on Sallust

I have recently finished reading a Latin-to-English translation from 1920 of the War with Catiline, by Sallust. (I had purchased the book for one dollar during a visit to my alma mater's library.) Beyond the fact that the actual war which this work purports to cover consumed no more than the last few pages of the text (which is scores of pages long), the tale deals primarily with such political corruption, societal decay, and moral downfall as that seems to have set the stage for Catiline's failed rebellion. Moreover, the situations Sallust describes in this book – situations which Catiline appears to have tried to exploit to his own benefit – struck me as eerily similar to situations we face in America, today.

Sallust speaks of the founding of Rome, how the city came to wealth and great fortune, becoming the mother of an empire. But, soon enough, the principles upon which it was founded – industriousness, thriftiness, valor – were supplanted by avarice, sloth, and self-aggrandizement. And, soon enough, in its primary political body, the Senate, “instead of modesty, incorruptibility, and honesty, shamelessness, bribery, and rapacity held sway.” This, I believe, is the trap into which our own Congress and Senate have fallen. The politicians who fill these bodies, while campaigning for election or reelection, champion themselves as honest persons of incorruptible and modest moral fiber only to revert, once they have gained office, to shamelessly selling their time and influence to the highest bidder and to writing such laws as rape the very people they have sworn to protect of their Lives, Liberty, and Property. Sallust speaks that when Rome had grown “great through toil and the practice of justice… savage tribes and mighty people subdued by force of arms… and all the seas and lands were open, then Fortune began to grow cruel and to bring confusion into all our affairs.” This text almost perfectly describes the course America charted from its founding until now, in that this nation was born in perilous circumstances, becoming soon a country dedicated to the preservation of the rule of law, then wiping out whole populations of First People tribes, and finally conquering Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to leave land and sea our disposal, only to discover, as if we had but recently come to our senses, that our internal affairs were seriously – and perhaps irrevocably – out of alignment.

I am not the first to draw comparisons between the Roman and the American empires, and I am not the first to suggest the inevitability of an empire such as our own to fail, but I am delighted to have found an ancient work that so well supports these points. While there is much solid wisdom to be learned from past writers (I should like to suggest to persons in the Occupy and the Indignados movements to read the aforementioned book, and to prepare for a total lack of positive change), the primary lessons I gleaned from this interesting and worthwhile text are that life seems to follow certain paths inexorably, that politics are intolerably messy and best left alone, that money and influence always corrupt, that people should be trusted about as far as they can be thrown, and that elected officials will only reluctantly and with much kicking and screaming give up such power as to which they have become accustomed. So please, dear reader, fellow Second Sons of Liberty, comrades of the New Guards for our Future Security, please do not despair, for no matter how dark our times may seem, they are sure to get worse before they get better. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

work cited: Sallust, page 14, J. C. Rolfe, London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam's Sons, 1920

on lacrosse – America's native game

Long have we Yankees watched, celebrated, and played non-native, imported sports. Baseball and ice hockey come originally from Canada; American football derives from British rugby; and tennis, let alone soccer, are European sports dreamed up by tards in the Old Country. (Basketball, as a makeshift sport created in America during the middle of the 20^th century, may well have been invented here, but, compared to lacrosse, too recently to be truly and exclusively American – it is a game for the modern world.) With invasive sports taking over our airways and poisoning our hearts, we ask, Where does it stop? What native-born game shall henceforth entertainment us? To the amateur patriot seeking to wring from his republic every last drop of terrible beauty; to the action lover yearning for the speed of soccer mixed with the crash of football; to the sadist lusting after the sight of blood spurting from well-bruised, moving flesh; to all these people, the game of choice is the game that thrived here long before the white man arrived to rape, to pillage, and to defile the good dark soil with his asphalt and concrete.

Lacrosse – brutal, quick, stunning lacrosse – was played on this continent well before the first paleface made landfall. For centuries prior to the arrival of European settlers, for generations before the white man lied and cheated and murdered his shameful way into the country's vast interior, this harsh sport blossomed amongst the democratic, resource-conscious First People nations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed area, and beyond. What better way to celebrate life than to try to bash one's opponent to death?! What better way to display one's vigor and fortitude than to take one's licks and to charge at the enemy with gentle, heedless rage?! Lacrosse requires hand-eye coordination and upper-body strength similar to that of tennis or baseball, stamina and agility similar to that of soccer, and bodily contact such as that felt in football, with an wholly unusual element: net-topped poles with which a player bashes and strikes at his opposing (ball-handling) player, hitting him anywhere about the upper body (excepting the neck and head area) even when he has fallen and is lying on the ground. (Lacrosse is played by both males and females, from the middle-school level onward.) Lacrosse is not a sport for persons with weak bones, inferior blood-clotting facilities, or a penchant for weeping – it is a sport for hardened operators for whom injury, pain, and deprivation are a way of life.

To the extent that each is a honorable, rugged, unflinching, team-oriented, and hard-hitting individual, the lacrosse player resembles the self-sufficient, resource-conscious American patriot. Watching lacrosse is akin to peering back in time to the days when our problems were solved quickly and according to clearly defined rules, to a time in which decision-makers hashed things out by bashing each other nicely over the head while attempting to pluck from the sky a small, rock-hard, fast-moving round object. Oh, if only the long-silent war-whoops would once again sound from the throats of proud and self-less warriors.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

ordered chaos at Lot 1 show

  It is evening in Angelino Heights, and Lot 1 is thick with jumpy, snorting alcoholics. The third to perform after Passionweiss and Fat Tony, Amigo the Devil mounts the stage confidently, with the booze on his breath and his heart filled with a joyous rage. The crowd, already raucous and grinning with the bravo charlie, hoists upon him waves of ragged applause. A girl passes out – she is draped unceremoniously over a torn couch in the rear. Members of different and opposing urban youth organizations mingle together peacefully, each man sizing up the next, each man primed and ready to rape, pillage, and destroy. Locally brewed beers flow freely and at decent prices, the barkeep rushing to keep up. Another girl passes out, this one an attractive blond – she is carried carefully outside and placed in the Devil's tour van, where she lies, waiting, to be consumed by him later. Just as the mood inside is nearing its peak of wild-eyed, skin-clawing frenzy, Freddie Gibbs steps from the shadows spreading good cheer, his eyes flashing with visions of the Devil strumming his banjo hard. Via con diablo, amigos.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on the pagan power of capitalism

  Capitalism, with all its evil and all its ills, has had one definitely positive affect on American society: to rid our pagan holidays of religious contamination. Neither morality nor meaning matter in the eyes of capitalism – the only thing that matters is making more money. For example: capitalism has freed the ancient holiday of goddess Eostre from the clutches of biblical oppression. As a holiday that once celebrated that goddess who makes women fertile (and the land grow green again), the festival we now know as Easter was high-jacked by religious forces and co-opted for their own narrow uses. In the last half century, however, the ever-grasping paws of capitalistic greed have freed Easter from the Shackles of Scripture, so that we once again celebrate lustful procreation (symbolized by the rabbit) and the return of the teeming things (symbolized by daffodils and other such flowers).

  Similarly, the holiday of the winter solstice, an occasion that has been marked throughout the centuries with lights mounted on pine trees. This holiday was taken hostage by the forces of Christianity, forces that bastardized the logical marking of the passage of time and tied it to the fictitious birth of a fictitious god in a land far removed in time and space. The passing of the winter solstice was only recently liberated by the uncaring hand of capitalism – an emphasis on Santa Claus and the profuse giving of gifts has replaced, thankfully, the (biblically) unspecified day upon which a young lady gave birth, in a (biblically) unspecified structure, in an (biblically) unspecified place, to a male child. (The story of Jesus is a precise retelling of the story of Horus, an Egyptian god born of a virgin who died only to arise from death after three days.) Now, instead of worshiping some stagnant and foreign godhead, during the darkest days of winter we celebrate the coming-together of loved-ones, and shower them with presents as a sign of our affection. Gone are the days of the churchly mandate – capitalism has finally, and for good, removed Christ from Christmas.

  And, most importantly (to me, at least), the uncaring and voracious greed of capitalism has removed any shred of religiosity from the delightfully pagan holiday of Halloween. What started as a heathen ritual to mark the beginning of winter was commandeered by Christian forces, who turned it into All Saint's Day, on which day only the dead of that religion were praised (in effigy). After centuries of suffering under the cruel, stifling blanket of this biblical slavery, Halloween has been dragged from its prison by the ever-hungry maw of monster-capitalism. Gone are the days when Americans celebrated the Christian dead – arrived are the days when we Americans celebrate inventiveness and the ability to take a good scaring, when we shower upon the children of the land many sweet gifts, when we might, for one short night, become someone other than our boring normal selves. (The proliferation of Halloween as a national holiday was made possible by profit-hungry corporations that recognized in it a way to sell cheap, Chinese-made costumes.)

  While I generally abhor capitalism for its tendency to make only a small portion of the American people rich, I celebrate it now for freeing our shared and common history from the clutches of religious oppression. We can ill afford to live according to the rules of a lost tribe of desert people, so it is fitting that the forces of our chosen economic model are wiping our history clean of religious contamination.

  The next time you are carving up a lamb on Easter, remember horny old Eostre, and give your spouse a long, lingering kiss. When you find yourself stringing lights on a tree, remember to go outside and enjoy the longest night of the year. As you are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate and dazzling costume, remember that its job is to scare away the sickness-bringing forces of the impending long cold darkness. Thanks to the religious impartiality of our capitalistic system, you can enjoy these events without being forced to fear the wrath of some jealous, vengeful godhead.

  America is not a Christian nation, nor was it in any way founded upon the Christian faith. Neither easter nor the winter solstice were originally Christian holidays – these pagan rituals were commandeered in order to facilitate the spread of one set of religious teachings. Just how non-Christian is America? We honor the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. On Wednesday, we remember the Norse god Wotan, and on Thursday, his son-brother Thor. In the harbor of New York there stands a large statue of the Roman goddess Libertas (whom we call Lady Liberty), a goddess who holds in one hand the Torch of Progress, in the other a representation of our most treasured of documents, the Declaration of Independence.

  Everywhere in this great land we witness the chaotic jumble of different faiths and systems of belief, all tumbling together and jostling to retain the slightest shred of relevancy. May the uncaring grasp of our institutionalized greed continue to keep American society free of religious one-mindedness! Thank you, lustful and rapacious Capitalism, you old sport, for doing you part to keep America jumbled, confused, and oppression-free.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp