An Open Letter To My Fellow Citizens of The United States of America:
(cross posted from (Parenthetically Speaking) because I thought the content appropriate for SEB)
I am sick of the endless debates about the fucking flag. I’m sick of the ribbons and banners. The parades. The fucking holidays. I’m sick of wars that, as Wes Mendell so elegantly pointed out, have their own theme music and logos. I’m sick of politicians who wrap themselves in the red, white and blue, setting themselves up so that any criticism of them or their ideas is a criticism of America itself.
You’re being fucked up the ass with the giant dick of patriotism and all you can say is, “harder, harder.” It’s a distraction, that’s all it is. Magicians call it misdirection. Hey, look over there, so you won’t notice what we’re doing over here.
You think you live in a free country? Bullshit. They’ve been systematically taking away your freedoms for a hundred years and most of you haven’t even noticed. It’s not new and it’s not partisan. It’s all about power.
Take a look at the Constitution. All those rights that you were guaranteed? How many do you think you still have?
The first amendment covers your right to free speech. Take a look, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The very existence of the FCC blows that one out of the water. Seems somebody decided that if it’s broadcast, it’s not covered. Ask George Carlin, he’ll tell you.
And your freedom of religion? Doesn’t apply if you don’t have one, or your religion doesn’t include a supreme being. At least that’s the case in seven states, where someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of god is prohibited from holding office.
Want to assemble peacefully? You might need a permit for that. Depends on the situation and the law that covers it, even though any law covering such assembly is, well, fucking unconstitutional.
How about the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms? Would you like to try counting the number of laws that infringe on that one?
The fourth amendment says this, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The Patriot Act took care of that one. For our safety. I refer you to the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Do you still think you’re free?
In a free society, you’d have the right to put anything into your body that you chose. Drug laws make that impossible.
You’d have the right to end your own life at the time of your choosing. Sorry, against the law.
Want someone other than the government and corporations to fuck you up the ass? Forget it, sodomy is illegal in 24 states.
And can anyone give me any reasonable justification for the laws against prostitution? As Carlin said, “Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn’t selling fucking legal?”
Land of the free my ass.
These laws and many others exist for one reason, to control us. To make us into good little sheep while the powerful live their lives of privilege, content in the knowledge that all it takes to keep us bent over is a little flag waving and a couple verses of the fucking national anthem.
It won’t change. You’ll keep voting for them, supporting them, gladly giving up your freedoms for a little more peace of mind. So when they take away your smokes, your red meat, your candy, don’t worry about it, it’s for your own good.
And when they start banning your games because they’re too violent for your children, well, that’s okay too. After all, we have to think about the children.
Any other freedoms you can live without? Speak up. I’m sure they’re listening……
From a law enforcement perspective, people’s Fourth Amendment rights are actually more stringently enforced than they used to be. 20 years ago, if you told some gang bangers to leave a corner and they didn’t, you called another few cars and proceeded to beat the fuck out of them with your nightsticks. That became a lot less common even before the advent of universally available cell phone cameras. Didn’t worry that much about probable cause when you searched them either.
Subscribing to this post.
Seneca the Younger: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
I’m looking forward to reading Don Winslow’s Power of the Dog.
I’m lead to believe it gives a bit of an idea about how corrupt ‘the war on drugs’ is.
Oh KPG, forgot to mention – great rant.
Subscribing…
There’s a big difference between corrupt cops not obeying regulations and an official act of congress that explicitly allows unconstitutional search and seizure.
Actually, big’s not a large enough word for that statement. Make it huge, gigantic, even fucking enormous…..
(in my best Helen Lovejoy imitation) Please, won’t somebody think about our freedoms?????
Watching.
I think all the religious right and christians would be dead before they let any ‘competition’ waltz right in and help people out.
here’s one point. the christians, as well as many other people think satanism is worship of satan, aka the devil, right. Satanism worships the self, and promotes human advancement, first yourself and the world second. So, does christianity see humans as devils and ultimate evil?
oh ya, i went there.
No they think those that follow this path are corrupted by satan. In their eyes the only way one could put humans before god is if satan trick them into doing it. You have to remember that this is the same group of people that confuse mental illness with demonic possession.
As well as the fact the quietly quaint god delusion they all believe in would otherwise be seen as quite mad.
If someone ran round saying Zeus was watching everything they did they’d be committed to the loony bin quick-smart.
Subscribe
KPG this was a great essay. Definitely subscribing!
Subscribing too…
KPG – great rant!
I surprised that you didn’t mention the death of Habeas Corpus. It turns out, though, that Habeas Corpus has been suspended before. This is a very interesting read, and it’s spooky how relevant the case remains to this day
From the Supreme Court Opinion in 1866:
A perpetual state of war is exactly what the wicked men of our day needed to legally suspend civil liberties indefinitely.
War … get used to it.
This is one of the best posts I’ve read in a very long time! Kudos SEB.
Is there anyway to subscribe without leaving a comment? I really don’t have anything worthy to add right now but want to follow this…
No, there’s no straightforward way to do it.
Les could, however, associate blog and forum posts and redirect comments to the forums, where you can subscribe to a thread without posting. Going that way would be a big deal, though. It would require a forum template to match the blog’s (and for good measure, an overhaul of the wiki template), some pervasive changes to the blog templates, and worst of all, a way to duplicate existing blog posts and comments into the forum. All of the above is doable, but it’s a lot of work.
Perhaps EE 2.0 will finally include such a feature, perhaps somebody will take pity and solve the problem…
I agree, but my point was that most people have more rights than they did even recently. Sure, if the federal government wants to fuck you they’ll claim they have the right to do so.
But that being said, US governments on all levels have been infringing upon people’s rights for centuries (slavery anyone?). I’m not going to pretend that selective investigation and prosecution hasn’t been rampant throughout our history, nor should anyone caught up with how bad things are today.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
If the notification system queries a database of email addresses, all you would need is a way for the user to click a button that queries and inputs, if need be, an email address. Or is the notification system more complicated than what I am envisioning?
One question concerning the original post:
Didn’t 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas strike down this particular legislative anachronism? I certainly hope it did. It’s at least one less example of egregious authoritarianism.
Hmm. I’m at work and can’t really look that up right now. The original article that I took that info from was dated 2004 or 2005, I believe.
Sure did, I remember some people in a Gender & Womens Studies class I was taking at the time being worried about the decision giving social conservatives a rallying cry for the 04 election.
I would say that according to Wikipedia on the issue, Lawrence vs Texas did strike down sodomy laws…
whitebloodoftheheavens, if I’m not mistaken you described Anton LaVey’s version of satanism. There are actual sects of satanism that worship Satan himself. For example check here. And actually, Christians would think that everyone that isn’t Christian is directly or indirectly worshipping themselves.
In regards to the post, I thought it was funny. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but anarchists have literally been saying this same stuff for centuries. Check this out for starters. I recommend every citizen of the US read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States before they consider themselves informed.
Yes, it is. There is no distinct database table that holds vectors for comment notification; instead that information is culled from the comments table again and again. I can see how you could handle thread subscription only, but it’s kludge that makes me cringe.
It seems simple enough to leave a comment saying “subscribing”. When I forget to do that, and go back to check the thread, there’s always a ton of interesting comments I missed.
It is a good rant, With everything there is an anatomy of origin. Where did all this start? You have to identify the cause before you can cure the problem. And that is the problem…No one fixed the problems along the way. The problems just became easier to ignore. It’s a ugly learned behavior that needs to change.
The fact that someone like O.J. Simpson is still walking around is not a case about justice. It’s a barometer about the society we live in. It’s apparent to this poster that no one is going to do anything until our system collapse’s into some type of default, and another power is brought to power. That power is a form, or closely resembles Socialism. Venezuela is experiencing it today. The US media is not reporting the abundant support that Hugo Chavez is receiving. ( Why is that you suppose ? ) It’s because the upper class controls the media in the USA, and they don’t report reality, they attempt to invent it.
We need to learn to be the ambassadors of representing “Principle before Personality”. And that is the ultimate problem with this Country. It’s “Personality before Principle”, approach to everything.
People getting rich at the expense of someone is America’s new standard. But not to worry !! Ignore a problem long enough and it will eventually take care of itself.
As I look at the prospects of the coming 2008 election, I don’t even see a hint of cure in any of the candidates. We are once again placed in the position of selecting the lesser of evils.
I know this sounds insane, But this can be fixed. And in only 10 short years or less. Not all dictators are evil. We have them now, it’s just a matter of choosing another one that knows the difference “Right from Wrong” and be willing to represent “Right”. Not just the elitist, handed down old money, good old boy club members.
Righteous Rant. As this country grows in population, the balance of freedoms tilts heavily toward the monied, as can be expected. Personal liberty, as almost always, takes it in the ass.
I am constantly amazed and disgusted by how much liberty good American sheeple are willing to hand over to “authority”-what’s even worse is that most of this happens at the hands of so-called conservatives who screech “Freedom!” all the way to the gulag. Don’t get me wrong, I nail liberals who act against personal liberty in the form of hate-crime laws, speech restrictions and the like, as well as excessive taxation, but it pales in comparison to the damage done by the war-mongers and Jesus-freaks. They seem to believe that a monied group of people, a corporation that can only be held responsible for it’s actions by the old “invisible hand,” should have all the rights of a citizen and be allowed to wreak any amount of havoc so long as it pays. On the other hand, the whole idea of true personal liberty is pretty much a foriegn ideology to just about every conservative I’ve ever met. They believe that if half or more of the people in a town decide they don’t like something, they should have the right not only to not patronize it(you know, like my right to not go to church) but should have the right to criminalize and demolish it. That’s some kind of freedom I guess-the freedom to do what you’re told.
Sorry for the rant but it really seems to boil down to basic mindsets-do you really believe in freedom and equal protection under the law, or do you only believe in freedom for those just like yourself?
Brilliant. Fucking brilliant!
So brilliant that I just had to give you a shout out over at my blog.
Me likes what me reads. Me will keep readin’
Paul, my only gripe with your comment is that there was, and remains, evidence which was disregarded by the prosecution in the crime, (the first piece that comes to mind).
Mark Fuhrman(sp?) was a contemptible racist who talked about setting up bigtime black people for a bigtime fall.
This does not invalidate your point, mind you. But with the LAPDs historical connection with anti-black-ism or flat out white supremacy, it’s the other dimension of the conflict. OJ walks free, in part, because the defense had the racism trump card and the investigation was incomplete.
For that matter, I don’t know whether OJ killed his wife or not – but the fact that he beat his wife routinely and the neighbors settled in, knowing there was a problem… that irks me, too. It is curious and frightening that human beings can be made so complicit, so easily.
Sorry for the double-dip. Should clarify – the bloody footprints around the scene that were not OJs and didn’t belong to anyone in particular – that was the first piece of evidence that came to mind (and not to post).
It’s amazing the directions that threads drift in. Whould have thought we’d end up talking about O.J.?
On my to-read list is a book by Gerry Spence about that trial. But in looking up that book’s Amazon link, I found another book that will come first and is definitely relevant to this post: Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power: The Rise and Risks of the New Conservative Hate Culture.
Wonderful what you run into when you’re looking for something else.
Okay, that’s going on my want list…..
Neil, you’re ranting about real “democracy,” usually only seen in small towns and Home Owner Association meetings. This country is supposed to be a republic, protected by “people’s representatives.” The problem is that the sheeple are easily missled and usually get the kind of government they deserve, especially if they do not participate in it themselves. I am reminded of an interview with Herman Goring:
From an interview with Herman Goring, an early member of the Nazi party, founder of the Gestapo, and one of the main perpetrators of Nazi Germany:
Goring: “Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
Gilbert: “There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
Goring: “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Oh, one more thing. Did a little research on the sodomy laws. In the interest of complete clarification, while the Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional, three states, Virginia, Oklahoma and North Carolina are attempting to continue enforcing their laws, as id the US Military.
See http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/usa.htm
Hmmm …
In Virginia, that might sound like, “No, no, officer. I was just doing a little research in your ass. A probe, if you will. There’s nothing to see here.”
Implied in that statement is the opinion, albeit a poorly informed one, that I am less free today than I would have been 100 years ago.
As has been pointed out, although not thoroughly dissected, that is just patently false. I can do the dissection, and will over the weekend. However, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to retract that specific statement KPG before doing so.
I’d guess this would have a lot to do with their belief in, and being under the mind control, of invisible sky chappies.
When you live with the paranoia of being watched, body and soul, 24/7, REAL personal liberty is, as you suggest, a foreign ideology.
Is it any wonder their definition of freedom is different to the definition you and I have?
Even if you were to front conservatives, and especially Evangelicals, with Goring’s words they would yell that you were a gay-loving, lying, pinko, librool; completely missing the point you were trying to raise and that the words were spoken by a clever bastard who might have been only a little to their right.
Like, how were they able to spin the chicken-hawk’s war record over Kerry’s?
Most don’t seem to have mastered dot-joining yet – if they didn’t have so much power over me I’d feel sorry for the ‘tarded bastards.
KPG
I did not bring up OJ to discuss his crimes. I meant the example of the gross miscarriage of Justice that is rampant in America. If you have the cash ” You walk with less penalty, or possibly no penalty ” The point I am trying to make is that in America ” Justice is for Sale ” and that’s not just wrong, It is a contributory attitude that is spreading. “It’s about attitude”
“This is an example, I am not hijacking this thread.”
The US spends close to $90 Billion on it’s Prisons every year. Most of those are drug offenders. The last time I checked my PDR, addiction is a health issue.
The USDOJ is clearly by evidence of (MORE incarcerations, NOT less would lead me to believe that they simply do not have the answer.
And so it goes with every US Department from Energy to Defense. None are within reasonable boundaries for long term goals of survival.
If I were a betting man. I would bet that mankind will be here for less than 150 years, probably less. Like I said earlier, Ignore a problem long enough, and it will eventually take care of itself.
Mankind is beginning to look like nothing more than a Virus that showed up on the planet, it will soon go away, and the cockroaches can get back to business.
Unless we want to really get serious about fixing this mess. And that would be a subject about less freedom, not more.
And here comes Consi to pee in the punch bowl…
Nope, no retraction. I stand by that and I’ll be happy to debate it with you this weekend. We can talk context and ground rules later…..
Geez you draw great pictures.
My principal agreement with KPGs’ rant isn’t to disparage Constitutional Democracy, but the idea, that has always been around, that one must justify one’s existence to others to be “in the club” when that club is America. This way of thought is directly in opposition to the spirit of having a constitiution in the first place. My favorite examples: Gays, Drugs and Hookers.
I would call laws against these activities unconstitutional, simply because their very existance presumes that the state owns you, body and mind, instead of the other way around. To pass laws against these activities without showing a real harm done to individuals and society is in no way conducive to the freedom of the society or the individual, and is, in spirit, against the principles on which this country was founded. “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
I realize that this country was full of nutless, whining, sex-fearing, freedom hating conservatives from the start-but that doesn’t mean that nobody was trying to loosen it up a little-nor does it mean that we shouldn’t still be trying today. Imagine Jefferson’s response if his fellow Virginians had decided that possession of tobacco would result in forfeiture of Monticello. Or that boning the slaves was to be punished in the town square with a pastor in charge.
I am curious as to why it is a poorly informed statement. Not that I disagree, I can think of a couple of examples; emancipation, women’s rights. However it seems there has been a certain amount of give and take; the draft (Nam), the patriot act (genius name by the way), the average debt incurred to corporations, a shitty two party system.
Allow me to make one clarification.
Rights that you had 100 years ago are gone today, by government intervention. That’s the whole point here. Yes, the Civil Rights movement was a huge stride forward for our society, and I’m not diminishing its importance. There are several cases of new rights being established over the last hundred years. I am specificly talking about freedoms that have been removed.
If we start down the path of comparing freedoms (and I suspect that’s the road Consi’s going to take, but I could be wrong), yes, I’ve lost this right, but I’ve gained that one, then we start assigning value to one right over another, and that’s no good for anyone.
This is fascinating. I have nothing to add at the moment; I was just hoping this gem wouldn’t get buried.
As you were.
I’d recommend defining freedom. Certainly there are several actions one could commit in the “wild west” that no one could get away with now. Certainly we have more opportunity for advancement today than we did 100+ years ago. At the same time there is no denying that the government has a tighter reign on people than it had even a decade ago. Depending on one wants to define freedom will determine much of how we can determine any kind of winner to any forth coming debate.
Agreed, which could potentially render this debate particularly thorny. One hundred years ago women had no suffrage rights, no reproductive freedom, and public displays of homosexual affection would not have been tolerated. Then again, there was no Patriot Act, and many substances that are now illicit were widely available.
Plus, what I would describe as the “vile influences” of forces (political or religious for example) desiring to “shape” mankind into some things which it isn’t (social engineering or claiming that society is more valuable than any or all individuals within its midst). Governmental enforcement of “decisions” to “adjust” the thinking of people merely because of the “differences of opinion” between them and the power holders, wouldn’t conform to any definition of equality or freedom that I hold dear. MYOB anyone?