American Mythology

Human beings love a good myth and we Americans are no exception. We cherish predicting how man made global climate change or the return of Jesus Christ will bring about the eschaton. We cling to the belief that voting for the lesser of two evils will help us at last find the chimerical "public servant" who puts (our) principles before (his) money. We blame the wealthy capitalists for the plight of the indigent. We accept it as indisputable that we are all descended  from a single microbe. We love to pretend that women are slaves to their emotions when they are actually coldly calculating, assaying, comparing, and scheming. We say that soldiers die for freedom and not hegemony.

We blame "overpopulation" for a dearth of food and medicine. We say all men are equal. We say all men should be equal. We believe the constitution was written to keep government growth in check. We just know the police are the good guys. We preach about the dangers of marijuana and promote the consumption of whole wheat. We think the president is in charge. We are convinced that the velocity of money is the key to economic growth and that capital accumulation is destructive. We believe that our children need the flu vaccine.

People tell fantastical stories of ghosts, soul mates, and an afterlife. We do not for a second doubt that the history of American warfare is a history of good vs evil. Astrology is widely popular. So are credit cards. We think that it is better to buy local than to buy imports as a matter of principle. We say labor unions raised the standard of living for all working men. We believe that child labor is inherently immoral. We praise Lincoln for fighting a war to end slavery. But did he? Are any of these things true?

Did Ronald Reagan shrink the federal government? Or did it grow at a phenomenal rate after his election? Was it necessary to drop atom bombs on the Japanese in order to win the war? Or had they already been beaten? Is Israel an innocent victim of Palestinian terrorism? Or are they a brutal occupying force? Does the FDA really do more good than harm? Should the government really be in charge of the money supply? Is it really beneficial to the planet to separate plastics from paper in our garbage? Does it make sense to be against the death penalty while promoting abortion as a healthy solution for the problem of undesired offspring?

Is there really someone in the great somewhere who hears every word? And, furthermore, does that someone really give a damn?

From Jefferson to Stalin: The Devolution of the American Right

What the hell is wrong with the right wing? If you turn on Fox News or AM radio right now, you're likely to hear someone ardently defending the federal government's torture policies. This seems to fly in the face of their professed anxiety over federal power. How do they not see the hypocrisy? They bristle at the idea of the feds rounding up AK 47s, or implementing one-size-fits-all education standards, or restructuring the medical market, but are perfectly comfortable with the torturing, spying, and bombing that the U.S. undertakes on a daily basis.

What I find even more galling is that they are constantly invoking the Founding Fathers when they rally against Obamacare or gun control, but they part company with the likes of Jefferson when it comes to waging war and "enhanced interrogation tactics". Sean Hannity, in an effort to excuse the brutal actions of the CIA, asked what you would do if your child had been kidnapped and you were able to apprehend one of the miscreants responsible for this crime. Would you stop at anything to pull information from this scumbag? Or would you be a pussy and refrain from using torture while your offspring is left in the hands of the forces of evil? I think I'll pull a page out of Socrates' playbook and retort with a question of my own. What if your child was the one suspected of perpetrating a kidnapping, but was wholly innocent? What are you going to do if someone who mistakenly thinks your precious son has information decides to torture him until he talks?

You see, in America, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in order to protect the innocent! If Mr. Hannity had ever read the Federalist Papers or maybe the Constitution, he would note that his founding heroes spent a great deal of time trying to create a system that would protect any individual from the very monstrosity they were constructing, viz., the federal government of The United States of America. Somewhere along the the line, so-called conservatives traded in the ideals of Jefferson and Madison for the savagery of Joseph Stalin. George III was downright benevolent compared to the psychopathic rulers of contemporary America.

Torture has been the hallmark of every despotic "socialist republic" that has ever been established in the name of the very people whom it tyrannizes. Liberty and benefit of the doubt for those targeted for persecution by the State is the hallmark of a free people. It's time that Americans turned off their Fox News and picked up some books. Thinkers such as Thomas Paine, H.L. Mencken, and George Orwell have so much more to offer conservatives than Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Statism: Even More Dangerous than Racism

Racism is ruining what should be martyrdom for liberty. On most days, right wingers go around disparaging government power and fervently believing that the beast should be reigned in. Left wingers, on the other hand, praise central power and advocate the use of State violence to correct alleged disparities. But then a white government employee guns down an unarmed black citizen and everyone swaps sides. The government chooses not to even have a trial for the pale faced gunman. The right wing cheers.

Of course, white people get beaten, robbed, and shot by the police all the time too. Beating, robbing, and shooting is pretty much all the State does. But the left wing of the media rarely takes notice of this phenomenon. They feel that white people are inherently privileged and that such occurrences are not news. So, the media plays up the whites vs blacks scenario and people choose their sides based on how they feel about whiteys. The real story is mostly ignored. The real story is the police vs the citizenry.

The police have a lot of power and authority as agents of the State. If I were to gun down an unarmed man (regardless of skin tone) because he had hit me and I was frightened, I promise you I would be indicted. Even if the victim had been moving toward me. If I had choked an unarmed man to death because he wouldn't stop terrifying me by remaining on his feet, I promise you I would be indicted. I also imagine that I, a white man, would be convicted. But cops are hardly ever indicted for the violence they mete out. And when they are, they're rarely convicted. This doesn't make sense to me. We should be much more vigilant about making sure the government isn't abusing the citizens it is paid to protect. Every police shooting should be scrutinized very closely. Right now public opinion seems to consider anyone who the police beat or shoot as guilty until proven innocent. Well, perhaps it is the boys in blue who should be presumed guilty. Perhaps they wouldn't resort to the pistol so quickly.With great power comes great responsibility and ish.

It probably doesn't help that the government street soldiers (aka policemen) are always depicted as the good guys on television and movies. Oh sure, every once in awhile a few bad eggs have to be taken out by internal affairs, but the heroes in this scenario are still cops themselves. We are also taught, as children being educated in government schools, to have an automatic respect for men in uniform. But as I have noted before, even if he is a nice man, the policeman qua policeman is not your friend. His job is to use violence in order to deter you from doing anything that is deemed impermissible by your duly elected panel of bureaucratic busybodies and rapacious swindlers.

Maybe the left wingers are correct. Perhaps I've downplayed the racial aspect a bit too much. There very well might be a disproportionate amount of police crime against black men. Or maybe the right wingers I hear complaining of disproportionate black violence are correct. But there is one thing that I know for sure. I have never personally been the victim of a black man's crime unless he was a member of the State. I have been pulled over, harassed, and ticketed by many a white officer. And day after day, year after year, I am systematically robbed and bullied by white politicians.  If a black man were to rob me, and then be captured, he would be put on trial. There will be no such justice for the flatfoots and scumbags who occupy central banks, white houses, and capitol buildings.

The Civilized Road is Morality

There are some things that I believe which most people, if you are to take them at their word, do not. But I find that when I observe what people actually do and how they go about their lives, their actions are in harmony with my views. For instance, I believe seeking profit is part of human nature and, furthermore, I believe it to be a good thing. I often hear people mewl about corporations putting profit above people. They are upset when a business puts its bottom line ahead of the welfare of any individual employee. Of course, the employees put their own bottom lines ahead of the company's concerns. Cease paying them and even the most dedicated associate will sprint for the nearest exit.

Then again, there are other things that I believe which most people, if you take them at their word, do agree. But I find that when I observe what people actually do and how they go about their lives, their actions suggest a disharmony. For instance, I believe that aggression (that is, offensive violence as opposed to defensive violence) is immoral. But it is commonplace in our society. There are many good people, if I may be oxymoronic, who decry robbery, rape, extortion, and murder while supporting taxation, eminent domain, wars to prevent wars, and democracy.

I say these things are immoral, you might call them moral, and yet others might call them amoral. Since morality is in the eye of the beholder, it seems like there is a chance that we are all "right". But morality is a means and not an end. The ends we are aiming for are subjective. And if we have subjectively chosen the same end, like perhaps the relative contentment of mankind, then our moral code can be objectively examined to find whether or not our actions will lead us to this end.

To be honest, I don't think very highly of mankind in general. For the most part, I really don't care if future generations cease being produced. I believe that the supposed threat of global warming to the fate of our race is no more real than the threat that Iran will attack America. But so what if it is real? The one thing we know about every single human being past, present, and future is that they all have mortal bodies. Death has been the fate of every individual and is the fate waiting for all those yet to exist. Why is it preferable that they succumb to heart disease rather than to severe weather events? To whom does it matter if we all die one by one or by the thousands, except for the people who might be left to dispose of the thousands?

Yet, I do have a subjective preference for the general benefit of mankind. This is because I am a self centered being, just as we all are. We all have something inside us that drives us to be satisfied. We constantly battle against those things that we feel stand in the way of that goal. The presence of varying degrees of empathy inside each of us makes it difficult to abide the varying degrees of suffering we see in our fellow creatures. Creating a world with less human suffering helps bring the chimerical goal seemingly closer.

The objective path toward reaching the subjective destination is a civilized road. All things that threaten civilization (such as  robbery, rape, extortion, murder, taxation, eminent domain, wars, and democracy) are immoral. All things that strengthen civilization (such as production, exchange, cooperation for mutual benefit, peace, private property, and liberty) are highly moral. All other activities that don't fit into these categories (such as playing video games, listening to gangster rap, going to church, writing blog posts, and recycling) are amoral. This is what I believe.

How You Choose the Price of Gasoline

I am often alarmed at how ignorant the populace is on the subject of economics. I'm not talking about the theory of diminishing marginal value or consideration of the upward limit on the boundary of the firm, but of simple economic concepts such as supply & demand. If you ask them, everyone claims to understand this most elementary law of human exchange, but hardly anyone actually believes it. For example, nearly any man you encounter will complain that gas prices are set by evil oil corporations and that we consumers are held hostage to these prices by our need to drive. There's no way gas should be $x a gallon, they say. It should always be x-n.

The absurdity of this argument can be shown to be apparent in a matter of seconds and it is a testimony to the wretched condition of standardized education in America that it survives at all, let alone that it is popularly accepted by even the relatively intelligent among us. If the oil and gas companies can charge whatever they like for their product, then why do they stop at say $2.87 a gallon? Why not $50 a gallon? Or $100? Or $1 million? I agree that giant oil corporations have no compunctions about getting every penny from you that they can. So then why do they stop at such a paltry amount if the only limit on their ability to increase prices is the amount of zeroes they can fit on a sign?

From the law of supply & demand we derive that as the cost of something goes up, ceteris paribus, the demand for that something decreases. The gas station doesn't charge you $100 a gallon because you won't pay it. They will not sell as much gas and therefore will not make as large of a profit, if any profit at all. If you would pay $1,000 for a gallon of gasoline, I assure you that they would charge that amount. And so it is for all prices. Your employer pays you what he thinks you will accept and not a penny more. The pizza parlor charges what they think you will pay and not a penny less.

Now we can see that it isn't the big oil companies who decide whether or not a gallon of gas will sell above or below $3. It is the consumers who are the sovereigns. Anyone who says that the price of gas is too high, and then chooses to pay that price, has just contradicted himself. Just like the obese man who says he wants to lose weight but can never find time to get to the gym, or the woman who says she wishes she could find a nice guy right before running into the abusive arms of the nearest cad, it is the actions of the economic actor we must observe while discarding his words.

The next time you feel upset at the amount of federal reserve notes you have to exchange for a tank of gas, remember that you only have yourself to blame.

Deport Mike Pence

Mike Pence, the governor of the great and boring state of Indiana, dropped by the Wesleyan university in my town earlier this week for a "community conversation". The students quoted in the local paper seemed quite impressed with Mr. Pence. One student went so far as calling it "an honor" and described the governor's views on border patrol as an example of how he is "passionate about our safety". Another student agreed, saying Pence's "number one priority is the safety of Hoosiers". I'm not certain what danger for Indiana is lurking on the south bank of the Rio Grande, but these children fear it and believe that Mikey has the duty, the will, and the ability to protect them from it and all other threats to their safety.

There used to be a different idea that dominated the philosophy of the subjects of the United States. They used to subscribe to the theory that the government's main job was to protect the citizenry's liberty, not its safety. Courts were to be established and funded by taxation of the population in order to make sure justice and property rights were protected and little else. Of course, this idea is absurd on its face. Taxation and lawmaking are themselves anti-liberty. The parallel would be putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen house. Even so, I prefer this logical absurdity to the now popular idea that the State should be your overprotective mommy.

Rest assured, Pence is only posing as your mommy. In reality, he is the fox. He tells you to watch out for the threat of foreign invaders as he slides his hand into your pocket in order to retrieve your wallet. The students quoted in the newspaper article were two social work majors and a youth ministry major. These naive young people were convinced to take on massive amounts of debt so that they could join professions in which their classroom experience will likely amount to nothing. But the bankers will be paid and they will in turn pay their agents such as Pence. I highly doubt there is anyone in Mexico who could do the amount of harm to these pupils as the state of Indiana has done. If we are going to deport anyone, let's start with the bastards in the state house and the governor's mansion.

Life, Death, and Booze

I try to stay plugged in. I try to focus on being a responsible person who doesn't let others down. I try to pretend that I care whether or not people who I'm not especially close to live or die. Sometimes I say things like, "I hope he is okay" even though I've spent absolutely no energy hoping anything of the sort. Neither have I wasted any effort hoping for anyone's demise. Hope is a waste of energy. Hope is hopeless. Or at least useless. Whenever someone inevitably falls short in their bid at immortality, I'm more apt to recall the words of Vonnegut than to be bothered by sentiment. So it goes.

Often I am successful at staying plugged in. I have just enough booze to distract my mind from noticing that almost everyone around me is an automaton at the complete mercy of their biological impulses. I barely notice that every thought uttered is a mere rationalization for these impulses that was formulated by some long dead philosopher who was himself merely trying to placate his own horror at the pointlessness of life on Earth. But I am not permitted to walk through life with a drink in my hand. It would be impractical. There are things to produce for people to consume. There are children who were involuntarily called into existence by my submission to my natural instincts. They must be fed, clothed, sheltered, and raised so that they may force a new generation to come forth to consume food, clothing, and shelter.

Even without the aegis of bourbon, wine, or beer, I am mostly capable of getting through a day without letting myself be overwhelmed by the futility of the charade in which we all participate. But then there are those brief moments when I fall to the floor and shout "why", hoping that there is a deity within earshot who might respond. Of course, one never does. I start to wonder why I value the things that I do. For instance, why am I constantly seeking the approval and admiration of other human beings? Approval and admiration are merely finite sentiments residing within a finite creature. Dust in the wind and such. The answer is no doubt grounded in psychology, which itself is grounded in biology, which in turn is grounded firmly in superstition and dizzying "scientific" theories.

Judging by the conversations I've had, the vast majority of people cannot relate to what I have expressed in this post. They are as impervious as insects, or bacteria, or a piece of drift wood to these crippling trains of thought. If it occurs to them at all, it is only briefly and is in no way an obstruction to their constant efforts at seeking the elusive goal of satisfaction. As for those afflicted with the vexatious condition from which I suffer, I can offer little advice. Personally, I try to have a drink, chill out, and enjoy the company of interesting people. (In fact, this can even be done without the drink, though it isn't as easy and I hesitate to recommend it.) Barring the unattractive option of suicide, this seems like the only effective way to avoid this debilitating condition. In short: you must seek distractions. Fortunately, distractions are what society is mostly composed from.

Mere Apathy

I can't seem to get riled up about all the things I see in the news or hear people discussing. I have no fear of ISIS or Ebola. I get confused when I hear Glenn Beck say that people of faith are under attack, and then use Christians allegedly not being able to speak against Islam as an example. I find this ironic since the United States government literally attacks Muslims (i.e. people of faith) on a daily basis while Glenn Beck freely criticizes Islam on a national radio show.

Today someone tried to convince me that "we" need to drop more bombs on ISIS in order to "get the job done". I tried to explain that the U.S.'s job in the Middle East will never be done because they have no intention of leaving. They want to rule it. He responded that I just don't get it. That, I don't deny. I don't get it. I don't understand how Americans keep falling for the same bit over and over again. Maybe it's because Americans are stupid. It's difficult for me to compare the intellect of the "greatest nation in the history of the earth" to any of the planet's other populations because I am not well traveled. But if we really are among the brightest and best people in the world, I weep for the miserable imbecility of the foreign hordes.

Fortunately, my exposure to these moronic arguments is fairly limited. I have no television service and I have no computer. I subscribe to no newspapers. I only occasionally make use of social media. There are a couple of people with whom I can discuss such subjects as politics, war, religion, economics, and philosophy. But I mostly try to avoid such conversations with most people. It is too exhausting. Sometimes I think I should keep trying to enlighten those around me and teach them about the benefits of liberty, free markets, and individualism. Or the evils of war and democracy. Or the beautiful logic of sound economics. But lately I've mostly been apathetic about the inevitable results of our State worshipping society. Most people won't or can't comprehend. We are all going to get what they deserve.

I'm just going to keep focusing on the things I actually do enjoy, such as socializing with friends, reading Mencken, criticizing people, listening to Rage Against the Machine, being amused by Doug Stanhope, working out, and consuming alcohol. In short, I'm going to exercise what precious freedoms I have to their fullest extent.

Citizens of Marion Keeping More of Their Money

Today's Chronicle-Tribune ran a story with the headline 'City Losing More to Caps', a reference to Marion once again hitting the state imposed property tax caps. But I prefer the positive spin: Citizens of Marion Keeping More of Their Money. Instead of money being transferred into the hands of thieving parasites such as Wayne Seybold and the rest of the career criminals that make up the city government, it will remain in the hands of the citizens who earned it. They will be able to freely choose to save, spend, or give this money away. They will use this means to help them reach a more satisfactory end.

When the government -any government- takes your money, it is a violent act of one party against another. They take by force what you have earned through peaceful trade. They then proceed to spend this money in ways that are satisfactory to achieving their goals; not yours. Their goals are typically political and are attempts to gain more personal power. They take "public" money to use for their own private benefit. What is taxation if not a transfer of wealth from the relatively powerless to the relatively powerful?

You've been taught -in government schools, no doubt- that taxation is the price of government. You have been raised to not even question the need for government, and therefore taxation. But a price is something that comes about voluntarily in the marketplace. If I go to Wal-Mart and purchase a copy of the incredibly entertaining motion picture Fight Club for the equally incredible low price of $5, it's because I value a DVD copy of that fantastic film more than I do the $5. Wal-Mart values the $5 more than the movie. Both parties to the exchange win. If Wal-Mart put a price tag of $40 on this item, I would decline to purchase it. I need that money for bourbon. Wal-Mart cannot make me buy it.

Let's contrast the above paragraph with how the government acquires its funds. They set a "price" that they call property tax, or sales tax, or estate tax, or income tax, or whatever the tax might be. If I say, "No. I shan't be purchasing your services at that price", they will take the money anyway. Should I resist sufficiently, they will send armed men (armed men that I paid for, mind you) to kidnap me and lock me in a cage. If I should try to defend myself, they claim the right to kill me. There's a word we use for this sort of financial transaction. It's called "robbery".

So, now we can see that the less money the city of Marion is able to obtain through taxation, the less the citizens it preys upon are robbed. I, for one, am always in favor of less robbery.