INDEPENDENCE DAY 2016

Tomorrow is the 240th anniversary of the declaration of American independence, an occasion celebrating the formal beginnings of what I (and many others) somewhat cynically call ‘The Great American Experiment’.

Unfortunately, there will be a lot of decompensatory craziness loosed on us tomorrow, perpetrated by those ‘blessed’ with a horrifically superficial and simplistic understanding of the terribly complex events and circumstances that led us to this national moment of fundamental decision, in the form of misplaced patriotic emoting (i.e. random public celebratory violence, drunken and/or substance-prompted ‘wilding’ and forest fires started through gross carelessness, etc.).

It is a great source of sadness to me that so many among us haven’t the least concept of exactly what American freedoms are, or what they represent in a world some 240 years removed from the circumstances that originally inspired the founding of our nation. Basic ignorance of those events is, so it would seem, the hallmark of the ‘average’ citizen, whose knowledge and concepts of American democracy derive principally from short-sighted, largely anti-intellectual populist interpretations of facts & events presented to them in movies and TV dramas. But in today’s atmosphere of attenuated awareness and sound-bite social media one can hardly expect more, since few have the time (or interest) to actually research, investigate and reflectively ponder historical events in a meaningful and productive manner.

Thus we find ourselves contending with extremists from both sides of a highly polarised and functionally defunct American political spectrum on the eve of our national birthday: the leftist liberal progressive ‘fascisti’ on one side (i.e. Hillary Clinton and her PC camp followers) and the archly conservative populist rightists (Donald Trump and his minions) on the other.

Viewed in the glaringly harsh (and rare enough in itself) light of impartial and objective analysis, ‘democracy’ is not necessarily a good thing, as Martha Stewart would put it (and an observation noted by many, not least among them being 30s journalist H.L Mencken), since it enables the majority of analytically dull and intellectually ungifted masses to determine what is best for the entire nation. That determination is today made by virtue of unimaginably expensive propaganda campaigns to sway the unthinking masses into accepting the partisan dictates of those with the most money (and consequently the most broad and widespread advertising campaign exhorting their views). But of course, the concept of American democracy was never intended to foster, organise, nourish, sustain and adjudicate the activities of a modern, 21st Century population comprised of easily influenced and highly susceptible people numbering in excess of about 320 million (as of July 2015). It was in fact conceived and promulgated for only about 2.5 millions (in 1776) only. This is a population roughly the size of modern Dubai!

Naturally, given the rural nature of American society in those days, as well as the total absence of mass media & communications which today absolutely control our day-to-day lives, an argument can be readily made to suggest that the very documentary underpinnings of our erstwhile democratic society are so totally out of date with modern era developments as to have absolutely no relevance to our present day concerns & problems whatsoever. That, of course, doesn’t keep bubble-gum patriots from maintaining that those documents and agreements of 140 years ago still absolutely delineate our every national action, activity and endeavor, personal or otherwise.

Consider a few facts. Back in 1776 our fledgling nation was virtually 100% a white, Anglo-Saxon derived culture of Northern European and British extraction. So called ‘Native Americans’ and Blacks were, if anything, fundamentally marginal to the nation’s way of regarding the world at that time. Blacks were viewed only as slave laborers whose sole utility lay in their ability to enable the American colonies to produce economically exploitable products (cotton, tobacco, etc.) with which to engage in trade. Native Americans were considered largely a nuisance, a discomforting ‘problem’ that irritatingly interfered with the plans of White Anglo Saxon land owners to expand their settlements, farms and holdings.

Further, ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, as expressed in the American constitution and related articles of confederation, was conceptionally intended to extend not to all people uniformly and without exception, but only to that same White Anglo Saxon ruling elite who penned them, that majority of elite Whites who framed the constitution that was comprised of highly intelligent, thoughtful, mostly well-educated individuals. They were, of course, thinkers and gentlemen scholars who didn’t waste more than half of their lives cluelessly following the capricious dictates of social whim (as do today’s younger populations).

‘Diversity’ was hardly even an afterthought in their minds back then and the ‘political correctness’ mindset that today plagues the American Left wouldn’t come along until well over 200 years later.

Contrast that given state of affairs with today’s America, a nation that is governed and controlled by wealthy business and powerful corporations, constantly by shamefully partisan media interests (again owned & controlled by the same unseen, wealthy corporate ‘owners’). To say that modern America ‘ain’t yer great, great grandfather’s nation anymore’ is hardly a thoughtfully astute observation, accordingly.

It is interesting to note that, despite our revolutionary origins and our supposed interest in the principles of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’, in 1776 the Black demographic fragment of our population (AKA: slaves) was about 21 % of the total, whereas as of 2010, the Black population demographic had dropped to about 12% of the total.

Given that backdrop, in today’s ‘modern progressive’ America, the liberal left has become so powerfully and blindly dedicated to its policy agenda of guilty White Liberal apologias (an outlook that it views as the only rightful posture for centuries of White racial bias against Blacks, and other ‘people of color’…to use that ridiculously euphemistic popular term) that leftist media (and the entertainment industries) are practically bending over backwards in a half-baked (if well-intended) effort to instill a sense of ‘feel-good’ equality and social inclusiveness in Blacks, through virtual over-representation in all spheres of public life.

While still only constituting a relatively small percentage of the total US population, Blacks and Black culture are everywhere being thrown in our faces on television, in advertisements, in sit-coms, in affirmative action programs and in just about every element of modern media other than in social media (which tends to be a relatively WAS activity). [Unconvinced? Just watch a few hours of PBS on your TV.] Frankly, the sight of all those friendly, beaming and professional ‘just folks’ Black actors being used to shill commercial products is just as disgusting to me as the Hollywood ‘blackface’ films of the 20s and 30s doubtless are to them! I am frankly surprised that they don’t have a more acute self-perception of how grievously they are being exploited by the commercial/industrial/business establishment to sell materialistic superfluities and commercial products owned & sold by powerful White commercial interests.

If a foreigner came to the United State and watched commercial broadcast (so-called ‘free’ broadcasting) television, they would have to think that Blacks form a disproportionate majority of people in America, based upon the frequency of these Black actors in said programming and in media-sponsored PR events. The fact that with one or two small exceptions, American media is literally owned lock, stock & barrel by left of center interests goes blissfully overlooked in today’s ‘dumb-think’ America. Further, the fact that modern commercial media and entertainment business are hugely influenced by Jewish interests is equally not recognised as helping to shape this lop-sided impression foreigners might get of where exactly America’s cultural heart lies.

In California we have a similar problem, as Hispanics continue to gradually take over the state (either through deliberate left-of-center efforts by companies to selectively hire Hispanics, or by means of the invasion of illegal immigrants who continue to flood into the country across our laughably porous borders). This particular trend is not strictly limited to California, either, as astute and highly educated authors such as Victor Davis Hanson (in his ‘MEXIFORNIA: A STATE OF BECOMING’) and Kirsten Powers (in her ‘THE SILENCING: HOW THE LEFT IS KILLING FREE SPEECH’) have noted in recent years. All across the nation, undocumented immigrants (from Mexico predominantly) are swelling that Hispanic proportion of residents in the USA rather substantially.

Very recently, I noted that on each of the three local media television broadcasting channels (‘free’ broadcasting…ABC, CBS, NBC), a striking majority of the principal anchors have Hispanic surnames. While they all appear to be equally competent and capable in their ability to present news stories, it seems pretty clear that hiring practices FAVOR those with some link to Mexican culture, whether direct or less obvious (as in 3rd & 4th generationals).

Naturally tits & ass quotients continue to be a prime determinant when it comes to who gets to have the juicy media anchor slots locally (and who am I to complain, since they are all uniformly lovely and I am a dyed-in-the wool male Chauvinist, after all!), but still…! And to add insult to injury, not one of them can properly pronounce common Spanish place-names (such as Vacaville, Amarillo, etc.).

In another sphere of American culture, professional sports (ugh! Think big money and greedy franchises that generate obscene billions in profits for owners and stockholders, promote a culture of gratuitous violence and indirectly foster a substance-abuse milieu), Blacks are not only disproportionately represented, they are, in an interesting turn-around, ironically ‘favored’ by the establishment in that we let them continue to get away with committing scandal and breeches of polite conduct in both sports and their personal lives…most often with little more than a slap on the wrist and a sort of ‘He’s been a bad, bad boy…but he brings millions of foaming at the mouth sports fans to the playing field, so…’ attitude by teams, owners and the pro sports leagues.

I suppose the point I am making here is that far from redressing the inarguable wrongs wreaked by previous generations over the past 200 years, today’s highly emotional and near fascistic liberal progressive left has gone to the opposite extreme. This helps explain why so many rather simplistic, highly reactive and unthoughtful (ignorant?) White people (who are obviously very right-of-center) today feel so unconsciously but palpably threatened in a nation that was in its founding state almost entirely a White cultural enclave at its onset.

Now, let me explain. What I am saying is not that ‘equality’, egalitarianism and many ‘progressive’ aspirations and ambitions are overtly wrong. Rather it seems to me that the new and powerful Democratic left (taken over almost entirely by the liberal left progressives that the Clintons so perfectly characterise) have horribly disfigured and perverted the erstwhile high-minded principles of ‘freedom and equality’ that were the founding precepts of our fledgling nation. As Orwell put it so deliciously in his book ‘Animal farm’, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…”

Don’t you find it curious that all we hear about today is ‘those poor Blacks’ and the ‘White racial bias against Black people’, when in fact you hardly ever hear anything at all about equally strong historic biases and prejudices Whites have maintained against Asians and Native Americans?

Tragically, in too many cases over the past 200 years, America has dealt with the Native American ‘problem’ by subjecting them first to extreme neglect and poverty (a status largely aided and abetted by alcoholism) and later to the consciousness distorting co-option of money schemes (generated through ‘Native American gambling franchises’).

For its part, the largest and most established Asian ‘minorities’ (Chinese & Japanese) have worked so hard at becoming homogenous ‘model minorities’ that you’d hardly know they existed if you didn‘t check the college admissions demographics. Eager to acculturate and embrace materialistic American ideals of wealth and status, most of them have developed an ethic of un-complaining, low-observably eager compliance in most things.

Not so, for the majority of Blacks and many Hispanics, who have become thoroughly spoiled by undemanding policies of our liberal governmental entitlements and favoritism to the point where they (Blacks & Hispanics) seemingly have ceased totally to understand the least thing about living up to personal responsibilities that are the traditional cost for citizens enjoying American style freedoms (to paraphrase that wretchedly popular catch-phrase, ‘Freedom isn’t without personal responsibility!’).

With a leftist liberal progressive media that can’t wet its collective pants fast enough to leap on every feigned example of ‘White racism’ (committed by police, who are HARDLY all White these days), and backed as they are by official corporate policies that are so terrified of litigation possibilities that they’ll reflexively regard ANY report of a justifiable act of homicide as ‘probable deliberate murder’, news reporting today is little more than a shameful joke perpetrated at the expense of a cowed White majority that has been conditioned to feel it is to blame for just about every untoward development in society these days.

But of course, Blacks don’t deserve all the blame for contributing little and demanding everything. And let’s not leave out that delightfully euphemized segment of society that terms itself the ‘LGBTQ’s. When the recent situation (and yes, it was deplorable, but so is ANY mass murder incident) in Orlando (practically on Mickey’s doorstep) occurred, it just couldn’t have been a more perfect set-up for the disproportionately outspoken & loud leftist liberal progressive whackos: those killed were not just predominantly Hispanic, but GAY, as well! Subsequent to that unhappy event we have now been subjected to wave after wave of sloppy and viciously outspoken sentiment, bewailing and bemoaning extreme bias against those who are homosexual (there are other terms used that include ‘fags’, ‘queers’ and ‘sexual deviants’, but I don’t need to point that out, do I?).

Do I have to point out that any rational, reflectively intelligent and broadly thoughtful individual finds outrages such as the mass murder of those people most reprehensible? Do I have to somehow atone for my own possibly unperceived prejudicial desires to ‘harm’ others of any persuasion? I don’t think so, since I have just as great a regard for all living creatures as any among you. However…big pause…I find I most resent having all this left-of-center histrionic bullshit repeatedly thrown in my face, day after day unceasingly. When it comes to those who call themselves ‘LBGTQ’, I personally have no strong feeling one way or the other about their sexual mores, practices & proclivities, and I do not deny them their due rights & privileges as fully entitled American citizens under the laws of the nation to conduct their personal affairs as they see fit. What I do object strenuously to is having that LBGTQ sentiment constantly flung at me, whether I like it or not. The term that again applies all so perfectly in this regard is ‘leftist liberal progressive fascism’…the ‘We’re right and you’re wrong, and we don’t want to discuss it further’ mantra that has literally brought the traditional American political party system to a dead and totally dysfunctional halt.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone may conduct their sexual affairs and act out their sexual desires any way they wish (within certain limits, of course: pederasty, overt violence and nonconsensual ANYTHING are clearly acts that are wrong and insupportable) as long as they have the decency and good manners to do it in privacy. But I am personally not interested in having these things forced upon my awareness involuntarily to even the slightest degree. It’s simply tasteless and a basic disregard for the proprieties of others (e.g. non-LBGTQ), as I see it.

Our present society is, sadly, so hopelessly f***ed up (in the conceptual awareness department) that we are apparently expected to take anything any three-brain-cell idiot says as gospel, including the popular ‘soft-think’ mentality that has created a hero cult across the nation (in which everyone who does more than wipe their own nose is immediately made out to be a hero of some sort or another). Such is the case with the nation’s uniformed soldiers, all of whom we are exhorted to regard as ‘American heroes’ simply because they foolishly let themselves be handed rifles and sent off to foreign lands to have their arms & legs blown off, with patriotic ‘attaboys’ echoing in the background as they depart.

Is that unduly harsh? I think not. I served, after all, in the Vietnam conflict back in the 60s, but I just about gag every time some frumpy, overfed, conservatively religious middle class house-wife comes up to me to ‘thank me for my service’. I don’t need that, nor do I expect or feel I deserve it. I did my duty, fulfilling one of the principal responsibilities expected of any American citizen and I was lucky to escape with all my arms & legs intact. Pure luck, that’s all, and no need to call me someone’s bloody ‘hero’. Perhaps if we rounded up all these sappy middle-class White Americans who lay the ‘Thank you for your service’ on so thickly and automatically these days and packed them off with a rifle to Iraq or Afghanistan for a few months, they’d have a slightly different perspective on whether America should be involved (usually uninvited) in warring on someone else’s national territory or not, since war is invariably a catastrophe, regardless of the ‘cause’ underlying it.

As I have said so many, many times before, I respect and honor the precepts that brought the ‘Great American Experiment’ into being, back in 1776, and like many others I also get a lump in my throat every time I see our flag fluttering in the breeze, or hear the magnificent strains of the Stars & Stripes Forever…but that doesn’t keep me from tending to agree with H. L. Mencken that democracy is NOT the ideal system for maintaining and ordering the affairs of men (read: governing humanity). Sooner or later all democracies fall away into the dust, as the next strong dictator heaves into view (e.g. Plato’s Republic, Rome and ancient Athenian democracy); it happened before and it can happen tomorrow, given the right circumstances and conditions.

Unfortunately, human intelligence and awareness are qualities as variable as the sands on a wind-swept beach. If we could rely on all individuals to be possessed of average or above-average intelligence, have access to suitable higher education and possess the willingness to shoulder personal responsibility, democracy MIGHT just prove ideal. Regrettably, the ‘stupid’ gene seems to have gone viral throughout America these days and there’s accordingly no vestige of hope that our democratic society (or at least that form of democracy that constitutes ‘American Capitalist Materialist Democracy’) will last more than a few hundred more years (if that long).

Famed director, actor & producer Mel Brooks put it smack on target when he titled his marvelously comedic film ‘LIFE STINKS’. Given the fact that in any democracy, sooner or later the lowest common denominator prevails, dragging everything down to the meanest level of reduced functional capability, we are…simply put…f***ed. [I’m not going to apologize for using words like that, since the French have been doing it (with style) for centuries! Sometimes words like that are the only suitable analog to employ.]

So, as the 240th anniversary of our nation approaches, I will continue to reflect on how great our nation COULD be, if everyone stopped expecting to be handed all the rights & privileges of American citizenship on a silver platter, bereft of any personal responsibility (responsibilities characterised by the behavior of the founders of our nation so many years ago, laying their lives and personal welfare on the line to secure the blessings of liberty in the face of oppression).

Mind you, if King George had been a bit more considerate and far less capricious in his dealings with the wealthy plantation owners in the colonies back in 1776, we might all be yelling ‘God Save the Queen’ today and waving little red union jacks! The motion presented before the Continental Congress to revolt on that fateful day was not a unanimous sentiment…in fact, it barely passed by a small margin. AND, they were far more concerned…make no mistake, regardless of all the sloppy patriotic horse exhaust we often refer to… about their personal fortunes than they were about the truly objective and egalitarian virtues of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’….

Finally, and I say this fully mindful of the fact that it was a bloody revolution that began the whole American adventure, there’s nothing that says that it couldn’t happen here again, if things continue to be as hopelessly dysfunctional as they presently appear to be…

Never forget that life and all human affairs tend to be cyclical, given the fact that human memory tends to be tragically short and superficial… Make of that what you shall. Meanwhile and despite that, I’ll join the nation in a toast to our 240s years of burdensome national travail and hope fondly for better things to come in our America of the future.