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
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts
08 March 2013
20 February 2013
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 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
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