on battling hatred

Tragedy marked this past weekend, with one person killed and many more badly injured in an act of apparent domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, VA. Concurrent with that violent act, in a public display of wild-eyed and misguided extremism, hundreds of middle-class European-Americans marched through said city holding torches and shouting slogans straight out of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. People who are now suddenly worried about the current rise of alt-right and neo-Nazi mentalities here in America must remember that Donald J. Trump ascended to the presidency on ideas nationalist, protectionist, and us-versus-them in their scope and design. In some sense, the alt-right stands today victorious, having helped vote its champion into this nation’s highest office. Hence, statements by leaders of the white-nationalist movement praising the president for his recent stance on their right to rally and organize with intent to subjugate and destroy.

The city of Boston this year decided to display a poster aimed at teaching people who use its public transportation services how to diffuse Islamophobia. It is this author’s personal experience that the most effective method for fighting violent extremism is to ignore the perpetrator and show love to the victims. In Charlottesville, VA, last weekend, citizens protesting the alt-right sometimes did the opposite, fighting violence with violence and hatred with hatred.

Although he disagrees with them on nearly every point (but for their right to keep breathing), this author thinks it’s important to let the alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white nationalist movements not only voice their ugly opinions but also march in public. If they’re banned from letting their true colors fly, open-minded and cosmopolitan lovers of freedom will never know whom to avoid socially, whose businesses to boycott or divest from, whose places of worship to picket, and whom to deny service as well as the time of day. (Since its financial support of organizations perpetuating homophobic bigotry came to light, this author hasn’t set foot inside of a Chick-fil-A, for example.) One slow, methodical way to crush America’s Nazi problem is to do so economically, a dollar at a time. Another way, is to crush it with clubs and sticks and knives and guns, like many of our grandparents did in Europe and beyond during the 1940s.

To destroy the creeping roots of incessant hatred it is often necessary to resort to violence. So long as one does so with positive intentions and for the benefit of all humanity, resting well at night should come easy. Just remember, though, that America’s white nationalists think that what they’re doing is for the benefit of all humanity, or at least the light-skinned portion of humanity whose ancestors come from Europe. Whichever path you choose in your resistance to bigotry and intolerance in America, stay grounded and don’t panic.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

regarding LGBTQC warriors

Dear members of America’s armed forces:

Please consider supporting your fellow lesbian, gay, bisexal, transgender, queer, or curious (LGBTQC) soldiers by performing the following acts: declare that your entire platoon, your full company, and your whole battalion are openly LGBTQC.

Not only will this make the unconstitutional, un-American, and hateful targeting and ostracization of individual service-members more difficult, it will enrage terrorist extremists at home and abroad. The foreign terrorist extremists known as Daesh (formerly IS, or the Islamic State) will lose their minds once they realize they’re fighting against and being killed by transgender people or homosexuals; and the homegrown religious extremists spouting hatred and spreading fear within the United States will be driven to frenzy just imagining that transgender people or homosexuals are putting their lives on the line to defend American values. Please remember that it doesn’t matter if any or all of you are actually LGBTQC - declaring it openly sends a powerful message of acceptance, hope, and pride.

Unit cohesion is fundamental to mission success. By standing united against small-minded bigotry, you’ll help show the world that true Americans are virtuous, inclusive, level-headed, and not to be fucked with.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

an unconstitutional presidency

A crisis looms; stormclouds are massing. Unless he can sell off his last holdings and put them all into a blind trust, the president-elect will on 20 January 2017, his inauguration day, violate the Constitution. Should he on that day run foul of the emoluments clause, he will have to be impeached immediately. It won’t make much difference, however, if his violations persist. America long ago abandoned the principles upon which it was founded: there is no clause that calls for the Ynki to act as the world’s policeman, doling out punishment or refraining from applying it as he sees fit; nowhere in the Constitution are provisions for a military industrial complex; nowhere does this nation’s supposedly most sacred text propose that America must be constantly at war for its economy to thrive; nowhere does our founding document indicate that non-human corporations should enjoy the same rights as flesh-and-blood people do, or that the wealth created by society as a whole should be given to a few affluent capitalists. We citizens of America have allowed these aberrations to stand; we citizens of America have allowed these violations to continue. As Americans, each and every one of us is responsible for the crimes and injustices our weapons of war visit upon the downtrodden peoples of this world - be they bombs dropped by us or ones loosed by a tyrannical client-regime.

As discussed in an earlier post, the American government now treats its citizens similarly to how we were treated by the British monarchy before declaring our independence. The rule of law applies to some of us, not all of us equally; armed agents of the state kill us without due process or punishment; taxes are imposed upon us without our consent; our seas lie plundered of their bounty, poisoned by industrial run-off; our coasts and forests sit ravaged, their diversity raped for short-term gain. The incoming president will violate the Constitution as soon as he is sworn in, and few of us will give a shit about it. Welcome to America - land of the greedy, home of the enslaved.

JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

big angry orange

In Hershey, PA, last night, the president-elect disappointed. Instead of embarking on the path of someone who has risen above partisan rhetoric, someone trying to make America truly great again, he dragged out the old racist slogans and hateful language, at one point mocking a disabled reporter. Perhaps he was just speaking to the crowd, rich Caucasians who booed loudly any time he mentioned Obama. Perhaps, though, his semi-sane suggestions of the last few weeks have been nothing but more smoke and mirrors from the Big Angry Orange. My companion and I left early, and so maybe we missed the part of Trump’s speech where he promised to disentangle America from its ongoing and illegal involvement in armed conflicts from Syria to Yemen. Most of what we saw appeared to be the president-elect rehashing his electoral victories and basically being publically jerked off by his legions of adoring white fans. Short on policy proposals but long on windbag self-aggrandizement, this author suggests that the ‘I Thank You Tour’ should be renamed the ‘You Thank Me Tour,’ and that Old Stumpy take things down a peg.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on Trump’s win

To all of my non-American friends around the world: I did not vote for Donald Trump, nor do I support him now. I think Donald will make a terrible president. A proto-fascist with little regard for either the opinions of mankind or the notions of kindness and respect for others, Donald is the one person (out of nearly 330 millions!) whom the American people should never have elected. Riding to power on a wave of hatred-for-others and buoyed by a strong fervor of Eurocentric racism (that was brought to this land by Christopher Columbus in the year 1492), Donald in one sense embodies the idea that Americans of Northern European Descent are alone entitled to the promise and possibility of the American dream. In another sense, Donald is a genius for capturing the mood of the moment and exploiting the fears of working-class citizens to get himself elected to this nation’s highest post. He will not protect or uphold the Constitution, for he has apparently never read it and definitely does not understand what it is designed to do. He will likely trample upon the hard-won rights and privileges of the following communities: Latino; African-American; Muslim; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, & Curious (LGBTQC); living women of childbearing age; as well as free-thinking and independent writers and other artists such as this author himself.

To my brothers and sisters of the Muslim faith - when Donald’s Death Squads come for you, I will do my best to keep you from harm. To my brothers and sisters of Latino descent - when Donald’s Deportation Squads come for you, I will do my best to keep you in this country. Do not despair, fellow lovers of liberty, for if history is any guide, fascist dictators such as Donald Trump cannot hold onto power for much longer than a decade and a half before the weight of their crimes drags them down into the abyss. Do not give up hope, but let love shine in your hearts, for love is eternal and immutable, the one act we can do for ourselves and our misguided neighbors that will prove that a shred of humanity still exists within the American experiment. Now is not the end of our struggles but the beginning. Hold fast and stay frosty.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場

dark & discreet

To fascist drumbeaters like Trump and Le Pen: we’re not at all surprised to see you again. Not more than a century back in the past was when we encountered and beat you at last but you showed up here in our calm midst again with confidence saying who’s foe and who’s friend. The masses you fool with a message of hate and promises to make brown folks emigrate but once wed with power corrupted you’ll be will drench in blood these shores from sea back to sea. Now fear stokes a fire that only is fed by listening to voices up in the head that champion anger and champion spite corrupting the ego both morning and night. This will not end pretty this will not end well and soon we’ll be swept into a right-wing hell where anyone who dares to strike or speak up will quick taste the heel of a jack-booted thug. With basic rhetoric and too-simple terms these wax-paper leaders the principles spurn upon which their nations long functioned and turned aloof to the lessons that history learns. So up now in unison we can defeat most any opponent or foe we might meet with methods bold brash brazen dark & discreet be it through the wires or out in the street. All antifa red-shirts anarchists and such who value their freedoms and value them much: let’s shake off the shackles of madness and hate and that without dally lest we be too late.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥