What Do We Really Pledge?

This came by my desktop recently :

Aw, horse chester. What high-horse blowhardism. The right-wing extreme certainly does not support these premises, for all their applauding the iconifying of them, or their characterizing themselves as loyal patriots, honorable mutineers taking back The Ship Of State from a rogue Admiralty. In fact, their behavior is quite the opposite.
What do those words we children were taught to chant actually say?

A pledge is more than just a promise, it is an irreversable act of submission, as in formal marriage or joining a brotherhood of bikers. To “pledge allegiance” means to take one as your liege, that is your King, and so to faithfully serve – not to judge, not to obstruct or bring down, but to give fealty, obedience. “The Flag” is obviously not literal, but what it stands for does not mean a body of particular ideas you choose to agree with or not like an armchair barrister, it means the seat of authority. Especially in a Republic, that means the ones elected call the shots, and you obey whether you voted for him or not, whether he orders you to fight or to farm, and whether he wears your color hat or not. You do not follow command on ship, or refuse to, because of how you feel about the Admiral, or where he orders the ship to sail, but because his authority is what is represented by his Flag, and that you have pledged to serve. Personally, having been both a hippie and a Marine, I prefer a more libertine than authoritarian status quo, but that is what the words mean.

Next it says, “The United States Of America.” That means the “one nation indivisible” and not one particular State, or one particular Party. That national organization, that body of definitions and agreements, is the Republic for which the Flag stands, the legal corporate national entity which exists as defined by the Constitution and the Laws. It is that which we loosely refer to as “the government” or “Washington” including the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Treasury, all the other agencies and bureaus, the lands and properties it owns, its accounts and assets, its population of citizens, and the Presidency, which is the seat of the Flag. You pledge allegiance to that Flag of that Republic as an existing thing if you pledge in reality, and not to some fantasy ideal you would imagine to be better, or to some faction within it you presume to define it apart from all the rest of us.

“Under God” would seem universally redundant, if we presume all of the created universe is under whatever we mean by God. The obvious error of the Christian right or any religious group lies in presuming that means God as defined by their establishment of religion, and the government should therefore in some way be subject to the dogma, doctrine, scripture, or influence of persons of power in that religion, that is, “loyalty to the higher authority” of their own interpretation and enforcement of God’s Law. It is what the First Amendment was written to prevent, and what the Dominionists of the evangelical Christian faction of the hard right are deliberately and quite openly doing.
As for “liberty” it is abundantly clear the Social Conservatives of the right wing would define that to be liberty for all to walk freely within the lines they draw, and liberty for them to draw those lines where they will, in accordance with morality as they define it. Those who object they declare to be seeking not liberty to choose, but license to sin. For its connotations of promiscuity, the word liberal itself has become an unexamined label of wrongness among the rightniks, with a terrible dark stereotype presumed to all upon whom they stick it, like nigger or commie. What’s wrong with liberals? Duuuh, Pelosi!

Across the political spectrum from right to left, and from authoritarian to libertarian, good people all sincerely wish for “justice for all” but every one of us can easily point to injustice somewhere in that system of agreements to which we pledge our allegiance, and within which we all no doubt sincerely hope to accomplish some good. To suggest that right wing extremists somehow have the edge on any of these things is unfortunately benighted. As easily as they say others are not “real Christians” the right-wing extremists are able to say others are not “real Americans” – and somehow they believe only themselves are either of those, and therefore only themselves qualified to make the decisions and laws of a Christian America, and by God, they will defend that with their 2nd Amendment rights.

I am not saying I support fundamentalist obedience to elected leaders, or there should not be an active confrontational dialectic in the democratic process, but only pointing out that supporting the decisions of the elected officials of our government, whether that’s how you’d have it done or not, is what Allegiance to the Flag literally means. It is what those words mean that the right-wing extremists are most objecting to under this administration, and most openly refusing to actually do, for all their touted oaths of allegiance, patriotism, and duty.

Americans who do not knowingly and wholeheartedly support the agenda of their blatantly sectarian coup de etad are advised to be prudently wary before voting for one of them, no matter whom they oppose, or how they wave Old Glory.
James Nathan Post

Is The Internet Divine Vision?

“The computer is a mirror in which I can see through the eyes of Thoth.”
Alex St. Luc, Enosar Emeritus
The Scribes Of Osiris

We take it for granted already. To know everything, anything, anywhere, now. That was only for God to know. There was a time only a few years ago in my own lifetime when most of the information in the world was printed on paper and available in catalogued libraries. That might sound like a terrible restriction today, but in its time it was a revolution. Before Gutenberg, there were few books, and only a few had access to read them. Most of what everyone knew of the world, they had only heard. After Gutenberg, all of the established institutions began to change as larger numbers of people knew more and more about the world. The changes were not predictable at the time. It was only after a generation had grown up with that information that they developed not just new ways of doing things, but new ways of organizing themselves and relating to each other.


If the invention of writing is the First Literary Revolution, and the Printing Press the Second, then the Third Literary Revolution is the Internet, the great commonly-shared data cloud of access to all of the information in the world, instantly. I can “invoke” the content of every book in thousands of libraries, in every language, and thousands of films, and daily newspapers across the world. I have access to cameras, maps, and even pictures from outer space, anywhere on earth, right now. All the information anyone knows, or has ever known, is now available instantly, to everyone, anywhere. Only a few years ago, such access to knowledge could only belong to God. Only Thoth, the Ibis-headed scribe who represents the Egyptian “intellect of God” could know all things at all times. Now we all have that. We are become as Gods. Though some of our science fiction writers have been exploring the idea for a century or so, this is going to change the nature of being human in ways we cannot yet predict.

The generations of people raised on the Internet and its Siamese-cousin the TV, living in that omnipresent data cloud (it knows who we are and where), and all connected to each other by social networks of varying exclusivity, will not think and feel much like the more individualized lives we live today. The Latterday-19th Century Teaparty type still trying to remember the Alamo for Jesus on election day would look to those people like a blind old fool who wandered in from the desert, and has never even seen an encephalo-metagram projection. “He wants to disband the Terran Sodality and the National Consensus and let everybody vote for two guys who will make all the rules… and they get to decide how much we pay them! Haw haw haw! When did you find your way out of the cave, Gramps?”

James Nathan Post
The Scribes Of Osiris

AFGHANISTAN UPDATE

"Insurgent" used to mean somebody from outside a country who comes in to organize arms against the legitimate government. "Partisan" used to mean civilians in a country who organize arms against an occupying foreign-empowered regime. "Red State" used to mean Communism, where everybody gets a job, a government check, and health care. Today, insurgent means anyone who stands up against America's guns, God, and credit cards. Partisan is a dirty word freeloading liberals call loyal Republicans, and folks in Red states vote to kick the sick old beggars and demand to see their papers. Ever read Orwell? "He who writes the dictionary defines the truth."


The people of Afghanistan are in the same position as political Independents in America who say voting for a GOP or DEM candidate is picking “the lesser of two evils” – or the new con deciding which cellmate to let fuck him to protect him from the other (even knowing he’s going to get fucked by both). The Afghan must choose between the mad executioners of the puritan authoritarian Islamic Taliban or the ultimate-armed robots and evangelists of the Christian American equivalent. Both are clearly evil by any reasonable standard. Those who try to do something to help themselves -- Allah beheads, and Jesus bombs from heaven.


Unfortunat­ely, the war in Afghanistan is not about them at all. Without a war, our economy would collapse. Troops are cheap, and sending even a few thousand of them, withdrawing them, honoring them, and burying them are politically visible actions, but if we ever quit sending the bombers burning 40,000 gallons of fuel every mission, and the USAF quit buying all that gas, EXXON would go broke! Likewise, if we quit bombing the opium and hashish fields to protect the US big pharmo corporatio­ns from superior third-world agricultural produce’s competitio­n... our so-called health care industry would go broke! If we quit sending our civilian armed security troops­, and quit paying our Afghan regime to hire them, we would have 30,000 unemployed perp-shooting Jesus-­fanatic killer-cops-for-hire looking for work back in the inner city hoods of home. If we quit making war on the reed fields of Araby (like Caligula)... our economy would go down like a pom-pom boy in the shower.


Much as he might like to, The President cannot get us out of that war, at least not without starting another. You know the scene: the men in black suits take Barack Obama into the underground projection room, and they show him The Film. He turns white (gulp!), and quickly comes to a specuguine conclusion… “I ‘spec you gwine do what you has to… Mr. President.” ("Ya shoulda seen the last ol' boy was in here... heehee, ol' Dub like to shat his shorts!")

James Nathan Post

The 1st Amendment Means Jesus Too.

From Day 1, 1776, we have violated the 1st Amendment prohibition of laws respecting an establishment of religion in several ways. One of them is freedom from the taxation other establishments must pay, even if doing the same thing, like publishing and broadcasting to generate revenue. A mistake then, worse now, as one extremist religious sect's marketers have created an industry rich enough to play the game of Senators and Presidents, in the hope of waging world war on the unsaved.

Another is the power to issue sex licenses... that is, legal marriage as defined by that establishment of religion's dogma, where all sex without that license is not just sin, but statutory crime.

Also the "blue laws" which regulate business and property use to conform to religious practice, when and what you can buy and sell vs Holy Day schedule, when you can drink, where you can put your business with respect to that church's premises, what books are not in your public libraries, what you can't teach in your schools, etcetc...

The Neo-Conservative Christian American Taliban (NEOCATs) believe their monopoly on the blessing of The One And Only Real God whose image is graven in occult symbols in their ancient scrolls like a mummified idol wrapped in papyrus entitles them to exemption from that Constitutional restriction, as they believe they serve "A Higher Authority" than the mere secular Constitution they would be sworn to defend... ergo, caveat.

Thank You Jesus, But NO Thank You!

What If We Did Make Gold Dollars?

If we ever again issued money with real Constitutional value, what would we do about the fact we are $11T in FRN debt to a private bank with global power? We smartly say, "Tell them to write it off," but can we actually do that? Can any debtor "repeal" the bank to which he is indebted? What would we tell the world when they come to cash in the trillions of FRNs they are holding as oil reserve accounts, bonds, investments in US corporations, and other such instruments of the arcane world of global finance? What would the Treasury tell them, and what would the Fed say?

What about all of us non-corporate non-capitalized just regular ol' peckerwoods? Apart from a few coin-collection curiosities worth many times more FRNs than their face value, who among us has any real Constitutional dollars? Nobody. Mostly, we don't even have FRNs, we only have numbers in some bank's computerized account somewhere, and most of us are upside-down mortgaged, credit-card maxed, and have no real property of any value whatsoever. If we take our digital FRNs to the new treasury, how many will we need to buy one real gold dollar? 2000/1? 20,000? How many Euros will it take to buy one gold dollar, when a million old FRNs won't buy one Euro?

Just who actually owns America's gold now, the Treasury?... or the Fed which issued trillions more in FRNs than the Constitutional value of the "reserves" on which our gold-certificate money was first printed, and replaced by fiat trade paper? Can the Fed "repossess" that gold collateral for non-payment of FRN debt... or has it done that already?

Would we spend our new real money to buy the rare-earth metals and other non-US natural resources we need to defend ourselves if we shook our pretty high-tech sabres (using Japanese chips made in China) and told the rest of the world to eat their losses?

Do you suppose at some point the world-ignorant, provincial-minded, isolationist, bigoted, consumer-obese, doctor-addicted, mortgaged, and nationally indebted American people will have to be taught that our country, like all the rest, is simply a big self-defined club with rules and dues, in legal fact just a corporation with a bank account and an (overdue) credit line, and not the uniquely-blessed, exceptional, and immeasurably-superior ordained and entitled National Creation of Abraham's God Himself we have let the teachers, preachers, politicians, and pundits tell us it is?

Who Do You Expect To Have To Shoot?

For the problem of deciding just what “arms” we ought to take steps to obtain for ourselves, whether covered by the 2nd Amendment or not, I’d say the answer depends on first getting a clear picture of just whom you expect to have to shoot.

1. Government troops. Fuggittaboutit! When we talk about our legal right to "arms" we are at the level of a semi-automatic rifle and a sidearm. As a gunship jock in the days before the stand-off satellite-aimed stuff, I have some sense of how small groups of men armed with rifles stand up against US military tech, even if they are well organized, and indomitably motivated to resist the power of Washington. As we proved in a few days in Iraq, even 100,000 men marching with rifles or dug in with 1000 tanks are only an inconvenience to modern US warfare and law enforcement. Resisting a Federal badge with your AR-15 is at best a suicidal gesture in which you might kill a few good American heroes in uniform, and do some collateral damage too. You'll make the News, and Tommy Lee Jones will play you in the movie.

As for discussing arms technology that might effectively resist US SEALs or SWATs (which discussion could arguably be considered an act of terrorist conspiracy), you should ask an Afghan vet... I mean, you know, one of them. Given a credit card at Home Depot and the weekend to do it, could you build an IED that will stop a tank... or even a Subaru?

2. Gangs. This one is tough too. When bourgeois order breaks down, especially under a militant security regime, the structure which survives best is gangism. Mexico is a perfect example. The pot-smuggling industry on which northern Mexico's sub-middle-class economy depended was well ordered, large old families with acreage, connections, a living for the peasant farmer, etc. We armed the Mexican DEA and turned them against that structure. Now the only structure ruthless enough to deal with the armed DEA and still serve the market is the gangs. They dropped most of the pot, abandoned the farmers, and switched to meth and guns. We pack them into prison and turn them into tightly organized utterly ruthless cadres of homicidal raiders... who hate you a lot more than you think you hate Borax Obonga or the Bible Nazis. Belonging to a tougher gang is your only hope, and you'd better have access to black market arms a LOT more powerful than the sports plinkers Massa Washington will give you permission to own, whether you vote Red Hat or Blue Hat.

3. Your neighbors. This is the most likely, and the easiest to take care of. You start now with a purse pistol, and classes to know how to use it. Learn. You recognize that it doesn't matter what armament the law says you may own, it only matters what you do own. You tell no one what you own. You keep it clean and out of sight. If you live in a place where you truly expect you are going to need it for self defense, you might consider the wisdom of a pre-emptive cleansing of your neighborhood before waiting to be placed in an untenable defensive position... and get away with it.

[Plug: I get into this idea pretty deep in my book KALISNACHT. ]

Why Not The FEDMED Hospital System?

CLEAN THE PARASITES OUT OF MEDICARE!

Some things, like national defense, are best done by a disciplined and highly motivated agency of state, that is, by socialism. The correct way to solve Medicare is simple: socialize it, and remove the parasites. I do not mean those who need medical care, I mean the INSURANCE INDUSTRY which profits on every stitch and pill by what is in fact a rigged form of gambling, and for whom actually providing medical care is not the objective. No, providing medical care is on the expense side of their ledger, something they want to minimize. (This is basic MBA duuh stuff, like creating jobs. Companies do not want to create jobs, which are labor costs they don’t want if they don't have to. Given money to expand, they prefer to cut labor and invest in more profitable alternatives, not hire a bunch of pedal-pumpers as some sort of political gesture. “Tax breaks create jobs,” is a pathetic lie to get workers to vote conservative in fear of losing their jobs, and the unemployed to vote red in the hope of being hired.)

As with the care provided to wounded soldiers by the Army Medical Corps, government could pay directly for the actual care, at the lowest possible wholesale cost. ZERO to insurance premiums, and no fat commissions for commissioners and contractors. Should this be the only way then, and replace what we have now? NO. Keep the private sector business exactly as it is, and if you want to buy their insurance and receive their services, you go right ahead. The Federal Medical Corps would operate in coincidental competition with the private sector hospital system, but not as a controlling entity or sub-contracting agency. It would not impose standards on the AMA hospitals and staff, and it would not take its standards from those, but could operate as its Flag Officers and Cabinet Secretary determined best for its mission.

If you were willing to go into the FEDMED hospital, or a VA hospital, or an Army field hospital and take what you get there.... would that be bad? NO. Our military Medical Corps are the excellent example: they work for the same salaries as other officers and troops, with the same gung-ho attitude that means giving the most medical care (not making the most money) to those they serve (the sick and wounded, not boards of employers), from a sense of pride and true service to America, exactly like the grunts on the line and jet jocks and rotorheads feel. Ask the troops how they feel about trusting their medics to save their lives. What soldiers do every day is heroic, and what their medics do every day is miraculous. I believe such a uniformed domestic US Medical Corps, just like the Coast Guard or the Air Force, would have the same esprit de corps, professionalism and top-only standards as the Marines, and would eagerly strive to best serve every human being who came into the place with the best they have, regardless of that patient’s gender, race, rank, religion, registration, or insurance coverage.

This would provide real medical care (not bullslick insurance coupons) to the deep class of Americans who are below even the working poor stratum, many of whom have never had insurance in their lives, though seniors now. It would really create good living wage jobs for thousands of people with medical skills, and for construction and maintenance jobs too. It would cost bupkis compared to collecting profitable insurance premiums with the IRS and the courts, and paying the profitable medical industry the gluttonously inflated costs of providing that same medical care. The socialist FEDMED system would be much less expensive than what we are paying now, and would provide better day-to-day "old country doctor" type common health care to all of us except the rich, who presumably will still choose to patronize the insurance companies and hospitals they have now, and good for them, as those hospitals are truly awesome and a blessing for those who can afford them. It is a win/win situation for both the best of a socialist system and the best of the free market too. Well, it will be a little rough on big capitalist medbiz and the insurance guys, but hey, a big racket is still a racket, right? If real care and real economy are the objectives, then you either take the rackets down, or you end-run them as I have suggested here.

James Post www.postpubco.com/anticyclops.htm

Assassins: Inspired Or Insane?

On July 2, 1881, a failed radical political candidate named Charles Guiteau, convinced that President James Garfield would be the ruin of the Republican Party and so bring an end to freedom and prosperity in America ...shot him in the back. As a result of the "health care" available to Americans then, Garfield died a few weeks later of infection he contracted in hospital. Guiteau said God told him removing the traitor from the White House was a "political necessity" -- and then he pled insanity. He was hanged on June 30, 1882, after having made several trial lawyers wealthy arguing on the public dime about the difference between prophecy and psychosis...

The issue is still not resolvable in the American court, every session of which begins with giving respect to The Bible, 1st Amendment or no. If a man crucified his son (or someone else's son) to death because he believes God said he must do so as propitiatary sacrifice, could he be exempted from prosecution because of his faith? Could he instead be declared insane? Is not agreeing to participate (even after the fact) in exactly that sacrifice the most fundamental precept and requirement of being Christian? Without the blood of that crucifixion on your hands, you're still a G-d damned Jew on your way to Adam's hell. Right?

Did God really tell Billy Graham to tell George Bush it was His Holy Will to bomb Iraq? Or was it Osama who received the Divine fatwa he faithfully obeyed on 9/11, thereby revealing the infidel Bush to be the idol-deluded mass-murdering psychopath? Or was Bush proved to be the saint and not the psycho after all because we were blessed by God with more bombs than Allah?

This is not just theological seminary chit-chat. It matters. A President who believes in these religious fantasies and holy wars has the atom bombs, real secular and empirical bombs, and the power to use them. If she were willing to kill us all because she and her ordained Jedi cabinet all believed in the literal truth of Star Wars, wouldn't you say it matters that their belief be exposed as epic fiction, and their faith however sincere has been usurped by a nuclear-armed chimera, a demon out to lead us to bring about our own real Hell on Earth? Hear, oh Israel. Burn the Books, and repent of the Sacrifice.

James Post www.postpubco.com/blasphemy.htm

Palin and Bachmann

Palin and Bachmann

They look alike, and represent the same values, which are after all very good American values, of family, community, business, and church -- as long as they are not taken to be exclusively correct. All the positive spin and juice the charismatic cheerleading political sophomore Sarah Palin has generated with her Lady GopGod act can now be transferred to Bachmann, who does not suffer from Palin's negative counterpoints in education and intellect.

Sister Sarah thought she was the Chosen One, but she's just Jane The Baptist, whipping up a ballyhoo in front of the big voting tent, preparing the way for GOP (God's Own President) Bachmann, to make her the most powerful woman in the world since Cleopatra and the most highly annointed since The Virgin Mary. (And to keep Sarah Jane from stealing the show, at some point someone will cut off her head, and throw it to the crowd at the Convention in Bachmann's name.) To those who value any freedom beyond Sunday-school rules imposed by the power of irresistible enforced law, Bachmann is a true horror, as she is "Palin with brains" educated in arguing the law on behalf of her indoctrination in the powerful right-wing American extremist Christian Dominionist sect (Oral Roberts grad, I believe). Like Mr. Gingrich, she is well aware the 1st Amendment prohibits the use of the law to respect the dogma or doctrine of any establishment of religion, but she believes her Christian allegiance is to "a Higher Law" than the Constitution, and to "a Higher Truth" than science or history, so her religion's establishment is exempt from that restriction.

Bachmann is precisely the icon of what is wrong with the GOP today, for all its tradition of good Conservative principles, and for all her obvious qualifications -- clearly she is a competent and intelligent person, but she leads in a deliberately orchestrated religious coup de etat, intended to usurp the secular power of the police state to enforce the "social conservative" values of her sect. Her sect's brand of Christianity, and their politics, is not to feed the hungry and comfort the widow, but to favor the wealthy as being most blessed, and to wield the deadly sword of God's Justice to scourge the land of liberal corruption, and to reap the golden harvests that have been fertilized so many years with the seed-blood-money of martyrs in freedom's cause. They would raise the cross and flag as though following Jane The Arc, and wage The Final War On Sin, God help us all.

James Post www.postpubco.com/blasphemy.htm