This is a touchy subject. I must be careful how I write else become a dot on the political spectrum. Where does “Clown Anarchist” fall anyway? Left or right? Few know that the origins of the terms “left” and “right” were born in the National Assembly during the French Revolution. Those who favored the monarchy sat to the right of the President (high clergy and nobles), while disgruntled lawyers and priests of the Ancien Régime sat on the left. As the revolution advanced, far ends on each side of the room had their heads lopped off until a weak center prevailed, and Napoleon marched in on his tip toes to take over.
Of course these political markers do not apply anymore, except among fools who tout a vaporous “pure” ideology with the presence of Crest® toothpaste in their lives. Try to get into an argument with someone who claims to be left or right. It’s like listening to a child’s proof of the existence of Santa Claus. Conversely, an ideology of the 18th century was like a giant wart hanging off the nostril of a typical bourgeois Frenchman. And if you dared insult that wart, a duel to the death might ensue. The ideology often meant life or death. Literally bread or no bread. Today, opposing political philosophies meet in a bar. One says “Rush Limbaugh”, the other “Michael Moore”. The former has handguns and 22" rims on his Ford 350, and the latter smokes pot. One is a bigot and the other guilty for being a bigot. Both are political ignoramuses and slave with less pride than serfs to pay for a mortgage, new car and spoiled kids picking out face filters on Instagram®. In matters of life and death, their realities are exactly the same. Their political differences are like choosing Crest® over Colgate®. They’re so tightly centered and weak that a revolutionary squirrel could rush in and subjugate them, paws down.
Imagine if the National Assembly stretched left and right, all the way around the world, and met to grab hands—that is my political philosophy. I go so left that I’m right, and vice-versa. It’s as human as I can be. It encompasses everyone. Yes, even those billions inhabiting unobtrusive continents. Like the devout in confession, I admit I have committed dirty modern left/right wing sins—sometimes I clean out the peanut butter jar with my bare fingers and recycle it, and sometimes I toss it in the garbage. However, unlike the fellas in the bar, who see enemies among members of groups they do not identify with, I imagine only one group, all human beings, connected by a circle of abandoned liberty. Talk about left and right politics is chimera if all individuals are not respected equally. And by equally, I mean exactly the same without diversion or division. Individual liberty can only exist with collective responsibility. Hence the political circle. Toothpaste doesn’t grow on trees. Yet there exist humans and human systems that expend a great deal of energy trying to get you to think otherwise.
Those people are my enemies. Easy to identify. Any person or institution holding power without consent. He or she has fallen off the human circle into the darkness, and from an illusory “outside”, tries to turn humanity like a knob in order to control it.
Federal tax season is my annual (mental) confrontation with a very small, yet god powerful influential group—the United States Military brass and their adjunct systems (ex., U.S. Congress, President and CEOs and boards of directors of weapons manufacturers). They are my mortal enemies. And it always sucks giving money to your enemies. Each spring I am confronted with a dissonance I am unable to muffle. This year it’s especially bad. To pay or not pay federal income tax to a rouge state harboring 3800 active nuclear warheads. Every March and April I rack my brain trying to come up with a sufficient protest to break into the consciences of the death wielders, but without success. Strength in numbers I have not! The majority of federal tax is taken out of my wife’s paycheck bi-monthly, leaving about a thousand dollars in arrears. To hold back those taxes “due” would just invite unwanted harassment and headaches to my wife (and separation papers to me). The last thing I want to do while saving the world is destroy my marriage.
Good news! This year I came up with a suitable protest.
In January the United Nations passed a resolution banning nuclear weapons. How would we even know? It wasn’t front page news. TV media made no mention. I didn’t hear a single ecstatic joy or hallelujah. Why this total lack of response and sharing of the greatest news ever told to humankind?
The social psychologists have proven that individual and group behaviors can be steered and controlled. We have seen it in action on playgrounds and in North Korea. Popularity and propaganda easily influence populations. Of course it’s more quickly effective in autocracies with the help of precision night raids and baton bashings, though success has also come to republics and democracies who consistently (persistently) provide attractive media and entertainment. Around-the-clock perceived threats from outside boogeymen (via attractive media and entertainment) popularize ignorance of domestic groups and foreign societies.
What else can explain our quietude over the celebration of the passage of the U.N. ban on nuclear weapons? Knowing the total annihilation capabilities of nuclear warfare, how can there not be massive popular movements against its continued funding? Why aren’t we talking at our dinner tables about the only thing, barring a Texas-sized asteroid or the failure of gravity, that will end all life in a weekend? I mean just talking about it? How is it that the little children aren’t warned about the monsters in power, the psychopaths, the presidents, senators, congresspeople who would allow its own military to kill everything? Why didn’t our parents or their parents stop this psychosis in its tracks?
Three reasons I can come up with. ( I would love to hear more, please.)
• The rogue nation of the United States “won” WWII with atomic weapons and became a superpower while threatening any nation with annihilation who questioned its supremacy. The Soviet Union soon followed.
• Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority.
• Cognitive Dissonace Theory.
In the U.S., we are the Nazi Germany that ended a world war with an atomic bomb. In autumn 1945, 25 fearful old men in war rooms decided to expand and invest our (great) grandparent’s labor into nuclear weapons research, development, and testing, while young, surplus cannon fodder made babies all over Levittowns, America. Life continued and victorious generals and weapons manufacturers sought more advancements in death technology. Enter the self-imposed and official implementation of cognitive dissonance and obeyance to authority, followed by a new generation loving and trusting their parents to have done everything they possibly could to eradicate the greatest evil (which they most certainly did not). Then baby boomers had babies and the entrenchment was complete. Today kids look at their hair. And parents look at their hair. And the grandparents go to salons to get their hair done. The phenomenon that has taken place in 75 years is nothing short of miraculous. A high speed evolution to the Eloi species (H.G. Wells Time Machine).
And here we are in our repetition of apparent helplessness, bombarded by the trite and inane nearly every minute of our awake time, and not a single person you care about knows what a 300 kiloton explosion does to a Smithsonian Institution.
Of course it’s easier not to think about it. Whenever I do, I tend to juxtapose the glowing cheeks of my wife with the results of a four star general’s most recent prostate exam, and a flood of rage envelopes me. And then strangely, almost immediately, I feel a wave of guilt for thinking such off-scene thoughts. Am I out of step with reality? What’s wrong with me?
Oh boy. That’s some powerful social conditioning. How the hell did I get here, imagining that I am “off” because I don’t want some kill-hungry dried up old fart general threatening the lives of our grandchildren? Why can’t I even think straight about the most obvious evil in the universe?
That is twisted guilt wrought by do-nothing time and the efforts of power-brokers with their propaganda apparatus. Not a single person connected to the existence of nuclear weapons should walk another minute on earth not under arrest. How could this be a debate one second longer?
For sake of argument and haste toward my mini-protest revelation, let’s assume we agree on everything. That you too think nuclear weapons are bad for the planet and want them eradicated immediately. But of course, like me, you’re a nation’s peon and powerless to sway the criminals in control.
What can we do about it nonviolently, for now?
My answer is to think on it. Please. Just try it. Use whatever methods work—logic, mindfulness, self Q & A, yoga. You’re gonna run into some difficulty. The mind control has been very effective. It’s dug in deep here. Uncomfortable feelings will arise. You will probably blame me for being such a downer. But if you can get through these exercises, and learn to nurture an acute disdain for the death-wielders, then it might be an indicator that it’s time to share these thoughts with someone very close to you. A spouse, mother, or child. However, they must love you enough to take on the exercise themselves. When mutual trust is gained and you sincerely believe that your loved ones also do not want to be vaporized (and can identify the guilty parties), then it’s time to share your concerns with a friend or friends out in the open.
I believe hope can begin after we overcome our fear of not fearing the only technology that will annihilate everything instantly. I think the path to life and death sanity is thinking sanely about life and death. Right now we’re collectively, murderously, cuckoo in the head. 75 year old realities can be eradicated. It happens every second of the day. People and elephants die. Nuclear weapons can too. It helps that they have been outlawed recently and the outlaws named. In our country, many are in government, self-stamping budgets and paychecks via our taxed labor. That must end. The existence of nuclear weapons is not set in stone, even if proof of their use is.
Enter my infinitesimal tax protest.
At this point in life, knowing what I have come to know, I would choose to live below the poverty line if it meant avoiding paying tax to the federal government. However, over the years, I have chosen to invest more in human relationships (marriage, parenting) rather than sanctioning my life to prove a point. Basically, I won’t leave my wife to try to convince others to dream my dreams. I have grandchildren I need to play with, not old pots I want to piss in.
So what can I do this year to protest the tax stolen to fund the end of life on earth?
For 2021 I’ve honed in on the illegal manufacture of a nuclear submarine. It costs 4.4 billion dollars, and will be the first in a line of 12 “new generation” Columbia Class Ballistic Missile submarines to be manufactured over the next ten years. It will have 16 missile tubes, each one housing a Trident II D5LE missile carrying 8 (475 kiloton) warheads. It is being built at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. Enough payload to turn every child and grandchild on earth into tiny flakes of strontium-90 floating around in what used to be called breathable air.
I want to take back the money stolen from us to fund the manufacture of an internationally outlawed WMD. First, I need to determine how much money is taken from our family to pay for the nuke sub.
Estimated 2021 U.S. tax revenues: $3.863 trillion
Cost of nuclear submarine: $4.4 billion
In order to simplify I rounded up to 4 trillion and 5 billion respectively. Smarter people on the Internet determined the following percentage of the total U.S. tax revenue used to pay for the submarine, which is .125%Again, in order to simplify, I applied this percentage equally among all people who pay federal taxes and determined our families’ forced contribution.
7.5 cents.
I think my protest this year should involve taking time away from some high office secretary at Huntington Ingalls Industries® (Newport News Shipbuilding where the sub is to be built). 7.5 cents worth of time. I’ll print out this essay and mail it to the office of Mike Petters, president and CEO of Huntington Ingalls®. An office secretary will be forced to at least, open the letter and glance at it. Let’s say his company time is worth $35/hour, $.58/minute, or roughly a penny a second. Opening this letter and determining its waste of time will take from 5 - 10 seconds away from his potential productivity. And I’ll figuratively get back the money that was stolen from my family to pay for the end of the world.
If he actually reads the essay? Well then, it’s all too much gravy and protest well-received.
Office of Mike Petters
(Room 666 Hell)
Huntington Ingalls Industries Communications
4101 Washington Ave.
Newport News, VA 23607
From A Spring Without Mulch:
I have kept myself quite calm and collected during the virus crisis, as I have watched crafty craven leaders pretend to control with the authority which no wild virus abdicates to mankind. Trump’s words, like all Presidents in differing situations, have killed a lot of people. However, his are the most sincerely ignorant—lies if they need to be, but truths in his own head sometimes, like a certifiable lunatic. Trump, and many other patriotically correct welfare-capitalists exist because large groups (citizens) are very light in moral weight and capacity. Trump remains because he and those around him, have not yet come to fear, with running screams and waving arms, the American people. Thus far we have not followed the virus’s lead to break the control of this vile old man who lords power over others. Enormous, worldly power, with all the weaknesses of a single human being.
Sure, Americans are ready with a string of tough words, shock, humor, sometimes enough cynicism to bring a child’s birthday party to tears. But no fight. Not even pots and pans in the street. Americans just waiting to be told what to do by the capitalist strong men. The type to have foot sex with teenagers and hang themselves in jail cells with the help of Prince Andrew and the CIA. 4 billion people have collaborated with the latest virus, sent by Gaia to show mankind how easy it is to cut emissions. Half of humanity laying low to squeeze the vinegar out of the piss of these codgers, and believe me, it’s working. This killer virus is terrifying shriveled up old Mike Bloomberg and equally shriveled up CIA. Nobody is relevant anymore! Not Don Trump, not Taylor Swift, not CBS news. Took a freaking microbe to do in days what millions of people could never accomplish, even with the Facebook® and Twitter® whine machine turned up full blast.
Now I read on the Internet media market that the NY Governor says the people of New York State will have to make up a 15 billion dollar deficit after he gets his trooper chopper back from temporary storage. Which means austerity to the forlorn. Austerity is a World Bank euphemism for “take out your own species at the knees”.
Half the human world putting pause on climate change. Northern Indians seeing the Himalayas for the first time in 50 years. Millions, billions of flying creatures looking down and about, “Where the hell are the people?”, they chirp, they buzz, they thank Gaia with their wings locked together in prayer. Half the human world on lockdown, taking away their everyday lives voluntarily because the real power of a teensy-tiny microbe has brought humanity to its knees.
Eminent domain is a policy of government expropriating private property from individuals for the public good. Several years ago, my home town confiscated the apple orchard from a three generation farm family to build a Walmart® and Barnes and Noble® book store. They paid the living farmer “market value” against his will, and the cash trade was not a fair one, as any apple will tell you.
Mike Bloomberg is a New York billionaire of the lowest class. Morally he is bankrupt. However, like Trump and Governor Cuomo, he is able to take power because the moral is anathema to the capitalist system. We easily imagine the mass brainwashing of North Koreans. Group think, which builds the strongest racism and xenophobia, assumes arrogantly its own oneupmanship. Americans would never dream that they are massively duped through brainwashing, just under a system with another name. The populace is trained to think that one simple man, Andrew Cuomo, can tell us how we must suffer in order for his power to remain.
Mike Bloomberg has investments, properties, and liquid wealth worth up to 70 billion dollars. He is the ninth richest person in the world. He is a New Yorker. He is a private individual. The public good is an erasure of a 15 billion dollar debt.
I have solved the debt crisis for New York. We (not Andrew Cuomo) take 15 billion dollars worth of Bloomberg assets and replace them with its equal in apples.
We’ll have our season without pies, but it will be more American than baseball or sucking up to the false power of greed, the latter which has become our new national pastime.
And if he doth protest?
We chop his loser head off and take the whole lot.
In the United States, the Revenue Act of 1861 established the first income tax (a flat one) to pay for the Civil War (3% on incomes above $800). It was revised to be more progressive with the Revenue Act of 1862, (5% on incomes above $10,000). Federal income tax expired in 1872 and would not be implemented again until 1894.
So how did the U.S. pay its army to terrorize and remove native tribes out west during the latter half of the 19th century? The Winchester Repeating Arms company wasn’t a powerful Washington lobby in its time, was it? And Dwight Eisenhower had not yet been born to warn about a Military Industrial Complex. Anyway, there was no income tax in the Treasury in order to raid the Treasury. So how did 100,000 soldiers get fed, clothed, and paid to raid villages and make tobacco pouches out of indigenous testicles? We know that the people’s income tax paid for My Lai and “Shock and Awe”, but who footed the bill for the Indian Wars—which individuals and/or institutions? I don’t think it was just tariffs and federal excise taxes.
This would be a good research project for an economic historian. He or she might discover some more dirt on Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, if that were possible.
Total war psychopath and genocide advocate, William Tecumseh Sherman, became General of the U.S. Army soon after the Civil War. He updated the Army Field manual and sent it to generals in the Western theater.
I have the original in my possession. Please go here for images and annotations.
“When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for public tranquility, the long and short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end.”
—Henry Thoreau from “Resistance to Civil Government”
The arrival of warm spring and the persistence of the hot virus has got me feeling more than ever the impotent revolutionary. Last night I walked along the lakeside with my wife for the thousandth time, but with a first time feeling of absolute freedom from being down so low, wound so tight, and shot like a bullet into the sky. The liberty is in the return fall, free of pent up aggression, no longer a threat. Political satori, if there is such a thing. Finally, after so many years of wasted words and worry, I see clearly that a collective goal of justice utopia will never be reached in this thoroughly corrupted State. Americans, myself included, have forgone the experiment of liberty for the efficiency of online delivery. Unfortunately, many think that our consumerism and the federal and state governmental systems go hand in hand. Pay your tax for an aircraft carrier and you can have many niceties under the sun, like scented Charmin® 3-ply toilet paper and the Bill of Rights. My neighbors are okay with the notion that some pimpled nineteen year old assassin can knock on every third Middle Eastern door and blow the face off an old man or grandmother. Some might complain or even protest, and with empty hope, can vote some stranger millionaire into power to fix those uncomfortable contradictions that regularly haunt sensitive people.
Unfortunately many of these gentle Americans retain the racism of the Founding Racists, and hold onto an 18th century Constitution of lofty words backed by the force of cash crop police overseeing three-fifths persons in a field. Today we are even less of a cut of that slave person pie. If myself or neighbor Joe are even one thirty-second persons, I’d be surprised. We are not free, not liberated. Many of you, especially the boys in $42,000 pick up trucks, are locked and loaded so tight, that a child’s “boo!” might be the last words that child ever utters.
For those who are still confused about words like “the State”, “freedom”, or “liberty”, let’s revisit the video from a bystander witnessing a policeman press his knee onto the neck of a man until dead. People went to the precinct to protest because this common exercise is rapidly burning off pounds of black people in our society. Police dressed in riot gear met the angry crowd of citizens and launched tear gas into their eyes and up their noses.
That the people did not press on in waves toward their armed servants, disarm and disband them in quick manner, and commit to a lifetime of private anarchy, provides another fine example to why I separated from society.
I urge any sane person to undo this government by releasing him or herself from it. Morality is dead and gone. Some may long to practice Dr. Frankenstein experiments on its return. But to no avail. We are licking ice cream, looking up at the sky for SpaceX, while standing in fresh blood pools from the slaughter of innocents. We allow police to press the necks of people until dead. America is done like a fork in the ass of Bobby's barbecue crap meat.
From Political Opponent, now a major motion picture in theaters this summer:
Not much to say beyond the title of the painting. Men (mostly men, rarely women) my age are holding the earth hostage with 20th century mass death technology. Not one of them is made of more virtue than I—Better bureaucrat, yes. Better fearer. Better mistruster. Better God or mother-hater. Better White supremacist. Better Chinese or Korean Supremacist. Better Indo-European, maybe even Dravidian supremacist—yes, of course. But never a “better” man than me. Any military that holds these in arsenal is more than coward—it is degenerate evil. Logic for this kind of destruction is insane. So humanoids in or out of government who tacitly set aside madness for status begin their climb from a much lower level than I, and I hope, you too. Maybe they are future denizens of hell, if the fiery eternity actually existed.
It truly is a world divided into us against them. Especially if “us” ever raised and loved a child. I tamed the phthalo wolf. I am better than all manufacturers and the combined militaries of nations that would serve this evil.
Potential mass annihilation is premeditating mass annihilation. People who are connected to these weapons need their noses forcefully pushed into their own Armageddon stink pile. Even our dear mother, uncle or son who collects a paycheck to perpetuate this madness, whether in R&D at Boeing®, or sweeping a broom at launchpad central. As a lowly painter I have become a higher human being than anyone who would allow a world to collect this much death power. There is a time to become arrogant in love and nurturing. I have arrived. I have more love for mankind than all nuclear nations combined.
And all I had to do to prove it was paint an imaginary green wolf.
Thanks for reading!
Ron