A loaded weapon
Threatens all of our safety.
Showing posts with label Safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Safety. Show all posts
26 December 2018
23 June 2017
if not we
The corporatocracy that America has evolved into is not the form of government designed for this land by the Founding Persons. Nowhere in any of the founding documents, from the Declaration of Independence over the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, is there any mention of this land existing in a perpetual state of war that benefits the controlling interests of a handful of massive corporate entities at the expense of civil liberties.
Thomas Jefferson saw an aristocracy of corporations as a threat to humans’ natural rights; and James Madison warned that war is the most dreaded enemy to public liberty. Regardless of these prior warnings, however, America has become exactly what our exalted forbears feared most - a quasi-republic ruled by corporations that together have enough wealth to buy elected officials and siphon real wealth (in the form of gold) out of the economy using perfectly legal methods (the Federal Reserve System, which is a private corporation).
This system will not change anytime soon. The corporations (and the few families who own them) that wield such enormous power are not about to step aside in favor of the freedoms and democratic institutions imagined for us by the Founding Persons. If the existing corporatocracy wanted to let wealth trickle down, wealth would have trickled already; if it wanted to solve unemployment and eradicate poverty, it would have solved and eradicated already. America’s monied ruling class has had centuries of time during which and vast resources with which to create in this great land an utopia of prosperity for all at the expense of none. This author proposes, therefore, that we the People set aside a few small parcels of land (similar to the reservation system) within America in which they who control the undemocratic and unconstitutional corporatocracy may do whatever unimaginably rich persons do besides breathe and eat. On the rest of the land, however, the People ought set up a form of government - one that closely follows the text of our Founding Documents, which include the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution - that to us shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.
All power stems from the People, and the existing structures exist only because we allow them to exist. If we are not to bring about the true promise of this grand experiment, then who? And if we are not to do it now, then when?
americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
18 October 2013
on bicycling cuffs
Inspect closely the hose of any hardcore and regular velocipedist and you will find his ankle cuffed. Held firmly in place by clasp or tie or tiny bent teeth the leg-cuff serves one main purpose: to keep the pant-leg from fouling in and being soiled by crank or gear or spoke. In the course of their duty the parts of a bicycle that spin accumulate grit and grime and soot and dirt, which swim in a soup of chain-grease that upon contact instantly impregnates clothing with tenacious and tar-black patterns removable only by excision. Furthermore, when a loose pant-leg catches on the teeth of a gear-wheel it can bring the rider's legs to such a sudden stop that their momentum unbalances and unships him, an undesirable event that results in bruised egos, skinned elbows, and cracked skulls. During his life this author used to laugh upon seeing individuals wearing the bicycling cuff, until he himself ruined a few pairs of pants and nearly crashed more than once due to his clothing getting caught on protrusion, nub, or gear-wheel. Now, he cuffs both legs. (The cuff on his right leg he sewed together using a discarded Velcro clasp and the reflective tape from a bloody safety vest he found in the woods during hunting season; the cuff on his left leg is battery-operated and at night flashes a bright red light.) The only disadvantage to cuffing the pants while riding is that people will laugh and point and wonder what the balls one is up to, which is a small price to pay for improved safety and the knowledge that one will arrive in pants soiled only by the tears of the traffic-jammed drivers one passed along the way. Huzzah.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
15 April 2013
a bogeyman lacking
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 pinkie red 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 keep enforcing its will upon a weary populace, and unable to keep up with the sheer might of NATO's consumption-centered capitalism and widespread industrial automation. 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 the commies were), America found herself without a clearly defined enemy.
Into this void came the 11 September 2001 attacks, after which the branches of the U.S. government that were charged with defense and intelligence focused their various highly-sophisticated covert surveillance, espionage, murder, and sneak-thievery apparatuses not onto external foes 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 foolish enough to still be using 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, 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 superfluous bullshit we were instructed to buy during exquisitely-crafted television commercials which we payed good money for the privilege to be exposed to.
There is a balance that the federal government must strike between keeping us, the People, Safe and Happy; since the Bush2 presidency and continuing into that of Obama, however, this balance tilted drastically to the side of Safety at the cost of Happiness. We, the People, must find a way to regain the balance that our nation has lost, but we choose instead to rot our minds watching TV and to rack up consumer debt because we cannot control the knee-jerk drive to impulsive and conspicuous materialism, and there is little hope that we might accomplish much of anything beyond become fatter, lazier, sadder, and less free. With Osama Bin Laden dead and the regime of the commie bastard long since withered away, our worth as a People is plummeting daily; perhaps we deserve our status as the new bogeymen, as the new whipping posts of the power-hungry plutocrats who punish and imprison us for daring to pursue Happiness.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
Into this void came the 11 September 2001 attacks, after which the branches of the U.S. government that were charged with defense and intelligence focused their various highly-sophisticated covert surveillance, espionage, murder, and sneak-thievery apparatuses not onto external foes 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 foolish enough to still be using 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, 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 superfluous bullshit we were instructed to buy during exquisitely-crafted television commercials which we payed good money for the privilege to be exposed to.
There is a balance that the federal government must strike between keeping us, the People, Safe and Happy; since the Bush2 presidency and continuing into that of Obama, however, this balance tilted drastically to the side of Safety at the cost of Happiness. We, the People, must find a way to regain the balance that our nation has lost, but we choose instead to rot our minds watching TV and to rack up consumer debt because we cannot control the knee-jerk drive to impulsive and conspicuous materialism, and there is little hope that we might accomplish much of anything beyond become fatter, lazier, sadder, and less free. With Osama Bin Laden dead and the regime of the commie bastard long since withered away, our worth as a People is plummeting daily; perhaps we deserve our status as the new bogeymen, as the new whipping posts of the power-hungry plutocrats who punish and imprison us for daring to pursue Happiness.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
05 November 2012
protect economic Safety
Persons who respect and read the Declaration of Independence will recognize that the role of government is to serve one main purpose: to bring about our Safety and Happiness. Keeping this in our minds, we look at the banks in this country that continue to steal billions of dollars from the American people, banks that starting in 2008 C.E. (common era) were given hundreds of billions of tax-paper dollars so that their larcenous and short-sighted practices would not drag this country into total ruin, banks that to this day are removing the families of active-duty military personnel from their homes and evicting old and sick persons with the the full support and active participation of armed and role-crazy police officers.
These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.
In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.
In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
19 October 2012
keeping out friends
Every door in this hunting-shack that leads to the outside has a lock; every night, as I practice my tactile awarenesses by stepping gingerly throughout this hovel with the lights off, in pitch-blackness, I activate these locks one after the other, with a few flicks of my fingers locking out the dark, the cold, and all things unforeseeable. And yet, every night, after basking briefly in the fleeting surety of my false security, I laugh out loud at myself for ever having believed such nonsense in the first place.
Locks only keep out friends and people who might desire to enter one's home but who are too nice to smash in one of its windows. Robbers and thieves are not deterred by locks – they never have been; they never will be; and there is nothing one could ever do, short of encasing one's entire home in a shell of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick and never leaving, that would be able to prevent a dedicated and determined person from gaining access to its dusty interior. (I doubt that even such measures would keep out someone with time, a cutting torch, and a pneumatic jackhammer on his side.) Locking one's doors at night is a good idea, especially where I live out in the sticks where there is really no one else around to watch my door or to keep an eye on things regularly; and few insurance companies are likely to compensate for stolen goods if they discover that exterior doors had been left unlocked; for the most part,however, leaving doors unlocked is a sign of one's abiding faith in the goodness of mankind, a beacon of love to one's neighbors, proof of one's detachment from material goods, and a strong indication of how little value one places on the trappings of the harsh outer world and how greatly one cherishes the tender peace within.
A better writer than I once urged us to invite in anyone who knocks on our doors, to grant entry to any person coming to call – be that person angry or joyful, bearing arms or bringing gifts – into the shadowy recesses of our homes, and, thereby, to allow him to plumb the deepest depths of our buoyant and exuberant souls. I struggle to follow this saying, preferring too often the calm of safety to the excitement of risk, trying too often to erect walls against the messy Great Unknown instead of welcoming it in with open arms. If I have learned anything during the past three-and-a-half decades, however, it is that, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or stop up my ears, the Universe always finds a way to access those areas I would prefer to keep hidden, and to pierce such veils as my ego tells me I need to keep in place. Slowly, then, and only with considerable effort, am I learning to let go of my fears and to drink as deeply as I can of the horrible beauty of this wonderful thing we call life. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Locks only keep out friends and people who might desire to enter one's home but who are too nice to smash in one of its windows. Robbers and thieves are not deterred by locks – they never have been; they never will be; and there is nothing one could ever do, short of encasing one's entire home in a shell of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick and never leaving, that would be able to prevent a dedicated and determined person from gaining access to its dusty interior. (I doubt that even such measures would keep out someone with time, a cutting torch, and a pneumatic jackhammer on his side.) Locking one's doors at night is a good idea, especially where I live out in the sticks where there is really no one else around to watch my door or to keep an eye on things regularly; and few insurance companies are likely to compensate for stolen goods if they discover that exterior doors had been left unlocked; for the most part,however, leaving doors unlocked is a sign of one's abiding faith in the goodness of mankind, a beacon of love to one's neighbors, proof of one's detachment from material goods, and a strong indication of how little value one places on the trappings of the harsh outer world and how greatly one cherishes the tender peace within.
A better writer than I once urged us to invite in anyone who knocks on our doors, to grant entry to any person coming to call – be that person angry or joyful, bearing arms or bringing gifts – into the shadowy recesses of our homes, and, thereby, to allow him to plumb the deepest depths of our buoyant and exuberant souls. I struggle to follow this saying, preferring too often the calm of safety to the excitement of risk, trying too often to erect walls against the messy Great Unknown instead of welcoming it in with open arms. If I have learned anything during the past three-and-a-half decades, however, it is that, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or stop up my ears, the Universe always finds a way to access those areas I would prefer to keep hidden, and to pierce such veils as my ego tells me I need to keep in place. Slowly, then, and only with considerable effort, am I learning to let go of my fears and to drink as deeply as I can of the horrible beauty of this wonderful thing we call life. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
31 August 2012
Commons, constitutional Right
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states that the role of government is to provide for the general Welfare. We the people, together with local, state, and federal governments, can only accomplish this if we properly protect the Commons, something which neither our system of quasi-free-market capitalism nor today's re-election-focused politicians deem important. The average, hard-working American, however, relies daily on things that make up the Commons, including roads, bridges, radio waves, wi-fi, seams of coal, deposits of natural gas, clean and smog-free air (vital to the health of all persons), clean and potable water (vital to the health of all persons), and national and local parks. Where once, however, a person suffering cold had the right to walk into the woods and collect for herself a few armfuls of wood, now those trees belong to individuals who sell that wood for profit. When something that belongs equally to everyone is sold by one just person, for no other purpose than his or her personal gain, the beauty of the Commons is shattered, Nature's bounty serving not the interests of all persons equally but only the interests of a few, specifically.
Among the gravest dangers facing America today is our loss of appreciation for things that have intrinsic value, that have worth beyond the merely monetary; our system of Me-First capitalism has so infiltrated and poisoned our minds that we think that everything comes with a price-tag, that everything is for sale. If we just admitted to being a nation of whores, a nation focused on the accumulation of personal wealth, if we just fessed up to selling ourselves into wage-slavery in order to maintain our electricity-dependent, non-self-sufficient lifestyles, then our estimation in the opinions of mankind might not be so low; but, as things stand, we come across as childish and hypocritical assholes who complain about the poor state of our lives while sitting around all day watching TV and shoveling food processed by other downtrodden corporate wage-slaves into our ever-expanding stomachs. The notion of the Commons relies on communal sacrifice, on inter-personal sharing, and on the idea that some aspects of our lives – love, mercy, humility, equality, and generosity – cannot be pigeonholed but must remain beyond the realm of definition, classification, and exploitation. To bring about this state of affairs and to rescue our tender humanity from the ever-grasping paws of profit-hungry corporate interests and the greed of unscrupulous men, we must stand together, protecting what belongs to us all with Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor.
The Declaration of Independence defines government as that body which brings about the Safety and Happiness of the people. Furthermore, it grants us the right to alter or to abolish our government should it become destructive of our Safety and Happiness. Friends, Yankis, fellow patriots, we demand that our governments protect the Commons diligently, since clean air, pure soil, clear water, and guaranteed civil rights make us Happy and Safe and poisoned air, barren soil, polluted water, and preferential treatment for avaricious, self-interested individuals makes us Unsafe and Unhappy. The government of the United States of America does not exist to pay $400 billion to defense contractors, to cut taxes for wealthy corporations and rich individuals, to stop funding education, to stop funding programs that assist the poor and the elderly, to attack and kill persons merely suspected of committing grave crimes (such as Al-Awlaki, Osama Bin Laden), to subjugate foreign peoples in order to gain access to their mineral and fuel resources, or to restrict the ability of its own people to consume whichever drugs they decide best; the government of the U.S.A. exists to insure domestic tranquility and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, which it does best by protecting the Commons and making sure they stay free to all who may require their bounty. As long as we remain undisciplined and look the other way, however, and as long as we participate in the travesty of conspicuous consumption, we shall remain the enemies of the Commons, blind to the fragile truths which can save us from ourselves. To free the person, free her mind. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Among the gravest dangers facing America today is our loss of appreciation for things that have intrinsic value, that have worth beyond the merely monetary; our system of Me-First capitalism has so infiltrated and poisoned our minds that we think that everything comes with a price-tag, that everything is for sale. If we just admitted to being a nation of whores, a nation focused on the accumulation of personal wealth, if we just fessed up to selling ourselves into wage-slavery in order to maintain our electricity-dependent, non-self-sufficient lifestyles, then our estimation in the opinions of mankind might not be so low; but, as things stand, we come across as childish and hypocritical assholes who complain about the poor state of our lives while sitting around all day watching TV and shoveling food processed by other downtrodden corporate wage-slaves into our ever-expanding stomachs. The notion of the Commons relies on communal sacrifice, on inter-personal sharing, and on the idea that some aspects of our lives – love, mercy, humility, equality, and generosity – cannot be pigeonholed but must remain beyond the realm of definition, classification, and exploitation. To bring about this state of affairs and to rescue our tender humanity from the ever-grasping paws of profit-hungry corporate interests and the greed of unscrupulous men, we must stand together, protecting what belongs to us all with Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor.
The Declaration of Independence defines government as that body which brings about the Safety and Happiness of the people. Furthermore, it grants us the right to alter or to abolish our government should it become destructive of our Safety and Happiness. Friends, Yankis, fellow patriots, we demand that our governments protect the Commons diligently, since clean air, pure soil, clear water, and guaranteed civil rights make us Happy and Safe and poisoned air, barren soil, polluted water, and preferential treatment for avaricious, self-interested individuals makes us Unsafe and Unhappy. The government of the United States of America does not exist to pay $400 billion to defense contractors, to cut taxes for wealthy corporations and rich individuals, to stop funding education, to stop funding programs that assist the poor and the elderly, to attack and kill persons merely suspected of committing grave crimes (such as Al-Awlaki, Osama Bin Laden), to subjugate foreign peoples in order to gain access to their mineral and fuel resources, or to restrict the ability of its own people to consume whichever drugs they decide best; the government of the U.S.A. exists to insure domestic tranquility and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, which it does best by protecting the Commons and making sure they stay free to all who may require their bounty. As long as we remain undisciplined and look the other way, however, and as long as we participate in the travesty of conspicuous consumption, we shall remain the enemies of the Commons, blind to the fragile truths which can save us from ourselves. To free the person, free her mind. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
04 June 2012
an open letter to America's founding persons
Dear individuals who founded or influenced the founding of the United States of America: may you have a good day. I write to you across a long stretch of time – nearly two hundred and forty years – with greetings and supplications. Much is being said of late in this fine land you crafted so long ago about your intentions, your motives, and your goals. Friends, woe is befallen us, for we have taken the essence of the nation you designed in the Declaration of Independence and trampled it unceremoniously to dust. As Dr. Franklin warned after the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, we have not been able to hold on to the republic you created; rather, we have allowed the forces of blind and inexorable avarice (which we now refer to rather as corporation-based, consumption-driven capitalism) to all but ruin the seemingly boundless promise of your intended nation. No longer does government exist to serve the People – now its punishes with fines and imprisonment those of us who drink deeply of the Blessings of Liberty and who pursue our Happiness as we see best fit without infringing upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person or persons; now it exists not to foster the free mind, the free life, or the free will but to punish the People for not living according to the rules it proclaims will bring the most benefit to the most people, rules, however, which are designed by and written for the benefit of a few hundred thousand of the richest citizens (and their respective corporate bodies) who enjoy privileged access to policy-makers due to their vast wealth, lack of humility, and insufficient focus on the Shared and Common Causes (making all people, equally, Safe and Happy) which should bind us, as countrymen, to one another, indelibly. Justice, friends, has been banished behind such dark and oppressive curtains as hang in our houses of deliberation; her blindfold has been removed in order to combat a poorly defined danger known as terrorism; and her sword now strikes down such persons – both native and foreign-born – as have not even been given a decent or fair trial by a jury of their peers. As mentioned previously, laws exist that promote neither the general Welfare nor that insure the domestic Tranquility but that subjugate the People to the whims of heavily-armed, fear-obsessed, oppression-minded police forces and that divert the vast wealth generated by the collective labor of this nation's citizens into the pockets of those few of us who have the best political connections and the broadest corporate reach. The noble cause of a more perfect Union has been replaced by the nation-wide homogenization of goods and services that has eroded the independent and self-respecting nature of the People, replacing it instead with a sheep-like mentality under which we slave primarily to fuel personal over-consumption of foodstuffs, electricity, and images that are piped at great expense into our homes where they move about on magical picture-boxes hanging from the walls.
Such is our suffering, and more. We move about not under our own power but atop and within auto-mobile metal boxes that are powered by the burning of a liquid pitch, an inflammable black goo that is pumped from the ground in distant places by hirsute, turbaned foreigners who use the profit from the sale of this oil to fund terrorist groups that in turn murder the People and maim our friends. Rather than raising and storing our own crops, we rely on foods that throughout their lives are sprayed regularly with an unknowable mixture of dangerous and volatile chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps via larger self-propelled metal boxes that travel upon thousands of miles of rock-and-liquid-pitch-paved roads; rather than raise our own livestock, we rely on meats that throughout their lives are injected regularly with an unknowable mixture of powerful medicines and growth-promoting chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps upon the aforementioned roads. And, due to this lack of autonomous locomotion and this over-abundance of foodstuffs, we have become lazy and fat, suffering therefore from fatness- and laziness-related diseases and dying of them by the hundreds of thousands.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, you who stamped this nation out of the dust, who risked Life, Fortune, and Honor in order to create a nation dedicated to the Safety and Happiness of a free and independent People, please accept our apologies for destroying all that which you risked to create, and for desecrating and neglecting all that which you worked so hand to bring about. We are weak, we are spineless, and we hardly deserve even the last, dying remnants of that which you so diligently created. Please, dearest fore-fathers and fore-mothers, please forgive us, for we knew the dangers of the path we have stumbled down, choosing it however because it offered us the least resistance. America delenda est.
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
Such is our suffering, and more. We move about not under our own power but atop and within auto-mobile metal boxes that are powered by the burning of a liquid pitch, an inflammable black goo that is pumped from the ground in distant places by hirsute, turbaned foreigners who use the profit from the sale of this oil to fund terrorist groups that in turn murder the People and maim our friends. Rather than raising and storing our own crops, we rely on foods that throughout their lives are sprayed regularly with an unknowable mixture of dangerous and volatile chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps via larger self-propelled metal boxes that travel upon thousands of miles of rock-and-liquid-pitch-paved roads; rather than raise our own livestock, we rely on meats that throughout their lives are injected regularly with an unknowable mixture of powerful medicines and growth-promoting chemicals before they are moved nearly to our doorsteps upon the aforementioned roads. And, due to this lack of autonomous locomotion and this over-abundance of foodstuffs, we have become lazy and fat, suffering therefore from fatness- and laziness-related diseases and dying of them by the hundreds of thousands.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, you who stamped this nation out of the dust, who risked Life, Fortune, and Honor in order to create a nation dedicated to the Safety and Happiness of a free and independent People, please accept our apologies for destroying all that which you risked to create, and for desecrating and neglecting all that which you worked so hand to bring about. We are weak, we are spineless, and we hardly deserve even the last, dying remnants of that which you so diligently created. Please, dearest fore-fathers and fore-mothers, please forgive us, for we knew the dangers of the path we have stumbled down, choosing it however because it offered us the least resistance. America delenda est.
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
11 April 2012
on luxury & comfort
This morning, while waiting for father sun to awaken, I heard on the radio an advertisement for a new motor-vehicle made by Lincoln. In this commercial, the company touted the vehicle's salient features, among them “organically tanned leather from Scotland, French stitching, and Moroccan (or Algerian) wood accents.” Beyond my abject loathing for a supposedly American company that pays non-Americans to make pretty, expensive cars for gullible Americans to buy, I find myself seething with rage at the notion in this country that we deserve things such as finery, luxury, and comfort.
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
19 March 2012
no better than Nazis
in
World War Two, we Americans fought bravely alongside Russians and
English and Chinese and Frenchmen to conquer the aggressiveness and
predatory nature of the Nazis and their allies. then, in the
aftermath of 11 September 2001, we became the aggressors, we became
the predators, and we invaded the sovereign nations of Iraq and
Afghanistan with a ferocity and a disdain for the laws of civility
that rivaled the ferocity and the disdain of the Nazis themselves. we
Americans started wars of aggression without having declared war on
these nations, thus robbing ourselves of the validity necessary to
see our actions through, thus violating and invalidating numerous
international treaties, thus sacrificing our precious honor for the
fleeting promise of safety. America delenda est.
場黑麥
ioanni
elymucampus fecit
06 October 2011
on our Declarational legacy
The United States of America was founded on such principles and organized in such form as to make the People Safe and Happy. In order for us to preserve for future generations even a shred of this nation's potential, we must redirect her course to honor and perpetuate the aims of the Declaration of Independence, and the promise of the Constitution. While this may sound complicated, the founders of our nation designed a relatively simple system with clearly defined parameters and expectations, those being: bestowing upon all mankind the inalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; forming a more perfect Union; establishing Justice; insuring the domestic Tranquility; providing for the common defence; providing for the general Welfare; and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
Current conditions in our Union of States infringe upon the Liberty of the People by dictating how we might dispose of our bodies (by consuming drugs or aborting unwanted fetuses), and by allowing the People to indenture themselves to undemocratic and totalitarian corporations that offer the shallow promise of monetary gain at the expense of individual pride and self-sufficiency. These conditions undermine the general Welfare by eliminating funding for public schools, and by leaving us exposed, lacking a national health care system, to the ravages of sickness and disease. These conditions infringe upon the Safety of the People by exposing us to hostility from without (due to our continuing occupation of countries that Muslims consider holy), by allowing too young citizens to drive, by polluting the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, and by granting privileged status to the economic interests of the top 20% at the expense of the economic Safety of the remaining 80% of the population, a privilege that furthermore does injury to Justice and the general Welfare alike when one considers that many millions of American children go hungry every day (see here).
These self-contradictory conditions are tearing apart our country from within. We have made our government bloated and inefficient by adding layers of bureaucracy to Homeland Security and by paying corporations interested solely in their own bottom line exorbitant sums to supply and assist our troopers deployed overseas; we as a People have lost our way, capable neither of compromise for the sake of national progress nor of peaceful cooperation with fellow citizens who do not share our political or religious opinions. As long as our nation persists, however, the Constitutional parameters are the benchmarks against which all legislation and all government actions must be weighed. Any legislation or acts that infringe thereupon (such as the Patriot Act, and the 1970 Controlled Substances Act) are estimable to tyrants only, and, as they violate the very essence upon which America was founded, must be repealed immediately.
Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration call for the dominion of one religion over the remaining religions or over the federal or state governments. Therefore, efforts by Sarah Palin and Rick Perry to spread like a suffocating blanket the teachings of their New Apostolic Reformation over our various halls of government can not, and will not, be successful. Similarly, any persons or groups calling for the incorporation of the rules of a specific religion into the laws of the land have no right to carry out their goals; indeed, any such efforts seek to abolish the Blessings of Liberty, and are thus intrinsically anti-American. The only acceptable actions that the various governments existing in these United States might initiate are those that satisfy the parameters of the Constitution and the Declaration alike.
For us as a People to realign ourselves with the founding parameters and principles, we should: ensure the general Welfare by extending Medicaid to all citizens, by pursuing medical research (stem cells) that exhibits significant potential for healing, and by making affordable and high-quality education available to all persons equally; reinstate Liberty by granting women full custodianship over their bodies, and by extending to all grown citizens the right to consume whichever drugs they think best; provide for the common defence by recalling our armed forces from territories not our own, so that they might defend the motherland; create and expand domestic markets so that our citizens might pursue a decent Happiness on their own soil; form a more perfect Union by abolishing electoral laws that favor a few states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida) at the expense of the remaining forty six states; rekindle the dying flame of Justice by retraining our police forces to protect rather than circumvent the rights granted the individual by the Constitution, and by altering the current rules of electoral fund-raising, rules that amplify well-funded interests while making irrelevant the voice of the common man; recalibrate the three branches of government so that they might once again gain the tender balance between executive, legislative, and judicial powers, a balance central to the (Constitutionally) correct functioning of our nation.
There are many more changes that must be made before we will have met the parameters of our founding documents, but the few suggestions mentioned above will put us back on track. As Benjamin Franklin said, We have created a republic, but only if we can keep it. In order to regain this grasp, we must break down existing legal and moral conditions, so that we and our Posterity might once again enjoy the full, unbridled joy of the Blessings of Liberty.
p.s. requiescat in pacem, Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011
Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp
05 September 2011
on free and ancient medicines
Sickness, like death, is a condition every living body must occasionally endure. Ailments come and go, ravaging this organ or that, sometimes effecting permanent damage, sometimes only causing the nodes to swell and the skin to appear loose and bloodless. In response to states of sickness, many Americans resort to traditional Western remedies passed down through the centuries, remedies designed to treat rather than to prevent. Often, these remedies fall short, their powers too weak to reverse the affects of neglect, procrastination, or downright abuse. With a significant portion of the American public lacking proper health coverage (see here), we are now witnessing twofold: steady increases in the costs of medical care (see here); growing numbers of individuals who, for whatever reasons, have allowed their potentially preventable conditions to become full-blown disorders (see here).
Yet the individual is not solely to blame – the political leaders of this country have too long focused on their own re-elections and on fulfilling the demands of their friends and allies, forgetting that the sole expressed purpose of government, the only justifiable reason for its existence, is to make the American people Safe and Happy. Good health is the foundation upon which all actions and aspirations are built; it is a component central to the industrial, artistic, and spiritual endeavors that nourish us in body and mind; without good health, safety is a cruel and clumsy lie, happiness but a distant memory of better and brighter days.
We could seek assistance in these matters from our elected officials; we could demand that our government provide ceaselessly for the general Welfare; we could rise up and say, “Happiness and Safety mean little if our bodies are weak and failing.” However, we would be fools to expect measured and timely response from houses and chambers that have too long now stopped their ears to the needs of the body politic while they with golden horns trumpet the causes and interests of an affluent plutocracy that now considers itself the rightful recipient of a disproportionately large portion of this nation's wealth.
Rather than relying on intervention or assistance from without, let us take matters into our own hands, and educate ourselves to the healing powers of common plants. What many have been told to eradicate are in reality species both hardy and ubiquitous, plants that spring readily from the soil in most any temperate zone. Among these plants are: plantago lanceolata, plantago major, woodsorrels (oxalis acetosella), salvia officinalis, and the lowly dandelion. Among the benefits gained from the proper use of these plants are: lower blood pressure, rapid external wound healing, self-dissolution of bladder and gall stones, purified kidneys, cleansed livers, a strengthened immune system, reduced arthritic swelling, cleared sinuses, and soothed bronchial tubes.
Yet the individual is not solely to blame – the political leaders of this country have too long focused on their own re-elections and on fulfilling the demands of their friends and allies, forgetting that the sole expressed purpose of government, the only justifiable reason for its existence, is to make the American people Safe and Happy. Good health is the foundation upon which all actions and aspirations are built; it is a component central to the industrial, artistic, and spiritual endeavors that nourish us in body and mind; without good health, safety is a cruel and clumsy lie, happiness but a distant memory of better and brighter days.
We could seek assistance in these matters from our elected officials; we could demand that our government provide ceaselessly for the general Welfare; we could rise up and say, “Happiness and Safety mean little if our bodies are weak and failing.” However, we would be fools to expect measured and timely response from houses and chambers that have too long now stopped their ears to the needs of the body politic while they with golden horns trumpet the causes and interests of an affluent plutocracy that now considers itself the rightful recipient of a disproportionately large portion of this nation's wealth.
Rather than relying on intervention or assistance from without, let us take matters into our own hands, and educate ourselves to the healing powers of common plants. What many have been told to eradicate are in reality species both hardy and ubiquitous, plants that spring readily from the soil in most any temperate zone. Among these plants are: plantago lanceolata, plantago major, woodsorrels (oxalis acetosella), salvia officinalis, and the lowly dandelion. Among the benefits gained from the proper use of these plants are: lower blood pressure, rapid external wound healing, self-dissolution of bladder and gall stones, purified kidneys, cleansed livers, a strengthened immune system, reduced arthritic swelling, cleared sinuses, and soothed bronchial tubes.
These plants go wherever the soil has been split or abused, crushed or laid bare by the passing of many feet, and at the edges of forests and pathways. They do not require regular care or special attention, and will grow in the least likely of places. When harvested at the proper time and consumed in the correct fashion (as teas, syrups, spreads, or powders), they can provide relief from many and various common conditions, from upset stomach and diarrhea to headaches, skin rashes, gout, and ill affects stemming from menopause.
If the healing plants are consumed regularly, they can help the human body to run smoothly and efficiently, managing the frequency and severity of ailments rather than addressing them when they have become problematic. Unlike pharmaceutical agents, the side-affects associated with the healing plants are either mild or non-existent, which all but eliminates the probability of wrecking one's liver in the pursuit of, say, lower blood pressure. Unlike newer methods of treatment relied upon today, the healing power of these plants has been known to wise-men, shamans, and philosophers in many different regions across the globe for close to a thousand years. So powerful are they that even the beasts of marsh and field use them.
Americans, awake! No longer must you suffer from lack of medical care. No longer must you live in pain or discomfort because you cannot afford your pills. No longer must you live in fear of sickness, hoping against hope that the inevitable will not occur, cursing big pharma and wishing that your elected officials had done more to fulfill the parameters of the Constitution. With the healing plants, you can conquer disease, cure ailments, and bring your body back into the harmony that nature readily and freely provides.
For wherever the earth's abused and ignored, there grow leaves that heal and reward.
場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp
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