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The thing about all folks who find themselves in the midst of a house on fire is that there is no confusion about where they are and what their next move is going to be. There is beauty in that kind of certainty.
The beauty, I think, is just this and nothing more: when you’re certain about where you are, there is no question about where you’re going.
I’ve landed, and crashed, into plenty of therapist’s couches in my life. I know that territory quite well. It’s an annoying, if useless, habit of mine to be in “record” mode WHILE my ass is getting handed to me. At some point in the future, I play back those tapes – recollections, revelations and reconciliations – and I come to some generally acceptable conclusions. And then I do it all again, at a still later time, and I come to the truly valuable conclusions that I was unable to accept at the time when the data was at its freshest.
Here’s one such nugget: No one who sits in front of a surrogate friend and pays cash money for that privilege can be said to be having a “really great day.” It’s possible to be delusional, of course, but delusion doesn’t change the fact that you and your neurotic friend in the mirror have successfully run off every friend capable of keeping your ass between the ditches in the long roadway of life. “They” had their perceptions of how you were conducting your affairs, and you had your’s. All too soon, perhaps within only a few decades, there were more of “them” than there were of, “you,” and the notion of “fast friends” was quickly being replaced by a circus of people much sicker than yourself.
There comes a day when your head, or your ass, is in your hands, and you cry out, “I don’t know where the hell I’m going, or why I seem to be going there!”
Here’s another, if aforementioned, nugget: if you don’t know where you’re going it’s BECAUSE you haven’t fully acknowledged where you ARE.
My friends, the house is on fire and the flames are licking at our backsides. Perhaps you’d like to sit and listen to a bunch of speeches about the philosophical nature of house fires, smoke inhalation, the recovery rates of those who suffer from third degree burns over what percentage of their body based on their age, or the safest place to put your head when attempting to leave a house fire (hint: it’s not up your ass). But unless you think picking bananas for United Fruit would be a really cool diversion, I’d like to suggest that you accept some rather uncomfortable matters of fact.
1. You are living in a banana republic that is being run by people who have made it their life’s work to run banana republics
2. People living in banana republics don’t have free and fair elections
3. People living in banana republics don’t have any Constitutionally guaranteed rights, much less any obligation to reasonably and peacefully petition their government with a redress of grievances
4. People living in banana republics get tortured for speaking out
5. People living in banana republics are frightened and terrified into accepting their fate as pickers of bananas the profits from which they will never see
6. People living in banana republics are, at best, endentured servants but, most often, are enslaved by a richer, more powerful benefactor to whom they owe their allegiance.
7. We’ve seen this movie played out in history dozens of times and it always ends with the slaves fighting for their freedom and the slave-owners spending multiple centuries trying to get their slaves back to doing their work for them (e.g., the Jews and the African Americans).
8. There will be no free and fair election on November 4th unless millions of us hit the streets willing to sacrifice life and limb to insist that free and fair elections take place
9. There will be no Constitution nor any Bill of Rights unless millions of us hit the streets willing to sacrifice life and limb to insist on the restoration of our Constitutional Republic – now and in the future
10. We are engaged in a class warfare where we did not fire the first shot, but which will likely require us to fire weapons at our masters.
This is going to be a bloody Civil War and you are likely going to have to perform the unpleasant task of mopping up the floor with your neighbor. You need to snap out of your denial and recognize, clearly and coldly, where you are. You are in the former United States of America and are presently living in a banana republic run by a junta of Bush family members and rich oligarchs who could care less if you live or die, or if your children have something nutritious to eat every day. You are chattel to these people and as far as they are concerned, 2 out of every 3 of you needs to stop stealing their oxygen from them.
These rich oligarchs have plans to kill you whether you fight back, or not.
I’d like to suggest that no man or woman be carted off to their demise without taking one of these amoral jerk-offs down with them. They’ve only got 4,000 troops ready to deploy against us, along with your local SWAT team and law enforcement. Frankly, I don’t think the odds are in their favor and even if they do succeed in killing most of us, they will still have to contend with a host of Russians, Chinese and Japanese opponents who would like to take back all of that cheap oil in Iraq and keep it for themselves. Even as you read this, the Russians are teaming up with the Syrians to secure northern Lebanon and possibly the Golan Heights. From there it will be a race between Turkey and Russia as to who gets to those oil fields first.
The point is the WORLD would like us to stand for something more than we have been. If we do not stand for something NOW, we will fall for anything later.
