on smaller states

When the U.S. American states were created, their populations were far smaller than they are today. In the centuries since this nation's inception, it has acquired areas legally, annexed territories by force, bought a region or two, and stolen vast tracks of landscape from numerous First People tribes. Most often, these regions were first broken down into manageable sizes before being given names and assigned stars on the flag. If they had been incorporated at their original sizes, we would now have one state reaching from Baton Rouge to Bismark and another from San Diego to Seattle. Instead of one state legislature and one governor answering to a hundred million people, today's much smaller states allow more people to have a greater role in determining for themselves the course of their lives. In this instances, as in a number of others (think babes, booze, and brats), more is better, and more states would lead to better lives for everyone alive today as well as for the many generations yet unborn. (Immediately, the author objects to his own argument on the grounds that, in the long run, more babes or booze or brats rarely make a person's life better.)

If, for example, we were to split California into three different states (northern coastal, southern coastal, and inland), the populations living in these areas could more effectively band together for the protection and propagation of their own interests instead of being tethered to societal groups with whom they have little in common. Furthermore, a smaller state would allow for greater and more fruitful citizen participation in society: in his lifetime, a man could get to know most everyone in a smaller community and create bonds with the few hundred thousand people living therein, whereas the idea of casually meeting and mingling with everyone in a state of 30 million (plus) souls is unfeasible to the point of being absurd. Today's Californian who desires to become acquainted with all of the people whose driver's licenses resemble his faces a daunting and nearly insurmountable challenge; dispirited and perplexed, he retreats behind the all-too-penetrable defenses of his meager abode and purees his mind watching seven hours of television a day.

As to the preferred size for new states, we humans already self-segregate by moving to cities with greater frequency and in larger numbers. City-sized states would allow for more efficient use of a political representative's time: if his constituents numbered in the two hundred thousand, he might feasibly speak to each one of them at least once a year (by addressing large gatherings of them at public events), whereas, today, governors and legislators struggle constantly with the challenge of trying to speak to even a small fraction of the people whose lives they are supposed to be governing let alone for whom they are expected to draft legislation impartial and beneficial to all. In addition to allowing for a better allocation of resources, reducing the population sizes of states by splintering them into more and smaller entities would provide greater political power to people not living in cities; it would negate situations we currently face in which the voices of far-flung rural residents are drowned out by the opinions of massed and motivated urbanites. The author fears, however, that we U.S. Americans must crawl to the end of the rabbit hole we have already entered and continue to suffer in brazen exacerbation the current trend of Homogenization To Enhance Corporate Profits that piggybacks on the disenfranchisement of great masses of citizens until such time as we come to recognize it for its dangerous and inherent inhumanity, and rid ourselves of it peacefully, and for good. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

risky political correctness

A dangerous trend has spread throughout these shakily-united States: the trend of political correctness. Damaging to honesty, truthfulness, and the very concept of Liberty itself, a person is being politically correct when, before speaking out loud, he stops to ponder whether or not what he is about to say might or might not offend someone within earshot. Rather than encouraging him to speak his mind freely in the knowledge that he has no – nada, null, zero, zilch – no control over the mental processes of other people nor the ability to control how others will react to whatever he chooses to say or do or sign or write, our society demands that he take everyone else's emotional and mental well-being into consideration and censor himself instead of just coming and saying whatever the deuce he intended to say in the first place.

Political correctness is un-American in that it forces us to be liars, to hide our prejudices and our stereotypes deep within the recesses of our souls, where hatred and malcontent tend to fester; it decreases the Safety of all Americans by allowing the bigot to mingle freely amongst open-minded people, his cruel heart filled with a resentment for people of color and a hatred for All Things Strange; it harms the Safety of all Americans by allowing bigotry and racism to build up in the mind of the sad and confused individual until he can no longer stand it, which makes him more likely to lash out physically against the object of his ire, a person with skin slightly darker than his. During more than one conversation between me, an American of European Descent, and Americans of African or Mixed African and European Descent (i.e. between a white person and brown people), I have heard these humans say that they would rather have their racist right out in public, where he can be tagged and avoided rather than for him to have to pretend to be color-blind when he really could care less if he saw a Negro being chained to a pickup truck and dragged.

Furthermore, political correctness emboldens the nitpickers and busybodies among us to wag their fingers at anyone even toeing the line of impropriety, and to say to them with self-righteous but artificial indignation: It's not nice to say this, and you shouldn't say that, because you might hurt this bunch's feelings, and cause that lot to be sad. There are many views espoused by religious extremists in this country – they who are trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and who want to amend our preciously secular Constitution to define marriage according to their and only their religious text – views I vehemently oppose and risk Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor to combat; yet while standing out in the snow counter-protesting nuns and stoking the ire of entire church parishes, I chose to speak my mind and to say hurtful and offensive things directly to them, right up in their faces, hardly flinching when they called the cops to complain about the public display of the word vagina, which is the medical term for one part of a woman's sex. I shall stop harping on the past and start encouraging the few lovers of Liberty left on these shores to end self-censorship, to encourage clear and open debate, and to fill their hearts with emptiness; together, we can conquer the scourge of political correctness, preferring honesty to deceit, choosing the Truth over lies. So stand up and speak freely – do it now, or forever scold your niece.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on losing a single vote

I shall not vote during this presidential election cycle. Normally, in the past, I made sure to cast my ballot one way or the other, even if I resided in a state in which, due to my being in the clear political minority, my vote did not count. (Why are there instances in which votes do not count, and why are there only two parties to represent the political interests of over one hundred and fifty millions of individual voters? America's system of representative politics is strange, corrupted, and unjust, indeed.)

Being in a battleground state (Pennsylvania), and living as I do in a predominantly politically and socially conservative area (York County), I know that I should vote this November, but our sitting president, Mr. Barack Obama, has lost my support, and his opponent – a fabulously-rich 1%er named Mitt Romney – embodies so many of the things that I see as wrong with this nation that I would sooner put out my own eyes with a melon-baller than cast a ballot in his favor. Up until recently, Mr. Obama had my support, but he signed NDAA 1540 into law, a defense bill which allows the government of the United States of America in instances of martial law to imprison her own citizens indefinitely, and without trial. (To be fair, NDAA 1540 was ratified unanimously by both the House and Senate, thus implicating all sitting Congresspersons and Senators in this, their most recent crime against Liberty.)

The Constitution of the United States of America contains provisions designed specifically to guard us – the people – against just such tyrannical overreaches. In the first Amendment, the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting[…] the right of the people[…] to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," and in its fifth Amendment the document states that, “No person shall be[…] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” NDAA 1540 makes it so that the American citizen is viewed as a criminal, as a worthless lout, as no better than those dirty Taliban fellows we have spent so much time, blood, and treasure trying to kill over the last ten years; it rescinds the citizen's right to redress grievances; and while federal, state, and local governments have violated the fifth Amendment for decades now by enforcing blanket restrictions on the liberty of the people to smoke or snort or shoot any such drugs they should wish to consume, NDAA 1540 deprives them of their liberty for nothing more than speaking out, or, merely, for being outside of their homes at the wrong time.

This defense bill sounds the death-knell for our country's 224-year-long experiment in individual freedom, granting our government such fantastic power as to make it the most clear and present danger to the rights of mankind that the world has ever seen. Welcome to the police-state, ladies and gentlemen, and get ready for a good, hard rear-ending, because I have the feeling that our leaders in the White House and Congress are only beginning to flex such increasingly awesome might as we have allowed them to give themselves lately. Fellow Children of Liberty, weep with me in shame as we bask in the afterglow of our nation's abject failure, kneeling as we do among the shredded gowns of our goddesses Liberty, and Justice. This November, I shall choose not one of these two evils but none of them, preferring rather to sacrifice my sacred franchise upon the forgotten altar of silent disobedience, since neither of these men is worthy of the post of President. America delenda est.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit