on freedom's price

Ask most any motorcyclist sporting a leather vest, jacket, or chaps, and he'll say that “The freedom of it” is one of the primary reasons that he rides. Ah yes, seductive and elusive Liberty, she who beckons from near and far, always around us but forever just out of reach, always tantalizingly close yet frustratingly far away, how we love her! We think about freedom, yearn for it, love it, enjoy it, abuse it, and harp on it, speaking of it in hushed tones and genuflecting before that giant copper-clad statue of goddess Liberty standing in New York's harbor to welcome the poor and the huddled masses to these our bountiful shores. Some people among us – the aforementioned bikers first and foremost – seem to be trying to actively execute their right to freedom by riding around on big, motorized machines that pollute the air we all breathe and shatter the quiet we all enjoy.

Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.

Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

declaring independence from...

This year, my proud fellow Americans, our goal is to turn ourselves into persons who live without want for things, who accept all adverse situations as gifts from the Universe, and who have learned to conquer such needs and desires as so often tend to hijack our lives. Among such negative influences as are working upon our lives are materialism as exhibited by our constant tendency to go shopping; sloth as exhibited by our insistence on driving cars everywhere we go; avarice as exhibited by the fact that money has become our One True god, the only thing for which we strive each and every day; dependence as exhibited by our nearly universal refusal to grow or raise our own foodstuffs; ignorance as exhibited by our watching of only one television channel or reading of only one newspaper or blog, which causes our minds to narrow and calcify; foolhardiness as exhibited by our having bought into the convenience culture and its tendency to trick us into thinking that life is or should be somehow easy, and that we deserve to be constantly treating ourselves to nice things; and stupidity as exhibited by our lack of proper flag etiquette, especially on such days upon which we seek to honor and celebrate the founding of our nation by displaying the flag for which it stands, under nothing but Liberty and Justice for all.

The negative realities listed above can be surmounted and counter-acted by ceasing to purchase anything but basic necessities (until such time as such necessities can be made at home or bartered for), by moving one's body around on foot or bicycle, by cultivating one's own person spiritual and emotional worth rather than grubbing after external worth such as cash, by making our communities and households food-independent, by getting our news from sources different from one another and unrelated, by making our own entertainment instead of watching television, by buying back out of the hollow culture of convenience, and by treating the flag of the United States of America as it should be treated, as if it were a human member of the family. To live in the manner that we live today is to go about our daily lives as dumb beasts tied to the yoke of distant corporate overlords, circumstances nearly identical to those of Americans living in the 18th century who toiled under the yoke of distant societal overlords. It appears that we in America have come full circle, changing from sheep to eagles, from eagles to swine, from swine to wolves, and from wolves back into sheep, soiling ourselves mightily along the way. There is another path, oh fellow patriots, a path, however, that does not involve merely stockpiling firearms, lying around watching TV, eating processed foods high in fat and sugar, and living under a perpetual Fear Of The Unknown.

Please, dear reader, cherished friend, declare independence from avaricious self-interest and small-minded laziness by throwing off the last, clinging vestiges of foul consumption-oriented capitalism; free your mind, excite your soul, and become a new Guard for our future Security, today.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit