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

what to do to help our war effort

Often over the past few months, while conversing with seemingly intelligent, apparently clear-thinking individuals, I have run into indifference and ignorance toward the fact that America is at war. For over a decade now, this nation has waged its wars in strange and distant places, battling fierce peoples in dusty villages, fighting a mysterious, shiver-inducing organization that, as would the hydra, grows new heads to replace any old heads that get lopped off, mozambiqued, or otherwise violently removed. During these conversations, my counterparts nearly always ask, “What is it that I can do, personally, to help our boys and girls win these wars that we have sent them off to wage?” To address this question, and to free my heart of much worry and consternation, here are two things that the person interested in helping America win the wars that she is waging can do: first, reduce the amount of gasoline consumed; and, second, plant a victory garden.

As to the first point, gasoline, a strategic national resource, is distilled from crude oil, which is pumped from the ground by states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. These states not only promote and fund terrorist groups and terrorist activities, they also regularly violate their own citizens' human and civil rights. By burning gasoline in our own cars, we take it away from the cars, boats, and airplanes of the military; by burning gasoline, Americans fund terrorism, since the money we pay goes to the aforementioned states, which fund terrorism and violate basic human rights. The patriotic American wishing to avoid funding terrorism will stop driving his car.

As to the second point, ours is a fertile and rich land capable of producing great varieties of vegetables in abundant numbers. In the spirit of our forefathers, and of their father's fathers, the self-sufficient, self-respecting America will, wherever she is able to, erect and maintain a garden in which she grows anything and everything she can possibly grow. She does not purchase apples from New Zealand, cabbage from Brazil, or soybeans from the People's Republic of China – she grows these things herself, tending for her plants with loving care and patient foresight. It matters little if she maintains a single pot filled with herbs or a plot of raised beds running the entire length of her driveway; what does matter is that she honors our warriors' sacrifice by making a few sacrifices of her own.

These are but two, relatively simple things that persons can do to ween our country off of its addiction to foreign oil and artificially low prices and to free up logistical and manufacturing capacities for use in the general war effort. Perhaps we might later organize aluminum and steel drives, and set up Exchanges for Neighborhood Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance, but, for now, let us focus on these two primary objectives: to stop using so much damn oil, and to grow ourselves what food we ourselves consume. Please remember to spread the aloha, and to keep your heart light, and buoyant. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

no better than Nazis

in World War Two, we Americans fought bravely alongside Russians and English and Chinese and Frenchmen to conquer the aggressiveness and predatory nature of the Nazis and their allies. then, in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, we became the aggressors, we became the predators, and we invaded the sovereign nations of Iraq and Afghanistan with a ferocity and a disdain for the laws of civility that rivaled the ferocity and the disdain of the Nazis themselves. we Americans started wars of aggression without having declared war on these nations, thus robbing ourselves of the validity necessary to see our actions through, thus violating and invalidating numerous international treaties, thus sacrificing our precious honor for the fleeting promise of safety. America delenda est.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on nine eleven

  On this day we mark a decade since the events surrounding the 11th of September, 2001. Many changes have taken place in our nation since that bright summer day, some that restrict us in our liberty, others that inconvenience to little noticeable advantage. Absent clear and defining purpose, we have foundered collectively among the shoals of short-sightedness and greed, bruised badly by the false promise of unlimited consumer credit, our public figures beating the drums of nationalism and xenophobia in tones ever more vituperative and religious, the cultural diversity of our peoples muted by creeping corporate homogenization, our inventiveness forgotten in the face of gadgets that rarely prove convenient to the economics of time, our artistic creativity lost in the mirror-maze of sequels, mash-ups, and gimmickry, our citizens willfully abusing the national flag in misguided attempts to prove to others their patriotism, that deep and pure sense of pride that shines most brightly when it is cultivated within the confines of the heart, a sense that shrinks when displayed too prominently.

  I was in Manhattan that day; I volunteered three days later in the dust and wreckage blanketing the North Cove; I lost a fraternity brother who had just started work high up in the North Tower. But, then as now, I will never succumb to fear, never believe in America-über-alles, never discriminate against someone because of their choice of religion, never accept torture as a means necessary to the common defense, never disgrace the Stars and Stripes to prove to another my love for country, and never cease in my attempts to secure the Blessings of Liberty to myself, my brothers and sisters, and our Posterity.

  My the people who died on that September day not so long ago continue to rest in peace.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

cattle, not putting greens

  America is facing a massive drought. I have been hearing and reading that in the South billions of dollars in crops have dried up, and that whole herds of livestock have been sold prematurely because of lack of cheap or reliable feed. Water, always a precious resource, is neither falling from the sky nor filling the streams and waterways that support human and animal populations alike. Regardless, in the August 22 issue of Time magazine, there is a picture of of a lush green golf course surrounded by parched desert. I do not doubt that hundreds, if not thousands, of other golf facilities continue to operate despite the widespread drought disaster that is threatening the food supply of millions of American citizens.

  In national drought emergencies such as the one we are currently facing, golf courses should be among the first entities to lose access to water. Non-agricultural and other such projects not essential to sustaining life that consume massive volumes of water (for reasons including a reliance on water-hungry, non-native species of grass to keep the golf balls zipping along the fairways) must not receive sufficient water to maintain their expansive and manicured lawns when agriculture and animal husbandry are failing. The livelihoods of whole populations (cattle and sheep ranchers, cereal farmers, and their dependents) are on the line, right now; therefore, those among us rich enough to afford membership at golf oases carved from the hard-scrabble desert will have to forfeit water-intensive past-times in the interest of their neighbors' plight. (I am just now realizing the futility of this argument, as the rich care little for the condition of those not as rich as they, and any such restrictions on water-use during a drought will likely be seen as a nanny-state government overstepping its role in society, or something similarly asinine.)

  The security of the people of this nation is at risk, and everyone living in this country will have to make sacrifices in its interest. Allowing golf courses to water their massive and, in the greater scheme of things, wholly unnecessary operations violates two of the core principles of the Constitution, those being promoting the general Welfare and insuring domestic Tranquility. The general Welfare is ill served by allowing operations to continue that consume exorbitant amounts of water in order to satisfy the fleeting interests of a handful of affluent individuals, operations that ignore the fact that, for lack of water, crops are failing and livestock is starving in the dust; domestic Tranquility is in jeaopardy of being shattered by food riots sparked by a further weakening of the economic strength of the majority of American citizens who are so poor that they may not be able to eat when food prices spike (which they will invariably do, very soon).

  Drought, inevitable and perpetually occurring, affects each of us; we must all sacrifice in its presence. As to my own personal sacrifice, I have ceased with my favorite past-time of contaminating large pools of ground-water with used engine oil and setting them on fire.

  Convert your lawns to gardens of sustainable native plants; flush only when it's solid; use low flow shower heads and take Navy showers; turn off the tap while shaving and brushing your teeth; and for the love of Liberty, cancel your golf membership.

  We are all in this together, and together, our small, personal sacrifices can turn the dwindling tides.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp