an impolite proposal

In her Guardian piece entitled America: don’t be polite in the face of demagoguery, Jessica Valenti makes a few solid points. The main thrust of her argument appears to be as follows: The best way for free-thinking and open-minded Ynki who disapprove of his damaging ways and dangerous proposals is to shame and ridicule their incoming president - a proto-fascistic, narcissistic, and greedy demagogue who seems hellbent on destroying the steps this country has taken in the last 100 odd years to share the wealth America creates among all Americans equally.

This author has for nearly a decade now heaped brimstone and vituperation upon the various public figures and institutions he feels are endangering the essence of the American experiment. What have these writings gotten him? Little more than the satisfaction of knowing that he has played a small role in speaking truth to power. America’s elected leaders must be forced to remember that they govern only by the consent of the governed. One way of doing this is by speaking aloud or publishing articles that ridicule and mock their poor and short-sighted decisions. Together, united behind the common causes of Safety and Happiness, we the People can accomplish much; divided as we are, however, in our insular homes, separated from one another by television and fear of the unknown, we will continue to be treated as pawns with little power.

Until balance is achieved in this land, until the government fears and respects the People (in whom all power rests), this whorphan will continue his efforts to shame and ridicule the forces of oppression that so tightly strangle our potential greatness.

JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on false compassion

On Tuesday night, the dog came back from the veterinarian's office, with droopy eyes and a ridiculously large cone around her neck. For the fourth time in less than two weeks, the poor beast – a two-hundred pound English mastiff – had undergone surgery to have her tail shortened, or, better said, to have the open mess of flesh and bone sewn back shut after she had chewed out the sutures. Why, you must be asking yourself, was she allowed to even get her mouth anywhere close to the freshly-closed wound? The answer, dear friends, is because of false compassion.

Her primary owner – a housewife in her forties with children of high-school age – had left the large, hurting bitch unsupervised on a number of occasions without properly restricting her ability to access the source of her pain. The woman had said repeatedly that she felt sorry because the dog had trouble getting around the house, bumping into things constantly with her plastic cone of shameful ridicule. Given her puffy eyes and despondent mood, oh, wouldn't it be nice to lift her suffering a bit by removing said shameful device and letting her lounge around, outside, by herself, next to her favorite tree. This woman's actions, of course, only added to the dog's suffering; her compassion proved false, harmful to her pet's well-being, dangerous, even, to its very life. The mastiff came within inches of death; had her owner not decided to spend another one-and-a-half thousand dollars to get the tail sewn back shut for the fourth time, the big bitch would have either been put down and cremated or taken into a nearby field, shot, and buried.

False compassion is similar to such false economy as is very often practiced by today's emotion-driven Americans, we who have been told to go with whatever our hearts tell us and that we can always buy whatever we want to buy in order to placate our slightest impulsive craving at our local convenience store, which is sure to open even at this time of night. Rather than practicing a bit of self-denial and self-control, we bash around and do what we think our gut is telling us to do rather than having a nice quiet sit and thinking about things for a while before acting. It was no better at the emergency room for pets, where I witnessed dozens of people fork over thousands of dollars for teeth cleaning, to buy a chemotherapy session for a fucking cat, and to try and save the life of a fourteen-year-old blind dog that was in its death throes, its body rigid and locked in seizure.

This is a touchy subject, one regarding which, I find while writing this article, I am in a sort of inner turmoil. At which point does one allow a giant dog into one's house, a dog recently rescued, a dog that shits and pisses on the floor every night for weeks, a dog that whacks her tail against the walls so badly when her new mistress returns from even the most brief trip outside that she develops a festering open wound that sprays droplets of blood with every wag? At which point does the damage caused to inter-human relationships by all the urine and blood and feces covering the inside of one's home compel one to give the dog away, to install a fenced-in kennel in the back yard, or to put the dog down quickly and quietly? The answers to these questions are hard to come by, but one question – whether to leave on the cone of shame or to let the dog waltz around a bit without it – has an easy answer: to reduce the bitch's overall suffering, one must leave the damn thing on, no matter her crocodile tears or pitiable whimpering.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on lacrosse – America's native game

Long have we Yankees watched, celebrated, and played non-native, imported sports. Baseball and ice hockey come originally from Canada; American football derives from British rugby; and tennis, let alone soccer, are European sports dreamed up by tards in the Old Country. (Basketball, as a makeshift sport created in America during the middle of the 20^th century, may well have been invented here, but, compared to lacrosse, too recently to be truly and exclusively American – it is a game for the modern world.) With invasive sports taking over our airways and poisoning our hearts, we ask, Where does it stop? What native-born game shall henceforth entertainment us? To the amateur patriot seeking to wring from his republic every last drop of terrible beauty; to the action lover yearning for the speed of soccer mixed with the crash of football; to the sadist lusting after the sight of blood spurting from well-bruised, moving flesh; to all these people, the game of choice is the game that thrived here long before the white man arrived to rape, to pillage, and to defile the good dark soil with his asphalt and concrete.

Lacrosse – brutal, quick, stunning lacrosse – was played on this continent well before the first paleface made landfall. For centuries prior to the arrival of European settlers, for generations before the white man lied and cheated and murdered his shameful way into the country's vast interior, this harsh sport blossomed amongst the democratic, resource-conscious First People nations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed area, and beyond. What better way to celebrate life than to try to bash one's opponent to death?! What better way to display one's vigor and fortitude than to take one's licks and to charge at the enemy with gentle, heedless rage?! Lacrosse requires hand-eye coordination and upper-body strength similar to that of tennis or baseball, stamina and agility similar to that of soccer, and bodily contact such as that felt in football, with an wholly unusual element: net-topped poles with which a player bashes and strikes at his opposing (ball-handling) player, hitting him anywhere about the upper body (excepting the neck and head area) even when he has fallen and is lying on the ground. (Lacrosse is played by both males and females, from the middle-school level onward.) Lacrosse is not a sport for persons with weak bones, inferior blood-clotting facilities, or a penchant for weeping – it is a sport for hardened operators for whom injury, pain, and deprivation are a way of life.

To the extent that each is a honorable, rugged, unflinching, team-oriented, and hard-hitting individual, the lacrosse player resembles the self-sufficient, resource-conscious American patriot. Watching lacrosse is akin to peering back in time to the days when our problems were solved quickly and according to clearly defined rules, to a time in which decision-makers hashed things out by bashing each other nicely over the head while attempting to pluck from the sky a small, rock-hard, fast-moving round object. Oh, if only the long-silent war-whoops would once again sound from the throats of proud and self-less warriors.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit