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

on the society for securing the blessings of Liberty

In the wake of all federal, state, and local government's recent refusal to follow such guidelines as are clearly worded in the Constitution of the United States of America stating that one of the few roles of government is to secure the blessings of Liberty to us, the founding persons' Posterity, by granting us, the American People, full and unconditional rights to do with our bodies and our minds as we see best fit (be it by smoking, drinking, gaining or losing weight, or cutting our hair in strange and unusual ways), the most upstanding and forward-thinking citizens of this economically-ailing and morally-oppressive nation have banded together to form the American Society for Securing the Blessings of Liberty (ASSBL).

Open to any person who swears that he or she has actually studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with a sober and open mind and who can prove that he or she is dedicated fully to the cause of keeping the People Safe and Happy (by staying out of everyone else's business until such time as intervention is requested by them in writing), the ASSBL seeks to guide our once-fine nation back onto the course from which it long ago strayed. Said Ebenezer Higgins IX (a direct descendant of one of the original Sons of Liberty), who was himself instrumental in the founding of ASSBL, “For too long have we granted our various governmental bodies the power to control our lives and to punish us for doing with our bodies things that do not directly infringe upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person, or persons. Our brave ancestors fought and died to secure for us total freedom, which we sacrificed in 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act and then again shortly after the 9-11 attacks in order to gain a simulacrum of security against the chaotic and shifting winds of Fortune, against which there is no security that has ever or can ever be devised by humankind.”

The ASSBL was inspired by the short-lived Department for Securing the Blessings of Liberty, a government body founded by President Barack Obama that flourished for, oh, about five whole minutes before the prison, district attorney, and police lobbies had its funding revoked and arranged to have its appointed members lose their lands, to have their mouths sewn shut, and to live in constant fear of being physically and politically disappeared. Dedicated to the idea that the role of government is to protect the People from external and internal threats rather than to nitpick their every action or to put them in jail for consuming drugs other than the drug alcohol, the drug nicotine, or the drug caffeine, the Society requires of its members merely that they risk their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor to protect the Life, Liberty, and Property of their fellow homo sapiens. To sign up for ASSBL, or to donate funds to help ensure its continued existence, please call 1.877.555.GFYS, or go to www.theblessingsoflibertydonotexist.com.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit