American Revolution II: Taking the USA Back from the Suits

In the goings-on of the past week on Capitol Hill, something very obvious has hit me: the government does not seem to be very much in line with the will of the people. Granted, there's a lot of debate to be had over whether the will of the people is actually good for the people and if the gov't is or is not carrying that out. However, my observation/reasoning operated off the idea that the people who are in Washington calling all the shots really are not closely related to the typical working class American. It's as if they're bred in secrecy, away from the masses in ornate caves called "mansions", and once they reach maturity, are released not into society, but into a cushy little do-nothing corporate job where they can be fast-tracked to the top once Daddy's bought their Ivy-League degree. Once there, they only work to add zeros to their income, no matter the cost. Fire this, acquire that, sell these stocks by this date, insert this politician into pocket.

Not every politician is in a pocket and not every politician has a background in big business, but the ones who seem to have any say or are given any kind of media attention must be. There are honest men and women in Washington, but they're ignored because they don't play the game. The media get away with this by portraying themselves as people who can relate to us and go through the same things we do. It's all an act. Take The Today Show, for instance. All those cooking segments, the latest in fall fashion, and interviews with everyday people about the election all make it look like it's a perfect portrait of America. This must really be what's going on. Yeah, some of it is. It's not a sin of commission that I'm faulting the media for. It's the sin of omission that's the problem. What we don't know is hurting us.

Think about it. The media are controlled by huge corporations that are downright ruthless when it comes to the bottom line. Those corporations operate by consumer spending. So of course they're going to program their media outlets to send you information that will benefit them. So what if they don't tell the truth? They're not accountable to anybody...except the consumer. Even then, if the consumer found out something sinister, chances are they could be bought or distracted enough to forget about it quickly before things get out of hand. If that wasn't enough, just hire a somebody to take care of them. If anyone from justice or law enforcement finds out, buy them or have them taken care of.

The American people are naïve to think they really have a say in what happens in their country anymore. We just blindly assume that the corporate sector somehow neatly stays in its place and out of government affairs, but I don't think it does because there's nothing to stop it. It looks like there are measures are in place to do that, but how do we really know if those measures are being enforced? We might as well assume that GM, GE, and Exxon-Mobil are the three branches of government. Just ask yourself one thing: "Do the corporations have the power to control America?" Yes. Yes, they do.

Seriously...we have really been taken on a ride. We think we can control a country with the likes of these huge corporations with a vote? A vote really is worth more than money? An American's vote is more powerful than their dollar? Crazy. I'm going to try that at lunch tomorrow. I'm going to go to Taco Bell, order me a baja beef chalupa (maybe even the #6 with a Dew), and pull up to the drive thru window and hand them my vote. Doesn't cost me anything but my time, which is okay. Time's a small sacrifice when you consider how it was used to keep the country running and stuff like that.

The kind of change these bozos are teasing us with is something they're not capable of delivering single-handedly. Not only that, but the American people really don't know how much the change they really need would actually cost. We think it'll just come to us for free if we vote for it. No sacrifice needed.

My question is this: do we let the suits keep running this country by buying their goods and services and supporting their puppets in Washington or do we take up arms and take back our country?

Unacceptable

Time for another religious rant. My thesis: I don't like church. Lately, I've been drifting into what I'd call "morally-ambiguous waters". Of course I have been for some time and I've probably mentioned it about every other post on this blog. Is this something I'm proud of or am I concerned about it? On the one hand, I'm happy to be breaking away from the pack and from the environment I was raised in. For the most part, it was a good environment, but I've also matured in an environment that was a little different than that. Even since then, I've deviated from that too. Really, my best friend Dan described this pattern the best: I do what I want.

Growing up, I could never watch R-rated movies and even though I'm 24, I'm still not supposed to do it in my parents' house. (Although I've done it so much, it's more of a "don't ask/don't tell" thing...along with alcohol, whether or not I smoke cigars, and what I do with my girlfriend.) Dan's right...I pretty much do what I want. There are a lot of things I've been told not to do in my life, but I refuse to blindly follow those things without questioning why I'm not supposed to do them. In a lot of areas, I've concluded that it's really not that bad if I do them, or if it could be that bad then use a lot of caution. As far as that goes, I feel fine living in my own skin while doing those things (like watching "bad" movies, drinking, smoking cigars, etc).

What bothers me is that I don't feel like I'm acceptable enough to pursue my relationship with God. God might think I'm good enough for it, since He says to come onto Him anyway, but it's the whole church thing that gets me. While I feel okay for doing those certains things that I do, I can almost certainly predict that not everyone at church will see eye-to-eye with me on that. Even if they still welcomed me and accepted me, it's not like they'd let me help out and do anything productive before they "purified" me. I'd still be ostracized for my "deviant behavior" and everyone would try all their different little way sof trying to correct me in my "sins". I don't want that. If someone can find me a church where I can go serve just as I am and I can make a bunch of friends who are solid brothers and sisters in Christ, I'm there. So far, I'm not sure if this exists. Even if it did, maybe it shouldn't exist and maybe it's not the healthiest church out there? I don't know. It's tough as hell trying to figure out if I'm being a pompous ass about religion or if I have a right to stand up for what I believe to be right and wrong. My parents would like to see me at church, but I just assume that's synonymous with becoming reprogrammed into God's little robot and I'll lose any kind of deviant or independent thought I have about God or religion. It feels like I must lose my identity in order to truly embrace worshiping with other Christians.

9/11

While I don't typically like hopping on sentimental bandwagons like this and I've already taken time out of the past seven years to grieve all I need to grieve, it is kind of interesting to reflect on the day itself. It's a fascinating study in fear, insecurity, paranoia, and a coming of age of sorts. That day we were having our senior pictures taken for the yearbook during my English class. Before that, though, I had my painting class and in the last 10 minutes of that, we started hearing about something that had happened in New York...like an airliner crashing into the World Trade Center.

Your gut reaction was to think it was just an accident. Nothing too scary about that. Sad, yeah, but it's just an isolated, rare incident that just randomly happened and it won't happen again for a while...if ever. Then right when you settle back into your skin and rationalize everything, the other plane hits. These were no accidents. The second plane hit well into the next class (English), and for the whole hour, we were glued to the screen. Eventually, we went to the auditorium for pictures, came back to the classroom, but only stayed for about 10 minutes before the school was evacuated due to a bomb threat (our school was notorious for those).

The whole time, more information's coming out about planes crashing into the Pentagon and one that crashed in Pennsylvania and one that was supposedly going to the White House (which turned out to be the one in PA). In any case, nobody was really worried about the bomb threat...we knew it was fake just like the other twenty we'd have in a given year. But it yanked us out of the routine of classes and gave us time to stew over the plane crashes and the World Trade Center coming down, which fed our fear and paranoia. The ground had fallen out from underneath us and we didn't know if this was the end of the world, just a similar event to Pearl Harbor, or if they were just freak accidents. It was scary. I kept thinking it might be the end of the world and the attacks would just keep on coming and coming and not just stop at four. Sure, we were pretty safe in Lexington, but who knew what these people were going to do next?

Our emotions and our hearts were raw. Thousands of people just like us--Americans going about their daily duty--had died. Security was out the window. Life as we knew it was over. Looking back on it, the whole experience was frightening, but it was more interesting just to see the human reaction to a tragedy like that...not only in myself, but in the people around me and in the country. Everybody was scared shitless and we did courageous things for each other...but once we realized we had our security back again (whether the government said so or not), we went back to being our regular selfish selves. We were back in the saddle again after being knocked off our high horse in the world.

That's what I believe led to us being attacked in the first place. Ron Paul believes it's because we kept bombing Iraq for ten years, starting with Operation Desert Storm. While that might be part of it, I don't think that's all or even most. What I think is the cause of their disgust with us is our pursuit of the almighty dollar. We've unknowingly been engaged in a cultural/commercial imperialism in the last few decades, allowing our culture to pervade places with longstanding traditions and cultures of their own. Our culture is seen as strange, new, and attractive and it's adopted by the youth who have no appreciation of their own native heritage. So then they start acting in ways that go against the ways of their ancestors, the old traditionalists get pissed after a while, and they want to make it go away. There's a great quote in a film starring Sean Connery called [i]The Wind and the Lion[/i], where he plays an Arab chieftain in Morocco at the turn of the 19th Century. In a letter to Teddy Roosevelt, who's just invaded Morocco to rescue an American woman and her children that were abducted by Connery's character, he says, "I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you, like the wind, will never know yours." While the movie was written and directed by an American, John Milius, I do think he articulated the mindset found in the Arab world. They want to keep their traditions and their culture and not have it robbed from them by us, just so we can become richer. We won't listen to reasoning, so drastic measures must be taken. Hence, 9/11.

We think our culture war between the liberals and the conservatives is rough. This ain't rough. What's going on in the Middle East, between the youth and the elders...change vs. tradition...is [i]rough[/i]. We indirectly instigated it by influencing sectors of their society, but now we're pulled into it, both by our own means and by theirs. It sucks, I want it to be over so there's no more killing, but in the end, I think we'll have a rather pleasant end result.

Erection Day 2008

Actually, I'm very much considering voting for McCain just because Sarah Palin's hot. No, really. I'm tired of having to choose between Ophony vs. McPhony. They're both politicians, ugly as sin, and they don't say a whole lot in their speeches. I need more criteria for choosing who I'll vote for and these two lame-o's just aren't dishing it out. Sarah Palin does. She brings the whole hottness factor to the table and that's something that shocked and awed me. So what if my boner casts my vote in the voting booth? At least it's decisive.

If McCain croaks, I'd be pretty excited to see what she'd do as POTUS. So what if she's not experienced? I'm not exactly convinced anyone who's ever been nominated/elected to the White House has been "qualified" to be Pres. I don't see why so many of my fellow Americans think they can rightly judge how "qualified" a person is for the job, when they've got no presidential experience themselves. There's only four men alive who can really decide who could be good and even then, they're told who to choose via party affiliations. That just goes to show they were stupid choices in the first place for being so easy to control and for making decisions based on party bias, not issues or--I shouldn't say it--their own beliefs!

Okay, so Palin's still a career politician, but I'd be perfectly content leaving the country in her hands. I don't think Presidents have any real power anyway--whether my "puppet" theory is true or not. If you ask me, Charlie Manson's just as "qualified" to be President as McLame or Osama. Just pardon him and remove all sharp objects from the Oval Office and we're good to go! Hell, he could pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and just go over there himself to get bin Laden and the rest of the "terr'ists". That platform alone would probably get him elected, because who would doubt he could do just that?

"Charlie, Charlie, he's our man! If he can't kill 'em, no one can!"