Are You A Conservative Or A Liberal?

Are You A Conservative?

Do you think you can adequately determine a man’s character by the size of his flag?

Do you feel there is a conspiracy to overturn the Second Amendment? Are you afraid of people without guns coming to take your guns?

Do you believe the fact that Nancy Pelosi looks like a skeleton with a facelift is a relevant topic of political debate?

Do you believe that people voting without I.D.s are out to overthrow your government?

Do you believe the corporate owners of the mainstream media are secretly socialist?

Does the idea of abortion somehow not seem so bad if performed with a gun?

Do you feel jealousy towards the illegal immigrant who cleans your pool, thinking he’s somehow getting the best of the deal?

Do you believe every black man with a job votes Republican?

Do you believe that Benghazi?

Do you believe the fact that George Soros contributes to Democrats justifies all the billionaires pouring their money into Republican coffers?

Do you believe an unborn child is not a choice but accepting the scientific evidence of climate change is?

Do you believe all racist Southern Democrats moved North and became liberals?

Would you spend $100 Million on a painting for investment purposes but disown your child if they spent $300 on an Art Appreciation class?

Do you hang out with a bunch of white people who feel the need to remind others how not racist they are?

Do you think someone yelling “Don’t shoot!” at you is a provocation?

Do you believe “Taxation is theft” is written in The Bible somewhere?

Do you believe the Chinese student who stood in front of a tank was a hero yet hope they pass a law that says you’re allowed to run over protestors?

Do you believe saying "black lives matter" somehow implies that other lives don't?

Are you a Liberal?

Do you think the age of 8 is too young to apply gender stereotypes to, but support a child of 10 who decides he or she is transgender?

Do you think all you need to qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize is to not be Bush.

Do you believe the fact that George Soros owns the Democratic Party is okay since even more billionaires contribute to the Republican party?

Do you believe that the only way to keep Republicans out of the White House is to adopt nearly all of their positions?

Do you believe Vladimir Putin is the reason your son lost his bid for class president?

Do you believe any person of color who votes Republican is selling out to the man?

Do you believe the best way of overcoming racism is to be acutely aware of race and base your politics around it?

Do you believe wearing a pussy hat is the best way to get taken seriously?

Do you hourly check your phone for the newest self-identification names for various minority groups to make sure you’re not offending anyone?

Do you believe White Appalachian men are keeping Hillary Clinton down?

Do you believe Woodward and Bernstein were patriots for their work but Julian Assange is a traitor for doing the same thing?

Do you like Donald Trump better with every bomb he drops?

The Slow Strangling Of Our Consciousness

Asking the experts of today to solve the world’s problems is like asking the priests of the volcano god how to end the drought. All they will tell you to do is sacrifice a virgin, it’s all they know. Today’s experts are little different, there are just more of them. Ask them what their solutions are, and they will tell you to bomb it, privatize it or medicate it.

Everyone in a position of power in a corrupt system is de facto corrupt himself. In bowing to a corrupt authority, they have surrendered their conscience, have proven themselves unable to choose between right and wrong. They cannot save us, they can only hurt us. We must help ourselves, there is no other power we can turn to.

Those in power, those whose job it is to inform the public, are more herders of opinion than people interested in expanding our understanding of the circumstances we now face. Their job is to limit the view of those who must toil for the present system in the same way horses are blinkered to prevent them being distracted from the task demanded of them.

And in blinkering others, they blinker themselves. Intent on their task, they are so focused on it that they lose sight of their larger obligation to humanity. Not constricted themselves, they yet become even more myopic than those they blinker because, as it is said, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A rock rolling downhill not only continues to roll downhill, it picks up speed as it does. Media that is more concerned with directing thought than it is opening new paradigms and providing greater context for its viewers will not merely maintain the status quo but will continue to narrow the window through which the world is shown. This has been occurring for decades now, though it has happened just slowly enough that we somehow have not become aware of it. The imperfections of the human mind are many, and the study of how those imperfections can be exploited has been well funded. Kind and decent human beings can be manipulated into supporting the most inhuman of systems if they are led to believe that the “experts” know more than they. Research the Milgram experiments if you have any doubt.

There are two ways thought can travel: outward and inward. We can expand our understanding of the world we live in by permitting ourselves to hold more than one possibility, one paradigm at a time. By not demanding hard and simplistic answers we can drift off into seeing facts and events from multiple perspectives. This requires a degree of faith, a relative absence of fear. In this way we can acquire a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the world and our place in it.

But fear is a barrier that bounces such understanding back upon ourselves. The media has erected a curtain of fear that causes us to seek simple answers in order to deal with immediate threats that may or not be real. The media would have you believe that ISIS, fascists, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and people of the party opposite yours are right outside the door. The crisis is perpetual, though ever-shifting, and in such a situation, you have little recourse but to trust those who have been kind enough to alert you to the threat. They have to run the media this way, it’s good for business.

Once your thoughts and perceptions begin to peer inward, once you begin to discard possibilities and embrace simplistic solutions, the lens through which you see the world continues to shrink. And like the teeth of a predator, the tools of the media are designed to grab hold of you and constantly direct you towards its awaiting maw. You sit transfixed, staring with fear and incomprehension at the world outside which is actually the world inside the media’s constricted narrative.

It is worth reminding yourself that the media is not your friend. What they do they do for money. There are ample examples easily found on the internet where those who are in the know admit as much. The CEO of CBS himself said of Donald Trump’s presidential run, “It might not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Are these the sort of people you want guiding you, guiding your nation? Are these the sort of people in whose hands you want to place your emotional and spiritual well-being? The future of the planet?

They do what they do for money. They do what they do for self-enrichment. Oh, I know, the mantra of the day is that the free enterprise system that rewards individual greed ends up being the ultimate delivery system for all that is good for us. It is repeated to us constantly until we accept it uncritically, indeed unthinkingly. And who is it delivering that message to us night and day? The media, a conglomeration of corporations that not only seek profit for themselves but seek a cultural milieu that justifies such profiteering for themselves and their sponsors.

The result is ultra hi-def television that nonetheless offers us only black and white broadcasting, the contrast level turned so high that there is little to no gray area. The definition our televisions are capable of is nothing short of miraculous, and yet so little detail is ever provided. Instead, instances of violence are looped continuously and the narrative that accompanies the video must play to the beat.

In short, the media is a Frankenstein monster created by powerful corporate interests and faithfully obedient to the Military Industrial Complex, the more direct weapon of those same corporate interests. It has a job, and it is not to inform you. It has a mission statement, and it is not the search for truth. It has an obligation to someone, and it is not the viewer. Unless you truly believe you live in a free society, you must know this is true.

You do know it is true. On some level you are unable to accept the lie. In your calmer moments, those moments where the media is not busily herding ideas that have strayed too far from the official narrative the way a sheepdog herds the flock, you have admitted as much. But then the powers that be find some new unsavory business to attend to and the media is put into motion once again in order to justify some great evil, such as destroying the environment or bombing nations that have done nothing to us. Then the fear sets in and you cling to the narrative the media spins the way Harlow’s lab monkeys clung to their cloth mothers.

It's time to step away from the artificial zone of comfort the media has constructed for us. Not only is it a trap but it is one that crushes us once we are inside it.

It will seem like madness at first, because you have been conditioned your whole life to think within the box. Those paths to death and destruction are the only ones we’ve been shown, and you’ve been corrected every time you’ve strayed too far from them. But one only has to look honestly at the ever-shrinking mindset that the authorities present to realize they offer no hope to humanity. They offer death, fear, environmental destruction. Their hope for the future is a technology bereft of all morality or humanity, Their hope is that perhaps we can export a few fortunate ones to some new planet to begin again this dysfunctional system. Hope for tomorrow is just another product or viewpoint they’re trying to sell, not a guiding principle.

We’re on our own. Humanity must evolve or perish. The system that exists today, the one all the authorities and institutions promote in order to advance themselves, is a death cult hell-bent on wasting Earth’s precious resources to make weapons in order to blow up more of Earth’s precious resources. Where are the voices in government, in business, or the media that decry the insanity? They are not merely silent, they are loudly crying for more.

Those Three Little Words

Imagine a married couple. Not a happily married couple, although they’re trying to work things out. It was a marriage that was troubled from the beginning. It was not a marriage that resulted from mutual love, nor even a marriage arranged by the families of the two. No, this marriage was one where the husband kidnapped the woman, put her in chains, and brought her back to live with him. Not an ideal beginning, but after so many years together and what with the children involved, they’re trying to make the best of it.

As you can imagine, in the beginning, it was not a good scene. The husband beat his wife, subjected her to every sort of cruelty. He treated her like a possession. He truly believed he owned her, that he was superior to her and that her personal needs—beyond being fed and housed—mattered not a bit. Besides giving to her the bare necessities of life, he gave her nothing and yet demanded all.

It sounds horrible, I know. Especially since so many on the outside, so many even in his own family, only seemed to see the goodness of the husband. Such was the man’s reputation that they built many impressive statues in his honor. To be fair, the husband did have many fine qualities about him, but no amount of virtues could ever defend the way he treated his spouse: there are some sins so grievous they cannot be pardoned.

The husband himself was aware that this was no way to treat another human being, though he had been raised to think it acceptable. Eventually the time came where his behavior became so obviously morally wrong that he knew he had to change things.

It wasn’t easy. His switch to a more equitable relationship came at a great cost to himself, nearly tearing him in two. He was forced to part with the illusions he had about his ancestors, who treated their wives in the same way, was forced to look at the cultural attitudes of the society he lived in that tolerated such behavior. And so he freed his wife from the chains he used to keep her in and promised that they would henceforth live as equals.

They weren’t of course, since he still owned the farm, the animals, the house. Perhaps she was now free to leave, but she was by then far from the land of her birth and had nowhere else to go. Besides, she had unfortunately become accustomed to the life she had been living however cruel and unjust it was. That is human nature, after all, to become used to the most unhealthy of environments when there is no better choice. Her only realistic option was to stick with her husband and hope that he would keep the promises he made, that all that struggle to become a better person would eventually lead to a better tomorrow.

Besides, she really did see something of value in the man who had forcibly took her from her home. There was a degree of humanity in him. He was still very much a work of progress, but there was potential. If she tried really hard she truly believed she could eventually learn to forget about all those years of violence and domination. From all of the pain and cruelty she could yet envision a brighter future, one where peace and equality would be a reality and not a hollow promise in one hand while the other hand held a whip.

It was a rocky road they walked, the wife always a few steps behind. The transformation of the husband, for all his hard work and sacrifice, was merely the beginning. For every few steps forward he took, it seemed he would invariably slip backwards a couple. Sometimes sheer cluelessness and self-centeredness aggravated the situation, leaving the spouse to ponder if he would ever be able to see her as an equal.

Undoubtedly, the relationship had come a long way. Sure, there were the micro-aggressions, the unwillingness to have necessary conversations about the past, the occasional black eye. But it couldn’t be denied he was trying to be a better man. If only…

If only he could say those three little words. But he couldn’t. And that was the sticking point. That was what made it seem that all the other changes that had been made were little more than cosmetic ones to disguise an ugliness in his heart. If he could not speak those words out loud, then how could she ever know for certain that at his core there didn’t still exist a fundamental lack of concern, a feeling of superiority, a lack of commitment to a healthy relationship? She needed to know she mattered, and yet he would not speak those three little words. She knew a healthy relationship could never truly exist until that day he could speak them freely and without reserve. Black Lives Matter.

Random Political Thoughts Part Seven

The free market solution to overpopulation is mass starvation. Can we not think of a better way?

The free market sees everything in terms of commodities, human beings not excluded. It’s just a matter of supply and demand. If you have too much of something, say labor (which human beings call “human beings), it then becomes cheap. If you have way too much of something, best to dump it down the drain the way we do cow’s milk when we have more cheese than we can possibly sell (which is different than more than we can eat, which again is different than more than we need.).

I have no problem with capitalists. They serve a valuable function in society. After all, prostitutes and drug dealers are capitalists, and even making their businesses illegal can’t make people stop demanding their services. But to suggest we hand over our nation to them lock stock and barrel is insane.

The capitalist works the milker of cows so hard that he creates a surplus, and yet the milker is paid such a low wage he cannot afford to buy back all he has produced. The worker and his children go without while the capitalist is forced to dump the milk into the earth in order to get rid of the surplus. This is sick enough and yet it does not even begin to account for the suffering of the cow and the environmental degradation that results in nothing more than wasting the milk, the environment, and the labor. It is merely the cost we pay. It is the sacrifice we make to the god of capitalism.

The problems we face today we face because we quit fighting the good fight once we got our slice of the pie.

Would that those who view the Second Amendment in absolute terms view the Sixth Commandment the same way.

A bomb dropped in error cannot be called back. A nation, once shattered, can never be put back together again. The scar will always be there, a reminder of violence.

There is a more accurate word for pre-emptive strike, and that is aggression. There is a word for someone who uses terms like pre-emptive strike, and that is deceiver.

When the two main parties lose touch with the working class, it leaves an opening for socialists and fascists to fill, and the powerful classes will tilt in the favor of the fascists every time.

Unchecked power inevitably goes insane. When one’s power is unchecked, so is his perception of the world. Suddenly, all things are possible. The CIA, NSA, there is no security agency that is accountable to anyone anymore. We now no longer merely have to deal with corrupt institutions, we have to deal with insane ones.

War only seems a good idea to those who have never experienced it or those who have been perverted by it.

Governments don’t demand peace, people do. If we ever want peace, it’s up to us as human beings to create it. We cannot leave it up to our governments, because they will always insist the way to peace is through war.

The typical working class Republican is smart enough to realize his boss is an idiot yet dumb enough to vote someone just like him into office.

The more your admiration for police officers and soldiers becomes, the more you are saying that most people need force in order to be controlled, that freedom applies to the few rather than the many.

The truth relies on you knowing history, lies depend on you being ignorant of it.

The Romans knew in order to pacify the population they needed to give them bread and circuses. The U.S. is cutting out the bread but is doubling down on the circus end of things.

Who controls the machines controls society. Technology, taken to its natural conclusion, will make drudgery unnecessary or else make people unnecessary. If people control technology, they will be liberated, if capital owns it, they will be eliminated.

The principle task of the Republican Party is to fire up their right while the principle aim of the Democrats is to mollify their left.

Asking the experts of today to solve the world’s problems is like asking the priests of the volcano god how to end the drought. All they will tell you to do is sacrifice a virgin, it’s all they know. Today’s experts are little different, there are just more of them. Ask them what their solutions are, and they will tell you to bomb it, privatize it or medicate it.

Everyone in a position of power in a corrupt system is de facto corrupt himself. In bowing to a corrupt authority, they have surrendered their conscience, have proven themselves unable to choose between right and wrong. They cannot save us, they can only hurt us. We must help ourselves, there is no other power we can turn to. 

Random Political Thoughts Part Six

I vote for politicians who tell me politicians are the problem, and I watch the media that tells me not to trust the media.

American culture will not be strengthened by limiting its influences but by broadening them. That has been our history: not condensing but expanding the story of who we are. Those who have fought to limit our definition of what is American have always been on the losing side.

Job creators are disincentivizing people from becoming entrepreneurs.

In the old days if you peed in the public well they would beat you up so bad you’d never do it again. Today they give you a tax break.

If the market expresses our deepest desires, then we are living in the best of all possible worlds.

I’m pro-life. I can’t imagine ending the life of an unborn child. At the same time I am a man, and whenever words like “uterus” “menstrual”, or “gynecologist” are mentioned I plug my ears and start humming so that I can’t hear what is being discussed. I don’t think I’m that unusual a man in my behavior, but I do realize that I am behaving like a child who does not want to deal with things on an adult level. This is reality and reality cannot be ignored. I think it’s at that point that I have abandoned the right to judge women regarding their reproductive decisions.

Can you give me an example of a government-caused environmental disaster in the U.S. that was cleaned up by corporations?

The government fears its citizens because it is not working in their best interests. Therefore it has to distract them with false or overblown threats. It’s really not that difficult a concept to understand.

A tree cannot be persuaded to move but must be moved. An animal can be trained to move and so can be made useful. A human can be taught to be part of the solution. Government too often treats its citizens as things or beasts rather than as human beings. Punishment is used rather than instruction or guidance. Until we have a government capable of dealing with people as people we will not have a government of, by, and for the people, instead we will have sociopaths ruling sociopathically.

I find myself distrusting not only both major parties but anyone who argues within the parameters they shape.

If a system is so unhealthy that it is incapable of giving you good candidates, and if you are voting for one of the candidates the system offers you, you are supporting the system. The system we have now will never offer good choices. The system, being corrupt, will only lead further into corruption, giving us even worse candidates tomorrow than it has today. This will lead us into a downward spiral until we realize we have no other option than to work outside the system. How far will we permit ourselves to slide before we make the change? How long will we suffer before we find our situation insufferable?

Taking a stand against a politician or even a political party is not making a difference. Politicians and political parties by definition are corrupt. No, we must take stands on positions, declare what is right and best for our state, nation, world. Only in that way can we hope to reach those who oppose the politicians we support as the lesser of two evils.

No matter how poor a dance partner the Republican Party is, the Democrats will never take the lead, nor will the Republicans willingly follow. It is time for a third party to tap one of them on the shoulder and demand a dance.

Why is it that you need I.D. in order to vote, but you are allowed to buy an election and remain anonymous?

Nobody that follows politics seriously can take politics seriously nowadays.

The problem with tossing bombs into another nation is that you tend to create a certain segment of that population that wants to toss bombs back at you. And the grievances of nations don’t dissipate after a week or a year or a century. The memory of a country and a people stretch forever, while the memory of those who have tossed the bombs doesn’t really exist at all. One day you’re sitting eating your breakfast and you hear on the radio about people blowing your shit up and you wonder why they went and did that. 

The only wars that last as long as the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War are wars of occupation. Wars of occupation never end until the occupier leaves, which they must always do eventually, whether it takes a year or centuries. All wars of occupation end in defeat.

 "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt said that.  A corollary to this statement would be that the small minds vote for a candidate, average minds vote for a platform, and great minds vote for power structures. For power structures are what create the platforms, and it is to the power structures that the candidate must bow to in order to have a chance at gaining a position.

Blame the government all you want, the media is privately owned and as culpable as any for the situation we find ourselves in.

Did all those who fought and died in foreign battlefields fight for glory and for recognition for their deeds, or did they fight for a better future? If the former, it is best we not remember them, for they fought only for selfish motives. If the latter, then we must continue their struggle off of the battlefield. We must work for the world they gave their lives for. We must work for peace.

Welfare doesn’t cause welfare abuse any more than guns cause the abuse of guns.

We can have any government we want. We set the standards. Perhaps we cannot all agree on positions, but we should be able to agree on truth and integrity. We can commit ourselves, regardless of our position, to politics with respect.

An abuser makes you feel as though you were responsible for everything and yet utterly powerless. Similarly, the deep state want to make you feel ignorant for not agreeing with it as it makes you feel helpless to learn what is actually going on.

The military industrial complex drives the push for technology we don’t need and don’t really want.

Random Political Thoughts Part Five

The bias of the media regarding politicians is the same bias it has towards sports teams: they don’t care who wins so much as they care about keeping you watching. They’re not so interested in making the proper calls as they are keeping the game interesting.

I’d rather you wiped your ass with the American flag than trample on the ideas it’s supposed to represent.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is if you disagree with a Republican he’ll call you anti-American and if you disagree with a Democrat he will call you a racist.

Fear is the tool by which you are manipulated and there is an industry that has turned such manipulation into an art form.

If instead of pointing out the corruption in the other party the Republicans and Democrats worked on cleaning up their own houses, each would have less occasion for finger-pointing.

Remove the profit motive from the arms manufacturing and the world will know peace.

A captain goes down with the ship, a rat deserts it. You cannot refer to someone as a captain of industry if he manages to escape the business he was in charge of while it goes under. Such a person should be called a rat of industry, not a captain. And if he manages to leave the sinking ship carrying with him great amounts of wealth then he is something even worse than a rat, he is a pirate of industry, a marauder, a plunderer, a brigand. 

That which the media tells you is patriotism is not patriotism. It is the shrill, amplified voice of institutionalized greed. It is the insatiable need for greater profit and wealth to the exclusion of any other concern.

We have developed a just-in-time philosophy regarding workers as well. 40 hour weeks? Nope. Whatever is required. 70 hours one week, and take the next week off. Unless we need you. You’re on call 24 hours a day.

They may say people are their greatest resources, but they are still just a resource, on the same level as raw material or machinery. In a corporate environment, human beings are reduced to numbers on a spread sheet, cogs in a machine that cares more about what it is creating than who is creating it. Corporate interests are given primacy over human ones, both the consumers and producers. The consumers are prompted to buy things they don’t need while workers are made to live lives that focus around production.

Why do we decide to promote corporate interest over human ones? It is because corporations make the rules upon which society functions. And when corporations make the rules upon which society functions, then they become the de facto government.

Perhaps it is time to take the power of appointing Supreme Court justices away from the President and give it to the House of Representatives, since they obviously have too much time on their hands. Doing so would avoid them doing nothing for 10 months as was the case with President Obama’s appointee. It would avoid every single presidential election coming down to the candidates position on abortion. Then we could give the president the power of veto.

Why would you vote for someone who is anti-government? Isn’t that comparable to appointing a socialist as the CEO of your company? Wouldn’t it be wiser to vote for someone experienced in the processes of government, who believes in the system?

Chelsea Clinton should be the poster child for the inheritance tax.

Capitalism is a system of economics that rewards the work of Adam Sandler exponentially more than it rewards the work of an electrician, a social worker, a teacher, an EMT, a fireman, or an LPN. A just society would reward those who clean toilets more than it does those who poop outside of them.

The media is unwilling to discuss Donald Trump’s mental illness because it is one they share.

Free market capitalism wouldn’t survive a year without government intervention. The capitalists rely on government to train their workers, enforce their laws, and fight their wars. Their businesses constantly need saving from the bankruptcy that their endless greed brings about.

When people talk about the freedom of the market what they mean is the freedom of money, and what that means is the freedom of people who have money.