Rage against the machine

Even an omnipotent monarch such as BO cannot retain power without the implicit will of the masses. The secret of the power elite is that the entire structure of power which supports them rests on a foundation of clay feet, of which revolution from below would vaporize it to smithereens in an historical instant. The gods of power would be exposed for the charlatans they are in short time. The elites go to great lengths to help you forget this inconvenient (for them) fact.

But as the end times approach, the facade of power is crumbling and the ruptures in the tower of power are, finally and fatally, steadily growing.

The perfect socialiste clamor of StatistCare, also known as the government's method to finally assert control over who lives and who dies, has finally awakened the bovine masses from their stupor. The monarchs of power return to the provinces which they nominally represent, to engage the dumb masses in the "consultive" process of democracy (sure...), but lo! they are faced with the seething rage of a populace which is growing to understand the great game that the elites play and are wise to the ways of the State power.

Even fools can see that State run health care is to provide the power of life and death over every individual to the State. Regardless of socialized health care's constitutionality (I'll give you two guesses) or its costs (instant bankruptcy for the USSA), the moral quandary of BO and his cohorts dictating who is worthy of life and who is not is pressing even for the feeble of mind.

It is the naked attempt of the sociopathic fascist to exterminate all those who do not profit himself.

First they come for the Jews...then the elderly....then the merely "eccentric"...and soon eccentric will be identified as any personal behavior which does not work to favor the Corporate State and the permanent financial profit of the Corporatocratic cartel.

Soon, even a subtle facial glance will expose you as a traitor. Be sure you're healthy when that happens, or the bovine healthcareocrats (who will undoubtedly derive from the same ranks as the corn fed cows of the welfare Bureaucracy) will suddenly deem you "economically unviable" and thus unworthy of care...life unworthy of life.

It is a general rule that as corrupt empires reach their last stages of collapse, their fundamental fascist tendencies grow increasingly open and undisguised, as do the corresponding attitude of their sociopathic power elites. Indeed.

The empire is in the hands of sociopaths and has been for the last 150 years. When regular people do nothing, freedom dies and the sociopaths win. 

But people are beginning to witness. And lo, may the sociopaths only hope that their deaths be quick and short when the time of the long knives commences.

Death spiral

These are indeed fortituous times for those who wish to study the mechanics of a wholesale civilizational collapse.

As the empire elicits its last wheezing gasps, laid low by the twin blows of debt orgy and parasitism, the madmen in power look to compound the blow as the last vestiges of the free economy are consumed by the State machine, with the next sector to fall under the bureaucratic mow looking to be health care. At this rate, it will be fortunate indeed if we even have roots and weeds to sustain us when the day of judgment arrives.

That day is approaching rapidly as we continue to max out our credit cards throughout the world, as the rapacious demands of a wicked Imperial machine look to outstrip the total extent of all wealth on planet Earth. The demands of the subsidy class know no bounds; the endless pit of need knows no end to its insatiable craving for something for nothing.

The fact that IT IS FINISHED is plainly evident to any sane thinking person, which sadly amounts to only a handful Remnant among the social ruins of the comatose mobs of T-shirt wearing, foul mouthed, overweight, ignorant, dirty, State worshiping grimy human refuse which comprises an overwhelming majority of those who are alive to-day.

Where once there was a sliver of escape, there can be no longer. The door is sealed, the jig is up, and we are all locked into a lethal footrace which is ensured to terminate in oceans of blood and mountains of corpses. Mere human extinction would be but a merciful outcome for the living Hell which is to be unleashed upon the wicked who walk this day on Earth.

In all ages Socialism = Death. In the former CCCP the blood of lost millions cries out from the earth as silent human sacrifice to the machine gods of State engineering and subsidy privilege. The mounds of corpses only grow in the face of the demands of the socializers of civilization to bend mankind to their will, while profiting handsomely in the process (which is the whole point of the blood fiesta, indeed).

Only a small taste of this gory fate has been unleashed upon the Amerikan sheeple so far. But the time of calm is evaporating fast and the long knives have been unleashed. In the face of resource deprivation, economic collapse, and mass starvation, the current Social Engineer in power intends to fulfull the lethal creed made bare in the infamous fascist paen of his ancestor in moral corruption, Rexford Guy Tugwell:

I am strong.
I am big and well made.
I am sick of a nation’s stenches.
I am sick of propertied czars.
I have dreamed my great dream of their passing.
I have gathered my tools and my charts.
My plans are finished and practical.
I shall roll up my sleeves — and make America over.

A New Deal indeed. The crematoria will fill up rapidly.

Celebrate fascism!

What passes for the mainstream media these days is a joke. The microscopic intelligences of the so called "journalists" that pass for media professionals is in such evidence daily as their trends of thought only follow those insipid, well trod ends that in all inevitability support the State as lord and master. The media is to a man (save the brave John Stossel) in favor of the police state, of government control, of our Leaders imposing random terror upon the populace, of manipulation of the economy to favor the few at the expense of the many (though it is sold otherwise).

Witness the average evening "breaking" newscast. Virtually every item involves some State depredation or another. The news is filled with stories of the destruction of lives, careers, livelihoods by State mercenaries. The foolish, braindead "reporters" all along simply cheer for the State, favoring the edict and the pronouncement of the bureaucrat over the real hardship of the powerless.

A certain top rated network affiliate in this city is an especially egregious offender in this regard. It is an open secret that the popularity of its newscast is due to its intense focus on the community's "war" against the criminal element. The news staff seems to obtain a sort of orgiastic wish fulfillment through the participation in the destruction of other peoples' lives. They offer generous amounts of airtime to chronicling and otherwise extolling the "good works" of the police, the bureaucratic authorities, and other thugs with badges who predate on those who harm no one, but have run afoul of one of the State's numerous traps and dragnets. All along, the entire business only produces positive benefits for the careers of the talentless half wits - almost to a person, all young, barely educated, and ready at a moment's notice to catch the next train to the next biggest market when it departs - who comprise what the station laughingly considers journalists. Imagine what can be said for the guiding minds, unseen behind the cameras for the most part, who operate this sordid show.

To-night, this station's evening newscast had a lengthy special feature entirely devoted to the work of the police in rounding up perpetrators of victimless "crimes." The reporter, always at the ready with "story ideas" made a big show of humiliating these hapless dregs of the underclass before the television cameras. It is the bread and circuses of our age, the celebration of a clawing fascism, the kind which is smug and self satisfied in passing a crude and unrelenting judgment upon those powerless nonentities at the bottom for which degradation and despair is simply a byproduct of their "natural" tendencies.

Oh how the elites would tremble if the thugs with shields would break their skulls about as the ghetto refuse experience daily. But the State power is aware that it must not become too rapacious lest those who matter become offended.

The journalistic inclination toward the State always manifests itself naked and perverse; we do not see because many, too, are wont to wax insipid at the sight of a badge and State power. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, of course; the State receives good press while eager sources in government bureaucracies make life easy for lazy journalists who would rather not bother with such details as investigation or checking one's facts.

But such an outcome is written. Indeed, when most journalism students claim that their reasons for entering the profession is to "make the world a better place", then you know they are fresh duds for the hook line and sinker of fatal fascism. 

And indeed, it is always fatal, as we are soon to discover once again.

No more "E" Guarantee

The "E" Guarantee is no more!

Personal injury lawyer and local teevee advertising celebrity E. Eric Guirard has been disbarred by the state supreme court for "conflicts of interest, failure to supervise their non-lawyer staff, impermissible fee sharing with non-lawyers, and facilitation of the unauthorized practice of law."

Gotta love the legal licensing bureaucrats and their exclusionary ways. In the age of State supremacy, the dictators of licensure and qualification can deny a person their livelihood if they deem fit to do so. Who knows what 'crimes' Mr. "E" and his law partner committed to earn their ire. Suffice it to say that if you don't conform to the bureaucrats' whims, they can destroy you utterly.

If real crimes were committed, the market would have responded...by evaporating the business of the purveyors of the "E" guarantee, and transferring it to other legal counselors who play legitimately. Don't think that losing business was ever an issue for them, though. Some crimes, eh?

Of course I can't shed too many tears for the legal profession overall. They desired this set-up to make their profession "exclusionary" and thus closed to all but a privileged, well compensated elite. You reap what you sow.

Walls

This is a world of walls, figurative and literal.

Each society is comprised of a innumerable series of interlinked but self-contained social networks, admitting entry to a certain number of people apiece. These networks congregate around topics as disparate as shared interests, professional societies, or even a shared enjoyed propensity toward inebriation (as is so common within the dickhead classes). 

These networks are formed at precise times during the life cycle. Generally the years of formal schooling, in par-ticular higher education, are the formative times in which it is "acceptable" by larger social standards to form and reform basic relationships with others.

However, when that opportunity passes, the window closes, or at least this occurs in places with stupendously low social capital such as the empire of dickheads we refer to as the USA. The arrangement of social networks freezes into place, and it has been made deliberately difficult by our wise overlords (not) to penetrate these networks without extraordinary, superhuman effort.

There is no school, no formal tautology which teaches the budding entrants into the human race that once graduation day arrives and you have failed to connect, you are to be left utterly, completely alone. The networks are formed, the little knots of cafe society are arranged precisely, and comfortable arrangements prohibit disruption by the inclusion of additional members after the fact.

These social cliques are as closed off in precisely the same manner as the most exclusive gated communities for the elites.

In short, the social isolate, attempting to penetrate the subject after the fact, is faced by walls
both actual and virtual. This can take every form from quiet shunning to the in-your-face presence of a burly, mustachioed, truncheon wielding security "officer" stating that one's presence means we now suddenly "have a problem" - to presumably be rectified by blunt force in the absence of turning one's tail between the legs and immediately vacating the premises.

Those left outside are cast out into the darkness of atomization and anomie, a breed of faceless, presumed inferior Others who are not fit to exist within "higher" society. The downtown areas of our nation are filled with such souls after 5 PM - the homeless, the broke, those reduced to fetching their suppers out of garbage cans, the convenient refuse of "superior" people.

And it is said that fascism was defeated decades ago.

Let it not come as a surprise when the comfortable in power, the latte-sipping class fully behind them, see fit to remove the "inferiors" from society completely, with the lame excuse that due to economic collapse, we cannot afford to let them remain "parasites" on the body politic.

They won't call them concentration camps at that point. But the intent is the same - to remove the Other from sight, to the point of physically destroying him.

This is where we are headed. We erect walls around our comfortable lives, admitting no one who does not meet our warped "standards", permitting no interchange of ideas that might disturb our comfortable worldviews, refusing to take risks by admitting into our circles those that might be even minutely different from ourselves.

One might think oneself safe, secure behind the virtual walls of snobbery and privilege which are seeming protections against those who are deemed by society as "creeps", "kooks", and "schizo." And for a time, these protections have worked to their intended extent.

But the creeps are becoming deeply discontent with their assigned role in the Amerikan corporatocracy.

They are hardly satisfied with the disgraceful position in which they are held by their social "betters."

They resent the bare, unsatisfying life dealt to them, in jobs which provide no spiritual redemption, in a debased currency where they subsidize the benefits paid to their social superiors, to the lack of companionship which a corporatist atomized society provides them.

They most especially resent being forcibly deprived of the comfort which a loving spouse would provide, for the rest of their days, on account of being labeled as "sick" and "anti-social."

But who is the dictator of "social acceptability"? Who is the arbiter of what can and cannot fly amongst the crowd?

Follow the money.

Here I do not speak of truly ill types, such as the late sociopath Cho Seung-Hui and his fellow travellers. I speak of those who lack social skills, for one reason or another, but who do not deserve one single iota of the disgusting treatment dealt them by a society which revolves around the counterfeit pleasures of sports, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity.

If you don't resemble the artificial, underwear model, soap opera version of a "man," you are a "creep."

If you believe that government is not your friend and protector and never will be, you are a "kook."

If you don't immediately trust and say "Hi-de-ho, neighbor" to everyone you encounter, you are "anti-social."

If you use your mind, follow the evidence, and understand the true, ugly reality of Amerikan society, and refuse to whitewash matters when asked your opinion therein, you are "schizo."

Gotta love labels. Leadership classes find them convenient for their divide and rule tactics.

They have grown to make us fear the Other, when it is They who we really should despise. It is They who have debased our currency, squandered our wealth, slaughtered the flower of our youth on faraway battlefields in the name of a false "freedom", pauperized the masses and reduced our standard of living, and championed the perpetuation of faith in a fictional nonentity as "eternal reward" for tolerating all their other depredations.

So wall yourself up, dear dickheads. Keep shunning the Other. Isolate and marginalize large sectors of our society for the sake of keeping your wine tasting parties continue undisturbed by the 'uncredentialed' and the 'undesirables'.

See how far that will get you when the lambs come to slaughter, and you will be desperately begging for our assistance.

But nay, we will be hard pressed to lift a finger to spare your lives.

Insanity reigns supreme

B.O. and his moral allies certainly have no equal in the art of economic destruction. Each day brings another fresh Keynesian depredation on the economy and the public. In the name of economic salvation, jobs are evaporating at a pace never before seen. The hidden unemployment rate has already reached Grate Depression levels, a feat which so far has been concealed by the government's convenient fudging of the numbers.

In communities across the land, the starving time approaches, or worse yet has already arrived. Malnutrition and early death are on the rise. The hordes of surplussed labor is offing itself in droves, in a bloody acknowledgment of the reality of their utter economic valuelessness in a time of want.

The stimulus of abominations promises more jobs for technocrats, scientists, engineers. That is, dickheads. As always in life, the prosperous are subsidized by the powerless. High tech jobs of the future? Tell that to the high-school educated, laid off factory worker who busted his ass for thirty years at the auto plant in Indiana who is now facing personal ruination. What benefit will employment opportunities in highly skilled fields be to him? It goes way beyond simple "retraining." After 30 years at the plant, it's going to be well nigh impossible to switch modes into dickhead gear, eh?

The bleats grow greater every day, with each piece of negative economic offal. More State intervention! More fiat currency pump priming! More socialism! Nationalization! Soak the rich!

In short, the exact opposite of what must happen in order to right the economic ship of state.

Indeed, insanity rules the day amongst the alleged "educated" classes. It is not always true that ignorance is bliss. On the contrary, ignorance always leads to mass grave city before long. I don't have to predict this; read your history texts.

Do not think that they don't really know what they're doing. The system they preach does actually work, and precisely in the manner in which it was intended to work.

The privileged with the right connections are to benefit as the booty of the provinces rolls into the Imperial Capital, to enrich our Masters. The 'little people', those that don't count to the power elite, who are disposible, less-skilled, poor, Black, or all of the above, from which this bounty will be extorted by gunpoint, are doomed and fated to receive the short end of it all. Oh, a few crumbs might spill here and there. But by and large the crisis is cover for the greatest legalized money grab in all of human history.

Because the elites know this country is spent, finished. It is clear to virtually everyone not a chest thumping, "terr'ist" hating uber-patriotic lunatic. (Talk about clinging to a dying philosophy.) They've bled it dry long enough, and they see that you can't squeeze any more blood from a dried turnip. So they make one last desperate grab for all they can take, before the final collapse into rivers of blood. Already they prepare for the day when the safe house stored with food and ammuntion will be the only means to survive the hordes of rampaging, bedraggled, skeletal marauders that is our certain future.

The last gasp of the elites is full bore fascism, before it all melts into the primitive animal bleat of tom-toms.

When men are brought to the level of animals, civilization degenerates into a zoo. Call that Urban Prairie Schooner's Maxim of Life #1.

--

A note on my highway rationalization scheme:

After substantial research and much use of the "DELETE" button, I have whittled down the system of Louisiana state highways to a manageable level. Some loose ends need to be tied up here and there, but overall the system is sound and largely complete.

Overall we now have (at least in proposed format):

271 state highways, including spur and auxiliary routes (this is still a tentative number)
All US routes, with the exception of US 371, have been retained (so far)
I-220 has been extended along Shreveport's Inner Belt

I wish there was a method of linking Excel files into this blog, but until I find a method to do so my results will have to remain secreted for now.

Piled high and deep

The corpses, that is.

No telling how many excess deaths were assured for the future as Our Imperator affixed his Imperial seal to the Stimulus of Abominations to-day, while upon one of his tours of his crumbling, decayed Empire.

Like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of an earlier dark age, this will be remembered as the straw that sealed the path toward utter destruction and ruination.

Only this time, it is certain that after nearly a century of the counterfeit fiat money regime, this go-round at sterilizing the implements of productive activity will spell the end of civilization itself.

The sheep aren't quite grazing in the Forum yet.  But millions cling to State rations, perched on the precipice of homelessness and starvation, while the implements of industry fall idle due to the dark works of morons in high places.

There is so much work to be done; yet millions are put to pasture, with the danger that now and future Leaders will mark them as "surplus population" fertilizer, good only for the killing fields, growing by the day.

The moral bankruptcy of the State ranks boundless.

Welfarism is always followed by warfarism, as the elites rush to "stimulate" the failing economy with the mass destruction of material goods, as stimuli and bailouts (even those orchestrated by our ruling men-gods) fail to work their alchemic magic.

At least one profession will be in high demand before long: undertakers.

So it will be piled high and deep indeed.

Murderer in chief

So in B.O.'s first week, the god-king has already proposed crippling new spending, ordered his first murder, promulgated onerous new regulations that will impoverish us all, and refused to demonstrate any form of native intelligence or moral restraint.

Off to a running start, I see.

Just as I anticipated, sadly. No surprise to all you freedom loving critical thinkers out there. The actual murderer who wears the purple may change, but the corporative fascist dictatorship lives on.

What, you thought that your messiah was all for "change"? You poor, sick, deluded asshole.

Meanwhile, the corpses pile higher and the hungry faces grow leaner and longer as the economy continues its total systemic collapse.

Another easy call there. When an economy is fueled by the collective American Express card (the platinum special, Ben Bernanke edition!), the sudden evaporation of a credit line means that spending is pretty much, well, spent.

If there is a silver lining to all this, it is this much:

I TOLD YOU SO, SHITHEADS!!!

Prepare for the harvest, fellow Amerikans. It will be fortunate indeed if even your testicles remain, after the creditors who funded your orgyfest are done with you.

People make the world go round

Not powerful and dark figures in high places. Not erstwhile Messiahs and demigods. Not shadowy, anonymous persons in smoke filled rooms who pull the strings that represent depredations on our freedom.

People act in the market. They buy and sell. They innovate and create. They build and develop, and redevelop. They undertake billions of actions every day that constitutes our dynamic economy and offers us a better life and expanded choices.

Capitalism is about expanding choice. Fascism is about constricting choice, to purchase the goods and items that our Maximum Leaders dictate, to live in the manner they deem "appropriate" and "healthy", to remain restrained to actions and activities that benefit the Leadership politically and economically.

The active dynamism of capitalism is what the powerful hate. They realize that to remain relevant and powerful, they must constantly be offering something of merit, that people will want, at all times - or they will face irrelevancy and eventually perish.

You know, competition, the driver of efficiency and wealth creation. Scary thought.

This does not make the powerful happy. They are used to their privileges and comforts. Why should they be permitted to give up these things? After all, they are superior men! The fact that they are powerful and important proves this!

So they seek to restrain the freedom of the markets and men, in order to retain their exalted position.

It is the siren song of the unearned benefit, of subsidy, the timeless fantasy of the ages. And the State makes it possible. For only the State is recognized to hold a monopoly on force.

With the backing of State guns, anything is possibly for an increasingly economically irrelevant and morally delusional elite. They can steal, enrich themselves, reallocate wealth and resources at will. Why, they can even make the world over!

Just as Imperator Obama promises us.

Is your Messiah, then, so far removed from the monstrous machine of entrenched dickhead power?

I think not.

Around the Stick Quickie

Like the Garfield and Friends Quickies of old! No Screaming with Binky here, though. Oh well, see this instead.

Nicholson Drive in the vicinity of the LSU north gate is increasingly taking on a higher-density, if not decidedly urban, vibe:





Scenes such as this bring to mind Mid-City New Orleans, in a faint sort of way.

(Hey give the area credit, this is pretty urbanized as Baton Rouge goes.)

In other urban news, here is the new fascism writ into the physical landscape:



The "designated smoking area" for the bureaucrats at the State government complex downtown. Yeah, this is the entirety - a couple benches tucked at the rear next to the freight entrance.

The numerous "No Smoking" signs/laws/probations/whatever have chased all tobacco activities to this dark and hidden location.

Smokers, the new set of second class citizens. See, it's official now!

While we are the topic of government idiocy, here is something else:



Fallen trees, debris, and other junk remains on public ways nearly two months after the late storm events.

Proving yet again that while you take care of your yard and prevent anything on your own property from becoming potential liabilities, the State feels no obligation to do likewise.

It's public property, man! Who cares!

Fascism and (anti) urbanism

The story of urban America can be understood as the rise of great and prosperous cities of human scale, built and molded by private interests to serve their needs and the needs of their customers. Like the great market economy, the diverse cacophony of different pieces comes together in beautiful harmony to create places of distinction and merit, environments of the human scale which in all their complexity uplift and testify to the value of the human spirit.

The architecture of urbanism is the architecture of humanity, of small scale, of detail and attention to the individual who inhabits the environment:



(Do your best to ignore the shade trees which have no place in a downtown area.)

Opposed to this older school of urban design is the more recent architecture of the suburban paradigm - inherently anti-urban, anti-human, and large scale, designed to the letter and intent of a parasitical host of regulations, rules, stipulations, and covenants which have been imposed upon us from on high from a government which allegedly only has our best interests at heart:



($2.80/gallon...mmm, the daze of cheep petrol...)

Regulations of every and any sort, propagated by the state, produces an environment which is inimical to normal human life. Ostensibly enforced for purposes of safety, health, and welfare, modern subdivision regulations render traditional forms of urban development more or less illegal (unless the developer is politically adept enough to obtain the sufficient waivers). The intent is to create socioeconomically segregated environments in which only the affluent can afford to inhabit, given the slew of sunk and recurring costs involved in suburban habitation. The raison d'etre of fascism is to further the interests and increase the assets of the elites at the expense of the lower classes. Such is the barely concealed purpose of the suburban paradigm.

The despoliation of our countryside by the onslaught of what is, in the end, a fundamentally unsustainable disgusting suburban morass is bad enough. It is most distressing, however, when the anti-urban, anti-human paradigm is inflicted on our central core areas:



The architecture and urbanism (or rather, lack thereof) of fascism is fundamentally the architecture of power, whether that be corporate or State. With power, the private and the individual, celebrated so well on the small scale, is discarded and jettisoned aside in the large scale glorification of the collective and the public.

To stand in the shadow of these gigantic structures is prone to humble and humiliate the mere mortal. These buildings pose the blank sterile walls of bureaucracy to the street, killing the life of the unregulated public sphere and containing it within the stormtrooper controlled confines of the marble labyrinth.

For fundamentally, the anti-urban revolution is about control - control of space, of where people may live and work (zoning), of how they will travel to work (by auto, of course), of what types of dwellings they may occupy (preferably single family detached, unless you are Black, in which case it's cheap, deteriorating apartment stock for you), and most of all control of the Other - circumscribing heavily where that Other will live, work, and travel, and in what few interfaces he may be permitted to mingle with outer society.

The urban centers have been left to the Other, since the urban centers were not designed with control in mind, and thus they have been left to a people which are seen to be criminals at birth. In any case, the dickheadery will always prefer their gated community and exclusive neighborhood - perhaps the ultimate harbingers of the urban fascism of our modern age.

Can't come into contact with "those people", you know, unless they cut the grass or clean the kitchen.

Thankfully, in every city there are a few hardy souls who have made a stand against the decay and death of urbanism. Often they occupy the "eclectic" inner neighborhoods which have resisted the mass forces that have worked on all sides to eviscerate the cities and transfer their vital elements to perfectly cultivated and controlled suburban greenfields.

In the future on this blog I will come to profile one of these neighborhoods - the neighborhood in which I live.

Amerikans adore control and despise 'clutter' in their lives - that is their regrettable trait as a people. But it is this very 'clutter' that makes this nation great - that makes freedom viable, creates diversity of experience, and renders innovation possible.

Woe be this country for its rejection of its greatness, and its embrace of the sordid counterfeit false comfort of State power.

Fascist Tomfoolery of the Week

Probably will go the way of all my other "...of the Week" items that I have failed to continue, but oh well...

As usual in Louisiana, we have the brownshirts in high places to contend with, and often we find them here in high office, the people here too willing to elect morons to high office on account of something like "he's my brother in law". Not being content with their BMWs and million dollar homes in gated communities, sometimes our beloved solons get the itch to impose their worldview of "white makes right" on the rest of us.

So cometh this grotesque proposal by one sick legislator (actually, they're all sick, but I digress...).

I do not even have to explain how this is the definition of fascism. Any sixth grader can witness how our great and noble solons view their less fortunate chattel.

I will say that it is true that there are many poor people who have far too many children.

I will also say that this does not bode well for our society, much less the proportion of social parasites to social producers. Witness your friendly neighborhood ghetto for details.

But I will finally say that it is government itself that subsidized irresponsible behavior, imprudent childbearing, single parenthood, and general social disarray. State social welfare programs did not just materialize out of thin air to breed parasitism.

And now they want to slice and dice us, after having screwed Amerika blind with their welfare policies. Heads they win, tails we lose.

What a crock of shit.

America, RIP

As the economic conflagration reaches crisis proportions, the alarm bells sound in the halls of power and privilege as even their shirts are threatened by the collapse of the financial establishment. Of course, if these masters of the universe had actually been as intelligent as they claimed, they would have seen this coming. So much financial rot is bound in the system now that only a truly insipid person would be unable to predict the coming cataclysm.

This bullcock which is sold to us as a "bailout" is really the last ditch effort of the power elites to protect their rapidly evaporating positions at the expense of the taxpayer - you know, the rest of us. The presidential candidates and even the Leader himself go into crisis mode as their hi-finanz playa friends in high places cry havoc.

(What, you actually thought that the politicians were suddenly all concerned because you are hurting? Spare me the idiocy of your thought process.)

With that, say goodbye to fiscal sanity, as the elites pocket the profits while the rest of us go to hell, in a long ordeal of mass starvation, murder, and destitution.

The elites are growing aware of the social nightmare to unfold. So lo, open fascism is making a comeback, in the form of State-sponsored sterilization.

It will be a elite's paradise, in this future coming Amerika which will resemble Brazil more than the U. S. of A. which the folk currently recognize - a land of high prices, low wages, slavery like conditions (or just plain slavery), and capricious two tiered justice. The Hobbesian nature of the existence of the bedraggled underclass morass will become the grim and lethal norm - existence as nasty, brutish, and short. The brutishness of man which civilization had tamed will be given free reign as that civilization evaporates into memory.

Expect an exodus from the cities as people escape in desperation from sure starvation, to trade their civil liberties for a tiny plot of land, to trade their status as free men to fill their stomachs and live under the protection of the lord of the manor. Welcome back to medieval times and another thousand year dark age.

(Cuz when the time comes, no State will be there to protect you from the raving rabble of highwaymen and criminals that can be found in the wake of the destruction of any society. Slavery is freedom.)

Then what will the dickheads in their Beemers say? Will they be able to claim with any semblance of a straight face that they are simply 'superior' people, when it is clear that even the most hard working folk are doomed to starve in this maelstrom?

It will expose the dickheadery for what it is - connected, privileged, unworthy of their exhalted position except for their fortunate luck in life to know the right people and attend the right institutions.

Color flows downhill, you know.

Elitism: it's what's for dinner

Looking back on my weary existence, I have witnessed more than my share of dimwitted narcoleptic assholes who sought to impose the very sense of their moral, intellectual, economic, and cultural superiority upon the huddled masses with aplomb. And one of the most high-hatted and malevolent methods by which this kind of social fascism is imposed is the vessel of the elite Catholic "college preparatory" high school.

In the city from whence I hail, there are a small but well regarded number of these schools.  Not that many, of course, since profligacy in the 'elite' moniker would render it all the less formidable. To wit, there is a difference in the greater Crescent City area between the standard Catholic 'archdiocesan' high school which takes in a relatively broad cross spectrum of the student population, and those elite 'prep' academies which are largely populated by the sons and daughters of society's most privileged and advantaged elements.

And what achievements these children of advantage produce! All these institutions can boast of how many National Merit Semifinalists they graduate each year, or their vaunted athletic prowess and near-monopolization of state championships in various sports, or their long and stories histories filled with long lists of proud achievements by students and alumni - which makes these places, usually dedicated to the greater glory of the deity or some such, manifestations of God's grace on earth, eh?

Please.

They are nothing more than reproducers of elite White privilege. They are repositories of entrenched wealth and power which manifest themselves in the most rigid and inhuman regimes known to the educational system.

I am all for old-time discipline. But Catholic high schools are the only place where a teacher can throw a totally unprofessional hissy fit and fling a chair across a classroom filled with students without any risk whatsoever to his employment status; where men of questionable origin and character rage poetic about the exact number of spitballs that he counted on the stairwell banister; where entire assemblies are made to stand out in the driving rain as 'discipline' while their dictatorial leaders shout "YOU ARE (insert name of school here)!"

Catholic academies bear more than a passing resemblance to fascist dictatorships.

What, you don't believe me? Pity you, moron. The unbending dedication to tradition; the revered treatment of past great fulfillers of the cause; the rule to conformity in thought and appearance; the segregation by genders; the sustenance of caste systems (in this case based on class order) which often degenerate into old fashioned hazing and physical persecution; the exclusion of racial minorities (particularly that most loathed of the Other races, Blacks); the paranoia against "out groups" (in this case, everyone outside the institution and having no part of it); the overbearing religiosity; the obsession with mass events, assemblies, the collective, and the grandiose, always overwhelming the individual and his own mind...I could go on but this might take all night.

The elite Catholic high school provides a fine and absolutely engrossing educational experience, and provides incredible academic opportunities. That is the one good thing I can say about it.

But at what cost to the soul?

Is the intent to create "Christian men" (as is generally claimed by the administrators of these military academies in disguise) or automatons for the System of which the Church and the social elites are so very much a part of??

Because I don't think Jesus would consider conformist brownshirts very Christian.

People say that because I abandoned and foresook the opportunities available to me at that not so mature age in my life, I pretty much ruined my life.

If they mean that I am nowhere near as successful as I might have been, they are absolutely correct. I am far, far less of a person than I could have been because of my self-immolating and immature actions - products of a fatal immaturity that has been the major defining force of my life and the key factor in my current bedraggled and despised socioeconomic status. The power brokers pretty much assure you a bad end in this matter. Cross them, even at this insipid level, and you are marked for life, and your existence as a failure is assured. (In my case, it would have happened anyway, since my personality and character is the absolute definition of what is required to be a loser.)

But if they mean that because I happen to think for myself, and question authority, and not trust every last thing our politicians, Leaders, and clerics utter from their reptilian throats, then they are shucking and jiving again. Because I would rather have a critical mind and be unsuccessful than the alternative - which, as you may have figured out by now, is to join the legions of the dickheadery.

American madness

Remember the 1930s film American Madness (dir. Frank Capra), about bank runs and financial collapse at the depths of the Grate (sic) Depression?

Of course you don't. Neither do I.

Yet again Amerikan madness prevails as the federal government moves to "conservatorize" (i.e. nationalize) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and moves to forestall the latest Wall Street collapse - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, a couple of failed financial chickpeas in a pod.

(Dey don't call it "nationalization" anymore since that rings of failed policy. Of course here then goes the State doing the exact same thing. Newspeak, anyone?)

The protection racket never ends for the elites who were caught short and lent long in this greatest of fiat money orgies. 

As for those poor suckers on Wall Street who have lost jobs and livelihoods due to this mess...well, if I could feel any sympathy, it would have to contend with my burning desire to roll around on the floor laughing. I just cannot make myself to feel any shred of compassion for the dickhead playerz and boyz who thought the good times in the fiat money regime could last forever.

I would seriously hate to be an investment banker right now.  Especially an out of work investment banker.

Actually, I would hate even more to be a bright young dickhead just coming out of Princeton or Harvard with a fresh piece of parchment, just raring for that lucrative career as an investment banker. (Only dickheads would aspire to such a pissy-ante paper pusher careers as an investment banker.) What pleasantry that must be, to think you have entered the height of assured success, captured the golden ticket to the gilded gliteratti class whose dicks are only meant to be sucked by others (according to conventional rules of caste and class), to suddenly find that your planned world is in tatters, that investment bankers are suddenly a redundant species bordering on extinction, that your entire educational process was a serious, massive malinvestment of time, money, and resources.

Sic semper dickheads.

The mortal storm

As another storm brews in the tropics and the projected tracks loom treacherously close to this land which we cherish and love, we here in the coastal South cast a wary eye over the water with no uncertain trepidation.

For we know all too well here in the Pelican State that powerful weather systems are no sneering matter. They can and do lead to major tragedy.

What disaster may be in store for us? What terrible fate may befall us now?

Older and wiser, with the tragic holocaust of nearly exactly three years ago still fresh in our minds, we know well the consequences of lack of vigilance. We know well how chains of events can spiral beyond even our worst nightmares to expose the gates of Hell right here on earth.

We have observed the darkest elements of humanity played out on a massive scale to rape and loot our state. We have seen the scions of the power elite turn their backs on us in our hour of supplication, in their preoccupations with enriching themselves and their friends on the backs of the suffering. We have borne the insults of the rape of our land by State bureaucrats, insurance agents, and other such hucksters.

We have witnessed the receiving end of social marginalization, have been called 'looters' and 'refugees', equated to the sickening rabble of a Third World country.

We consider the acronym of a certain lethally incompetent federal agency to be a four letter word (hint: it starts with "F").

The storm destroyed livelihoods and property, laid waste to human lives, dreams, and hopes alike. Over 1,800 of our brothers and sisters paid the ultimate price.

Lost in the subsidy train for those who were helpless before the deluge and who continued the trend of their mooching lives in the aftermath, were those working folks who lost jobs and homes by the capriciousness of brute fate.

No assistance was given them since they lacked either the proper skin color, sense of victimhood or entitlement, or political connections.

Careers were truncated, lives were destroyed, and with nowhere else to go whole families were cast out into the optionless horizon of the street when the pittance of disaster relief dried up.

I barely avoided this fate myself; only with a massive stroke of luck (and I do mean luck) was I able to dodge permanent marginalization such as the residents of our still-extant "temporary" RV parks have fallen into.

Some vanished forever, into homelessness, into drink, into a life barely a shadow of the productive, valuable contribution that they maintained before the storm. Human potential was cast aside like so much storm debris, as in a fit of societal insanity we discarded valuable human capital in the mass profit taking and "holding pattern" non-recovery which followed like locusts in the wake of crop failure.

After the storm, talent was desperately needed to rebuild the state and get things back to working order. But the bureaucrats and the powerful shitheads won the day, and also the rewards. In the aftermath of the hurricanes, furthering the careers of the pinheadocracy and making sweetheart deals for the elites and their friends was apparently more important than returning this state back to normal. So guess whose fat bellies profited, and guess why tens of thousands of the non-connected, non-powerful across the state today still struggle with the scars of that fateful August day???

The storm exposed the two tier society in all its unholy putridness, separated the comfortable from the desparate like wheat from chaff, accomplished major strides toward the elites' long desired goal of creating a permanent Amerikan caste system based on color and socioeconomic origin.

The storm provided great cover to advance the social engineering principles of those for whom the system is set up to benefit.

The dickhead gatekeepers of the admittance into a life of decency found ample cause in the wake of the storm to roll up the mats of opportunity, ramp up the marginalization of their supposed "inferiors", distribute human resources in their desired manner - more for food service, less for jobs of the mind.

After the storm, fast food huts and other such establishments were begging for workers, with $10/hour (and up) wages not uncommon. Yours truly was forced by circumstance to take them up on the offer, for a time.

But any sane man knew that the situation was unsustainable. And after a year, $10 an hour was deemed economically unviable, and those who had not managed to escape the trap (that is, the people who stayed behind, not including myself) were suddenly facing the raw pavement again, replaced by cheep Mexican workers for which minimum wage is a princely sum.

And what did they have to their work histories, except a lost year gaining poverty wage skills at some fast food hut out on some anonymous suburban highway? Many had taken fast food work as temporary income until they could resusitate professional careers which had been truncated by the storm. Little did they consider that they were now persona non grata in the professional world, only fit to grace the kitchens of further fast food huts, making starvation-level wages in the pursuit of selling the almightly hamburger...

The great fascist economy device of stripping opportunity for the alternative of placing "talent" where it can be most controlled worked just as planned by society's architects - that is, those in power. The not so invisible hand (or more precisely, fist in glove) of sorting the masses to the least common denominator in an unfree economy worked perfectly.

And these were only the fortunate. The immediate and severe contraction of opportunity in the wave of the holocaust rendered hundreds of thousands superflous and redundant. Some managed to repair a semblance of their former lives in other cities, other states, their talents and contributions lost to Louisiana forever, so to shrink the ranks of the productive and that much progressively enlarge the proportion of the grotesque, the inhuman, the morally crippled, the emotionally insane, and the otherwise overall takers of society. Others were consigned to the bleak fate of bureaucratic limbo, all in a futile and pathetic effort to delay the inevitable day when they would finally be facing bare pavement, without a roof over their heads, and empty pockets and stomachs.

We are all drowning in idiocy, of which Mayor Ray Ray of Chocolate City and his political cousins of all ideologies and colors are merely the most obvious symptoms. And even now the powerful make a show of "preparedness" all while they are nursing their stashes in foreign parts and leaving us to die in the dust - or more precisely, to drown in the surge. For as I have said, they are all complete egotistical narcissists who seek only pure pleasure, and thus do not give one flivvering fuck whether the vast hordes of 'nobodies' which constitute "the people" that they are sworn to serve either live or die.

When the second rape of this great state comes, will we have learned anything? Will we demand that disaster planning be performed with competence? (Now's your chance, Bobby boy, to show the people that elected you that their faith in your abilities was not misplaced.) Will we make the effort toward a true recovery, instead of leaving it in the hands of imperial officials from distant lands who hardly give a damn about this state, its people, or its economy? (The stillborn status of the so-called recovery from the previous storms, with cities and lives in ruins three long years after Doomsday, should provide a clue.) Will we let the worst and darkest aspects of our human natures control us, or will we stun the world and act like civil men and women?

I hold out little hope that another disaster will be handled with grace and class. Past experience is cold comfort, if you know what I mean. The people of this state are by and large not up to the task. With so many on the subsidy dole, it is no wonder. The remnant of us who slave our lives away to support these assholes will use this looming catastrophe as the final straw, the final reason which justifies abandoning ship once and for all.

And then for those who love this state and were committed to making our lives here, there will be nothing left, and unless we manage to really impress the corps of dickhead hiring managers-cum-gatekeepers to the good life who await us in Atlanta and Dallas and Nashville and Charlotte (fully knowing our desparate position and like the animals they are, all too happy to exploit it for everything they can get out of it), we will be forced to survive by digging for roots and hustling for change.

I say all this not to shock, but to convey the extent of the enormous human tragedy of a Katrina or Rita. Hurricanes are not just about damaged property, floods, storm surge, and physical ruination. They are testaments to what a society values, and its moral character. The Chicago of 1871 could rise again from the ashes, because the talents of the people in that laissez-faire age were allowed to run free and rebuild a great city from the ruins of tragedy. The New Orleans of the bleak present, in contrast, remains in a stultified state of ruin, precisely because it is no longer about a free people. It is about power and who sucks whose dick, plain and simple. That is what the State, and all the social maxims which it personifies and teaches, is all about.

I have never mentioned this before, but Katrina is what made me a libertarian.

And nothing has changed in these three years to make me believe that it will be any different next time. In all honesty, I believe it will be ten times worse. People (holier-than-thou shitheads from up Northeast in particular) are too desensitized to suffering and the omnipotent State today to give a shit anymore about what atrocities go down in "that" part of the world. We are all just a bunch of looters and apes, eh? The next time the levees break, they will say, "Stick a fork in them, Louisiana is finished! Let the mass disinvestment commence!!"

So comes Gustav. The bodies shall hit the floor and the rivers of blood shall again flow free as the destruction of our state and its people that was commenced three years ago is now completed.

Slim prospects

The nation reels as the economy continues its gradual collapse and the slow-motion destruction of our society and culture continues unabated. What must those people be thinking who, once productive members of society, now face this hour in a state of incomeless, jobless, purposeless destitution.

As the economic conditions bleaken, one by one the major corporations either wither away or conduct massive retractions, shedding jobs and livelihoods with abandon. Steve and Barry's Sportswear faces dissolution, and Mervyn's might not be far behind. Starbucks is closing hundreds of stores and more or less completely disinvesting from this particular city and state (Louisiana is always disinvestment target number 1, since it is presumed that those who live here are all poor destitute Blacks). Retailers and other similar service "industries" twist with terror as the inflationary boom ceases and Amerikans can no longer afford to purchase the superfluous cheap junk which they sell.

For those who seek work at this hour, any work, the picture is grim. Long lines form for those now-rare open positions which pay reasonably well. Even fast food chains have to turn away the increasingly desperate, as ten applications are submitted for one low-paying opening. The crowds at the day labor office down the street from where I live are thicker than ever. Men stand on street corners with hungry lean visages, desperate for any means of survival.

The eternal law of caste and class comes into play, as the dickheadery coalesces in an effort to protect their interests first and foremost; people of color, social outcasts, and misfits are the hardest hit by the economic paralysis, the last hired in good times and the very first fired in bad times. The groups of idle men on the streets of my neighborhood are more numerous, larger, and hungrier appearing than ever.

The elites and other affluent Whites in their BMWs and Hummers are largely unaffected so far, at least on the surface. Of course, who knows what massive bleeding of paper losses is going down in hidden fashion. But the creditors and lenders will be most gentle with the privileged folks, since that is how one treats "nice people"; perhaps they will send out an extra warning notice informing their customers on the inconvenient facts about the arrears in the mortgage payments, to be easily ignored. For the ghetto Blacks and other poor who regrettably do not fall into this category, they can instead expect heavily armed sheriff's deputies to show up at their doorstep to effect the rapid eviction or foreclosure.

In a rareified world far removed from the average working man's troubles, Wall Street convulses as this monumental scam by the financial elites to defraud the working man of his income collapses like a house of cards. The evil is gradually being exposed for what it is, and the government, that agent of false salvation, is appearing as impotent as it actually is in the face of the crisis.

The best case scenario is for the government to do nothing and to let the crisis pass relatively rapidly, destroying many lives but preserving what is left of our civilization. However, the view has long been abandoned in our culture that government does best when it does least. The tide is for statism; the dream of untold generations of death worshipers has arrived, as President Obama makes it his mission to create a new and glorious day for the omnipotent State.

A wave of gargantuan socialism will sweep the land as the elites attempt every last measure to preserve their profits, and which will screw every last Everyman into the ground. And as the Chinese rise on the wealth which we have so foolishly bequeathed to them, the shattered ruins of our society will only hold the dark and monstrous barbarism that is the final death rattle before societal extinction.

Even the dickheads in their fancy cars and McMansions will feel it. And yes, they will feel it. Hunger is real. Thirst is real. Starvation is real. Death is the ultimate reality.

It's as real as it gets. That should make only the thugs happy in this advancing age of death.

Corporative fascism: theory and practice

I often speak of fascism here on these pages and how Amerika today fits the profile of a fascist state. What do I mean by that?

The current economic/political regime in the United States today is not based on an ideology of conservativism (gee whiz, ya think?), liberalism, socialism, libertarianism (certainly not), democratism, or anything else of a 'conventional' stripe. The prevailing ideology is referred to publicly by some as neoconservativism, but is more properly called corporative fascism.

In all instances fascism is corporative in nature, but I emphasize the 'corporative' in Amerikan style fascism as the fascism which is currently practiced in the USA, and supported by its elites, is more concerned with economic "management" (more like mismanagement) and preservation of prosperity (at least for the elites) than anything else.

The core tenets of corporative fascism are as follows:

• Unquestioned support for the State and for its continued expansion
  
• Privatization of profit, and socialization of losses (see Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac)
• Extreme regimentation in thought and activity
• An emphasis on order (see War on [insert undesirable item here])
• Glorification of the military and the police (see current major TV network primetime lineups)
• State "management" of the economy and currency system (see Federal Reserve System)
• Preservation of the established racial and socioeconomic pecking order
• An interventionist approach to foreign policy and a reliance on military and economic force when dealing with other countries (as opposed to diplomacy) in order to secure the 'national interest'
• Government control of the social "safety net" (see Social Security, Medicare, et al.)

There are other elements but there are the basic beliefs.

The system is underpinned by a universal consensus of thought which extends across the entire breadth of what may be broadly termed "the elite" - Beltway politicians, corporate interests, government contractors, major bases of capital and wealth (real estate, stock, cash), the mainstream media, powerful interest groups (read political donors) - anyone in these groups with a national reputation and who plays on a national stage. Virtually all of these people can be tied to federal largesse and State favor in some way.

At the pinnacle of the system lies the Leader. While nominally an elected executive, the Leader has untold power over life and death, favor and disfavor, to an extent greater than any other executive in all of history. The Leader has aggrandized unto himself over time much of the power and decision making ability formerly vested in the national legislature, whether due to direct delegation or established (but unconstitutional) custom. While legislators are periodically answerable to the whims of the electorate, once in power the Leader is only subject to one such "accountability moment" within an eight year span, and thus in a very real way answers to no one. Technically the legislature has the constitutional means (and even a moral mandate) to block or blunt his unchecked whims, but because legislators themselves are very much invested in the system as it is currently constituted, rarely does this ever actually occur in practice.

Corporative fascism, similar to actual corporations, favors 'top down' hierarchial structures which place the bulk of the decision making power in the chief executive. This permits a relatively speedy implementation of public policies and an almost instantaneous ability to expand State power in an instant if the Nation is deemed to be threatened by malevolent forces (or whatever the State considers malevolent and a threat to its rule).

That is not to say, however, that it is only the Leader's own thoughts and beliefs which matter in the decision making process, for there are an army of "assistants" ready and willing to advise him on every action. They function as a sort of court aristocracy, and like their ancient predecessors can amass great power in their own right and carve a substantial sphere of influence for themselves (see Rove, Karl) by controlling access to the Leader and mastering his trust. Like the royal courts of old, access and relative closeness to the Leader has its privileges...

If the Leader can be likened to the "head" of the system, and his executive staff and advisors the "brains", the federal bureaucracy functions as the "arms" of the complex, enforcing the Leader's many edicts and proclamations, supplemented by legislative law and fiat. (Legislation, by the way, is often in keeping with the Leader's political program.) It is this massive bureaucracy that is responsible for the myriad functions of an imperal corporative State, from economic "management" to prosecuting the Government's various "wars", both real and figurative. Their combined claim on the national wealth (via income and other taxes) is tremendous and serves to 'crowd out' a substantial amount of private investment. What cannot be funded from direct depredations on private income is borrowed either through issuing bonds (usually purchased by foreign governments in countries to where our industry fled thanx to those same taxes), or more insidiously, printing new money which serves to devalue the currency, thus causing inflation.

Where does all this federal spending go? Well, after considering the salaries and benefits of millions of well paid and fed bureaucrats, there is substantial spending which is directed toward the purchases of goods and services. Most obvious is defense spending which benefits many large and influential corporations that provide armaments and weapons for the government - aka the military-industrial complex. There are other parallel procurement schemes for many other industries. Other benefits to private enterprise include subsidies, both direct and indirect (mortgage tax exemption which stimulates real estate, agricultural subsidies, etc.) and 'entitlement' payments which stimulate incomes of various low-income groups and contribute to consumer spending, which underpins the entire economy today. Then there is "capture spending" in the form of federal grants to nominally independent lower levels of government, of which the rules attached to such funds ensure that the local authorities will function (against their will in some cases) as emissaries of policies formulated at the highest level.

All of course funded by taxpayers, borrowing against future generations, and currency debasement.

As you can see, the private sector is very much invested in the current system and would not appreciate its dismantlement. Private gain, public loss.

The 'conventional wisdom' (as it is called) of this system is thus broadly supported by all its beneficiaries, and is transmitted through the major media to the public and is taught to budding citizens through indoctrination via the government school system. In this way everyone is fed the conventional wisdom, constantly being reinforced in it by media figures, and made to at least implicitly support the entire scheme despite its obvious net negatives to the average person, as an alternative means of social order (i.e. freedom) can not even be conceived or conceptualized, much less considered viable, by anyone 'rational'. (This is why the power players could laugh Ron Paul out of consideration, with the sheeple concurring every step of the way.) To think outside the set confines of the elite-established parameters is 'delusional thinking.' In the worst cases, offenders against the conventional wisdom may be imprisoned, either in an actual jail or a padded neo-prison called a 'mental health treatment facility'.

Propaganda does not have to be open, or as obvious as a Goebbels or a Leni Riefenstahl made it out to be. The elites have learned from their past mistakes, and it is not in their interests to repeat themselves too carefully lest they be exposed for what they are - primitive purveyors of sloth, the beneficiaries of unearned benefit and the fruits of someone else's wealth.

From ancient times a group of people have called themselves the 'leadership class' and lived the dream of the parasite - to survive by force from looted wealth. It is a feature of every place, culture, and age. The jig continues until the surplus wealth is consumed, then society collapses. The ruins of the ancients provide a mute testament to this seemingly eternal process.

We must call them out for what they are, and nip their parasitism in the bud, or we will ourselves only live in memory among the ruins of once great, now dead civilizations.

On freedom of speech

With Independence Day looming, here are some thoughts on freedom of speech.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to free speech - a right which many Americans take for granted today, but nevertheless an important and ancient right (which is sadly being eroded by the day). Without freedom of speech and communications, a free society - and this blog - would be impossible.

However, one must understand what "freedom of speech" means. The Constitution enumerates negative rights - that is, the State cannot eradicate or truncate a natural human right bestowed by nature. (The opposite would be a positive right, where the State "grants" the right or privilege to engage in some activity - as if the State has the legal or moral authority to do so. Positive rights are also known as "entitlements.") The First Amendment, in reality, is a prohibition - of State action which would inhibit the right of men to communicate and enlighten.

The First Amendment, therefore, cannot protect a person from the private effects of his speech. People are free to disagree, shout out curses at you, call you a liar and a bigot, etc. And if the power brokers and connected are really irritated by your fulminations, they can bring suit against you (it's called "libel"), track you down, permanently shut the doors of social and economic opportunity, destroy your livelihood and your family, and taint your friends and colleagues with guilt by association.

Such are the realities of a fascist age. In this society virtually everyone is liable to take offense at even the most feeble protests against the regime. Imagine what full scale dissent does to these people. It probably makes their heads spin!

This is why I and others like me must lurk in the shadows by necessity. The power elites very much dislike it when someone exposes their game and speaks too plainly about the realities in our society, as I routinely do here on these pages. Exposure would mean social estrangement and isolation, economic marginalization, utter personal ruin. We truth tellers and seekers must creep around anonymously if we are to survive and perform our necessary work.

In times past, when hereditary absolute rulers were common (today we just elect them), there was a member of the king's court known as a jester, whose formal role was to entertain the royal household; but in this manner he was the only person permitted to tell the whole, unadulterated truth to the monarch.

We are the modern functional equivalents to a court jester. We hope that our efforts entertain and please, but also hope that some very real truths are spread out to the world.

We worship death in the good ol' USA

Today I again observed an incident which shows that, at its root, human nature and character is banal, ugly, and sickening.

A certain US Senator in this state, as you may know by now, got caught red handed in a sex scandal, where he was found to be the regular patron of a high profile prostitution ring in DC. Well this politician had of course not the character to face the situation like a man, resign his office immediately, and kill himself quietly -so after delivering a perfunctory apology at the side of his mercenary spouse, on he continues to solder forward as 'representative' of the state's people as if the incident never occurred.

For amusement's sake, today I attended one of his 'town hall meetings' (you know, the ones where you write your questions down so that they are vetted by the handlers to the High and Mighty One beforehand), and there were people, just as I expected, meekly and feebly asking insipid and fawning questions which did absolutely nothing to question the legitimacy of the system, its vile corruption, or its brute cynicism.  In all it was a like minded neocon choir for our 'conservative' Senator who made a big dog and pony show of being 'conservative'.  Because he is 'one of them' (i.e. a dickhead) they give him their undying love.  One woman even stated that she was proud of the Senator!  Boy, are we as a people ever forgiving!

In all, a farce.  The sheeple have spoken.

One extremely brave man (not me) would have none of it.  He had come to speak truth to power and did so.  He bellowed to the Almighty one, in a powerful voice:

"ARE YOU IN FAVOR OF LEGALIZING PROSTITUTION IN THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS?  YOU ARE SICK AND A DISGRACE!"

Admittedly a low blow, but one richly deserved.

And then the enormous spectre of human ugliness reared its filthy head, and the crowd went wild.  Cries of "SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!!!" were mingled with jeers of so called "Christians": "HE WHO CASTS THE FIRST STONE SHALL BE WITHOUT SIN!!"

It was a frightening sight, to say the least.  You could feel the body assembled growing out of control.  Almost like a lynch mob.

You gotta love their emotional and heartfelt support of their Leader.  So much for free speech, upholding human decency, expecting public officials to have character, etc.

The truth is that this was an assembly of the comfortable, and the dogma of "go along to get along" is paramount in their lives.  They would never imagine stirring the pot, lest it disturb their privileged and shallow little lives, until someone comes along to disturb their sick little worldview - and then they take that individual outside around the back and beat his ass to within an inch of his life.

I am sure that is what the Senator's handlers did.  

We call ourselves civilized in this country.  And for the most part we make a big show of being cool and collected. In fact most of us are sick, depraved, monstrous individuals who would do anything to destroy another person to gain a benefit.  This is the only reason I can imagine why allegedly educated people could support degenerates such as the junior Senator from Louisiana.  

Today's events were only brute confirmation of that fact.

In this circumstance, I can gladly say that the Iraqis demonstrate more civility and class than most Amerikans.

Today the only permissible subjects which men may casually discuss among themselves, due to social fascism, are beer and sports.  Step outside those bounds and you are ostracised and brought to destitution - or better yet, called a terrorist. No wonder social relationships are so vacuous and empty today, and why people are so alone and atomized.  The arbiters of social control have painted us into a corner indeed.

This is no longer a free country where a man may speak his opinion without molestation - it is now conform, or die.  Yay for democracy and the good ol' USA!