Our American Experiment

Damn!  That last post on drone warfare was heavy!  Sorry, but I just had to get all of that off my chest.  Anyway, I want to lighten the mood here for a bit, so I’m going to attach a piece I wrote, hell, almost eight years ago.  It’s called “A Fairy Tale.”  It’s pretty short and I hope you enjoy it…

“She was once a tall, beautiful woman, as much at home in the fashion halls of Paris or Milan, as she was in her native subdivision of Sunnyvale Heights; the trailer park on the outskirts of Marlow, Oklahoma from which she hailed.  She was desired by men and women alike, and chose her lovers as freely as a bird chooses the tree in which to make her nest for a short time.  The world was hers to take as she wished, and like the bird she seemed to emulate, she would flutter from tree to tree; from lover to lover, gracing each in turn with her beautiful song of life and love.

She was elegant at her very essence, and when she walked, it was not as if she was walking at all, but rather floating on a cushion of sweet, spring air.  When she spoke, her voice was indescribable.  It was sexy yet not promiscuous, soft yet full of confidence, and in the final calculation, operatic.  Although I never had the honor, her kiss was said to always have the hint of the taste of fine champagne; as a crystal glass was never far from her delicate hand.  In the impregnable circles of the European haute couture she was “known,” and to know her was to be “known” as well.

After years of this fantasy-laden Bohemian existence, the combination of 30 or so filter-less Lucky Strikes each day and hours upon hours of daily exposure to the Mediterranean sun shriveled her once lovely, svelte frame into a wrinkled, raisin-like shell barely five feet in height.  This was compounded by the inescapable desire for the rush of meth-amphetamines coursing through her veins.  No matter how high into society she would climb, the hillbilly heroin of Sunnyvale would always be her nemesis in hiding: her secret no one could ever know.

Eventually, as society moved ever higher, she reached her peak and began her descent.  As these vices took their toll upon her body her spirit began to rebel, and in an attempt to regain the life she had once known and lost, she turned to vodka for the confidence and courage which were once her calling card.  A glass “on the rocks” a couple of days each week became a couple of glasses “straight up” each day.

Now, between the bottles of vodka, the occasional glass of Martini & Rossi takes her back to those gay nights in evening gowns that are now lifetimes, if not light years, away.  She works as a B2B inside sales representative for an office supply company and speaks to her reluctant customers with a crone-like cackle which brings to mind an amateur thespian’s portrayal of some ancient and evil witch from a Greek tragedy.

Drunk and covered in “imposter” body-sprays, she seeks her prince in the local pool halls, and honky-tonks.  She is as anonymous as the men who write of her on public restroom walls, giving her phone number to any who happen to stop there.  Many call, and these desperate, lonely, and angry lovers are now all that is left to her: none of them are still there when she awakens late in the morning, rolls over, and lights her first cigarette.

Without a passport or prospects, she is both forgotten by the bon-vivant of Europe and shunned by the trailer queens of Sunnyvale.”

Okay, so that sad little story didn’t lighten the mood that much.  Oh well.  Still, I hope you enjoyed it.

Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

If there is one thing in this world that bothers me almost as much as the Christian and political right wing’s declared war of cultures between them and the muslims of the world…believe me, there is nothing on this orb that distresses me more than that…it is the rise of drone warfare.

This post is based loosely on a short article I wrote about the rise of America’s use of drones in combat, and I firmly believe that this has evil ramifications far beyond the combat zones of the far-flung areas to which we send these killers.  I purposely did not use the term “battlefields” to describe the areas in which we currently use these.  We do no use drones in any sort of conventional battlefield.  We use them in areas in which no one would expect their sudden and unwelcome arrival.

The article referenced above originally began as a rather angry reply to an author of an article in a biblical “Prophesy in the News” type of magazine called “The Philadelphia Trumpet.”  The item which angered me so was written by a man of the surname Oostendarp and was entitled “In Drones We Trust.”  What angered me so, was Mr. Oostendarp’s apparent lack of moral  outrage toward the rise of drones in American warfare.  If the article had been written for a secular journal, then I would expect some level of moral ambiguity toward the issue, but it was not.  It was written for an audience of so-called Christian believers, and as such should have been an outright condemnation of any sort of warfare.

The use of drones in offensive warfare has been a concern of mine since their first reported usage, and this article so galvanized my spirit that I knew I had to write about the subject.  I suppose you could consider this post a piece in my continuing series on war.

To give you an idea of how angry this article made me, I have placed a few statements, which were deleted during the editing process, directed at the author in my original letter:

“…I think you need to state your positions before God and see if you can stay off of your knees and not beg forgiveness for this article and the poison within you that drew it from you.”

“…you are apparently oblivious to all of this.  Or perhaps you are not oblivious to it.  Perhaps you welcome it.  Perhaps you feel it hastens your “end times” fantasies and the coming of The Kingdom of Heaven…or, perhaps, hell.”

“…I’m not going to seek to advise you on your theology except to say that you might spend more time writing about the great commission of Christ than fawning and drooling over America’s preponderance of firepower in this evil world.”

Yes, I was angry with this man.

I will start with the absolute truth of the matter from a spiritual perspective: warfare of any sort, and especially its new evolution regarding the drone killer, is against the will of God.  In fact, I would argue that the injection of drone warfare into the human history of mass murder for political ends is the most dangerous evolution of satan’s game ever known to man.

Armies (for my purposes, the word “army” refers to all branches of military service) always seek, out of necessity, to convince their young conscripts and volunteers that God is on their side and that the kills they notch on the butts of their rifles are righteous in His eyes.  Every army does this…EVERY ARMY!  This statement is as untrue of the armed forces of the United States as it was for the Waffen SS.  If you feel, somehow, that armies do not do this then please explain to me in a reply to this post why German soldiers in World war II were issued belt buckles that read “Gott Mit Uns (God is with us).

It is no secret to those of us who have spent major parts of our lives studying this plague called war, that one of the major factors that has kept a lid on the wantonly violent levels to which conventional warfare will go is that commanders on the scene understand that they have to send their own soldiers into battle.  In modern warfare, even under the best of circumstances, many of them will be killed.  The generals want glory, they want victory, and they are willing to suffer others dying to achieve it, but invariably, when given the choice they will have their soldiers come back in one piece, or better yet, not go at all.  This is called, discretion in the fog of war, and the murderous operators of the predator and reaper drones experience no fog, and lack all discretion that emerges therefrom.

Any human who has experienced the horrors of the battlefield are never quick to send people into that version of hell on earth.  Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of American politicians are quite eager to kill for power.  The generals, unfortunately, must stand ready to do so on the best and smartest terms they can muster when ordered by the civilian authorities.

When you take warfare to the point that a couple of grunt computer geeks at NORAD can kill people in Afghanistan, then the world is in for a disaster.  In terms of it’s effect on the immediate vicinity of combat; when all limitations imposed by the discretion of soldiers confronting an enemy and the personal danger they face in doing so are removed, the influences of valor, courage, discretion, and humanity are also removed from the equation.  When this happens all that remains is a morbid, impersonal, half-a-world-away, fist-person-shooter-game and the violence of conventional war will inevitably spiral out of control.

Right now this spiral does not, under the limitations imposed by our current low-intensity conflict wars, entail a significant rise in the sheer tonnage of ordinance deployed over a given amount of time.  There are numerous spirals of violence in war and this particular spiral envelops innocent human beings who are not soldiers nor would, under almost any circumstance, become one.  Unless, of course, their mother and little brother are killed by a HARM missile fired from a predator drone miles away.

One of the most grotesque policies of the American government in its effort to add some level of validity to their drone program is to determine that any male, 18-years or older, killed in a drone attack is considered an enemy combatant (don’t even get me started on that term!) and…you guessed it…a righteous kill.  Therefore, a missile fired from a reaper drone that destroys the equivalent of a city block in the United States which  kills 5 suspected “terrorists” and 25 other people achieved a righteous kill total of 20.  There are 10 19-year olds engaged in a small football match around the corner, and 5 old men sitting in a cafe nearby as well.  The other 10 dead women and children, well, that’s what you call “collateral damage,” or, as we like to say in America: “tough shit.”

In drone warfare the suffering imposed loses its reality because it is not felt by the people responsible for the killing.  When you pilot a craft with death hanging under its wings at the same time you’re chugging a diet dr. pepper and munching on a bag of cheetos, there is no manner by which you can truly connect to what you are doing.  You are galaxies removed from the death your fingers cause, and the “intelligence” used to validate what is done in the name of corporate freedom is, to say the least, suspect.

The overwhelming weirdness of this entire development in warfare is that if you thought taking war to a nuclear level was scary, you just wait until we start handing it over to the drones.  The common wisdom of the politicians in charge of this is: Nuclear weapons are too destructive to use, drones are too cool not to.

In terms of the effect of the rise of these machines on our domestic life, I shudder to think of the Orwellian nightmare that awaits us.  Privacy will be a thing of the past, and Big Brother will watch you always…that is, if you have a credit score of less than 300…or are of any number of brownish hues.

Now, I don’t expect local police to start using predator or reaper drones to start taking out American citizens suspected of crimes; not yet anyway.  However, when we have police forces across this country that now kill people on a whim (and it is growing worse every day), do any of you reading this post really think that the day will not come when they use drones to do this?  The surveillance drones are already in use in certain parts of the country.  The predators are next.

So my question is this: “Why would any person, especially anyone who considers themselves to be on God’s side not stand against warfare in general, and war waged with drones in particular?”

When thinking of our growth and expansion of the use of drones to kill people, I am reminded of the words of Lord Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command for The Royal Air Force in the Second World War.  When offering his rationale for the bombing of German cities he said: “They have sown the wind, now let them reap the whirlwind.”  I think we can all agree that the whirlwind was much more horrific than the wind, given the sheer amount of ordinance that was deployed.

I can guarantee you that if the United States continues to sow this wind we will reap a whirlwind for which none of us are ready.  It will be a whirlwind which only the generals and politicians will deserve, but which the poor and innocent will suffer.

Love and Peace to all,

Niemand

I have never been comfortable with being labeled a Christian.  Of course, this was especially true when I was an absolute paganistic bohemian nihilist living in a world of self absorbed self love sprinkled with a dash of self-loathing and intolerance for the imperfections of others. Wow, that was a mouthful!

Anyway, what I mean is that even before I was a follower of the way of Jesus Christ I knew that the vast majority of Americans who call themselves Christians were and are no more than the same pagans I was who have heard of this Jesus guy and think he had some interesting things to say.  These are the people who call themselves Christians but, sadly enough, give the rest of us a bad name.

They judge and they hate.  They call our LGBT brothers and sisters abominations and deny the abominable nature of their own words and thoughts before God.  They call Christ’s plan for living, the sermon on the mount, an unobtainable state of being, and because it is so lofty and (the truth is) really inconvenient, they decide that it then doesn’t apply to them.  They say a “sinner’s prayer” and think it’s both some sort of silver bullet to kill the werewolf inside them and an automatic ticket to a place where the streets are paved with gold, and every ordinary Joe gets a mansion (with only other white folks for neighbors).

I wonder, are angels allowed to wear hoodies in heaven?  I would suppose they can, so long as they’re not trying to “conceal their identity,”  but that’s another post altogether.  Back to the topic at hand…

The fact that these people seem to control the institutional evangelical church in America is a testament to, if nothing else, the fact that this is, indeed, the devil’s world and all human transient power is his to portion out.  Sadly, that is what the mainstream church has succumbed to pursue; power, wealth, and the F-35 (a.k.a. death).  The devil smiles and God shakes His head wishing and waiting for us to return to Him.

The tragic martyrdom of 21 Egyptian Christian brothers on a beach in Libya is our chance, as followers of Jesus and not the twisted machine made up of broken levers His church has become, to truly state our case to the rest of the world, and the people of the Islamic State in particular.  This is our chance to tell the institutional church of the far right that their ways of darkness do not apply to us.  They may get all the TV time and that’s fine with me for right now.  Their power, and wealth, and harsh judgment of people who are different than them, and especially their false claims of persecution in this “culturally Christian” landscape are all nothing more than check points on the wide path of destruction.

What then is our case to place before the world and the people who support the methods of the Islamic State?  Our case is this: “We, “the people of the cross” as you call us, love you.  We shall not fight you as you seem to want us to fight you.  We will tell you every day how much God loves you.  We will tell you every day that both He, Allah, and we, his children and your brothers and sisters, forgive you for being as misguided in your actions as the rest of humanity has been throughout our shared history.”

“We do not support what you do; we find it tragic, repulsive, and in the service of the enemy we all share.  However, in the same breath, we do not support those who seek to kill you in return for what you do either. We, as the people of the cross, as followers of Jesus, “Isa” as you call Him, know that there is a better way for the children of the living God to live together and resolve their differences.  We know that the escalating cycles of violence in which the devil wants us to engage serve only his interests. We know it is the violence of our history and not you who are evil.  You, like us all, are sinners seeking the grace of our merciful God.”

I think that is a brief, but effective message to the people of the Islamic State, but perhaps of even greater importance is that this message be shouted loudly among the “so called” Christian community of this world.  The captive news media in the United States calls the Islamic State “so called” as a means by which to debase and insult them.  I take a different path.  I call the people who call themselves Christians and support war in any form, oppression in any form, revenge in any form, or exploitation in any form whether against people or this planet “so-called” Christians, for they are anything but followers of the way of Jesus.  They are subjects of their divine right sovereign; the “Power Church.”

My dear friends and followers of Jesus, this is our chance, and it is the best chance we will have this month, to stand together and symbolically cry “I am Spartacus!”  It is our best chance this month to stand in the breech, not only for those who have been martyred in the name of our Lord, but also for those who martyred them.  Our best chance to offer them our cloak.

I say ‘this month,’ because this world parades so many tragic events before our eyes on such a regular basis that I am certain we will have another chance to stand and cry out next month…or perhaps next week…or perhaps today.  My friends, we must seize every opportunity to stand firm for love and forgiveness; for our dear Emmanual.

Love and peace to all,

Niemand

I recently had an exchange with an individual regarding the children coming to the United States from Latin America; many of whom were unaccompanied or with single mothers, and all were without proper paperwork.  This was a big news story throughout a portion of 2014.  This person indicated that he and his wife had recently returned from a cruise to Honduras, Belize, and Cozumel in Mexico, but that they had refused to go ashore in Cozumel because the Mexican government, among other things, had allowed these children to pass through their country and into the United States.

I have placed my reply below, along with a few ending comments:

“Now, I must take issue with your complaint about children from various Central American countries crossing into the United States through Mexico, and this will fill the rest of this letter.  Your complaint is that some sixty thousand children fleeing poverty, violence, and government corruption have come to the United States seeking shelter.

From a purely secular standpoint let me start by stating my opinion on this matter: “Let all of those in the world who must flee to save themselves from certain abuse and death at the hands of drug gangs and police death squads come to our land.”

The poem inscribed upon the base of the Statue of Liberty reads:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;

her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I believe in those words, but as I read Emma Lazarus’ poem now, I believe also that if the majority of tea party members knew the words to that poem, or even that it exists, they would push to have it removed.

It shall not be removed.  This is the United States of America.  Tell me, is it all a lie; everything our propaganda has tried to cram down our throats about the righteous mission of this nation?  Are we not the nation that stands welcoming the downtrodden of this world?  Or have we been reduced to the myth of “Manifest Destiny” and the horrific reality of the “Bush Doctrine?”  This, of course, is the precept in which we reserve the right to violate any nation-state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity if we feel there are people there who are tired of being treated like they are less than human by us, or feel that the United States government and its corporate allies are full of it.

These children have come to us seeking asylum from the tempests of the violent world beyond our shores.  Unfortunately, they now jump from the frying pan into the fire.  They come for the comfort of a “Christian” nation and end up at the end of some minuteman’s rifle.  These impoverished and desperate mothers and children who have come here seeking compassion face a political system becoming dominated, by every illegal means available, by people determined to return this country to the golden age of white domination which began to speedily unravel in the 1950’s.

They come to live law-abiding lives of productive work (as soon as they re old enough) and face a militarized police force that shoots people of color and poor whites first, and doesn’t even bother to ask questions later.  There was a time when a police officer had to be very cautious before he employed deadly force, as he knew he would be held accountable for his actions.  Now they murder with complete impunity for the courts have made it abundantly clear that they will not be made to account for lives they take.

Of course, this militarization of our police forces doesn’t affect communities like ….., but I stood inside Joe’s the week before Christmas and watched US Marshals dressed in camouflage and carrying automatic weapons place one of our community in handcuffs and then into one of their Chevy Suburbans because he knew someone for whom they were looking.  They and the Oklahoma City police found this person’s trailer at a nearby trailer park and destroyed it; bashing in the door and breaking every window.  Not because they had to, but because they could…with absolute impunity.  They then stole it, hauling it away when the man wasn’t even home.  I received calls from law-abiding citizens terrified to go outside; not because there were thugs in red and blue out there (Crips and Bloods), but because there were thugs in camouflage and badges out there.  The police state had come crashing into their neighborhood…with absolute impunity.  Oh, yes, the man was wanted for a technical violation of his probation.

There has been a long history of people questioning and analyzing that little thing called The Third Reich trying to determine if that entire event was strictly a German thing; hence what is known as “The German Question.”  Many of these analyses end with the claim that “it couldn’t happen here.”  I have a news flash for those people…it is happening here, and it is happening now.  The police state protects the wealthy’s “property rights” and puts bullets into the poor when they try to defend their civil rights.

You complain that the American taxpayer will have to fulfill the obligations of housing, feeding, educating and providing health care for these people.  Good.  Bring us the world’s refuse.  They built this place once and they can rebuild it now.  I will gladly pay my taxes to stand with them as they do this.  I stand with the Mother of Exiles.

What I will not do is offer up another penny to maintain the most bloated military the world has ever known.  This country spends more taxpayer dollars on the weapons of death than than the next twenty-three countries of this planet combined. It is no longer the arsenal of democracy of 1942, it is the battering ram of the share-holders.

I don’t want the F-35.  I don’t want the Predator drone.  I want schools that have more money than they need.  I want every person who lives in this country (citizen or not) to have access to health care.  I want children to not have to grow up immersed in tea party gun culture.  In fact, I’m surprised the tea party and their right-wing evangelical co-conspirators haven’t started their lobbying effort to have their precious second amendment added the the Ten Commandments.  Do the propagators of gun culture really think guns will keep them safe or free?  It is not the possession of firearms that keeps a person free, but the will to be free that does so.

Are you aware that for the money this country has already spent on the F-35 project, (and we still don’t have an operational unit) we could have placed every homeless person in this country; every man, woman, and child in their own mansion?  I don’t want to place homeless people in mansions, I just want them all to have a solid roof over their heads.  I want the mentally ill to not have to beg on the streets for money.  Heck, don’t want anybody to have to beg for money.  I want what God wants, and neither of us have any use for this so called “multi-platform fighter.”

I want the men and women who are fighting in foreign lands to come home, yesterday.  They are not out there risking their lives protecting our freedom, they’re young, poor saps that bought a lie pushed down their throats by the most sophisticated propaganda machine the world has ever known.  Goebbels would keel over in envy at the subtlety and pervasiveness of it if he were alive.

These poor kids are not “heroes,” they’re the sons and daughters of poor and lower middle class families who haven’t the education or sophistication to see what’s happening to them.  The captive media calls them “heroes” so that the flow of souls our government can send into their imperial meat grinder never stops.  After all, what 19-year old kid doesn’t want to be called a “hero?”

Now, those arguments are all fine and dandy, but if we are to dig our way to the core of the matter surrounding these mothers and children about whom you complain coming to America, we must assess this from a pastoral perspective.  I want to begin by asking you a question.

Where would the world be if the Egyptians had turned Joseph, Mary, and Jesus away at the border?  Where would the world be if they had sent that family back to the slaughter awaiting the Christ child at the hands of the Judean death squads Herod had sent out to find and kill Him?  They were looking for Him and killing every new-born child age two and under in the country.

Where would we be?

I want you to remember that one of those children crossing our border from Mexico may be the Christ child coming back to bring the kingdom of heaven here.  Where will the world be if we send her back to the death squads and the drug gangs.  This is why the Mother of Exiles stands guard at our door; not to keep people out, but to remind us to welcome them in.

Don’t worry, I know the propaganda of America is all a lie. The great part is, we can make it the truth.  We can take the idea of America from those who have turned it into a consumerist nightmare and make it into a reflection of the freedom God wants every person to have.  We can make that poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, that glorious gift of the French people, a reality.  All we need to do is cash in hate and greed for love and forgiveness and it will happen.

I have heard you claim that the road of violence, retribution, and destruction of America’s “enemies” is a more practical approach than the way of Christ.  That may be so, but I would like for you to answer another question: How is that “more practical approach” working out?  Are our “enemies” neutralized?  Are they coming around to some flawless logic of our side, or are they growing in number and ferocity?  They are growing in number and ferocity, and I don’t see anything practical about that.

At some point the world will have to face the harsh reality that its “more practical approach” is a suicide machine; a suicide machine that is killing people and this planet at a faster pace every day.  It steals liberty and replaces it with oppression.  Whether it is the Islamic State, the Russian Federation, the Third Reich, or the United States of America, liberty is always under fire from the forces of oppression.  I always render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but it is the nature of Caesar to take more than is his and wait for someone to stand up and say “no more.”

Unfortunately, as things stand now, the world’s share holders will never allow the highly practical method of the way of Christ to guide our actions, because there is too much money to be made; especially off of war.  There has never been a war in the history of humankind in which the wealthy have not made huge profits; regardless of whether they were citizens of the “winning” or “losing” side.  God forbid, their portfolios should take a hit for peace.

We have police killing people at the drop of a hat, we have wars too plentiful to count, we have genocide still happening throughout the world, we have an American society that is becoming reduced to the equivalent of third-graders fighting it out at recess, and we have tea party politicians claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency and not the Central Intelligence Agency is out of control.  All of this and more and you’re angry because sixty thousand mothers and children came to this country seeking asylum and protection from violence you can’t even imagine?  I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand your position.

Jesus weeps.  I weep.  The Mother of Exiles weeps.  Maybe it’s time you started weeping too.”

The written response from the individual to whom I wrote that piece was, shall I say, disappointing.  He reduced his replies to the issues I raised to analogies, which eventually devolved into an rant on president Obama’s birth certificate.  Oh yes, he also went off on something like Colonel Jessup’s “You can’t handle the truth” diatribe from, “A Few Good Men.”  Indicating, of course, how dare I question the rate, manner, or reasons my government kills people in this world in my name.

This was not the discussion for which I had hoped.  However, he did, in his analogy-ridden reply ask me what I would do if my neighbors (who happen to be Latin American) showed up at my door with their kids and aunts and uncles and grand-parents and maybe a few friends and said “We’re moving in.  You’ll need to feed us, clothe us, educate the kids, provide vocational education to the adults, and provide us with health care.”

Although I was so disappointed in his reply that I merely shook my head, sulked for a bit, and then did not write back, my written reply to that…that…I’m not sure what to call it…ah yes, “scenario.” would have gone something like this: “I say bring them!  If you are going to try to argue through analogies,  which is almost as low as arguing through patriotism (the last refuge of a scoundrel), then let’s a least maintain economies of scale.  I would be happy to feed, clothe, educate, and care for the health of my neighbor’s extended family, because each of them would be about 1/16th of an inch tall, and I can afford that.”

However, he neglected (purposefully, I believe) to mention what they said after they told me I’d have to attend to food, clothes, and the other stuff for them.  They told me they’d be willing to work hard to help keep the house in order and earn whatever I provided for them, and that they’d do it for less money that others would charge.

People, xenophobia is a disease, and the only vaccination that works is to place yourself in the world village.  I agree, the Statue of Liberty is but a symbol, but it is the symbol of what makes being an American an ideal toward which we must always strive.  That ideal is so lofty as to be as unobtainable as a life without sin before God.

Welcome them, for they are us, and if we cast them out, then we cast something out of ourselves at the same time.  That which we cast out is that with which we can not live, for it is is love.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

Hello…

What really upsets me about war, and not so much “standing armies war,” or insurgency war, but how this society relates to the very concept.  My problem at this moment is with the people who have the power to make war.  For them is it is no longer the weapon of ultima ratio (for you tea party nascar republicans, “ultima ratio” is latin for “last resort”), rather, it is the premier option for politicians on both sides of the republican/democrat divide.

I’m going to dive into the subject of war in the next several posts to this blog.  Of course I’m certain I will interrupt the series with other posts on matters at hand.

In this particular post you are reading right now, I’m not going to discuss war between nation states, because I’m so certain I’ll deal with that enough in the years to come, I can safely leave it out of this post.  The wars I want to discuss over the next few posts is the right wing’s war on people.

The reactionary forces in this nation, given voice within the FOX nation, have been raising the volume of their banshee style wailing in the last six years.  Their cries have been driven to a fever pitch by their manifest, racist hatred of our president, and it’s extremely dangerous.  To use my own phrase: “If our beloved republic is to survive, the tea party must be marginalized.”

I am convinced that these people wish to return this society to some fantasy-laiden era before women could vote, before blacks were anything more than chattel, and before any immigrant who wasn’t definitely European could come here and expect anything more than frequent beatings for the first generation and a half.  If you want what they callously called “rights,” you’d better be “free, white, and twenty-one”…oh yeah, and have male equipment dangling between your legs.  Sorry, guys, but we’re in the 21st century now, and we’re not going back with you…Take Idaho as your giant time machine, it’s yours.  The humans in your midst will be more than happy to send you on your own “trail of tears.”

I’m going to discuss each issue in brief and perhaps offer partial solutions for working around them, so let’s get this romper room started, shall we?

1. The war against poor people’s right to vote.  Nothing says “My political philosophy is completely bankrupt” faster and with more clarity than seeking ways to deny people who probably disagree with you the right to legally cast a vote.  Beyond that, nothing says, “I don’t have the intellectual capacity of a three-toed sloth” faster and with more clarity than trying to mask your intentions behind falsely applied statistics and anecdotal stories relating to minority voters and their voting habits.

When these bankrupt unter-sloths raise their swords in battle, what is their weapon of choice?  Nazi-era legislation efforts to require photo identification at polling stations, of course!  They scare the nascar republicans half to death with the possibility that thousands of illegal immigrants may be on the voting rolls and casting ballots.  Holy shit!

Okay, before everybody starts writing to the FCC about my use of French, I have to admit that there is that possibility (even the reality) that this problem exists.  However, if and when it occurs, there means by which to fix the problem without infringing on peoples’ right to vote, without profiling people who are of any number of the rainbow of brownish hues, or who are obviously not shareholders in the trickle-down piss pot out of which the poor must drink every day.

I and the other pastors of my church work with homeless communities on a daily basis, and one of the pervasive aspects of chronic homelessness is the lack of proper identification.  Many if not most of the people required to live in this quagmire possess neither a birth certificate nor a social security card.  When you are homeless these things tend to become lost, or more commonly, stolen.  This is not a condition of just the homeless among us, but of those who live below the poverty line in general.

New birth certificates are not free, and even if a homeless person can scrape up the money to request one from the state in which they were born, they rarely have a valid address to which such a document can be sent.  With the exponential growth of the homeless population in America, the political right seems quite willing to not only cast these people into the abyss as liabilities on their balance sheet of human beings, but to also disenfranchise the lot of them in order to occupy political seats by…yes…what turns out to be fraudulent means.

When you’re quite willing to deny hundreds of thousands of “born here, gonna die here” homeless and impoverished americans the right to vote because you’re worried about 2,500 possible fraudulently cast ballots in a state like Florida with a population of 19.9 million, then something is wrong with you.  That 2,500 people amounts to 1.25 ten thousandths of a percent of the population.  Shit, I can’t see even a complete foaming-at-the-mouth-nut-job-tea-partier spend time on that (well, maybe), so if the end game is not the few illegal immigrants who are voting, it must be a larger chunk of the population.  Perhaps it’s something like hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of poor and homeless people in the state.  Perhaps they’re afraid that if everybody who is a red, white, and blue balls american voted, the friggin’ Bolsheviks would be running this joint; which might even be the truth, given the way the gap between the haves and have nots is widening in this country.  Let’s face it, someday, the workers of the world will have to unite or perish…but I digress.  Maybe they’re afraid the democrats would be running things, I don’t know.  It certainly wouldn’t be the republicans.

As I said in the 1st post to this blog, people who reach positions of power in any organization are not stupid.  These people are not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing, and what they do is testimony to bankruptcy of their political philosophy.  They know, after all, that the more poor people who vote, the fewer the number of seats their deplorable cronies will occupy in the halls of government.  Elections are something they fear.  They have not the courage to confront instances of fraud on an individual basis and call out the guilty parties to the media or the courts, so they opt for their nuclear option: mass disenfranchisement of the poor.

I could go on, but I’m not going to, mainly because I want to keep these posts brief, but also because I’d start foaming at the mouth.  Instead, I’m going to offer a word of advice to those of the political left: If you are involved in defiling the voter registration rolls with fraudulent voters…STOP.  You don’t need to do this (that’s like talking to some vengeance filled dude in a movie who’s about to go on a killing spree…for justice).  You don’t need to lower yourself to the level of your opposition, because all you are doing is feeding their fire.  Concentrate your efforts on A) making sure all eligible voters have what they need to vote and actually vote, and B) acquiring legal status for the immigrant populations with whom you are in contact.  That being said…

The question, then, is how do we fight these efforts at mass disenfranchisement on a practical, grass-roots level.  The best and easiest way is to help the poor and homeless acquire and maintain proper, photographic identification.  In order to do this, there must me a working alliance between both secular and pastoral progressive groups.  Although such will require money, it will require much less than one might think, because, after all, it is only the poorest of the poor, and those who suffer great mental illness who will not be able to come up with the money to acquire proper identification.

1. Talk to people about how important it is that they vote and get them registered.

2. Carpool to the polling station.

3. Start a file for each person.  Used filing cabinets are pretty much free and can be found with little effort.  The files to go in them are cheap too.

4. For the homeless, offer to keep their birth certificate and ID in a safe, secure place.  Their file would be a good place.  For the poor who have housing, offer to keep their birth certificate.

5. Get the word out that you’re working on making sure every eligible voter has what they need to vote, and network with other groups.

6. Open a P. O. Box and allow the homeless in your community to use it as an address at which to receive mail.  It’s only $56.00 per year.

7. Don’t be afraid, for if what you do is good in the eyes of God, he will not abandon you.  He will keep you safe from the forces of the evil one who are certain to oppose you.  This is the most important reason anyone involved in fraudulent voter registration should stop.

8. Love those who are your enemies.  There is enough hatred in this world to go around, and hatred is the tool of the enemy.  Love those you are trying to help have their voice heard, but more importantly, love those who oppose you, and pray for them.

9. Love God with everything you are and love your neighbor as yourself.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

Hello…

A lot of people look at the world around them, and especially at people who are in so-called “leadership” positions, and say to themselves (and others) “These people are stupid!”  I used to say that myself, and in so doing began, surreptitiously, to believe it.  However, over time I lost the ability to reconcile that strangely acquired belief with the obvious fact that people don’t reach positions of power within the realms of business, government, or organized religion by being stupid.  They reach those positions by towing lines; by subjugating what they know is right for what they are told is profitable.  By doing what they are told, so to speak.

So they are not stupid.  As we watch and participate in the world around us we have to understand that the overwhelming weirdness of this world is the product of the actions of people who know exactly what they are doing.  In the final equation, whether or not they know that what they are doing is right or wrong is between them and God.

This is the first post for this blog site, and in it I will write my views of the rights and wrongs of this world.  Through this site, I truly hope that someone (one person would be nice) might find some insight into what is happening around them.  Perhaps they will find some sort of truth between themselves and God, or between themselves and their neighbor.  Our neighbors, by the way, are everyone else on this planet.

There will be posts regarding politics.  There will be posts relating to our relationship with God.  There will be posts relating to social trends.  There will be posts relating to food that’s causing me temporary gastro-intestinal misery.  I hope that every post will make the person reading it either smile, or frown, or laugh, or cry, or become angry, or say “hmmmm,” or say “this guy is stupid!”  For those in that final group I can assure you that I am not stupid (misguided, maybe, but not stupid), I know exactly what I am writing, and I choose my words very carefully.  Therefore, if I write something that makes you laugh, or smile, or become angry, I meant to do it.

Although I know what my first issue-based post will be, it is not for this entry.  That will come tomorrow…or perhaps even later today.  This post is merely to say “hello” (with lots of punctuation and words).

Love and peace to all,

Niemand

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