on defining RePaRe

Across the world, brave and honest citizens are fighting oppression. Their earstwhile governmental protectors have abandoned them in favor of corporate kickbacks, corruption thinly-veiled. No longer can we the concerned and forward-thinking persons of this modern age sit back and suck down soda-pop while our constitutional rights are stripped from us as fast as the land is stripped of its bounty. No, we are duty-bound to repair society, to repair the Earth, to repair honor and humility and moderation. We start to repair by deciding to RePaRe, which stands for Real Patriots Resist (or Refuse, Rejoin, Reject, Rescind, Rejoice). We resist restrictive and unnecessary ordinances designed to badger and reduce us under tyranny; we refuse to stand idly by as president Obama and his henchmen destory the Bill of Rights; we reject the notion that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be allowed to pass laws that restrict a woman's reproductive rights or keep persons of the same sex from marrying each other; we rescind governmental sovereignty and reclaim that sovereignty for ourselves; and we rejoice at the efforts under way in Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, and Germany to reoccupy such common areas as have been sold to the lowest bidder by politicains who have forgotten what it means to serve the People. Hats off to all who stand and fight, who put Lives, Fortunes, & sacred Honor on the line to defend those things that government is hellbent on destroing, those things that it was originally designed to protect, foster, and repair. Huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

OOS – OOM

In 1989, when the author was 12 years old, his family moved to Europe, to Germany, to Bavaria. Soon thereafter, the Berlin Wall fell, the Iron Curtain crumbled, and a people long divided was suddenly free to mingle, once more. He remembers seeing the East German cars known as the Trabant, or Trabbi, choking the Autobahn outside of the Upper Franconian town in which his father had become the local Lutheran pastor; he remembers the excitement of getting new school-books in geography class that showed Germany united, its border once more extending all the way east, to the river Oder; what he does not remember, however, are the names or faces of any of the classmates he had left Stateside.

So traumatic was the cultural shift, so monumental the changes he faced each day, so daunting the challenge of soaking up a new language and way of living, that he learned to first ignore and then cancel out the yearning and homesickness he felt for the people he had left behind. To this day, once a person is out of his sight, they are generally out of his mind, neither missed nor pined for, needed or necessary; he can just up and leave and live a contented life without ever having to see the people from his past, ever again.

The oos-oom state of mind is a defense mechanism common among people who jettison old cultures for new ones and create for themselves unique, personal, 3rd cultures along the way. It is both curse and blessing, beautiful and bad. On some level, the afflicted individual sacrifices the comfort of tight, reliable interpersonal relationships for freedom from some of the pain of losing loved-ones; he skirts the trap of humanity without giving up the inherent impartiality of his inner beast. Sometimes, the only way to hold on is by letting go.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

pirates, parties, September

In honor of Septembarrrr, that mooncycle dedicated to All Things Pirate, let us turn our gazes to the Federal Republic of Germany, where the voice of the common man still has power. While in America people upset with Me-First capitalism, Beltway corruption, and an ever-more-menacing police state must resort to standing out in the street getting pepper-sprayed and handcuffed for expressing their political views, Deutschlanders upset with the status-quo may now look for representation from that nation's newest political party, die Piraten (the Pirates). When discussing America's two-party system and the lunacy of having just two organs to represent and address the concerns of over one-hundred-and-fifty-millions of unique voices, people often tell me that our population is simply too large, and that its members have simply too many different opinions, for there to be more than two political parties, an argument which has never made sense to me.

Can just a couple of parties represent the opinions of our massive voting base better than many different parties tailored to each region individually and to its special and unique demands and abilities? They cannot. In fact, the Democratic and the Republican parties in America do such a poor job not just of promoting the general Welfare but also of securing the Blessings of Liberty to all persons equally that it is a wonder our society has not sooner descended into civil war. Such is the failure of our massive, ineffective, easily-corruptible one-party system (because Dems and Reps are basically two sides of the same coin) that, with the efforts undertaken recently by President Obama to enact in this land a police state, our republic hardly resembles the nation it was just a dozen years ago, in the good old days before we threw up our hands in fearful defeat, rescinding our rights (Patriot Act) and allowing President Bush and his puppetmaster Dick Cheney to violate this nation's two-hundred-year-long refusal to torture or mishandle our prisoners of war (see here for link to page involving U.S. torture cells at Abu Gharib prison) and letting them violate due process, personal privacy, the Geneva Convention, and the notion that every human being – American or not, combatant or not – has the right to a swift trial by his or her peers.

Arrrr! I have fallen into a tirade against old man bushes and his triggerhappy boss, losing myself in vile and vituperative rebuke against the forces of bygone evil. Regarding the links posted above, at least the Germans can now vote instead of hurling paving-bricks and fighting small armies to secure their rights; in America, though, we have come to see police officers as persons with ultimate power, as nearly god-like individulas whom we dare not touch, spite, or trust. We have forsaken personal Liberty and self-determination for a state of questionable Safety in which the only reason the cops exist is to punish us for not following the tens of thousands of different laws that we our political leaders have passed. To whom can we turn in this our time of woe? On whom do we rely to secure for us the Blessings of Liberty and to represent the interests of the Commons and of the common man alike? Our two national political parties do not do these things; Republicans and Democrats sit on Capitol hill in plush, tax-payer-financed office suites receiving visits from lobbyists and corporate donors who hand over envelopes stuffed cash. Oh, if we but lived in a democracy; oh, if our supposed representatives would but give up their fat paychecks, cushy pensions, and comprehensive coverage and try living on minimum wage for a while without access to decent health-care. Then, dear friend, then we would see some positive change in this country. I fear, however, that we may have to wait a few years until a person from the Pirate Party of America takes the presidency. Ho hum teedle-dum and a bottle of mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit