alpha male today

American society, it seems, has a tendency to try to reverse roles and redefine truths according to rapidly shifting mores. (If anyone has a sound argument for why this is the case, please share them in the comments section below.) The concept of masculinity, for example, is being changed from one of strength to one of aggression, from the idea of a firm and just hand to the notion that might makes right. Men who labor to control people in thought and deed - using violence, if necessary - are seen and portrayed as alpha males, when in fact they are beta males.

The true alpha male labors to control himself, then leads or inspires his neighbors by virtuous example alone. He does not use force against others, because trying to make someone else do something that he or she doesn’t necessarily want to do is a violation of that person’s liberty; he protects those too downtrodden, poor, or weak to help themselves rather than exploit them for personal gain; he respects the planet upon which as well as the other members of the society within which he lives. Among the hardest things a man can do is to learn who he is at root, what his underlying needs and urges are, and how to control himself. The man who denies himself the gratification of his sexual desires, for example voyeurism or masturbation, is a man who is on the road to mastering those desires. The man who succumbs to his sexual urges, however, enslaves himself readily to anyone who can help him reach climax.

Recent movies (End Of Watch, Deadpool, The Accountant) and television shows (The Apprentice, Kitchen Nightmare) reinforce the notion that an angry or violent man is a good man, perhaps because such men are both despicable and predictable - they fit into a box of others’ choosing and are therefore easier for society to deride and marginalize. In light of this, my fellow American men, consider controlling the self before trying to control others; become an alpha male, today!

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

where freedom reigns

Hope simmers today in America - hope for Liberty! During a recent trip to Washington State, this author experienced a brief taste of the true power simmering behind the unalienable (but heretofore aliened) rights set forth by the Constitution and Declaration. Rather than having to arrange shady dealings, persons in that State who desire to pursue their Happiness with the help of marijuana are free to do just that; rather than being forced into the shadows or hounded by cops, people who enjoy weed can in that State consume their stimulant of choice anywhere cigarette smokers also can, be it in public or private. Oh how the police in that State must be fuming now that the spigot of funds has closed that once flowed from the federal government into their coffers in support of the war on drugs (and against freedom). In a State where the people are free to smoke the chronic bubonic without fear of brutal nanny-state intervention, 40 years of anti-American policing actions have come to a grinding halt.

This author salutes the brave Washingtonians who are standing up to oppression by sparking up their joints; his heart is buoyed by the levels of freedom regained by valiant acts of righteous disobedience in pursuit of personal Liberties. The body of each citizen is the ultimate repository of life, liberty, and property as set forth in the Fifth Amendment; because his body is his life and his liberty and his property, anything he does to his body without infringing upon anyone else’s body is a protected act. Once all Americans call for the end of the war against Constitutionally protected activities (i.e. the war on drugs), this nation will shudder with vibrant energy as hundreds of millions finally breathe freely. Huzzah.

JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on discovering Liberty

I am reading the Constitution of Liberty by F.A. Hayek, and my life is changing fundamentally. For years, I have felt strange when arguing certain political points or chasing one or the other topic down its respective rabbit-hole – this book is helping me understand why. Most of my life I have lived under the sway of unsound theories, of counter-productive opinions, of methods that more often than not have lead to failure, sadness, contempt, and woe. Now, however, as the awesome brilliance of the Torch of Progress shines into the dank and fetid recesses of my psyche, the foundations of my soul are beginning to dry out, and solidify. The shrill voice of nagging doubt loses its biting edge as my soul rejoices at the majesty of Liberty's countenance; my energies align as I perform the ancient practices of yoga and meditation; my being soars as mind – free of thought – merges with body to beholds the deep essence of the Universe. It has taken many moons of studying a plethora of unrelated texts to reach this point, and I dare not suggest that following in my footsteps would lead anyone else to the same conclusions. For now, though, perhaps just for today, I see a brightness on the horizon I have not seen in years, and it finally feels as if I am starting to truly understand myself. Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on Phyrgian caps

While the American republic was still being formed – that is, before it outgrew its britches and started pining for global full spectrum dominance – the concept of Liberty was vibrant, and alive. Today, however, as we approach the 9th month of the year 2013, the colors of Liberty have faded from her shores; preferring conformity and convenience to individuality and self-sufficiency, preferring television and nutritionism to simple pleasures and real food, the American people are in a sorry state. How do we shake them out of their stupor? How do we shock them back into passionate dialog and community-conscious living? One method for awakening them from their trance is to show them that most actions done with a car can be done on a bicycle. Another way to quicken their tepid fluids is to don a Phyrgian cap and prove to a candid world that we few who are mocked and ridiculed and looked upon with scorn have doffed the shackles of materialism and freed ourselves from greed and need and avarice by wearing a red and floppy hat. Look no further than the War Office Seal, which features a Liberty cap; find its collapsed contours in the symbols of the American Revolution's own Sons of Liberty. Perhaps we pampered modern Ynki would be able to pull this land out of its tyrannical tailspin if we emulated the men and women who risked Fortune and sacred Honor to create a nation dedicated to the principle that all persons are created equal, a republic founded on the notion that all choices and thoughts and decisions should be allow so long as they do not directly violate the Life, Liberty, or Property of another person. If, however, a majority of the public keeps pumping gasoline into slaves' chariots and numbing itself out to five hours of TV each day, the idea of Liberty will continue to sputter and wheeze, suffocating from lack of believers. Citizens of America, awake!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

freedom to choose

Some time ago, NPR aired a debate about whether or not Pennsylvania should sell off the liquor stores it owns and operates. During this debate, a woman advocated for the rights of consumers to have access to the best possible selection of booze, saying that choice is freedom and that freedom is the American way. (The author is paraphrasing here). Since 1971, the federal government of the United States of America has waged war on the right of every person under its jurisdiction to choose for himself which drugs to introduce to his body; since passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971 (CSA), Liberty has been under constant and incessant attack from local, state, and federal government, the very agents who should have been protecting her, all along.

When the state makes some drugs illegal (weed, coke) while profiting from and promoting the sale of other drugs (alcohol, nicotine), it chooses sides, sending millions of non-violent persons to jail for wanting to do with their bodies as they saw best fit. The XIV amendment to the Constitution was designed to protect against just such governmental overreach, stating: “[no] State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]” If a person should demonstrate an inability to handle certain drugs without posing a threat to himself or others, he should be banned from consuming those drugs. Individuals, however, who have not been banned by a judge from smoking weed should feel free to do so as often as they wish; no aspect of the Constitution gives any branch of our government the right to infringe upon the common freedom of all individuals living in America by passing a law as destructive to our inalienable and immutable rights as is the tyrannical Controlled Substances Act of 1971.

In the 42 years since adoption of the CSA, the business of punishing and incarcerating non-violent Americans for consuming and possessing their drugs of choice has become big business. Lawyers, judges, parole and police officers, wardens, jail builders, and drug warlords all continue to profit from the ban on certain drugs. We the People must make the right to choose inalienable once more and strike down the prohibitions currently in place; then, the individuals just mentioned would have to go out and get jobs of actual usefulness instead of being allowed to game a system that punishes freedom-loving Americans for pursuing their Happiness as they see best fit. A person's body is the only piece of property he cannot live without; he may do with it as he pleases so long as he is not infringing demonstrably upon the right of any other person to life, liberty, or property. To lock someone up for changing his brain chemistry by smoking weed is no different from locking him up for changing his brain chemistry by eating a large bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. Let us realign ourselves with this nation's founding principles and legalize the freedom to choose by ending the madness that has brutalized Liberty every day for the past 15,330 days. Fight tyranny; act freely; defend Liberty. Mahalo. 

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on riding coach

Helen Keller, a famously blind and deaf woman, said: “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.“ How happy, then, can today's rich people be? One percent (1%) of the U.S. population controls roughly sixty percent of this country's material wealth; the same one percent also wields political and economic power disastrously greater than ought be held by such a small cabal. With almost no hardship in their lives, and with few checks on their growing might, this group is helping to morally and spiritually bankrupt the nation while also condemning itself to a life devoid of joy, drained of color, and soured by the foul stink of cash. In the course of his own life, the author has closed his mind to certain ideas, including the notion that the goal of human existence is to make as much money as possible before dying; if a prosperous life is one devoid of struggle, sacrifice, and want, he will gladly stay poor, and ride coach.

A few ten thousand Americans are richer than a hundred and fifty million of their fellow countrymen, combined. With enough resources to hire good lawyers and weather long trials, they rarely receive full punishment for their crimes. Do we see Justice, here? We do not. Is this what our Founding Persons meant when they spoke of securing the Blessings of Liberty, forming a more perfect Union, or promoting the general Welfare? It is not. Instead, we see the theft of power by a small cluster of moneyed plutocrats who corrupt the halls of government and call for armed conflict while profiting financially from the wars they call for. The insatiably greedy few who caused the poor of France to storm the Bastille and the stubborn of America to toss tea into a bay are back in control; once more, we suffer the petty aristocracy.

The American republic was founded on a handful of simple principles, some of which are listed above. Today, millions of children in America regularly suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when they cannot be sure where their next meal will come from. Tens of millions more Americans wallow daily in wage slavery brought about by high levels of student debt, their hearts gripped by fear of increasingly militarized police forces. Poverty, hunger, and police brutality are hardships we could master, together, if our political leaders weren't constantly stroking the shafts of their financial backers and if deep-pocketed lobbying groups weren't incessantly plugging their own pet projects (and if a hundred million misguided Americans stopped paying to be brainwashed into abject docility by compelling television programming). Rich people experience monumental successes frequently; they have forgotten the abiding joy that comes with infrequent enjoyment of small successes. If we downtrodden masses could only convince the 1% to be happy with having completed a daily workout routine and remembering to floss before going to bed instead of standing idly by while they celebrate trillion-dollar federal bailouts of their failing banks, America might resemble her old, egalitarian self, once more. Heavy is the crown, but not heavy enough to dampen the avarice of they who wear it.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

liberty or death

las tres hermanas

on keeping quiet

In the years leading up to America's Revolutionary War, a group of persons calling themselves the Sons of Liberty cried foul of the corruption and abuse they suffered under British rule. Among the patriots was Samuel Adams, whose pamphlets, along with Paine's book Common Sense, helped convince the colonials that sharp rebellion against tyranny was preferable to dull suffering at the hands of tax-hungry bureaucrats. Time heals all wounds; it also obscures the lessons of the past. Such is the uniformity in America today, such is the average citizen's conformity to rigid social norms, that we resemble bad clones of worse stereotypes more than we do unique individuals. The lies repeated in person and in commercials by corporations, newscasters, politicians, and pastors have convinced large numbers of formerly stout-hearted Ynki that buying foods in bulk and abandoning humble personal development for brash football fandom leads to Happiness, that it's OK to hate brown people who hopped a fence in order to pick lettuce in Arizona for fourteen hours a day, and that everything in life will be easy so long as one worships a bearded White god while in the presence of one's nit-picking, judgmental neighbors.

A quote from 1984 by George Orwell came through on the tumblrbot recently, one as chilling as it was accurate. “Heavy physical work,” Orwell wrote, “the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizons of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And when they did become discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty grievances.” Few authors have with greater accuracy predicted that Americans by the hundreds of thousands would sacrifice personal independence and self respect for consumption-oriented wage slavery.

While reviewing the pieces I wrote that are critical of contemporary American society, I realized that many of the dangers I spoke about were methods implemented purposefully in order to keep the American people docile, content, and in the dark. (“They who sacrifice Liberty for safety deserve neither.” Source unknown.) If I keep going along my current alarmist path, I may well be singled out for reeducation and forcibly lobotomized. Far better were it for me to fall into my pigeon hole along with everyone else, rack up personal debt, watch hours of television every day, eat fast food, and drive my car regularly; far better were it for me to dance the zombie dance of the blissfully aloof rather than bicycling, recycling, learning how to grow my own crops, running my household on solar power, and dialing back my consumerism to the point where I am clothed and fed but little else. I refuse, moreover, to buy chocolates on Valentine's day, to say that I support the troops without actually doing anything to support the troops, to let cars take my right-of-way while I am bicycling, to glue an American flag to an article of my clothing, or to participate in the racism that is carefully calculated to keep us little guys fighting each other rather than the conglomerated and incorporated juggernauts that have all but brought this country to its knees. Therefore, in the spirit of our Founding Persons, with thoughts turned to old man Adams and his ilk, I shall keep up this fight until goodness and Happiness have vanquished the forces of hatred and greed, risking Life, Liberty, and sacred Honor to defend this country's founding ideals. Morituri te salutamus, and huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

a logo from 2012

on harrowed rats

While paging through a dictionary one day last year, I came across something called a ruptured duck. (Now, I cannot locate this entry in my New Oxford American dictionary, and, without access to Lord Googlebot, I cannot do an Internet search. Help!?!) If memory serves correctly, the ruptured duck is an Old World heraldic symbol consisting of a detached human arm – bent at the elbow – embossed upon a shield with square top corners and a rounded bottom. I remember reading the description of the ruptured duck and finding therein few answers to pressing questions.

A few of my questions were as follow. 'Who chose the name for this emblem?' 'Is there an emblem of a whole duck, before its rupture?' 'Is the ruptured duck a secret image designed to enrage the simple-minded or is it merely a bit of medieval nonsense that somehow survived the ravages of time?' These questions well never be answered, but my initial puzzlement inspired me to start designing a coat armor, or coat of arms, for the modern street artist, graffito, and vandal. So far, there are two (similar) designs, found here and here. The goal is to develop a coat armor simple enough to recreate in less than sixty seconds that depicts both the tools of the graffiti trade and the graffito himself.

The rat represents street artists because they frequents hidden and scary places, bringing life to the ignored, the dirty, and the underutilized portions of their respective cities. And even though they tend to be interesting and productive people, graffitos are reviled by nearly everyone else, by cops and property owners, magistrates and fence builders, security guards and taxi drivers. Besides other graffiti writers and buxom female teenagers, the only persons who tend to applaud a vandal's work are ones who sell paint. The anarchy symbol seen in both pictures represents a common attitude held by Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists, or SDUBS: no one person owns the world, it belongs to us all; therefore, we will make the drab spaces beautiful by risking life, limb, and liberty in order to paste, spray, draw, and bomb our art into and onto the boldest possible spots. My design skills are paltry, and my ideas want for much, but perhaps if I keep bashing my head against the wall for long enough, something useful might come out of it.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

foxtrot tango whiskey

In the movie The Dark Knight starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, Michael Cane's character sums up the Joker's actions with a single, iconic sentence, saying, “Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn.” To some degree, my desires mirror those of that green-haired maniac; on some level, I think that the most expedient and the simplest way for us to return balance to our world and to curtail mankind's dangerous over-expansion is to stop trying to control things that are wholly out of our control (such as human economic and moral behavior) and return to a state of blessed anarchy.

Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.

Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

importance of metrics

Americans – and, by extension, peoples in all parts of the world who are yearning for Liberty – appear to have lost sight of the more important things in life. Bombarded by constant advertisements telling us we need this new thing and that new service, this new skirt and that new car, we long ago gave in, affording these things by burying ourselves under mountains of personal and high-interest debt. Furthermore, we have come to define ourselves primarily by our current occupations; we have come to accept monikers such as Blue Collar, Middle Class, Working Poor, and the like, without batting an eye, without a single question, without the slightest outcry, without even taking a moment to see how such narrow definitions are deflating our once-buoyant and once-vibrant individual souls.

To accept such monikers, or to strive to be seen by others as belonging to one specific class or the other, is to step willingly into the artificial world that advertisers and their corporate slave-masters try so hard to craft for us (in order to get our money); to talk constantly about What We Do For A Living – to start every single fucking conversation with that exact question – is to declare that our lives are primarily boring, devoid of personal development, lacking in spiritual humility, focused mostly on grabbing and taking instead of offering and giving. When trying to remember when was the last time I spoke with someone about my recent efforts to increase my own Liberty or that of another person, my mind draws a blank; when trying to talk to the average Someone about the use of negative space within an artistic composition, or the importance of cadence in prose, they immediately change subjects and want to discuss the upcoming release of the blue-ray diskette of the fourth season of some worthless fucking TV show about super-models-turned-moms who run secret subterranean cabbage farms.

I am beginning to suspect that I am largely alone in my conscious rejection of modern consumerist culture, that my efforts to cultivate a shred of individuality – not by hoarding cash or working 70 hours a week but by reading books on a dozen different topics and trying to reawaken my artistic abilities – that my efforts to make myself a slightly better and more interesting person are being matched by few, if any, of my peers. Please understand that I am not trying to say that I am cooler or more valuable to society for rejecting its more knee-jerk and pitiful aspects, merely that I feel largely alone, a poor sob adrift on a sea of self-banishment that is fed by my own tears, a snake for whom the once-familiar tones have lost their charming edge. My disappointment with society is likely the reason why few people bother to read these blogs, anymore – my bleating has turned sour; my whining, incessant; and my holier-than-thou attitude has become so stale that even I am bored with it. Perhaps I too should just give in, work a nine-to-five, worry above all else about my choice of cable-TV provider, and gain 75 pounds of pure belly-fat. Probably not, though, because I've given up on so many other things in my life that I could hardly live with giving up on becoming the best person I can possibly be. (If The Best Person I Can Possibly Be is not a metric of its own, a tiny little box into which I am trying to force my bursting and exuberant soul, then I have no idea what a metric is, anymore.) To my knowledge, though, few Americans self-identify with artificial names and metrics dreamed up by content-hungry newscasters, and this judgmental thunder-and-brimstone that I compose is just wasting space on a perfectly good server farm, somewhere. Oh well; mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on providing Welfare

For this author, the main reason that we cannot allow Mitt Romney to gain our nation's highest office is that he has never read the Constitution of the United States of America. If the former governor of Massachusetts had at one time read even the preamble to this our second-most sacred document after the Declaration of Independence, he might have retained at least a distant memory that the role of government in this land is to provide for the general Welfare and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to us and to our Posterity. (Perhaps his and his Republican Party's openly-declared plans to amend the Constitution in order to define marriage as between 1 (one) man and 1 (one) woman include secret plans to edit out this embarrassing preamble, this handful of words that contradict Mr. Romney's apparent core beliefs by clearly stating that government in America is supposed to help and uplift as many people as possible, not make as few as possible fabulously rich.)

It is better, perhaps, for Mr. Romeny and the Republican Party in America (or RePIA, pronounced “rape-ya”) to remain ignorant of both the Declaration and the Constitution; if they were to take a closer look at either of these our precious documents, or to do any background investigations into the deeper meanings inherent to these two texts, they may find therein more passages aimed at spreading Liberty and equality amongst the peoples of the world that they would want to remove, amend, excise, cut out, and destroy. Curious to me is that Mitt-the-Governor-of-Massachusetts seemed to understand the role of our government far better than does Mitt-the-Candidate-for-President, he who appears to be catering to – openly and without shame – that billionaire lunatic-fringe that continues to profit from the Great Recession, from this nation's spreading of war across the globe, and from the purposeful and planned destruction of economic equality in America. I watch with consternation while riding my bicycle through this little blue-collar town as more and more banners appear on the lawns of modest homes that support Romney and Ryan; after talking with an Obama-hating neighbor, however, I am gaining some insight into his and the other Romney-supporters' views and methodology.

As far as I can tell, these people passionately hate Obama and timidly support Romney because they expose themselves to the narrow views of but a few political pundits, TV fear-mongers, and syndicated radio talk-show-hosts; they have allowed hatred to fester in their hearts by avoiding any opinions other than those that stoke their ire, preferring cocoons of self-righteous indignation to the rage-stilling effect of a careful and rational analysis of many different sources, news outlets, and opinions (my neighbor mentioned that he despised Obama not for his race but for being an idiot, even though we had not even come close to discussing the tone of our sitting President's skin). Dear reader, please understand that in the past I have been guilty of this same sort of behavior, passionately hating George W. Bush and mocking his every word and deed; now, however, seeing things from the Other Side, I recognize the danger that lurks in such narrow-minded and puffed-up views of the members of political parties. Hatred of this type obscures the true danger that is facing democracy and equality in America, which comes from people thinking that there is a difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties, that one is better than the other, that one has all of the answers and the other, none. Both of these Parties regularly mock the notion of representative government, both cater to fantastically-rich corporate and private donors to the detriment of tens of millions of hard-working average Americans, both are farcical shadows of their former selves, and both long ago sacrificed sacred Honor for the shallow reward of fleeting political power. Woe is unto us, friend – America delenda est; only through dastardly and destructive effort might we change the status-quo, and regain for ourselves all that we have lost. Mahalo, though, and keep fighting.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

corporate rule falters

As a self-appointed bane of America's corporate ruling-class, I speak often of the risks posed by these quasi-humans and their propensity to homogenize and sterilize any and every process and action they undertake. I have been encouraged, however, in recent months, by what appears to me to be a slipping of the corporate hand. Contrary to the image they work so hard to portray in countless and persistent television advertisements, in home-improvement centers such as Lowe's and Home Depot, for example, I wander the aisles for long periods of time without being approached or spoken to by those stores' employees; if I am approached (by anyone other than poorly-disguised undercover police officers who shadow my every move, all but begging me to steal something), I am called such things as, “Guy,” “Bro,” “Man,” or “Dude,” and only rarely, “Sir.” Such is the laxity of these corporations' wage-slaves that they stand around frequently in clusters talking to one another about anything but work, about kids or sports or how much their lives such, in earshot of paying customers who might need help finding something; such is the impotence of their bosses in middle-management that mandatory training-sessions aimed at fostering within their hearts a sense of decorum or self-pride appear to be wasted effort.

Whereas I initially placed the blame for such unprofessional behavior squarely on the shoulders of the under-educated and fiscally-misguided employees who live in this area of South-Central Pennsylvania, in my recent travels I have noticed similar behavior exhibited by employees stemming from other regions, as well. Therefore, I suspect that the once-iron grip of corporate rule – a grip that for many decades has relied on employees' fear of retribution or job-loss, their honest desire to serve the customer, and pride in their small-but-important contribution to goals clearly defined in their corporations' mission statement – that such inherent and priceless values have been steam-rolled into oblivion by incessant demands to increase profits and the need to keep stock-values rising, to the detriment of service to the customer. I have noticed the grip of corporate rule slipping in states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, at stores such as those mentioned above and at Sam's Club, Auto Zone, and at branches of different grocery-store chains.

Could my mind be so filled with vitriol for undemocratic, greedy corporations that I am seeing something that is not there, or could my observations contain a hint of the Truth? Am I so fed up with the way that corporations are destroying the fabric of American society that I nitpick even their slightest professional errors, making mountains out of mole-hills? While I admit to longing for a time when the Commons belonged to all persons equally and when we Yanki were self-reliant and self-respecting individuals who cherished things of intrinsic value and who contributed willingly to communal success instead of just looking out of ourselves all the time, I recognize the futility of my struggle to resurrect such lost values and my resemblance to a fool tilting at windmills; if, however, I do not fight to free the American Dream from the stifling grasp of materialism and conspicuous consumption, who will? If I do not sit here in this cold room every morning banging away at this netbook with a pot full of hot, green tea at my side championing the rights of gays and lesbians and hurling barbs at the creeping menace of homegrown religious extremism, who will? Few Americans are as stupid as I am to stake Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor on the notion that we as a people have a duty to defend Liberty at all cost, to work tirelessly to ensure that all of our fellow humans are treated equally, and to fight governmental over-reach with such foolish brashness as I tend to do; I blame this behavior in part on Silas Nickerson, my 18th Century ancestor, who took up arms in our War for Independence, joining a rag-tag band of homegrown terrorists who were fighting with a distant tyrant for their right to decide for themselves how best to make themselves Safe and Happy. I wonder if old man Silas would applaud my efforts, or if he would succumb to the siren-song of Me-First capitalism, signing away his hard-won freedom for 60 months of interest-free financing. Hrm.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

laws to obey

Roughly a hundred and forty years ago, the persons who founded this American republic staked their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor on a simple yet profound document. Calling it the Declaration of Independence, these people wrote a text that is as powerful today as it was then, shaping our minds, our hearts, our common desires and destinies. The Declaration defines not just the rights of the entirety of humankind to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but also the expectations we have for government, in clear and unequivocal language, cementing in the minds of millions of downtrodden persons across the globe the notion that they have the right to be ruled as they see best fit by an entity whose sole purpose it is to make them Safe and Happy.

And, yet, the federal government of the United States of America considers the Declaration to be a dead and useless document, one that We the people of this land cannot use to correct our systems' failures or to turn to for protection from our leaders' overreaches. The federal government justifies this position by claiming that the Declaration only applied to the thirteen original signatory States, and, since we have more than thirteen States today, it no longer grants us the right to shake off the stifling grip of corrupt rule or to free ourselves from the smothering grasp of tyranny. Such an opinion is indeed estimable to tyrants only, not to the democratically-elected leadership of a free and honest people. Not only would such a stance – if applied equally to all legislation passed to date by our houses of Congress – negate all laws but those issuing anew from our legislature each and every year, it would require lawmakers to continuously redefine, on a regular basis, this nation's entire legal framework. Let us take the feds at their word, though, and look at the world for a moment through their cruel and twisted eyes.

The Declaration was ratified unanimously by the Congress of the United States of America; it has been passed down from mother to son and from father to daughter, inspiring countless acts of courageous defiance and helping to lift entire generations out of the stifling sewer of poverty and oppression. In line with federal contempt for the Declaration of Independence, however, let us commonly ignore the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and take any drugs we wish to take. Let us also ignore the provisions of the Patriot Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and regain the rights and freedoms that it took from us. Let us ignore the cruel and unusual provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and marry whom we please, be that person man, woman, or something in-between. Is it lunacy to assume that laws only apply while the legislature that passed them is in session, and that they fall by the wayside once it convenes? If this were so, our police forces might actually serve and protect the citizenry rather than abuse us and seek to revoke our personal, human freedoms; if this were so, persons among us – such as Mitt Romney – who exploit loopholes in the tax code for personal financial gain and to the detriment of our nation's treasuries, damaging the welfare of those of us who cannot afford to hire the best tax attorneys money can buy, such persons would be punished for their evil and un-American ways and forced to play nice like everyone else. Even trying to think in such a way chaps my buns to no end; even trying to rewire my brain to see the Declaration of Independence as anything but mankind's ultimate living document drives me to the brink of tears. But, dear friend, this is the land in which we live; our federal and state overlords treat us how we allow them to treat us, in the manner of docile livestock. Perhaps we deserve not Life nor Liberty nor to Pursue our Happiness, only to live as corporate wage-slaves desperately clinging to dim memories of justice and equality for all. There is another way, however, a way for us to live in complete Liberty while looking out for each others' Lives and Fortunes, but we shall never live such a life unless we stand as one, right now, and create for ourselves the type of country that the Declaration of Independence once envisioned, wresting freedom from the corrupt individuals who make up our tyrannical and oppressive government. So stand up, speak out, and demand the right to Pursue your Happiness as you decide is best. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

a Declarational pledge

In the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, that legal document that lies at the heart of this American nation, our founding persons – and, by extension, all American citizens living or dead – declare that, “[A]ll Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness[.]” (Since starting this piece, I have read that the federal government does not consider the Declaration an active legal document because it was ratified before the Constitution by merely thirteen states, not after this republic's official establishment by the number of states we have now; so long as even a single American yearns for Liberty and the right to Pursue his Happiness as he sees best fit, however, the Declaration grants him – and us all – the right to alter and abolish our government until it creates Safety and Happiness for all, equally.) Long have our political and social leaders hewn to this pledge, laboring tirelessly to ensure that we are all blessed with freedom and justice; now, however, the Republican Party plans to destroy the essence of the Declaration of Independence by amending its sister-text, the Constitution, with a sentence defining marriage according to the Christian bible, just one of hundreds of different religious texts we turn to in this country, each and every day.

To restrict a person's right to marry whomever he should please is to rob him of his ability to Pursue Happiness; it says to him that he is worth less than others, that he was created less than equal, that his Liberty is less important than the Liberty of persons with a taste for heterosexual liaisons. Anyone with even the slightest shred of intelligence will look at the quote given above and immediately join our ranks as we fight the Republican Party's plans to abolish the rule of law and to supplant it with the rule of the church. (Which church or which faith is irrelevant; organized religion, with its fear-based indoctrination tactics, brainwashing of young people, and rigid, unyielding structure, poses among the greatest of conceivable threats to the Safety and Happiness of free-thinking, Liberty-loving individuals everywhere.)

This author finds it curious that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan prefer lies and hatred to Honor and Truth, and that they care so little for the opinions of the American people that they dare to stand up and say, Fuck everyone who isn't a hardcore Christian, fuck everyone who likes to sleep with persons of the same sex, and fuck everyone poorer than our corporate cronies and slave-masters. More shocking, however, is that roughly half of the American voting population – some seventy million (70,000,000) people – seem to agree with the vile nonsense spewing from the Republican Party, its members and representatives; when tens of millions of people abandon critical thinking and stop doubting the bullshit that is being shoveled down their throats we get things such as the Nazi's Holocaust, the Soviets' gulags, and Bush's Patriot Act; when tens of millions of people sit idly by as their leaders rack up record debts and wage wars of aggression against sovereign foreign nations, we can honestly say that America has fallen from grace, that the pledge of equality once made in the Declaration of Independence is null and void, and that our attempt to create a just and peaceful society comprised of self-reliant and self-respecting individuals who mind their own business has been trampled under the jackboots of mindless, Me-First automatons blindly adhering to poorly-formed notions and vacuous party-lines.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Liberty, at stake

Liberty, at stake

This picture was created on 25 March 2011, well before the Republic Party in America released the Defense Of Marriage provision in its Romney/Ryan presidential platform, which is a brazen assault on the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual Americans to get married. Fight theocratic rule! Fight injustice! Maintain the separation of church and state! Mahalo. X

president, not king

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

on privileged protesting

In these United States, different types of people protest differently. On the one hand are wealth-backed lobbyists and representatives of special-interests who are invited into the personal chambers of Congresspersons and Senators where they voice their concerns, bitch, moan, and explain their reasons for being aggrieved after having handed over a check for many tens of thousands of dollars. On the other hand are citizens who cannot afford to give elected officials envelopes filled with cash on a monthly or weekly basis and who therefore must stand outside in the elements, holding signs in their chapped and blistered hands and perhaps telephoning once or twice a day with their state representative's personal secretary in the hope that she might allow them to speak – even if only briefly – to the person who is supposed to be their go-to-guy in Washington. Furthermore, in this, our Corporate Republic of America, certain fabulously-rich individuals can hire slick-tongued, crafty motherfuckers to set up vacations at ski lodges in posh resorts, to which Senators and Congresspersons are invited and where they are wined and dined, harangued and harassed, and bought and sold to such an extent that when they return to Capitol Hill they initiate and support legislation favoring the narrow interests of their new corporate overlords rather than pursuing with single purpose the diverse interests of three hundred millions of common and average citizens. This is how things go in America today, a country whose government was once slightly representative but which now exists merely to increase and to protect the profits of a military-industrial complex that demands constant war and corporations that have been allowed to grow so large that they get away with not paying taxes, degrading and destroying our commonly-shared environmental, stealing and mismanaging the investments of millions of hard-working persons, and brainwashing the public via ubiquitous and constant television, radio, and billboard advertising into thinking that all is well with the world.

All is not well with the world, ladies and gentlemen. The economic system known as capitalism is being used to destroy Nature and to shuffle unimaginable riches into the pockets of fewer than a thousand families across the globe. Television is rotting the brains of millions of previously self-respecting and self-reliant individuals, encouraging them to kill themselves slowly by sitting around all day and not getting out for a nice walk, exposing them to the stale crumbs of televised truthiness rather than forcing them to think critically about the bullshit seeping from the mouths of their favorite painted talking heads.

We did not arrive at this state of affairs accidentally – this was engineered by precisely those individuals who run the aforementioned giant corporations. But who is protesting the downfall of democracy and the desecration of Ladies Liberty and Siblinghood? Only a few hundred thousand people are actively battling this unjust state of affairs, among them the members of Occupy, the Indignados, and the Anti-Fascists, or antifa, who are all carrying on the proud tradition of warring against injustice that started back in the late 1840s, when the members of something called the Paris Commune first took up arms against the overreaches of the state, inspiring Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to write a short pamphlet called the Communist Manifesto. And, unlike persons who choose to bribe and to corrupt elected officials to get their way, Occupy and antifa do their protesting out in the street, for all the world to see, eschewing back-door dealings for peaceful marches through tear-gas, pepper-spray, and hails of rubber bullets so as to bring attention to the marginalization of Lady Justice, who cannot easily protect herself, as she must remain blindfolded. So, friends, by rising up, speaking out, and never taking the easy way out, you too can help make this world a better place for all people, not just for the super-rich. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit