haiku 19 Mar 2018

Grinding self-hatred
Each act and thought bathed in fear
Healing lies in love

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ] ​

dreamstate writing 28 Feb 2018

[This dream occurred at roughly 7am, after I had crawled back into bed following completion of all twelve steps of my morning qigong meditation.]

We were driving down a steep hill in a grey vehicle. I was in the passenger seat greatly concerned that we would crash into the debris that dotted the grassy hill - beams and bars of steel, piles of sandstone blocks, and stacks of cut wood. At the top of a rise we stopped, where I voiced my concerns to the driver, who merely stared forward, his face an unreadable mien. Below the rise stood the first tee of a disc-golf course next to a dead tree, but my companion turned and walked back up the way we’d come. I followed him back upward onto a dirt path that lead along a ridge covered in snow, from which we surveyed the surrounding countryside of cultivated fields, scattered woods, and distant farm houses.

Walking back down to the tee, we came upon a half dozen other persons kitted out for disc golf. Somewhere nearby but out of sight a person was screaming with horrible urgency, which scared me enough that I ran for shelter. The formerly dead tree had grown tremendously, great reaching tendrils of a hardened, textured, grey plastic that dug back into the ground, forming a wall. Finding my exit blocked, I turned to find the others standing close by, a massive newcomer in their midst. (He reminded me of a figure from my childhood, a giant scotsman dressed in battle fatigues.) The newcomer apologized for the screaming in a way that took my fear away, at which point the dream changed radically.

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

and rebirth beckons

Hopes fails, dreams shatter. Sadness emerges, and, with it, fear. Concern for one’s own future sharpens, fear blossoming into anger. And then anger mutates into self-righteous indignation at anything perceived to be the root cause of one’s problems. Even if the people or choices targeted actually have nothing to do with one’s problems, they become the focus of one’s hatred.

Within the morally vacuous, cacophonous self-pity factories that social media sites and other internet message boards often are, one’s indignation grows while at the same time, however, the size and origin of one’s problems stay the same. Soon, anger spills over into aggression, hot and sour words hurled unnecessarily at others in one’s web of contacts. The hurt doesn’t go away, prompting one to pile on the grief in an effort to smother it. Still, it lingers, now a sucking and festering wound wrapped tightly around the once-soothing tendrils of ever-loving heartspace.

Gradually, one’s web of social contacts shrinks, its individual strands broken, severed, neglected. More and more isolated does one then become, so isolated and lonely in fact that fear and anger appear more and more real. Suddenly, it’s all one can seem to think about, how stupid and foolish and misguided everyone else is, how simple the solutions to this nation’s and this city’s and this block’s problems are. ‘If only people would just listen to me,’ one thinks, an angry, lonely voice screaming into the yawning void. Pitiable, the soul struggling to withstand twin onslaughts of negativity and self-loathing, the world suddenly an evil and unwelcoming place, the last strands give out.

Yet there within the charred and blackened ruins of one’s real and online lives glimmer, diamond-like, the compressed jewels of love, hope, and compassion. And rebirth beckons.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

good and fast

There is a war waging here inside my mind between what I feel and what ego defines. The ego it clings to the sins of the past to sadness and torment it holds good and fast to lies and to treason to pity and woe and back to its portion it won't quickly go. It hides in a recess behind my left eye and sallies forth quickly whenever I try to open my heart up to make myself whole and use love to clean up the dregs of my soul. I'm learning its contours and tasting its form and tracing thought-patterns that it's deeply worn into many actions and many ideas that have so long plagued me since my early years. As feeling awakens down in lower places I find deep inside me a great many faces that peer up and peer out of warrens constructed to hide them from evil deeps I have conducted. 'Don't go there, it's dangerous, ' the ego's plea – a voice in the head-space that sounds just like me – but all that I've learned in this lifetime has taught that to live in fear is to live less than naught. Where once I turned from it I now turn and face the ego up there in its dark hiding place and sample its worries to search for its root to render its speaking quite helpless and moot. Please wish me luck, dear friend, upon this here task; for patient compassion is all that I ask; on this road I'm taking no other can tread as I alone must chase this scourge from my head. Aho, then, mahalo, and a namaste and thank you for reading this writing today; perhaps on the morrow I'll be somewhat clearer should freedom from fearfulness have drawn any nearer.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

eyes in graffiti

Walk through Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Amsterdam, or Bangkok, and look in the forgotten, in the grimy, and in the underused places. With a keen glance and a bit of luck, you will witness the riotous beauty known as graffiti. Oh, what a profusion it is of style and color, of shape and size, of message and image, all blending into a whole that, if viewed from afar, resembles little more than clutter. Step closer, however, and trust your peripheral vision, and your most tender of sphincters will drink gladly of the intoxicating power of street art. Why, though, do we look? Why are we powerless against the urge to sweep our gazes down into worn and sticky curbs and up onto soot-stained poles? Eyes, my friends, we look at graffiti because it is full of eyes (and not just any eyes, but human eyes). They may have stumbled upon the technique accidentally, they may have copied it from advertisers, but, for whatever reason, graffitos exploit one of mankind's primal and deep-seated fears, using a time-proven method for getting people to look at something – giving it eyes.

Since our time as forest-creeping, prairie-running, skull-bashing troglodytes, the species homo sapiens has developed the uncanny ability to recognize the shape of the eye even if it should be obscured by layers of random patterns. Experts argue whether this ability is restricted merely to recognizing human eyes or if it applies to those of our former predators (i.e. bear, cougar, coyote), but I hazard that our subconscious brains are constantly trying to figuring out if someone, or something, is looking at us. Advertisers exploit this evolutionary adaptation to our status as Top Predator Of One Another by blanketing the asphalt landscape – the phaltscape – with pictures of pretty people who nearly all happened to have been staring directly at the camera's shutter when it opened. (Now, however, instead of our powers giving us the upper hand in a fight-or-flight situation, they allow us to be convinced that we need that new and re-formulated cucumber body scrub. Woe be unto mankind.)

All quasi-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary nonsense aside, why do graffiti-writers use eyes in their designs? Why does they want people to look at their works of art? Few graffitos apply their craft for financial gain; as with other labors of love, people cipher-write regardless of the risks it poses to life, limb, liberty, and liability. SDUBS (Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists) are wily and suspicious by nature; they maintain a level of honor, decorum, and discipline so profound as to make inquiry into their personal matters a life-threatening endeavor; therefore, these questions shall likely go unanswered for generations to come. For now, however, please enjoy the street-side galleries of free-to-the-consumer art wherever you may be, and rest easily in the knowledge that, by looking back at eyes that look at you, you are merely executing a deeply-ingrained survival reflex that is as natural to humans as is laughter. Never forget, however, to keep an eye out for mankind's oldest enemy – itself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on fighting fear

I am stumbled into the viper's pit, into a home suffused with Fear. That force against which all upstanding and self-respecting persons fight diligently and with indomitable passion reigns here nearly supreme; its stifling cloak has settled over most aspects of life within this home; its sinister influence has calcified upon the brains of this home's mother, poisoning nearly every thought that sparks within her mind and every tone that sounds within her mouth. The father – the SAR of whom was written just this week, on the moon's day – he contends with this his most deadly foe, but he fights it head-on rather than by the round-about, directly rather than sneakily, with thinly-veiled contempt rather than with clandestine, consummate compassion.

Our wartime President Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” These words ring true now more than they ever have; America is being pulled under by the slowly sinking wreck of consumption-driven capitalism, downspiraling into ignorance and small-mindedness by the hollow promise of convenience, brainwashed by the 24-hour news cycle as it drowns slowly in the brackish and sugary waters that seep from our society's crumbling foundations. As with everything else, however, as with obesity and sloth and the loss of independent thought, as with all the other ills that plague this once-fine land, fear's stranglehold is rooted in the propensity of humankind to take the path of least resistance, or what appears to be the Easy Way Out. Especially for a person whose daily activities revolve around the twin pillars of watching television and eating, it is easier to fear that to trust, easier to hate than to love, easier to despise than to praise. Especially for someone whose parents never modeled for her that love and compassion spring only from hard work and patience, dedication and sacrifice, who rather than teaching her that life is neither fair nor easy complained constantly of what they did not have while cursing other persons who appeared to have more, especially for a woman such as this – even though she is not fully to blame for her pitiable state of mind, since she has during her life neither known, nor thought to search for, a different path – fear comes easily, and it comes quickly.

It would be fine if the aforementioned woman kept her fear to herself, but, being a person averse to physical exertion and one addicted to such soothing, creeping soul-death as is addiction to television (and playing the lottery, buying name-brand foodstuffs, being driven around to nail and hair salons, and always looking for something to complain about), she talks about her problems over and over and over again instead of doing something about them. Fear has suffused her life to the point that it – rather than inherent rationality or latent compassion – is the first thing that springs from her lips; fear, which quickly becomes mistrust, which quickly becomes malcontent, which quickly becomes hatred, fear is her baseline mode of operation, the jumping-off-point from which she plans the steps of her life. How does one combat fear? By slowly and gradually showing it that it has no power, that it has no business lurking in the hearts of this nation's more gullible persons. Better this way that the other – to combat fear directly, with spiteful and equal malice – because combating fear with anger serves only to fuel fear, to make it grow and blossom so that it sinks its roots deep into the psyche. Just listen to the tone of this article: it is suffused with fear, as I have allowed evil into my heart. Oh, brother. Mahalo.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

on the Second Sons of Liberty

Attention, self-respecting Americans searching, perhaps in vain, for an organization attuned specifically to the concept of Liberty and all that It entails: The time has come for the founding of the Second Sons of Liberty. (See here for information on the original Sons of Liberty.) You are very welcome to comment on this article with suggestions for how best to organize a group of like-minded individuals bent on reestablishing the longstanding but now defunct notion that each free-born American citizen has the duty under not only the Declaration of Independence but also the U.S. Constitution to live her life in such a way as to satisfy her own wants and needs while not at any time, or in any way, infringing upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person or persons.

For too long now have we allowed the aptly-named nanny state to dictate our actions and to try to protect us from ourselves; for too long have we called upon the state and federal governments to enforce prohibitions on the consumption of a great number of stimulating and mood-enhancing substances; for too long have we relied on outside forces to tell us what is good, acceptable, or patriotic, rather than heeding the tender inner voice of Liberty and deciding for ourselves how best to lead our own lives. The original Sons of Liberty, who labored a dozen years before their efforts culminated in a Revolutionary War that brought independence to this fine, broad land, these our brave and selfless predecessors risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred Honor to establish a nation conceived in Liberty; this idea of freedom, so harshly infringed upon by the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, was further eroded by the passage of the Patriot Act of 2001; this notion has all but died from the general American consciousness, replaced by rampant consumerism and its close cousin, unnecessary wastefulness, by automobile-induced sloth, fear-of-the-unknown, over-reliance on “convenience,” and hollow proclamations of this county's supposedly inherent exceptionalism.

It is time for us to retake control of our shared, common future by focusing the national dialogue once again on the power of individual responsibility and the need to respect our shared, common virtues such as frugality, self-sufficiency, minding one's own business, and preserving the environment for the following generations. Please, dear friends, brothers and sisters alike, please secure the Safety and Happiness of the American people by joining us in this effort to found and organize the Second Sons of Liberty (which shall of course be renamed so as not to exclude persons not born male). Our struggle will not be easy, nor will it see a swift or bloodless conclusion, but it is a struggle we must undertake. Let us make sure that our children, and our children's children, are raised in a nation dedicated to little else than making us its citizens Safe and Happy.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on LA, briefly

  I love LA. My fluids suffuse her soils, yet she always provides spoils. Too easily she drags me in, enticing me with perfect asses, teasing me with furtive glances, breaking my heart a thousand times a day, my own insecurities and fears amplified against the foul tympanum of her heaving cracked pavement. Within her envelope I walk and wander gladly, casting about clumsily for the dim remnants of tenacious glory, my eyes grating like those of a madman, my soul zigzagging between high elation and base surrender. She knows me as would my mother, yet she denies me all but that which I might truly obtain.

  Bear with me, courageous readers. I am not yet over my culture shock, and shall resume my regular posting schedule when it has abated.

  Sincerely, JP

on my loss of faith

  My parents were both Lutherans. My father was a pastor, my mother a devout follower of the same religion. From birth until my fourteenth birthday (at which point I rebelled more openly) I was for most of my life either in a church, on my way to a church, or otherwise engaged in some sort of churchly activity. Among my earliest memories outside of wild animal encounters as a toddler take place in churches. I sang my first public solo, at the age of ten years, on Christmas Eve, to a packed house, at a church in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

  All around me were devout and loyal Lutherans who all sang the same songs in the same fashion at the same times of year, their practices unchanging from one decade to the next. While I, in general, have no problem with people engaging in religious practice, I realized recently (after deep and introspective thought) that I had abandoned my own faith at a very young age. My belief in an invisible god, as well as any respect I might have had for the doctrine of the Lutheran church, these things faltered as early as the age of six or seven; by my teens, they were long gone. It is well that I was a shy and quiet child – if I had told anyone about my doubting, they would likely have forced me into re-education classes, so as to keep me enslaved to The Church. (I have never believed that thinking “bad” thoughts, doubtful thoughts, would get me in trouble with a godhead whose main message is love, forgiveness and compassion; thankfully, I recognized at a comparatively young age my fellow Lutherans' fear of eternal damnation for what it truly is: a thinly-veiled effort by the church hierarchy to keep the people in the pews hating themselves for sinning, and begging the pastor to do something about it.)

  I was a young boy standing in a front-row pew watching my father perform the service. I can remember looking at all the people around me, their heads bowed, their lips moving in unison, and I thought they were all going to look up at some point to spring the joke and laugh. I can recall looking at those docile individuals standing in that wood-paneled church, looking at them and bouncing the backs of my legs against the dark wood of the church's benches while laughing to myself quietly. I have since that time not stopped laughing at and mocking any organized religion that happens to cross my path. The complexity and self-contradictory nature of the thousands of different teachings found in the Christian bible had become overwhelmingly foreign to me at that young age, so foreign and confusing that I knew, in my deepest of knowing-places, that they could not all be true. At that young age, for some reason, I was able to see through the smoke-screen of canon and verse, and pluck from the brambles of dogma the few tender fruits of pure and honest meaning. In time, I have been able to utilize these fruits outside of the framework of the artificial, and inherently corrupted, structure of organized religion. (I wish sometimes that I had not lost faith, that I could somehow become faithful again, and believing, that I could abandon perpetual doubt, that I could once again with impotent fury shake a fist at the sky and curse the god who made me, but I do not believe in an external god, only in the Majesty of the Human Spirit – I hold myself responsible for my place in the world; I fix my problems instead of bitching about them.)

  Of course, standing in that church and doubting quietly, I feared Yahweh, that terrible and jealous god whom I had been taught from birth to fear with abject and abiding terror. Once I had in my own mind mocked him and laughed at him and shown him my young and tender behind, however, I realized that the might of His Wrath (an emphasis on paternalism pervades the Christian bible to the point that I am shocked that any woman would practice that faith willingly) existed only in myth, or in the tales of old. I knew at the age of seven years that religious indoctrination was very much a form of mental slavery, and I was abhorred by the fear-mongery and intimidation used by most organized religions to perpetuate their existence.

  Now, many years later, I am so very happy with my young self for his brave and clandestine decision to rebel quietly against the culture within which he had been so enmeshed. That seemingly simple act of doubt, along with Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching, has helped me to find the path to inner peace, to primal simplicity, to a life without need for self-aggrandizement or self-justification; now, the action is the goal. I let the chips fall where they may, no longer constrained by the stultifying and stagnant framework of a desperate and failing religious organization. Now, my mind is free and elastic, while my heart is empty and still.

  Three cheers for doubt, and for quiet and patient rebellion.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on the necessity of union

  When the Declaration of Independence was written, and its sister document, the Constitution, the need for Union among the States was great. Joined in Union, the States proved better able to effect their independence, and to stand strong collectively, a dozen-odd entities working together against the many pressures that faced our young nation as it fought to make a place for itself in the world, and to prove that its shockingly progressive ideals had staying-power.

  Then, halfway through the 19^th century, divergent forces and interests among the States compelled them to split apart into two separate nations, one seeking to maintain a slave-based economy, the other seeking, officially, to maintain the Union. Whole populations that no longer felt that they should be following the same path rose up in conflict, two seemingly foreign peoples that understood that they had grown simply too far apart in thought and in method to be able to stay together. In those times of relative national weakness and persistent internal turmoil, the Union held; it has held through two world wars, scores of other police-actions (including Vietnam, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003), and rapid and widespread cultural and societal transformations both here and abroad.

  Today, however, we have witnessed the ascendancy of a federal supremacy over the states, and within that supremacy the elevation of the executive branch (in clear violation of the checks and balances built into the Constitution), as well as growing divergences between the citizens who live in roughly the same areas as those that split asunder in the 1860s. Two loose but still recognizable camps have formed in this nation, with millions of voters hovering at varying degrees around the edges of each, one camp calling for more punitive and dogmatic responses to our problems, a camp that relies on the gullibility of the masses for the propagation of its conservative views on religion and society, the other camp one that strives at least superficially for rational debate, the reinstatement of the constitutional right to liberty, and a more compassionate and socialistic view of the role that government and society must play in the elevation of the American People and in the bringing about of our Safety and Happiness. (It would be convenient to suppose that I am here referring to Republicans and Democrats respectively, but as these parties have become the necessary repositories of most anyone seeking political office, their ranks are as varied in their opinions as is the greater population, which is split roughly between liberals and conservatives, i.e. between those who seek to propagate liberty through rational debate and those who seek to maintain the status quo through Fear Of The Unknown and an inflexible mind-set. In my opinion, open debate and rational thinking are essential to the propagation of liberty, for the concept of liberty presupposes that the individual is capable of deciding for himself how best to lead his life: it demands of him that he understands the consequences of his actions while allowing him to live a virtuous life devoid of willful violations of the life, liberty, or property of his fellow persons.)

  Perhaps it would be best, then, in this time of America's military supremacy around the world (when no danger is clear and present enough to enact our total destruction), in this era of seemingly irreconcilable rhetoric and clear societal, moral, and religious divergence, to conclude with this chapter of our experiment and, as the Union of all States is no longer absolutely necessary for the basic preservation of our nation, to allow those portions that wish to pursue their own course to secede.

  Since our country's inception, we have added a good number of states, in locations sometimes far-flung from our original borders, states that by their isolation are seen even now as distant lands and foreign peoples whose primary binding characteristic is the feeble, cancer-like presence of the homogenized corporate retail location. In the interest of DomesticTranquility, it would be better to allow those who wished to establish a socially conservative nation based on a particular religion where they might better keep the ignorant in Fear, a place where the individual might not have the right to decide for herself how to affect her body (by tattoo, weight-loss, or abortion), where the benefits of the joining of individuals in marriage or civil union would be bestowed only according to the writings of a specific religious text (and not to homosexuals or to couples of different hues), where a specific language might be declared (the USA haveno official language), and where a specific system of beliefs might be recognized by all, unanimously, as the state religion.

  Perhaps the citizens of America should be asked directly if they feel that these two clearly divergent populations should become separate nations, an official poll to gauge the possibility of such a split, even an outright vote for their fragmentation and reintegration as separate nations according to the wishes of the respective majorities. (These new nations would have to be well-established, sovereign states with clearly demarcated borders, their constitutions well-written, with provisions in place for the unobstructed movement of goods and people between them, especially people who decide, within a set amount of time, that they had made a mistake and would like to switch nations.)

  The essence of liberty that flowered in America and in the world during the 1960s was stamped out in this country for a number of reasons, among them conservatism, Fear of the Unknown, war-mongering, and racism. Chief among these reasons, however, was the passage of legislation prohibiting the use, possession, and distribution of mood altering substances such as marijuana, legislation that to this day continues to violate the liberty of the American People by restricting their ability to obtain and use legally those substances that they deem would best assist them in their pursuit of Happiness.

  Until such time as the citizens of America are granted their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property; until such time as their right to abort unwanted fetuses and to use whichever substance they decide are best and to marry whomever they please; until such time as the citizens are entrusted fully with their unalienable right to choose for themselves how best to lead their lives and they regain the right to pursue their Happiness as they decide is best; until that time, liberty does not abide in these United States, and the rights enumerated in the Constitution are null and void. (If any one portion of the Constitution becomes null and void, the entire Constitution must be considered null and void.)

  Certain constitutional protections (against unwarranted searches and seizures) continue to be violated courtesy of the Patriot Act. Similarly, enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act violates the individual's fifth and fourteenth Amendment right to property, because her body is her only true property, and she can do with her property whatever she wants, so long as she is not harming anyone else's property. Since some of the most fundamental rights and protections our Constitution was supposed to have provided continue to be withheld from the American people, we must assume that our Constitution is no longer functioning as intended, that is has been so abused and mocked that it more resembles a nice thing to read on a sunny afternoon than a bedrock legal document. With this our finest document already torn, tattered, and violated, with our most basic rights and protections reduced to the theoretical, we would do well to allow those seeking liberty to break off from those seeking to cling fearfully to the mistakes of the past, that a new Union based solidly on the principles set forth by our nation's forefathers might be formed, a new nation that would not rest until the Blessings of Liberty were guaranteed to ourselves and our Posterity, equally and without undue restriction.

  Let the religious zealots thump their holy books and legislate according to their morality, in their own nation, while they funnel the wealth of their people into the pockets of the richest one percent. We rational, progressive, compassionate few, we who yearn for liberty, we who would like to affect our bodies and to pursue our Happiness as we see fit, our Safety protected by the might of the Declaration, our rights as enumerated in the Constitution immutable and unalienable now, and forever.

  Only through constant vigilance and rational foresight can we ensure Liberty and Justice for all. Stand up. Speak out. Demand your constitutional rights. While this struggle may seem nearly over, we have not yet begun to fight.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

American theocracy - 3

  The following are quotes from the founders of the United States of America:
   "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." James Madison, 1774;
  "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson;
  "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac;
  "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson, 1787;
  "And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Thomas Jefferson, in an 1823 letter to John Adams.

  The above statements were made by the individuals who created this nation. Similar quotes were made by George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. The content and general message we can take from these quotes is that we were founded by men who shared a love for reason rather than men seeking the elevation of a particular religion. Never can we allow religious teaching to highjack our institutions of government: for to incorporate religious teachings amongst the laws and constitutions of our land would be to destroy the efforts of our founding fathers to create a nation of equal, rational, free-thinking, exceptional human beings.
  During a recent discussion, my counterpart stated that, The founding fathers were informed by Christianity; they drew from a common value system that was prevalent at the time. While this theory of osmotic religious indoctrination has some merit, I propose a theory that has perhaps equal merit. In the statements by Thomas Jefferson quoted above, we find two references to ancient Greek notions, namely Reason, and Athena (Minerva).
  If Christianity informed our founding fathers, and Jefferson foremost among them, then the polytheistic teachings and value systems of the authors of Hellenistic antiquity, who wrote such works as The Republic (Plato) and Politics (Aristotle), also informed our founding fathers. The notion of Reason – the fluid process of evaluation and decision-making by which man masters adversity – can be found in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. The notion of goddess Athena – patroness of art, craft, guile, justice, strength, civilization, and wisdom – can also be found in the writings of these two men of old.
  Thomas Jefferson, an educated and well-read individual, in his crafting of the Declaration of Independence, drew upon the writings of the ancient political philosophers, and was sure to have been exposed considerably to the polytheistic notions of ancient times. And yet, when writing the Declaration, did he make mention of Zeus, or of any other gods from the Hellenistic pantheon? He makes no more mention of them than he does of YWH, the god of the Christians. If I were to stride into the Chambers of Congress and announce to those assembled that, since Greek deities informed our founding fathers, rites must be performed regularly to placate Poseidon, or to please Zeus, I would surely be laughed out of the room by all present. Congruently, any individuals entering said Chambers and demanding the observance of Christian rites is to be drowned out with raucous jesting.
  Our Constitution, in the first Amendment, states that no laws shall be passed that restrict the practice of, or that establish officially, any religion. This amendment gives the right to all who here dwell to practice their religion without fear of government repression or coercion. In my opinion, a person should be able to decide which god he or she should worship, which religion to practice, and what beliefs, however outlandish and outmoded they may seem to me, to hold. I rejoice in that freedom; I do not wish to see it ever taken from the people of this land. Efforts currently under way, however: to interfere with a woman's right to abort things growing in her private property, her body; to delineate the right to marry according to the religious tracts of one specific group; these efforts pose great risk to the first Amendment, to our Constitution, and to the foundations of this American republic.
  I applaud those individuals fighting against these efforts to abolish our core principles.
  I applaud the judges hearing these cases, and trust that they will approach the matter resplendent in the mantle of reason, their minds broad, their logic sound, knowing well of the dangers inherent to state-mandated religious doctrine.
  America, as a country, as a nation, as a concept, can only remain viable if it is founded on reason, justice, and the notion that all persons, regardless of class, creed, or color, can here find fertile grounds on which their dreams and aspirations may grow. If we allow even one snippet of religious code to find its way into our law, we will have failed our founding fathers by abandoning reason, and we will soon find ourselves in a barren and hostile wasteland rife with intolerance, and ruled by fear.
  This must not come to pass. Let us continue to fight – with patient voices and open minds – for the salvation of our nation.
  Stay true to our founding fathers: say NO to American theocracy.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on acting like a bitch

  The mentality of the average American voter bears certain resemblance to that of a skittish dog rescued from the pound. No matter her physical size or how well she is treated by her adoptive family, the canine will likely never shake the Fear put into her by her abusive former master(s). If when out walking she is spooked, she at times will shake off her leash and bound away at high speed, her face seeming to express an exuberant anxiety. Gracefully eluding all attempts at capture, one of the few options for bringing her back under control is to trick her into entering a vehicle (an action that normally means a trip to the park or some such thing). Once inside the vehicle, she forgets the potential for freedom unbound that lies but a quick tug of the head away, and allows the leash to be bound around her neck once again.
  So it is often with voters in this nation, especially with those who were so scared by the events whose ten year anniversary we will soon mark that they sat quietly by, cowed by Fear-driven propaganda into allowing the Patriot Act to pass unopposed, believing of the lies spewing forth from the suck-holes of power-hungry politicians desperate to expand their base, cheering as we joined the short-list of nations guilty of initiating a war of aggression, re-electing a president who forever tarnished America's long and honorable traditions by valuing the paltry benefits of enhanced interrogation over the unalienable and immutable Rights of the individual.
  A dog raised to fear is unlikely to shake its burden; an individual provided the opportunity to fear will settle gratefully into the welcoming cocoon that fear provides, forever ignorant of the beautiful savagery inherent to mankind, never doubting the actions or the rhetoric of persons claiming to have all the answers, forever trusting any individual who stokes the fires of that fear and who makes skin-deep promises that evaporate immediately upon re-election.
  When the conditions seem right, the voter is likely to break free and to dash about wildly, demanding changes in the status quo through the implementation of untested strategies championed as the solutions to our economic and societal woes, believing with exuberant anxiety in the clever deceptions of the heads shouting on TV, scrambling madly for the first door that promises even the faintest hint of Happiness only to succumb instantly, wild-eyed and out-of-breath, to fear's soothing grip as the shackles of ignorance and repression are calmly reapplied to the cardinal points of the soul.
  It is without question easier for the People to accept the oppressions to which they have become accustomed than for us to venture forth, without a backward glance or the slightest hesitation, in search of new Guards for our future Security. Unlike a tortured and skittish bitch, however, once we have broken free of the chains that have held us in check, we have the capacity to maintain that newfound freedom by consuming news from various unrelated sources, by being wary always of the power of propaganda, and by not forgetting for an instant that, as Frank Herbert said best in his book Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”
  Fear in itself is a sufferable Evil, but fear employed by the highest powers as a tool for controlling the hearts and minds of the People is an Evil that has ceased to be sufferable. Freed from constriction, the mind is capable of feats far-reaching and grand, while a mind hobbled by perpetual paranoia functions similar to that of a broken, groveling beast who understands only the bite of the lash.

Speak freely. Stay vigilant. Spread liberty.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp