pretty much fucked

For the average citizen, ignorance of the law does not excuse him from punishment. Consider that taken together federal, state, and local laws number in the tens of thousands, and change, constantly. Without focused effort, however, most Americans commit 3 felonies a day, as Mr. Harvey Silverglate of Boston writes in his book. When looked at critically, this system seems to exist not to protect or better lives but to extort cash from or transfer into prison-slavery people who get caught breaking said myriad laws. (Please note: according to the U.S. Constitution, slavery is still legal in America, but only as a form of punishment, i.e. prison.) For the citizen working as a police officer, however, ignorance of the law - ignorance even of the fundamental tenets of the Constitution - is met not with reprimand but reward. Following Heien v. North Carolina, citizens working in the police forces can violate the rights and freedoms of their fellow citizens, first performing warrant-less searches then claiming ignorance of the Constitution’s 4th amendment protections against same. What sort of nation allows a heavily armed police force - a standing army beholden to neither established law nor the opinions of mankind - to operate free of the constraints of the very document upon which it was founded? What sort of country sends the armed agents it has chosen to enforce its laws out into the street without first making sure they understand the contents of the very document they at some point swore to protect and uphold? When a terrorist attacks, the various churches of the religion he claims adherence to come forward and denounce his violent ways. Where, however, are the voices of the various police departments around America coming forward to denounce extrajudicial executions committed by their brothers in blue? Are police unions in large numbers urging their members to stop escalating roadside encounters and stating publicly that they do not condone violent acts against unarmed civilians regardless of creed, hue, or race? The police unions are not, and great numbers of police officers are not, because citizens who work as police officers exist not to protect the rest of us but to distrust, fine, follow, track, stalk, and - if startled - shoot those of us who do not work as police officers. Now, more than perhaps ever before, the age-old concerns about watchers (and who watches them) lick hot at the forefront of the mind.

Video recordings abound of police officers shooting unarmed or legally armed average civilians out of at best fearful aggression and at worst hateful convenience. When investigated, most of the shootings are deemed justified - by an attorney general or equivalent legal party who works frequently with the trigger-happy police officer and his colleagues, who must depend on the man’s good favor to efficiently perform his daily duties, and who is thus inclined to find the man’s behavior in accordance with whatever police-specific or special laws that he and his ilk conspire to uphold and protect. (The American people have given police officers leave to break the law - to lie, cheat, and steal - in order to secure a criminal conviction. Ought we be surprised that they’ve decided to include in their list of permitted crimes that of shooting first and asking the questions later?) The lawless savagery of absolute Despotism that occurs when those supposed to keep the peace are given leave to break it - at will and without fear of punishment - runs counter to the letter of our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence. (In reality, It offers the People no protections, however, as in the opinion of the U.S. federal government the Declaration has no legal weight or legislative significance.) Among the causes that compelled the Founding Persons to declare their separation from the British empire was as follows - For Quartering large bodies of troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States(.) When reading the Declaration immediately after you finish this piece, I challenge you to substitute ‘the King of Great Britain’ with ‘the U.S. federal government.’ How similar to the conditions we face today were those which drove the Founding Persons to call bullshit and ouster their plutocratic overlords? (In a widely-circulated official Pentagon training manual, the Founding Persons - George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, &c. are referred to as criminal extremists one rung below outright terrorists who would today be barred from military service). Are the conditions we currently face but another example of sic semper tyrannis, proof that a political force of sufficient size and longevity will naturally evolve into the very oppressive and dastardly power it once sought to overthrow - even a political force conceived for and supposedly dedicated to the purpose of bringing betterment and liberty to a large mass of people?

Unless we average citizens do something very soon, the million tentacles of the teenage police-state throbbing in our midst will seek out and suffocate what few freedoms we have left. Since 2001 C.E., civilians working as police officers have killed more unarmed and innocent civilians than the terrorists did on 11 September, albeit one or two and not hundreds or thousands at a time. How does one root out a beast as firmly latched to the fear-teat of modern America as a police force that slays our youth and hounds the defenseless whilst demanding knee-jerk and blind obedience to its every whim and fancy? A beast whose appetite for blood and gore never lingers, whose cruel heart pumps blood black and blue? Not quickly, efficiently, or thoroughly. To start, however, please know your rights, and record every interaction with the police. Beyond that, though, put on some lipstick and rouge, because we the People are pretty much fucked.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on naming conventions

Every state in America's South has destroyed the concept that “All men are created equal” by adding to its state constitution portions of the Christian bible's old testament. Proving themselves wholly ignorant of the fact that none of the persons who founded this American Republic saw fit to restrict the rights of free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals to enter into contractual agreements with other free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals, tens of millions of freedom-hating voters in Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virgina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky decided to embed the hateful opinions of their god Jehovah, or YHWH, into their states' constitutions (for an example of these dastardly and cruel opinions, read Leviticus 20, specifically verse 13). Instead of actually coming out of their hate-closets and confessing their disdain for the notion that democracy can flourish amongst the peoples of the earth only when church is kept separate from state, these misguided voters casually forgot to mention which religious text they drew upon when drafting their laws, laws that ended hundreds of years of equality amongst the various peoples of America.

In keeping with this new tradition of doing crazy things without calling them crazy things and actually getting away with it, we Lovers of Liberty shall no longer refer to smoking weed as smoking weed, but as grimble-dinks (or something similar), and our spraying of graffiti and applying of street-art will henceforth be called huddel-fugg (or something similar). Since neither grimble-dinks nor huddel-fugg have been classified as crimes by any judge known to mankind, we shall do them to our hearts' content and without even the slightest effort to hide these our preferred methods for Pursuing our Happiness as we see best fit.

The accused war-criminal former President George Walker Bush authorized the use of torture by referring to it as “enhanced interrogation techniques,”and the accused war-criminal President Barack Hussein Obama continues to violate the right of individuals not to be transported across vast distances in order to be imprisoned without trial or access to legal counsel by referring to it as “renditioning.” By committing these crimes against humanity, our highest officers have proven to mankind that we Americans are but loathsome jackasses who long ago sacrificed our sacred Honor by violating a half-dozen national and international laws in order to end the lives of persons merely suspected of having done us harm (see the slaying of the Saudi Arabian citizen known as Usama bin Laden and the killing of the American citizen known as Anwar al-Awliki). These our accused war-criminal Presidents have shown us Lovers of Liberty a way, however, of doing whatever we please without fear of punishment, retribution, or the application of clearly-worded federal, state, local, national, and international laws and statutes – we have but to do what we wish to do when we decide is best to do it and to ignore the cries and condemnation of any and all persons who demand that we stop. Unlike our accused war-criminal presidents, however, we just want to Pursue our Happiness in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the XIV Amendment to the Constitution when, where, and how we as individuals decide is best; we shall continue to respect the Liberty of others even as we are imprisoned and abused by the various layers of American government for living lives full of Liberty and devoid of harm to other persons. What a fucking crock of bullshit we have allowed this country to become. Hrm, though, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

counter-protest | assault on the square

  In keeping with the horrendous pagan tradition known as Halloween, today I dressed up in a fine cashmere loden (cloak) and a nice, pointy felt hat, to keep me warm out on the square in downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania. My new sign for this heathen holiday: WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END HALLOWEEN opposite KEEP DEMOCRACY MESSY.

  In addition to the usual jeers, middle fingers, and cautious votes of confidence, I was approached by a skinny, middle-aged man who claimed that freedom of religion means freedom to worship Jesus, not freedom to worship any other god (Satan). I told him he was wrong about that, and about his claims that the Quakers founded America (we were founded in 1776, by the 2^nd Constitutional Congress), whereupon he battered me (by tapping me on the arm with his cheap little fake-leather notebook). Immediately I sprung back out of his reach, lambasting him for violating my person and saying, “If you assault me again, sir, I will defend myself.” He laughed and scoffed and looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed his foul act, mocking my anger at having been touched without consent. He claimed to have at one time been a Marine, and said that he was about to beat the crap out of me.

  He called me a pussy (I agreed), and a faggot (I agreed), and I invited him to kindly go fuck himself somewhere else, but he stuck around to make fun of me and to try to block my sign with his body. “Why are you assaulting their freedom of speech?” he asked, to which I responded that I was doing nothing of the sort, rather that I was defending the rights of the women of America to decide for themselves what to do with their bodies, and with things growing inside their bodies. When he would not budge, I started singing my nonsense song about vaginas and wombs and keeping your business out of them, which sent him skittering across the road to safety.

  He talked to each of the anti-choice protester in turn (no doubt recounting his terrifying encounter), and when a police cruiser drove past (they drive past every few minutes now) he pointed at the officer and yelled at me to report his criminal conduct. I responded by smiling and nodding my head at him, so he gave me the finger, and fled into a nearby shoe store.

  With my new signs – WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH and WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END HALLOWEEN – I think I have been getting my message through to the disinterested drivers who pretend to ignore the sign-war on their square. The gist of my struggle is this: if we let the forces of moralistic and religious conservatism destroy one of our freedoms (that being liberty, or the ability to decide what to do with your own body), all other freedoms (speech, assembly, religion, &c) will be taken from us as well.

  Hence my other new sign, KEEP DEMOCRACY MESSY, to remind the People that counter-protest is vital to the healthy functioning of a true democracy in that, as an organic reaction to a well-organized and well-funded juggernaut of religious oppression (40 days for life), it provides a plurality of opinion.

  Stand up. Speak out. Challenge everything.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp