risky political correctness

A dangerous trend has spread throughout these shakily-united States: the trend of political correctness. Damaging to honesty, truthfulness, and the very concept of Liberty itself, a person is being politically correct when, before speaking out loud, he stops to ponder whether or not what he is about to say might or might not offend someone within earshot. Rather than encouraging him to speak his mind freely in the knowledge that he has no – nada, null, zero, zilch – no control over the mental processes of other people nor the ability to control how others will react to whatever he chooses to say or do or sign or write, our society demands that he take everyone else's emotional and mental well-being into consideration and censor himself instead of just coming and saying whatever the deuce he intended to say in the first place.

Political correctness is un-American in that it forces us to be liars, to hide our prejudices and our stereotypes deep within the recesses of our souls, where hatred and malcontent tend to fester; it decreases the Safety of all Americans by allowing the bigot to mingle freely amongst open-minded people, his cruel heart filled with a resentment for people of color and a hatred for All Things Strange; it harms the Safety of all Americans by allowing bigotry and racism to build up in the mind of the sad and confused individual until he can no longer stand it, which makes him more likely to lash out physically against the object of his ire, a person with skin slightly darker than his. During more than one conversation between me, an American of European Descent, and Americans of African or Mixed African and European Descent (i.e. between a white person and brown people), I have heard these humans say that they would rather have their racist right out in public, where he can be tagged and avoided rather than for him to have to pretend to be color-blind when he really could care less if he saw a Negro being chained to a pickup truck and dragged.

Furthermore, political correctness emboldens the nitpickers and busybodies among us to wag their fingers at anyone even toeing the line of impropriety, and to say to them with self-righteous but artificial indignation: It's not nice to say this, and you shouldn't say that, because you might hurt this bunch's feelings, and cause that lot to be sad. There are many views espoused by religious extremists in this country – they who are trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and who want to amend our preciously secular Constitution to define marriage according to their and only their religious text – views I vehemently oppose and risk Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor to combat; yet while standing out in the snow counter-protesting nuns and stoking the ire of entire church parishes, I chose to speak my mind and to say hurtful and offensive things directly to them, right up in their faces, hardly flinching when they called the cops to complain about the public display of the word vagina, which is the medical term for one part of a woman's sex. I shall stop harping on the past and start encouraging the few lovers of Liberty left on these shores to end self-censorship, to encourage clear and open debate, and to fill their hearts with emptiness; together, we can conquer the scourge of political correctness, preferring honesty to deceit, choosing the Truth over lies. So stand up and speak freely – do it now, or forever scold your niece.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on changing perceptions

Every day, we get the chance to change our perspectives; every morning, with our first few conscious thoughts, we reshape for ourselves entire worlds, crafting from the aether of the Universe's chaotic jumble the seemingly ordered environments, things, and people to which our brains have become accustomed, all that our minds have come to expect from life. Such is the power of these perceptions, and so deeply ingrained are they within what we sometimes call the psyche, that we convince ourselves of their eternal and abiding presence, of their immutable and tactile realness; occasionally, however, some cursed and lucky few peoople among us step across the boundaries of our commonly-held, consensual hallucinations, mixing old thoughts with new ones and pulling stray bits of Truth from the Great Pulsing Void, from the Ever-Expanding Vastness of That Which Cannot Be Named.

The power of these strange and lateral movements is so great, and so broad are the Insecurities and Fears which buoy the petty and shallow ego, that the person who sees the Truth all too often runs away from his unanticipated and unwanted burden, forsaking an open mind for the rigid patterns of old and comfortable thought and burying his head in shifting and shallow sands, in booze or in sex or in the dim half-truths of his parents' religions. If I could but muster the courage to keep looking into the Truthful Void, if I could but bring myself to stare into the Generous Folds of God's Vagina, perhaps I could free myself from slavery to my small and pitiful needs, from my longing for this substance or that, from self-torment and sadness and pent-up old anger; I am too weak, however, and too spoiled, too pampered and worthless and small, to do any of these things, to rise above what I have been told for is Myself and cherish the Primal Simplicity that burns at the core of my deepest and most mystifying of cores. Oh, dear friend; oh, cherished reader; I am not worthy of the gifts I have received; I shall try harder, though, purging my soul of discontentment and allowing the shadows of this strange and beautiful world to pass me by unnoticed, and undisturbed. Please know that I love you, however, and that I take your sacrifice of time as among my greatest of rewards. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

counter-protesting - day # 4

  This picture shows the sign I have been holding on the square in Hanover PA for the last few days (the opposite side reads, CHOICE = LIBERTY - DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION). Today, however, things got a bit nasty: a priest showed up, grabbed the pro-lifers' only PRAY TO END ABORTION sign, crossed the street, and stood directly behind me for a good forty-five minutes. We had a brief conversation about the freedom of speech (he was incredulous when I told him that most modern nations allow their people to speak freely), but he retreated all the same, with a farewell, "See you later," when his attempts at intimidation didn't cause me to immediately vacate my spot.

  Many were the people who voiced their support for my efforts at counter-protesting, among them a shopkeeper from a nearby store (who praised me for keeping my distance from the pro-lifers and not posting up directly behind or next to them), truck drivers, people in passing cars, and the very nice couple who, out of solidarity, bought me a coffee and a water. Many also were the people who voiced their opposition to my signs, either through thumbs down or by yelling angry threats from passing cars.

  The culmination of my day, however, was when the local police showed up to inform me that they had received multiple complaints about the fact that I was displaying in public the word vagina. "This is borderline disorderly conduct," the officer said; "you have the right to speak freely, but we're getting complaints about the word vagina on your sign." I asked him if I could complain about the fact that the pro-lifers have pictures of dead and bloody fetuses on their signs, which I find disturbing and offensive, and he told me to file a complaint at the station. He took my name, address, and date of birth, and thanked me for being civil about the complaints. When I raised my coffee to him as I was packing up and he was pulling out of the parking area where I had been standing, he nearly shouted out with glee.

  I can imagine only one source for the complaints: the pro-lifers who had tried to bring out the big guns, and, having failed to shake my resolve, turned snitch. To stay out of trouble with the law, I will change my sign to read, "KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY WOMB," but womb is not nearly as memorable as vagina. Every action has an equal and appropriate reaction. I refuse to turn snitch and complain about signs bearing bloody and mangled fetuses, but I will not abandon my battle to secure for the women of this land the Blessings of Liberty. 

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on abortion (counter-protesting)

  I am just come from counter-protesting the abortion protesters who have been infesting the central square in the small, rural town where I live. For weeks now, I have driven past them day after day, middle-aged men, grandmothers, and nuns standing out in the cold, standing up for that in which they believe. They carry professionally-made signs that say, PRAY TO END ABORTION, or, LIFE IS PRECIOUS. Some of the signs bear pictures of aborted fetuses, some pictures of cute and cuddly little babies.

  The first sign I made, at two Saturday morning with a head full of booze and a heart full of indignation, said, CHOICE = LIBERTY – KEEP ABORTION LEGAL. Having spent the day playing disk golf at Codorus State Park, I remembered the sign I had shoved into the trunk of my car the night before, and made it out to the square just before dusk, Saturday evening. Within a few minutes, two separate drives had either booed me or given me thumbs down, while one of the protesters, a young, sporty-looking woman, had waved to me at least five times. Fortunately, my disk golfing partner was there to back me up, and to take pictures for posting to the socialverse.

  Once again fresh from disk golfing, today I debuted my new sign, this one with two sides, and two messages. The first: CHOICE = LIBERTY – DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION. The second: KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY VAGINA. I made sure to hit the square around lunch time, this time without backup, to catch the midday traffic. Immediately, there were honks and jeers, thumbs up and down, brief conversations with drivers stopped at the light where I stood, and many, many people looking away in shame or embarrassment. More than one driver agreed that it was “only a matter of time” before someone did what I was doing. The sporty young woman waved once or twice, but her companions, two women in their seventies, never ceased shooting daggers at me, their looks dripping with malicious contempt, their polished little signs no match for the giant piece of spray-painted cardboard upon which I had clumsily scrawled my counter-slogans.

  I caught a half dozen drivers taking pictures, and a trio of proto-hipsters approached me at one point, to have their picture taken next to the vagina slogan, but the highlight of my hour on the square was the local rapid-transit bus that circled the block so that one of the passengers could take a picture of the vagina slogan, the bus's driver laughing and signaling to me with her hands to flip over my message-board.

  I believe strongly in my messages. According to just about every doctor on the planet, a fetus is just not a baby until it emerges from the mother's body. Until such time that it emerges, the fetus is the property of the mother – she has the inalienable right to do with it what she pleases. In the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, each person is granted the right to life, liberty, and property, rights that pertain to the body specifically, that property without which life is impossible.

  If one thinks that the fetus during the first trimester is human life (when it is only a cluster of cells), then abortion activists surely oppose (on moral grounds) surgery of any kind. During liposuction, living human tissue is removed from the body. Similarly, a cancerous tumor is living human tissue – when it is removed from the body, it dies. Who is protesting publicly to end the removal of cancerous growths? No one. When my pancreas is issued a passport, or when my trachea obtains the right to vote, I might agree with the protesters, but these internal tissue clusters are part of me, not separate entities: they are mine to dispose of as I please.

  No country of which I know issues a certificate of conception, whereas most countries issue some sort of certificate of birth. I think this shows us what modern, enlightened society understands: that anything growing within your body belongs to you. Our Constitutional rights must be guarded continuously from attacks by persons and groups that wish to take them from us. So stand up, speak out, and keep your prayers out of my vagina

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp