume to wait patiently for whatever is going on to end. I ramp up my peripheral vision and enter Type 81, that state in which I see everything but appear to look at nothing.

A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass before I glance at her perfectly-shaped rear end. She talks with the concave-chested agent who had approached me initially and glances over as I am staring inappropriately at her buttocks through the fabric of her immaculately tailored gray suit. "Would you come with me?" Concave Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a secluded area piled high with rows upon rows of discarded airport seating. The TSA agent, whose name I shall not here mention, introduces himself politely. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, about any past military training, and about where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions. We chat amicably. After nearly twenty minutes, the lithe female with the perfect ass walks over, waiting until we have concluded our pleasantries.

"Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" she says in a condescending tone. I tell her that I wasn't, but I do not explain why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union inked boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, because I am a Son of the American Revolution, and because I 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. I explain that I strive always to act like a 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 before turning on a heel and storming off.

"Do you have any writing instruments on your person?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. A wide and joyous smile threaten to fill his features. "You had better sit down and get comfortable – this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close to where I am sitting, but I decide against asking to use them. The agent 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 tell him No, but he does not seem convinced. Soon thereafter, Concave Chest and a uniformed airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.

I round the partition to a sea of staring faces. Every single person who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me. Some are staring with the after-affects of shock, but most are looking at me as I were wearing a necklace strung with severed baby's feet. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily toward it. A unmarked door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly and armed men sit along a far wall with their elbows on their knees looking at me with poorly-veiled bloodlust. "This way," someone says, leading me into a smaller, glass-walled room that sits within the larger room. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I sit in a cheap folding chair at a cheap folding table.

“This is federal property," Concave Chest says, gesturing at the four walls. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, shrugging. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I know that I am in international waters where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm and control my breathing with the remnants of the semi-trance. My mind is utterly still and focused to a razor sharpness. Every passing second bears tremendous weight, and as the agents lean toward me with pens poised above notepads, I relax in the knowledge that I have done nothing wrong.

Concave Chest says his name and the name of another agent, a short, ugly man whose face looks like that of a Tolkien troll. I force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, since my mind is constantly comparing what is going on to every beautiful, dashing agent I have ever seen grill a suspect in a spy movie. "Do you have a camera?" Concave Chest asks. I give him my camera, and as he is rifling through it, the Tolkien-Troll-looking man asks me which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady or unsavory 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 who are emptying my torn Nike bag and carefully fingering its seams.

"You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Concave Chest says. "Thailand is chock full of amazing street art," I say. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful graffiti there." My zeal has little impact on their stony demeanors. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I say that I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I say that I am ready take a lie detector test at any time. "Well, the thing is,” he says, “we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts (those guys will be here in the morning), 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 the Ps used to write the note. Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."

"OK," I say, nodding and waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Concave Chest says. Before I can answer, my cordial TSA guardian pulls my marker from his pocket and places it on the table. Concave Chest's face lights up with excitement. "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, before a judge, things will go 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 mess this up, I am looking at three to five years in a maximum security federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.' I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Concave 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..." (here I pause, for the agents have all perked up and leaned forward and strained their ears to hear exactly what I am about to say, thereby indicating just how important my next words are) "… 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," Concave Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of the Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat your preceding statements under polygraph?" "Absolutely. I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync,” I say, “but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, at eight a.m., I shall be there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right-hand side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left-hand side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I did not even set foot on the left-hand side of the plane. I was in seat number ###C. Compare the fingerprints on that seat to the fingerprints in the bathroom. 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-hand side of the plane, and in the vicinity of that seat."

"Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?" he says. I again assert that I am ready to polygraph at any time. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now because it will be better for you in the long run." 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 permanent 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 sit heavily into the chair and stare at the assembled feds while I force my breathing back to normal and the anger within me to abate.

"Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you'll be in Los Angeles, so, we'll be in touch," Concave Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says, offhand. I shake my head and say No. His eyebrows rise incredulously. "Thank you all very much for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I sit next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say, smiling. He laughs until 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 through a warren of forgotten passageways to the customs area. While I am waiting in line (and getting stared at constantly by hovering federal agents), my unpleasant neighbor during the flight keeps giving me strange looks from his line a few lines down. But before I can make anything of his glances 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 toward the exit, but, halfway there, my former TSA guardian, he whose name I shall not mention, stops me short. "You don't have any checked baggage? You traveled alone, to Thailand, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say, "it cuts down on time and all but eliminates the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough; I keep my answers short and my eyes fixed on the ground. It is nearly one in the morning. He bids be farewell and I exit into the main arrivals hall without further delay. After urinating for what seems like an eternity, I call my lawyer to let him know what just transpired. Forced to remove cash from a highly priced ATM (because both my prearranged ride and the cheap bus have stopped running), and sick of being shadowed by uniformed officers, I count my twenties, hail a taxi-cab, and speed off into the night, a free man.

p.s. If a law enforcement agent 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, he or she wants you to sacrifice your rights, he or she is your enemy and an enemy of Liberty, and he or she wants only to send you to prison. Please do not ever – EVER – forfeit your rights and protections. Thousands of good Americans have died to guarantee those rights. Educate yourself, and fight tyranny and oppression wherever they might raise their ugly heads.

p.p.s. I never received a call, and I have been not questioned nor approached subsequently.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

defend the Constitution!

The police forces of America are waging war against our Constitution. As those people sworn to the task of defending the Constitution, police officers may not at any time perform unwarranted searches or seizures. As those people dedicated to serving the community, cops must obey the Constitutional parameters at all times. If a police officer attempts to search your car, if she tries to root around in your pockets, even if she so much as asks to search any of your possessions, she is an enemy of the People and a destroyer of your legal protections.

Do not let power-hungry pigs get the upper hand – read your Constitution, and defend it from all who seek to do it harm.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on safety vs. liberty

  In America today, we face a simple choice: whether to fight for our freedom or to continue on our present course, and sacrifice freedom to the hollow lie of false security. (By false security I mean the efforts by our government to control the lives the American People by restricting what they do to their bodies, and by punishing them for pursuing Happiness or for exercising Liberty, efforts that mock and destroy the tender concept of freedom by trying to make it one-size-fits-all, when it is a messy, individualistic affair too easily ruined through external tampering.)

  We, the People of America, are not a free people. We have allowed our freedom to be taken from us. We have allowed, for forty (40) years, the Controlled Substances Act to destroy our freedom to choose what to do with our own bodies (thankfully, it is not yet illegal to get tattooed, or to undergo elective surgery, two activities that alter the body just as much as recreational drug use). We have allowed the Patriot Act to do violence to the Constitution, and to rob us of our once inalienable protections. We have allowed our police to focus on sidestepping our Constitutional protections (by letting them brow-beat citizens into body and property searches, and by letting the police lie, cheat, and steal in order to bust criminals engaged in non-violent “crimes”), a focus that negates police effectiveness and that forces them daily to violate their most sacred of oaths, as they have all sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. (A police officer actively involved in persuading a citizen to give up his Constitutional protections is actively involved in destroying the U.S. Constitution.)

  We have allowed all these things to happen because we have allowed Fear into our hearts. When, in the early Seventies, we saw our crime rates rise, we blamed it solely on drug-use, and banned the use of certain substances (thereby robbing the American people of the right to dispose of their bodies any way they wanted), while not banning certain other substances – alcohol and cigarettes – substances that have maimed and murdered millions of America's sons and daughters. When faced with the consequences of our failed foreign policies (09SEP2011), we gave up our freedom, preferring to have our liberty violated by persons within our own government rather than to have it violated from without. For these reasons, we are no longer a free People. For these reasons, ours is no longer the land of the free (for Liberty knows few personal restrictions), nor is it the home of the brave (for the pure of heart rejoice always in their impending death: they fear only cowardice).

  In concurrence with the erosion of America's common dream, we have seen the erosion of our most basic and fundamental concepts. Our patriotism has been supplanted by conspicuous flag-waving and banner-hanging (very often in blatant violation of the code governing the treatment of the flag of the United States of America). Our secular morality has been high-jacked by the forces of religious conservatism (to become xenophobic proxy-racism). Gone are the days when we were told to fear nothing but fear itself: now we are told exactly what to fear, and that we have a whole lot more to fear that we ever thought we were capable of being afraid of. Our once-great traditions of story-telling and gung-ho, can-do enthusiasm have been tongue-lashed out of us by our corporate overlords; they have shriveled to almost nothing before the inexorable, terrible beauty of television.

  Brothers. Sisters. Fellow New Guards for our future Security. Now is the time for your voices to be heard. Now is the time to recover for our Posterity the promise of this land, and to free our constitutionally-guaranteed Liberty from the shackles of repression, religion, and fear.

  Freedom, much like democracy, is always messy: its expression will hurt someone else's feelings, every time. But as much sacrifice as freedom demands, it repays tenfold with deep, abiding confidence, with true and tender self-respect. So take a chance, and take your opinions known: it does not matter what you have to say, merely that you are saying it out loud, in full accordance with your Constitutional rights.

  It is easier, far easier, not to fight for the Blessings of Liberty that the Constitution guarantees: all we have to do is continue to do nothing, to let the enemies of freedom take from us the few liberties we have left.

  This cannot come to pass. Stand up. Speak out. Challenge everything.


p.s. congratulations to the United States Marine Corps for two hundred thirty six years of defending the liberty of the American people from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Libertatem Defendendam - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp