When the Revolutionary War had ended, and America had gained her freedom, the people of this land were so grateful to George Washington that they wished to make him King For Life. Cognizant of the corrupting effects of power and knowing the dangers inherent to autocratic rule, Mr. Washington turned down the offer, pushing for and succeeding in establishing a presidency limited in its power, an office that once balanced, and that was once balanced by, our other pillars of government, the legislature and the judiciary. And the system worked for a few hundred years, until the 20th Century, most notably during World War Two, during which conflict the president of this Union of American States began to issue great numbers of executive orders, thereby circumventing the balances designed into our system of government, changing our society in vast and lasting ways and effectively ruling the people by whim.
The American system of government is set forth in our founding documents, those being the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Nowhere therein is made mention of the executive order, and neither document grants the president any right to issue or to rule by executive order. All presidents since the Great Patriotic War have used the executive order, including George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama; all presidents since the Allies beat the Axis have brushed aside legally crafted procedures carefully and specifically designed to keep too much power out of the hands of just one person, fundamentally changing the way our government works and destroying the efforts of our founding persons to protect us from tyrannical and despotic rule. Democracy in America is long dead, steamrolled into nothingness by the Patriot Act, which did away with protections contained in the U.S. Constitution; Liberty lies crushed under the smothering mass of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which made it illegal to consume any drug other than drugs sold by pharmaceutical corporations, beer distributors, and cigarette retailers. With a few, simple pen-strokes, our president could do away with these injustices, which are heaped upon the people daily, just as the president could issue an executive order to cancel all subsequent executive orders, declaring them null and void.
I fear, however, that things have not changed much, here, and that the American people still wish for, pine for, and long to wallow under kingly rule. (Fuck the British queen, by the way, and fuck her jubilee.) Why else do we continue to allow the president to rule as his or her whim and fancy should dictate? Perhaps we let this mockery continue because we deserve not freedom nor Liberty nor a balanced and democratic system of government, only the carbon-copy lives of wage-slaves yolked to materialism and convinced of the inevitability of constant and conspicuous consumption. As long as the blood is warm in our veins, though, it is our duty to fight for Liberty, to reinstate her, and to share her comforting effect with the sovereign peoples of the world. To prove to mankind, however, that our systems are worth emulating, we must reign in presidential power, re-balancing it to the other branches of government, and outlaw such undemocratic and unconstitutional means as the executive order. So stand up, speak out, & fight injustice. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Showing posts with label george. Show all posts
Showing posts with label george. Show all posts
27 August 2012
23 May 2012
on job-creating street art
In this year in which the president of the United States of America is once again appointed to his post by representatives who are themselves selected (not elected) by the individual States and sent off to the all-powerful electoral college, much is being said in public about Things That Create Jobs, and about Job-Creating Agencies, Legislation, Institutions, and Policies. Amid all of this hullabaloo, it is not surprising to this author that one major job-producing aspect of American culture has been left out, namely: Street Art.
Street art creates jobs in different ways. First of all, graffiti writers frequently purchase large quantities of name badges, shipping labels, poster-board, poster sheets, glue, and other such materials which they use as media for storing their art, for moving it around without too much fuss or unnecessary weight, and for applying their art to otherwise unadorned surfaces – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Then, our favorite urban vandals buy markers, pens, chalk, ink, spray-cans filled with paint, colored pencils, regular pencils, cans of paint both acrylic and oil-based, and many other media with which they make marks upon the aforementioned paper products or deface public (and private) property directly – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Beyond this, Self-Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) purchase face-masks, respirators, eye-protectors, and many other such materials required to shield their soft tissues from fumes and splatter caused by their many writing implements – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. (I would like to point out the major flaw in the argument I am making here: that the enormous, intricately-linked nature of our capitalist world markets means that the action of a few, specific individuals does not necessarily create jobs for any other specific individuals, even if the two parties Seem To Be Directly Linked; it is therefore impossible to attribute the Creation of Jobs to any one specific action (such as buying a packet of colored markers), person (such as Banksy), or group of persons (such as all American graffiti-writers put together), but the same can be said for the bullshit seeping from the mouths of our corrupted and re-election-obsessed politicians who claim that this specific thing or that specific policy Created Jobs.) Thirdly, graffiti writers create jobs by giving judges a means to punish juvenile delinquents and other such petty criminals by scrawling on and otherwise defacing property that needs to be subsequently scrubbed clean of said defacement, rehabilitated, and re-painted – if not for street artists, the persons making the cleaning products needed in said rehabilitation, and the persons catching, trying, and sentencing these law-breakers, would likely be out of work.
The above text is brief, but, I believe, powerful, justification for officially recognizing self-directed urban beautification as essential to a robust economy and a vibrant and lively national consciousness. So please, dear friends, write to your local street artist, and thank her for getting Americans back to work.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Street art creates jobs in different ways. First of all, graffiti writers frequently purchase large quantities of name badges, shipping labels, poster-board, poster sheets, glue, and other such materials which they use as media for storing their art, for moving it around without too much fuss or unnecessary weight, and for applying their art to otherwise unadorned surfaces – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Then, our favorite urban vandals buy markers, pens, chalk, ink, spray-cans filled with paint, colored pencils, regular pencils, cans of paint both acrylic and oil-based, and many other media with which they make marks upon the aforementioned paper products or deface public (and private) property directly – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Beyond this, Self-Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) purchase face-masks, respirators, eye-protectors, and many other such materials required to shield their soft tissues from fumes and splatter caused by their many writing implements – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. (I would like to point out the major flaw in the argument I am making here: that the enormous, intricately-linked nature of our capitalist world markets means that the action of a few, specific individuals does not necessarily create jobs for any other specific individuals, even if the two parties Seem To Be Directly Linked; it is therefore impossible to attribute the Creation of Jobs to any one specific action (such as buying a packet of colored markers), person (such as Banksy), or group of persons (such as all American graffiti-writers put together), but the same can be said for the bullshit seeping from the mouths of our corrupted and re-election-obsessed politicians who claim that this specific thing or that specific policy Created Jobs.) Thirdly, graffiti writers create jobs by giving judges a means to punish juvenile delinquents and other such petty criminals by scrawling on and otherwise defacing property that needs to be subsequently scrubbed clean of said defacement, rehabilitated, and re-painted – if not for street artists, the persons making the cleaning products needed in said rehabilitation, and the persons catching, trying, and sentencing these law-breakers, would likely be out of work.
The above text is brief, but, I believe, powerful, justification for officially recognizing self-directed urban beautification as essential to a robust economy and a vibrant and lively national consciousness. So please, dear friends, write to your local street artist, and thank her for getting Americans back to work.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
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