Freedom of Speech Is Not Important. Especially Yours.

The Dirty Tricks Squad doesn't think freedom of speech is important. Especially yours.

     Lovers of the written word and enforcers of freedom of expression have a very grave paradox to deal with in American culture, and it is this: freedom of speech is destroying the quality and force of the written word and burying under avalanches of pointless and hollow expression the very brave and vital perspectives that necessitate the eternal struggle for freedom of expression in the first place. Simply put: there's too much stupid out there and not enough genuine, inspired and novel. With the explosion of the cyber world everyone in America now has a blog and a website where they are the star and are free to parrot whatever synthesis and regurgitation of cultural events is currently being shoved down their gullet. Recently I was invited by my butcher to visit his blog, which I had hoped would reveal some wisdom and unique insight into the art of butchery, which I must confess I know little about (at least the animal physiognomy). Instead I was treated to yet another in depth analysis of the current season of American Idol.

         Freedom cheapens the value of freedom and obscures its rarity and absolute beauty. Freedom blunts the desire to contemplate the sacrifice and discipline necessary to maintain freedom. Like a cat who refuses to behold it's reflection one wonders if Americans are so fiercely in tune with the tragic misuse of our freedom that we hide behind our own banal, uninspired blogs and stubbornly refuse to behold our grotesque, bloated reflection. Has any civilization in history done less good with more resources than we have? Has any epoch in human history failed to produce more beauty and truth and reason to fight for the liberation of the human spirit than we have in the midst of the absolute freedom much better and truer minds suffered to provide us? 
      
  Freedom is enslavement. Only the keenest among us can accept this. Only the slave is a freedom fighter. All others are captors. We are the slave owners of the world. We are the ones who benefit from the enslavement of our fellow humans and do nothing. We are the ones with the gall and lack of irony to write incessantly about freedom and our greatness and goodness when we are neither and in fact quite the opposite: we are the weakest and the worst. Only enslavement can free us from our deep sleep. What Americans need is a great deal less freedom and a lot more opportunities to become freedom fighters.         

Take these examples: in Stalin's Russia some of the great poetry of the 20th century was written. Beautiful, symbolic pleas for freedom and liberty. Poets like Anna Ahkmatova and Lamerntov wove the case for the individual's right to express human emotions and desires into poems that unfolded like birdsong: somewhat confusing if one doesn't know the language but undeniable in it's message: freedom. These poets wrote knowing full well to be discovered was to be brutalized and imprisoned in barbaric camps like Baba Yar, but they wrote and published anyway. They led lives of privation and died badly in prison for having the courage to demand freedom, not only for themselves, but for all.         

You don't have this courage. Few Americans do. And it's an insult to those of us who have the balls to actually defend something to be deluged by your idiotic, unoriginal and cowardly banterings day after day. It's an insult to listen to rednecks and schills ape the old adage that our soldiers have died for our freedom throughout American history and we should thank them. Our soldiers have never fought for anything but the property rights of the elites and are pathetic victims of an evil ruling class. Indeed the only examples we have of our troops being used in the battle for freedom are in an effort to suppress freedom to benefit the ruling class. The labor movement where protesters and union organizers were murdered by American troops while attempting to champion fair wages, safe working conditions, the forty hour week and the abolition of child labor are one example. The Civil Rights movement, the Free Speech movement and each and every attempt to gain freedom and equality for an oppressed minority or unpopular principle were met with violence from American soldiers.         

The worst insult is that we are told we should "Thank the troops for fighting for our freedom." The only people who owe the troops a thank you is the few who benefit financially from their occupation of a foreign country. My freedom has never been threatened by anyone but agents of the United States of America. It is the troops who owe those of us with the courage to challenge the system a thank you. We are fighting for their freedom and safety and a thank you would be appreciated.  
       
The closest thing American history can offer to an actual freedom fighter is comic book creator William Gaines. Ya, I said it. At a time when anyone who wouldn't get in lock step with the current regime and anyone even suspected of entertaining ideas not endorsed by the elite was blacklisted and ostracized there were only a few people with the balls to say anything. It's not much different today. In fact in many ways it's worse.         

Here's a few examples of the cowardly nature of the modern American and why I believe most of you haven't earned the right to express yourself freely and restriction of your freedoms would actually lead to more happiness for you. Some of you might remember there was a little incident in New York when "someone" knocked down a couple of building with aeroplanes. The culprits were quickly identified as Arab terrorists and an oil-rich nation was subsequently attacked. It was irrelevant  to Americans that the terrorists identified couldn't possibly have planned or executed the terrorist attack and all evidence indicated that American elites had planned the attack in order to invade a nation that contained oil resources they desired. Then despite the fact that the county designated for attack was not even purported to have been involved in the terrorist act United States troops invaded and destroyed the country. Ironically, many people in the Executive branch profited greatly by having vested interests in the companies that produced the armaments used to destroy the country and also the companies that were awarded no bid contracts to rebuild the country. They also made a few billion dollars on the oil they now pumped out of the country.         

Remember that? I do. Just like it was a few years ago. What I remember predominantly is that almost no one in America spoke out against the war or the invasion of Iraq or raised any questions about the actual perpetrators of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center or challenged the billions and billions of dollars of profit those who were in the Executive Branch made while American troops, primarily minorities and the lower classes, died to defend the oil fields.         

Remember that? Virtually no one raised their voice to protest or demand accountability. I must admit a few hippies and greenies and generally weirdos did take to the streets but their protests seemed more like block parties than real protests. Ninety-five percent of the people agreed with the war and it was literally dangerous to disagree with this violent majority. I remember this clearly. People were adamantly convinced the war in Iraq was the right thing to do and if you disagreed you put yourself in physical danger.         

I took the trouble to waste three paragraphs of your time to make the point clear: virtually no one spoke up after 9/11 or the invasion of Iraq to challenge the prevailing opinion. Recently that changed. It's all but impossible to find anyone who claims to have supported the war or now believes it to be a good idea. Now I'm no math genius but since I know 95% supported the war and that now no one claims to have supported the war someone is lying. Not lying about a golf score or their age or how much money they make but lying about surrendering their freedom and laying down to give the Elite the power and authority to 's sick. use the volunteer Armed Forces of the United States to invade a foreign country merely to make a profit for a small, inhuman elite.         

That's sick. And cowardly. I refer to the American public not the Reptilian pigs who engineered the disgrace. They have never been anything but what they are now. They did this right in the open and with a near unanimous outcry of approval from the American people. No one said shit and those who did were shouted down, threatened and labeled un- American and unpatriotic.         

Isn't irony a bitch? Four years later the stigma has been removed from questioning the war and now the floodgates of ignorance are open and the cowardly and gutless feel the entitlement to tell the few of us who resisted from the first how they always were on our side. I looked around briefly in 2003 to see who was on my side and I didn't see anyone. To have even questioned the Executive Branch in 2003 was thought of as treasoness, but four years later even the mainstream will now joyfully hop the bandwagon and join in the debate whether or not the American government bombed its own citizens in order to profit.         

So, back to my assertion: the power of free speech is only as good those who have the courage, power and willingness to say something of value and uniqueness. We don't have that in America. We have an abundance of clever smartasses who can say something witty and culturally relevant about just about anything. We have 25 million bloggers explicating and interpolating on every topic from Global Warming to stand up comedy. We have 24 hour news networks and political pundits spouting at all hours of the day and the internet and Google and newspapers and websites and think tanks. What we don't have is a corp group of courageous and capable patriots and intellectuals with the balls to ignore the group think that has pervaded American culture and tell the people you're all full of shit.         

Even if we did the voice of those patriots would be drowned out by the herd of sheep bleating out whatever position their captors force down their throats and spending their intellectual resources on debating who should be voted off American Idol this week. (Note to future generations: you'll have to Google American Idol to realize the full farce of how much time people wasted discussing it while their civilization withered).         

So, free speech has become tits on a nun. I watched while the Executive branch and their Reptilian masters suspended your Constitutional rights one by one and I waited for all the self-avowed patriots and freedomsties to say something. I read the full provisions of the Patriot act and waited for someone, anyone, to stand up and protest. I must admit numbness when I heard that habeus corpus had been repealed and that the goons of the state could invade my privacy anytime and unwarranted. It didn't matter to me anymore. Do you know why? I'll tell you. I've always been the person who eventually lost his freedom to defend someone elses. I've always known and accepted it was incumbent upon me and those few like me to stand up and defend something. What I have trouble accepting is how the rest of you have shirked your responsibility to defend your own freedom and cowered before the will of the state and all but surrendered everything but your right to agree with whatever enslavement is forced upon you.         

It is a shame that Americans continue to enjoy freedoms that they no longer deserve. America has proven that it doesn't value its freedoms enough to even speak up when they are taken away. The fourth Amendment can seem abstract until the morning you are awakened from sleep by agents of the state standing over you with guns drawn. After this the right to privacy tends to elicit a greater appreciation. The First Amendment can seem unassailable when everyone can spout out whatever thought comes to mind in forums and through technologies thought inconceivable only years ago. Consider the insulting possibility that what you are saying has neither the relevance, courage or gravity to merit even the passing disgust of another human being. Consider the stinging evaluation that at your best you pose no threat to the cabal of the elite. It will not be you who is forced to oppose the true enemies of freedom. It is not you who will be awakened in darkness. Go back to your computer and write something clever and innocuous about something clever and innocuous. Someone else will fight your battles.         

Freedom is enslavement. Those of us who bear the greatest burden of freedom, the inability to lie, to say black is white and white is black, will continue to wander and babble among babblers in the largest of prison of all. 

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Why the Fight Over The Tenth Amendment Will Be the One That Finally Breaks Our Union

The Tenth Amendment.

What?

The Tenth Amendment.

Why should I care?

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Uh, oh. What the hell does that mean?

It means we're in for three years (at least) of hearing about the Tenth Amendment. 

What it means is every time the Democratic Congress and Presidency, elected in vast majorities by the People (remember them in the Amendment) pass any legislation the Conservatives (overwhelmongly trounced in the last election by the aforementioned People) don't agree with we'll hear that anyone who doesn't want to obey the new laws of the land doesn't have to because of the Tenth Amendment. In short they'll just say "It's not the law where I live.

Isn't there a rather shameful example of what happens when states and local governments set aside the law of the land in favor of their own personal beliefs? I'm certain I remember something. Oh, ya, the Jim Crow Laws. Despite Lincoln's Emancipation Procolomation, Southerners (and others) just weren't buying it. Free black men and women, not in my backyard. That led to a hundred years of backwards cocksuckers basically keeping Blacks in a state of slavery and without any ability to vote or exercise their Constitutional rights, even though it was the law of the land.

We're not going to let this happen again. Places like South Carolina don't need to make their own laws. And if they do want to change the laws the Constitution offers there are these remedies:

1) Vote. It's a democracy. The reason Conservatives are up in arms in the first place is they got swept out of office at all levels by a vote of the people. The People. But instead of waiting two years and making their case to the people and turning Democrats out of office they stamp their feet like children and say "Well, we're not going to obey the law." That's pretty dangerous, don't you think? Because these people aren't even willing to work within the broad freedoms Democracy offers to change things, they just want to take their ball and go home after a loss. Experience tells me people like that are dangerous, childish, and impossible to work with.

2) Amend the Constitution. If you don't like it, change it. You have two ways to do it. What you don't have the right to do is ignore the law of the land. 

UNLESS. You want to secede. I'd love to see South Carolina on it's own. I'd love to not have those inbred, toothless, hillrods living in the same country I do, a country that showed the rest of the world what Democracy can be and what freedom is and what happens when good people do the right thing. 

Here's the fundamental problem with interpreting the Tenth Amendment: People are stupid. And as much as I hate the Federal government, the only thing I can think of that would be worse is the idiots I see around me on a regular basis running things. At least the Federal Government is sort of on autopilot, and although it's inefficient, corrupt, bloated, and unresponsive, it's so full of inertia it's difficult to really make a change that will cause chaos. Whereas the morons who are my neighbors (who don't vote anyway) would get a bug up their ass every ten minutes and be changing the colors of watertowers and forming pitchfork mobs nightly if they were in charge. I'll choose the bloated Federal Government over that anyday.

The second point is this: Conservatives never seem to have an issue with Federal Government when they are running it. The last administration ran the largest deficit in history and managed to suspend more civil liberties than anyone since Mao. Not a peep. Fourth Amendment gone? I didn't need it anyway. Habeas Corpus? What was that? Harassment every time you demonstrated anywhere near an important function? Assembly schmamembly. It was probably just a bunch of pinkos and fags and animal rights freaks getting sprayed and beaten down with clubs anyway, right?

Wrong. It was all of us. President Bush took back or suspended more of our Civil Liberties with his Executive Orders and Presidential Letters than any President ever. Not even close. Not one of these came up for a vote. Where were Conservatives yelling about their Rights then? It just seems a little hypocritical to make such a fuss about it now. Especially when I don't have the feeling that anyone is trying to take away my liberty right now. And trust me, as a whacked out eccentric artist with a big mouth who would be the first to go when they start rounding up people for whatever bullshit charge they hang on you when it gets down to lynch mob time, I am the first to start yelling about any loss of my personal liberties, regardless of which party is threatening them. I'm not threatened right now.

And I think that may be the very thing that has Conservatives shitting bricks. They can't control what they used to control. They aren't trying to defend freedom, they're trying to get back the iron grip on deciding who was free and who was let's just say less free (women, Blacks, Mexicans, immigrants, gays, pinkos etc.) they have enjoyed in the past. They know they have lost the power of the majority, or the Silent Majority, or the not so silent but more affluent minority, or whatever they used to be. So, they have decided if they can't use the Presidency and the Legislature and the Courts to tell you what to do they'll just retreat to their gated communities and make up their own rules. 

Trouble is you don't get to do that in America. You're still in America, and the Constitution is the law of the land. Obey it or go to prison because when you disobey you are a criminal, not a Patriot. I bet you'll be the first one's behind your walls to avail yourselves of all the services and privileges of being an American (and probably the last to serve). You'll benefit the most from the tax structure and your ceaseless lobbying for tax exemptions and no bid contracts and you'll ask us working Americans to bear the brunt of your research and development and let us pay to build your plants and headquarters and you'll live a life of opulence, but the second you're asked to return the favor by providing good paying jobs with health care and benefits you cry foul and say the governement is out to get you and redistribute your wealth (which, if you're following closely, you'll realize was the Peoples' wealth before you funneled it upwards). All you want is to sit in your gated community and enjoy all the benefits of the bounty of America and exploit the hard-working American worker, then not give back at all. 

Go somewhere else. Your headquarters are in a foreign land anyway. Go there. Don't want to obey the Constitution? Go somewhere where they don't have one.

But one thing you won't be selling to me is you're defending Freedom. All you're defending is you're financial interests. And the toothless inbreds you get to parrot your idiotic propaganda will never be what made or keeps America great. They'll always be the ones who opposed every major reform that kept  America's promise  as the shining example of potential equality, justice and decency. They'll dig in their heels (tarheels) and bitch and whine about their freedoms and slow down progress just long enough that millions will needlessly live in poverty (including themselves) and fear and  desperation, but when reform comes, as usual, they'll be among the first to benefit and see their quality of life improve. Then they'll be the first morons to oppose the next round of progress. It's hard to blame them: they're stupid and backwards and being brainwashed by the elites who actually benefit from a poor, fearful, divided America. 

The Tenth Amendment. Learn it, know it, feel it. The Tenth Amendment is like when a pop fly is hit to the outfield and there's some debate if the center fielder or the left fielder (or even the short stop) should take it. I submit to you it's almost always best when the center fielder (The Federal Government) asserts control and takes it. Just reduces confusion and the possibility of an error being made by another fielder who is out of position and beyond his range. Everyone knows you wouldn't be in left field unless you were a butcher with the glove anyway. Pin It

Jesus Got Off Easy

Jesus Got Off Easy
  

   Jesus had a pretty bad day there right at the end. They roughed him up pretty good. He got stoned, mocked, crucified and poked in the ribs. A pretty bad day by anyones estimation, but not nearly in the top ten of all time bad days. Not even close really. At the height of the Inquisition, supposed witches and heretics were often systematically tortured in ways too heinous to imagine, for hours upon hours, without the relief of death. I say Jesus was a ninny. A whiner. An ingrate really.....

      Even during the worst moments of his execution Jesus knew he was the son of god and that he would be resurrected and spend eternity in heaven. None of us has the luxury of knowing this in our everyday lives. No one of us suffers the pain and doubt of this world knowing for certain we will have everlasting life. Jesus had this and he still groused. At the end he chided god, saying "Why have you forsaken me?"

     Wow. Even knowing that his short term of suffering and pain was near its end and that eternal reward was at hand Jesus still felt it necessary to question a God he knew for certain as just and loving why his suffering was necessary. I'm not quite sure this is the kind of guy I want at my back in a barfight let alone an eternal struggle between good and evil. History is full of stories of heroes who suffered excruciating pain and of an ongoing nature who did not question their individual misfortune but bore it with courage and nobility. They did so believing in their cause but not knowing for certain if they were right or wrong. Jesus knew. God told him. And yet he had the nerve to condemn God for exposing him to a human life. ....

 This isn't the comedy team I want evaluating my performance as a human being. .... Pin It

The Fonzarelli Effect

The Fonzarelli Effect 

        When I served my time as a schoolkid in the seventies and eighties things were different. Parents weren't cool. There were no MILF moms and 40 year old dads in punk rock bands. Hell, in the entire frickin' universe there probably only 700-800 people tops who were considered "cool." And they had done extensive work to become so. Lunch boxes proved it. You got the wrong lunch box you took a beating. In 1978 it was Evel Knieval, John Travolta and The Fonz.

        What's my point? I'll tell you my fucking point. If you wore Chuck Taylors to school in 1978 it meant you couldn't afford blue Adidas with the three stripes and you took a beating. If you wore brown Toughskins to school in 1978 you might as well have ….  well, something bad.  You remember Toughskins from Sears. A fucking robot couldn't wear them out so what chance did you have to ever be rid of these monstrosities.

        What's my point? I was recently forced to attend an event at a "trendy" night spot. Everyone there was significantly cooler than me. I know this is true because they drank nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and wore the same awful military style black frame nylon glasses I was issued as a defenseless seven year old and wore until I was sixteen. More than this they  had managed to find a lost consignment of brown Toughskins somewhere at a forgotten torture facility and were sporting Old School Chuck Taylors. I suffered flashbacks and had to remove myself from the suarez before I started stabbing everyone in the jugular with the shards of an Appletini glass.

        What's your point, Thomas? I'll tell you. In 1978 I wasn't cool in my brown Toughskins, Chuck Taylors and black nylon military style glasses and neither are you in 2006. Pabst Blue Ribbon is horse piss and always has been. My father drank PBR for forty years and he's far from being one of the cooler people on the planet.

        So, The Fonzarelli Effect. What is it? As I mentioned in 1978 no one on the planet was cool. 700-800 people tops. And the rest of us accepted that. There was only one cool table and we weren't at it. When Dungeons and Dragons came out we played it. When Devo made albums we bought them. We were known as geeks, dweebs and nerds and treated accordingly. There were no television shows glorifying us.

        Flash forward to 2007 and of the 6.5 billion people on Earth roughly two-thirds of them are now "cool." Everyone gets it. Everyone has a cell phone and a blog and a My Space site. Pretty much everyone in the entire world is in a punk band and everyone else is a tattoo artist. Every trend is transmitted to everyone simultaneously so no one has to do the hard work of being an individual. Everyone gets it. Even the last examples of uncoolness on the planet, the nerds, geeks and dweebs are now hip.

        The Fonzarelli effect states that if everyone is cool no one is cool. Cool isn't the right lunchbox, awful pants, bad music and deluding yourself into thinking Pabst Blue Ribbon is a palatable beverage, cool is a T-shirt with The Fonz giving you the thumb and saying "AAAAAYYYYYY" just be yourself.  Cool is not getting that dumbass tattoo and looking to past generations for ideas and slogans and trends to steal instead of creating your own.

        You know what else isn't cool? Harley Davidsons. The entire biker culture. Not cool. It's a medival costume party for over the hill middle managers. Here are a few other things that aren't cool: lists, Hooters, Green Day, storm chasers, crocodile hunters, profilers, mobsters, gangsters, athletes, The Onion and Emmylou Harris. If you're on this list you ain't cool.

        When did everyone decide sharing a small part of a global brain and identity was preferable to living a large and adventurous life at the periphery of societal norms and standards? When did everyone become too clever for the room? Pin It

Amazingly No One Died

       It's damn hard to kill human beings. Just ask the U.S. military. Over the past few decades they've spent billions of dollars and expended tons and tons of bombs of all sorts: smart bombs, scud bombs, daisy cutter bombs, sitting on the john reading the Arab Weekly news bomb- all of that mostly for just two men: Mohamar Quadafi and Osama Bin Laden. Although successful in taking out a few people in the general vicinity of these men on occasion both have stubbornly refused to die.

        People just won't die. Case in point: a snowboarder in the Rockies was recently attacked by a pack of wolves while simultaneously dropping seven hundred feet from a sheer cliff. On the way down the wolves stripped his entire legs of flesh down to the bone. Upon landing the man was mauled by a mountain lion and buried under an avalanche for sixteen days, his only source of nourishment being his own internal organs. Fortunately this occurred in May and upon being questioned about his ordeal by a rescue crew the man simply stated, "Cowabunga dude!"

        Did I mention it's hard to kill people? This didn't make the national news but last week a nuclear device was accidentally detonated in New York City at high noon. Now this was no jelly donut bomb it was the full 1000 megaton bomb. The next day on page seven of the Post appeared a twelve line story that began "bomb dropped on New York City, seven suffer minor injuries." The New York Times declined to send out a reporter.

        We've arrived at a point in human history where people are more difficult to exterminate than cockroaches. Even in the most abhorrent conditions in Third World nations people just aren't dying like they used to. Various agencies have released the AIDS virus, bird flu, E Bola, tainted spinach and Big Macs upon the world. Everyone gets fatter and dumber but stubbornly refuses to die.

        Why?

        I think I know why. Television. In the Dark Ages there was no television. And everyone had the decency to die at an early age. It is mistakenly believed The Bubonic Plague or unsanitary conditions was the cause but new evidence proves it was lack of television. These people wanted to die. There just wasn't anything to do. These people had nothing to look forward to. No American Idol, no Wheel of Fortune, even the most popular sports event, Beheading of the Infidels, wasn't readily available on closed circuit until the Renaissance. Faced with the prospect of another day of grueling labor and insufferable boredom many chose just to die.

        Right up until the debut of I Love Lucy the average life expectancy was 27 years. And today, judging from the crowd I witnessed at the Old Country Buffet, the ALE is 123 years old. That's right. There was no AARP in 1838. No Blue Cross, no Medicare. Anyone older than 24 was quietly urged to "give it up." If one persisted after these gentle warnings one often found oneself attached to a catapult and aimed at enemy encampments. But now the old have no shame. Worst of all they are encouraged not to die. This occurred roughly around the time Matlock, Murder She Wrote and Walker, Texas Ranger made their spectacular debut on television. Now the old have no reason to die. They got the buffet, Matlock and they're the only ones who can afford to see a doctor. Have you ever been in a doctors waiting room? I haven't since I was fifteen but I seem to remember it full of gummers there to complain about stiffness, pain and general disrepair. Of course you feel bad, Methusula, you're like 187 years old. If you'd kindly die and get out of the way maybe you'd be doing a favor for the quality of television and buffets everywhere.

        So, what can we do about this dilemma of people refusing to die? The Biltebergers and New World Order have been going about this all the wrong way. Scouring the rainforest for new flesh eating viruses, digging up the coffins of victims of the Spanish Flu to study the influenza that killed 25% of the world, ignoring the basic nutritional and sanitary needs of Third World nations- all of these methods have been only marginally effective in their goal of reducing the world's population to 500,000,000. What they need to do is implement a television curfew of six p.m and show only re-runs of Walker, Texas Ranger, Matlock and Murder She Wrote. No other programming would be available except with the proviso that for one hour of television watched one hour of intensive study of history, literature or philosophy be suffered. Within six weeks the population of planet Earth would be reduced to 500,000,000 due to deaths caused by boredom and suicide.

        Are you listening you cocksucker New Worlders? Get to work. Pin It