Fun with Charts & Graphs: Contextualization of U.S. National Taxation & Debt, c. 1920 thru Present [revised]

(Note: I've revised this post and added material about 4 hours after my initial posting - I want to be sure that the post is long enough to keep your attention..)

Happy Tax Day! Remember: The IRS Loves You, Baby.

Belated wishes, anyway. I meant to post this yesterday.

Still, in the spirit of the celebration (which properly speaking ought to be marked with an octave..) I present you all some pertinent charts, mostly from this excellent site: Visualizing Economics.

As always, you may click on the images to expand them.


First item, a chart of the top marginal rates of the three major sorts of U.S. Federal income taxes - personal income, corporate income and capital gains (tax on investment gains) taxes - since 1910:

This all is still only a snapshot, there's of course much more to the overall story, such as questions concerning the percentages of the lower brackets, the adjusted dollar benchmarks for all brackets, as well as issues such as tax shelters and deductions and other complications in the code cannot that be crammed into one or any graph.. So it's all more complex than this graph can represent.

The graph "Lower Taxes for the Highest Earners" below and this explanation of the chart from the Visualizing Economics website explicate those complications a bit:

Green line is the top marginal rate for married couples filing jointly (most years dividends were tax like ordinary income until 2003), orange is the top rate for income from capital gains. The top corporate tax rate is included for comparison. Your marginal tax rate is the rate you pay on the “last dollar” you earn; but when you view the taxes you paid as a percentage of your income, your effective tax rate is less than your marginal rate, especially after you take into account the deductions and exemptions, i.e. income that is not subject to any tax.

Over the years, changing the amount of taxes people pay was accomplished not just by changing rates but by changing the income limits of the tax brackets. Just looking at the top rates does not give the whole picture about who is paying taxes. Before the 1986 tax reform, the income tax had 15 brackets. In the 1930s, there were more than 50. The Wealth Tax Act of 1935, applied the top rate to income over $5 million and had only a single taxpayer: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. As the number of tax brackets decrease, the the top rate was applied to more people over the decades. Since 1987 the income tax brackets were combined so now more than a million people “qualify” for the top marginal rate. If you are interested here is the first 1040 form for 1913.


The main thing to note is how the top marginal personal and corporate income taxes were *much* higher in the booming 40's & 50's through to the Reagan "Supply Side" Tax Break Revolution 1981.

The top marginal bracket peaked in the mid 90's and then settled at 90% from the early 50's until 1964. Those were the tax rates during the most expansive economic boom in human history, in the richest country in the world.

Here are two charts that put us into an international context:

First, an international comparison of both corporate and personal income tax rates:

Notice that the United States has relatively high corporate taxes, and low personal income taxes in international terms.


Next, I give you a narrower international comparison of the percentage of the GDP (tax-to-GDP ratio) taken by governments in tax revenue:

Today, Denmark is the most taxed country in the world with a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 48.9%. While as you see here, the U.S. tax-to-GDP ratio hovers in the low to mid 20 percentiles.

Comparatively, amongst first world nations, the United States takes a very low percentage of GDP as taxes..


Interestingly, I found this graph which says that Danes report being the happiest people on earth, somewhat happier than Americans, despite making less and being taxed more:

They also report being equally happy, rich or poor, which is atypical.


Now, take that very first chart of American income tax history above, and compare it with these next two showing the national debt explosion over the same time period:

Some observations:

We now are at a similar level of debt in comparison to our GDP as we held during WW II.

Also, there seems to be some odd correlation between cutting taxes and our exploding debt.

Note 1981, which is the year of Reagan's tax reform. The debt explosion began there, briefly improves under Clinton and the economic boom of the late 90's, and then explodes again under Bush and then Obama.

Can anyone say "voodoo economics" or supply side catastrophe? Can you say trillions of dollars blown into the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan?

I knew you could.


Here's another interesting chart, showing a graph of the percentage of capital gains as a percentage of all national income against a chart of federal budget surpluses and deficits by year:

Note here how the late 90's surge in investment income (the tech bubble) corresponded with a series of Federal Budget surpluses under Clinton, but that the housing bubble surge under Bush did not.


This next chart gives a bit of perspective on the issue of tax brackets, lacking in the very first chart:

Notice how the income tax is still hugely regressive, in that the people making tens of millions (the upper 1%) pay less than 40% (and still can shelter much of that), while the lowest earners making tens of thousands still pay over ten percent..


Wikipedia has some interesting data on poverty in the United States, saying that it's cyclical in nature with roughly 13 to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some point within a 10-year time span. Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Approximately 43.6 (14.3%) million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million (13.2%) in 2008. Also note, and to put all of this into further context, that the poverty threshold in the United Sates in 2009 for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$21,756.

This last graph shows how that compares to poverty internationally:

Blue is good, yellow and orange not so much, red is very bad.


National estimates are based on population-weighted subgroup estimates from household surveys. Definitions of the poverty line may vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations. Thus, the numbers are not comparable among countries.

The common international poverty line has in the past been roughly US$1 a day. In 2008, the World Bank came out with a revised figure of US$1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity..

Try driving your SUV to the McDonald's drive trough on $1.25 a day. You could fill the tank maybe half full once a month in the few before the repo men come, and starve.. Or else walk, and then when you got there you'd be able to buy one item off the dollar menu.

Accentuate the positive, you'd burn off flab.

But that's just a fantasy. You make US$8.50 an hour at Walmart. And you can still get a plum job at the U.S. Post Office, so no worries! They start you at $19 an hour and the median pay is well above that! You'll get benefits and a Federal pension too!

So cheer up my fellow Americans! Don't be glum! Life isn't so bad! Not when you can afford to send a check for thousands of dollars to the IRS to do your part in helping bail out Wall Street and pay bankers their well deserved bonuses! And still own a car and shop at an American supermarket and eat out once in a while..


I close with a really funny set of maps. These demonstrate in yet another way how weird our politics are. I'm going to use the first graphic again later, because I have another post in mind that will discuss how warped people's voting is, in terms of how their ideological discourse and voting habits often diverge from their economic interests.

Click to enlarge and read it:

The two maps are a bit confusing. Look at the chart at the bottom of the graphic that gives the proportion of taxes paid to benefits received. Then compare it with this map, the electoral results for the last (2008) presidential election, red states McCain, Blue Obama:

See the joke? States that voted for McCain and the Republican line (lie) of smaller government and forever lower taxes almost all get a much greater return on their tax input than do most states state that voted for Obama and "socialism."

New Mexico, which gets the highest return per dollar sent (2 to 1) hung in the balance and I think had a recount, so it's a near exception. My home state Maine, is a clear exception - voted Obama, and get the cash for our vote. We also have two of the most powerful - moderate female Republican - senators in the country, Collins and Snowe, whom I bet account for much of that money in pork.. Most of the other exceptions who voted for Obama and get slightly over parity on their return for the tax dollar (e.g. Iowa, Pennsylvania, Missouri) are close calls electorally and have recently been skewing Republican.

I think the overall pattern can be explained by senators from small states getting the goods for their constituents, ideological blather aside. They have much more influence per taxpayer head than senators from large, and they use it. Texas you'll notice is also an outlier, but has 24 million people for its 2 senators. Maine has 1.25 million for its 2. This disparity in the senate favors states with small (and incidentally mostly rural - look at the federal farm bill for a graphic demonstration of this effecting federal cash flow) constituencies.. That's the raw brutal math.

This disparity amuses me immensely. The banker and bubba both howl against "socialism" and then take the taxpayer to the cleaners with a crowbar up side the head.


God bless America. Land that I love.


The American dream's still alive. Yippee kay yay, eh?



---

Essential Texts: Fydor Dostoevsky - The Grand Inquisitor, Chapter V of The Brothers Karamazov (1879)

Redacted, with some few emphases for clarity's sake. The paragraphing is a bit rough here, I highlight some of the fireworks..


Do you know, Alyosha -- don't laugh I made a poem about a year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me, I'll tell it to you."

"You wrote a poem?"

"Oh, no, I didn't write it," laughed Ivan, and I've never written two lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in prose and I remembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my first reader -- that is listener. Why should an author forego even one listener?" smiled Ivan. "Shall I tell it to you?"

"I am all attention." said Alyosha.

"My poem is called The Grand Inquisitor; it's a ridiculous thing, but I want to tell it to you..

Chapter 5

[...]

Bearing the Cross, in slavish dress, Weary and worn, the Heavenly King Our mother, Russia, came to bless, And through our land went wandering.

And that certainly was so, I assure you.

"And behold, He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like children. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God, and 'in the splendid auto da fe the wicked heretics were burnt.' Oh, of course, this was not the coming in which He will appear, according to His promise, at the end of time in all His heavenly glory, and which will be sudden 'as lightning flashing from east to west.' No, He visited His children only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once more among men in that human shape in which He walked among men for thirty-three years fifteen centuries ago. He came down to the 'hot pavements' of the southern town in which on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, ad majorem gloriam Dei, been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent auto da fe, in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, the most charming ladies of the court, and the whole population of Seville.

"He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognised Him. That might be one of the best passages in the poem. I mean, why they recognised Him. The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, they surround Him, they flock about Him, follow Him. He moves silently in their midst with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in His heart, and power shine from His eyes, and their radiance, shed on the people, stirs their hearts with responsive love. He holds out His hands to them, blesses them, and a healing virtue comes from contact with Him, even with His garments. An old man in the crowd, blind from childhood, cries out, 'O Lord, heal me and I shall see Thee!' and, as it were, scales fall from his eyes and the blind man sees Him. The crowd weeps and kisses the earth under His feet. Children throw flowers before Him, sing, and cry hosannah. 'It is He -- it is He!' repeat. 'It must be He, it can be no one but Him!' He stops at the steps of the Seville cathedral at the moment when the weeping mourners are bringing in a little open white coffin. In it lies a child of seven, the only daughter of a prominent citizen. The dead child lies hidden in flowers. 'He will raise your child,' the crowd shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to meet the coffin, looks perplexed, and frowns, but the mother of the dead child throws herself at His feet with a wail. 'If it is Thou, raise my child!' she cries, holding out her hands to Him. The procession halts, the coffin is laid on the steps at His feet. He looks with compassion, and His lips once more softly pronounce, 'Maiden, arise!' and the maiden arises. The little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling with wide-open wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had put in her hand.

"There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his gorgeous cardinal's robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Church- at this moment he is wearing his coarse, old, monk's cassock. At a distance behind him come his gloomy assistants and slaves and the 'holy guard.' He stops at the sight of the crowd and watches it from a distance. He sees everything; he sees them set the coffin down at His feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick grey brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He holds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead him away. The crowd instantly bows down to the earth, like one man, before the old Inquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on' The guards lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison -- in the ancient palace of the Holy, inquisition and shut him in it. The day passes and is followed by the dark, burning, 'breathless' night of Seville. The air is 'fragrant with laurel and lemon.' In the pitch darkness the iron door of the prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself comes in with a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at once behind him. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes into His face. At last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table and speaks.

"'Is it Thou? Thou?' but receiving no answer, he adds at once. 'Don't answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost thou know what will be to-morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have to-day kissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,' he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner."

"I don't quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?" Alyosha, who had been listening in silence, said with a smile. "Is it simply a wild fantasy, or a mistake on the part of the old man -- some impossible quid pro quo?"

"Take it as the last," said Ivan, laughing, "if you are so corrupted by modern realism and can't stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be a case of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true," he went on, laughing, "the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his set idea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner. It might, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of ninety, over-excited by the auto da fe of a hundred heretics the day before. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should speak out, that he should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for ninety years."

"And the Prisoner too is silent? Does He look at him and not say a word?"

"That's inevitable in any case," Ivan laughed again. "The old man has told Him He hasn't the right to add anything to what He has said of old. One may say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least. 'All has been given by Thee to the Pope,' they say, 'and all, therefore, is still in the Pope's hands, and there is no need for Thee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for the time, at least.' That's how they speak and write too- the Jesuits, at any rate. I have read it myself in the works of their theologians. 'Hast Thou the right to reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world from which Thou hast come?' my old man asks Him, and answers the question for Him. 'No, Thou hast not; that Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old, and mayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest anew will encroach on men's freedom of faith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. Didst Thou not often say then, "I will make you free"? But now Thou hast seen these "free" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. 'Yes, we've paid dearly for it,' he goes on, looking sternly at Him, 'but at last we have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it's over for good? Thou lookest meekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst? Was this Thy freedom?'"

"I don't understand again." Alyosha broke in. "Is he ironical, is he jesting?"

"Not a bit of it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy. 'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast warned,' he says to Him. 'Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men might be made happy. But, fortunately, departing Thou didst hand on the work to us. Thou hast promised, Thou hast established by Thy word, Thou hast given to us the right to bind and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou canst not think of taking it away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder us?'"

"And what's the meaning of 'no lack of admonitions and warnings'?" asked Alyosha.

"Why, that's the chief part of what the old man must say.

"'The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence,' the old man goes on, great spirit talked with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told in the books that he "tempted" Thee. Is that so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee in three questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in the books is called "the temptation"? And yet if there has ever been on earth a real stupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument that those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly from the books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them anew, and to do so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth -- rulers, chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets -- and had set them the task to invent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but express in three words, three human phrases, the whole future history of the world and of humanity -- dost Thou believe that all the wisdom of the earth united could have invented anything in depth and force equal to the three questions which were actually put to Thee then by the wise and mighty spirit in the wilderness? From those questions alone, from the miracle of their statement, we can see that we have here to do not with the fleeting human intelligence, but with the absolute and eternal. For in those three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature. At the time it could not be so clear, since the future was unknown; but now that fifteen hundred years have passed, we see that everything in those three questions was so justly divined and foretold, and has been so truly fulfilled, that nothing can be added to them or taken from them.

"Judge Thyself who was right -- Thou or he who questioned Thee then? Remember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this: "Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread -- for nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread." But Thou wouldst not deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that man lives not by bread alone. But dost Thou know that for the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will strive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, "Who can compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!" Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? "Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!" that's what they'll write on the banner, which they will raise against Thee, and with which they will destroy Thy temple. Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building; the terrible tower of Babel will be built again, and though, like the one of old, it will not be finished, yet Thou mightest have prevented that new tower and have cut short the sufferings of men for a thousand years; for they will come back to us after a thousand years of agony with their tower. They will seek us again, hidden underground in the catacombs, for we shall be again persecuted and tortured. They will find us and cry to us, "Feed us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven't given it!" And then we shall finish building their tower, for he finishes the building who feeds them. And we alone shall feed them in Thy name, declaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man? And if for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall follow Thee, what is to become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for the tens of thousands of the great and strong, while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee, must exist only for the sake of the great and strong? No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but in the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them- so awful it will seem to them to be free. But we shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name. We shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us again. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie.

"'This is the significance of the first question in the wilderness, and this is what Thou hast rejected for the sake of that freedom which Thou hast exalted above everything. Yet in this question lies hid the great secret of this world. Choosing "bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity -- to find someone to worship. So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!" And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not but have known, this fundamental secret of human nature, but Thou didst reject the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down to Thee alone -- the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected it for the sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven. Behold what Thou didst further. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if someone else gains possession of his conscience -- Oh! then he will cast away Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience. In that Thou wast right. For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance. That is true. But what happened? Instead of taking men's freedom from them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. And behold, instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men, acting as though Thou didst not love them at all- Thou who didst come to give Thy life for them! Instead of taking possession of men's freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.

"'So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what was offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness those forces are miracle, mystery and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing so. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Thee, "If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art the Son of God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father." But Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course, Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak, unruly race of men, are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in making one movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have lost all Thy faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against that earth which Thou didst come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted Thee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And couldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonising spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, "Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed, look upon them. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou didst? By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him -- Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter. He is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now rebelling against our power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride of a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring out the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will cost them dear. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organise a universal state. There have been many great nations with great histories, but the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union. The great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too were but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course, with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written, "Mystery." But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee. Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!"

"'Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle. They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while since they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to blame for their not knowing it?-speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it astray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will submit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child's game, with children's songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient -- and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and say: "Judge us if Thou canst and darest." Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting "to make up the number." But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.'"*

* I have spoken.

Ivan stopped. He was carried away as he talked, and spoke with excitement; when he had finished, he suddenly smiled.

Alyosha had listened in silence; towards the end he was greatly moved and seemed several times on the point of interrupting, but restrained himself. Now his words came with a rush.

"But... that's absurd!" he cried, flushing. "Your poem is in praise of Jesus, not in blame of Him -- as you meant it to be. And who will believe you about freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That's not the idea of it in the Orthodox Church.... That's Rome, and not even the whole of Rome, it's false-those are the worst of the Catholics the Inquisitors, the Jesuits!... And there could not be such a fantastic creature as your Inquisitor. What are these sins of mankind they take on themselves? Who are these keepers of the mystery who have taken some curse upon themselves for the happiness of mankind? When have they been seen? We know the Jesuits, they are spoken ill of, but surely they are not what you describe? They are not that at all, not at all.... They are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor... that's their ideal, but there's no sort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it.... It's simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination-something like a universal serfdom with them as masters-that's all they stand for. They don't even believe in God perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a mere fantasy."

"Stay, stay," laughed Ivan. "how hot you are! A fantasy you say, let it be so! Of course it's a fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really think that the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is actually nothing but the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that Father Paissy's teaching?"

"No, no, on the contrary, Father Paissy did once say something rather the same as you... but of course it's not the same, not a bit the same," Alyosha hastily corrected himself.

"A precious admission, in spite of your 'not a bit the same.' I ask you why your Jesuits and Inquisitors have united simply for vile material gain? Why can there not be among them one martyr oppressed by great sorrow and loving humanity? You see, only suppose that there was one such man among all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain-if there's only one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in the desert and made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make himself free and perfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it is no great moral blessedness to attain perfection and freedom, if at the same time one gains the conviction that millions of God's creatures have been created as a mockery, that they will never be capable of using their freedom, that these poor rebels can never turn into giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist dreamt his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he turned back and joined -- the clever people. Surely that could have happened?"

"Joined whom, what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's his secret!"

"What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It's perfectly true, it's true that that's the whole secret, but isn't that suffering, at least for a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could not shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly, 'incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.' And so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is in the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had so fervently believed all his life long. Is not that tragic? And if only one such stood at the head of the whole army 'filled with the lust of power only for the sake of filthy gain' -- would not one such be enough to make a tragedy? More than that, one such standing at the head is enough to create the actual leading idea of the Roman Church with all its armies and Jesuits, its highest idea. I tell you frankly that I firmly believe that there has always been such a man among those who stood at the head of the movement. Who knows, there may have been some such even among the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of that accursed old man who loves mankind so obstinately in his own way, is to be found even now in a whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance but by agreement, as a secret league formed long ago for the guarding of the mystery, to guard it from the weak and the unhappy, so as to make them happy. No doubt it is so, and so it must be indeed. I fancy that even among the Masons there's something of the same mystery at the bottom, and that that's why the Catholics so detest the Masons as their rivals breaking up the unity of the idea, while it is so essential that there should be one flock and one shepherd.... But from the way I defend my idea I might be an author impatient of your criticism. Enough of it."

"You are perhaps a Mason yourself!" broke suddenly from Alyosha. "You don't believe in God," he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully. He fancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. "How does your poem end?" he asked, suddenly looking down. "Or was it the end?"

"I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come no more... come not at all, never, never!' And he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away."

"And the old man?"

"The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea."

"And you with him, you too?" cried Alyosha, mournfully.

Ivan laughed.

"Why, it's all nonsense, Alyosha. It's only a senseless poem of a senseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you take it so seriously? Surely you don't suppose I am going straight off to the Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord, it's no business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to thirty, and then... dash the cup to the ground!"

"But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love them?" Alyosha cried sorrowfully. "With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you? No, that's just what you are going away for, to join them... if not, you will kill yourself, you can't endure it!"

"There is a strength to endure everything," Ivan said with a cold smile.

"The strength of the Karamazovs -- the strength of the Karamazov baseness."

"To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?"

"Possibly even that... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape it, and then-"

"How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That's impossible with your ideas."

"In the Karamazov way, again." "'Everything is lawful,' you mean?

Everything is lawful, is that it?"

Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.

"Ah, you've caught up yesterday's phrase, which so offended Muisov -- and which Dmitri pounced upon so naively and paraphrased!" he smiled queerly. "Yes, if you like, 'everything is lawful' since the word has been said, I won't deny it. And Mitya's version isn't bad."

Alyosha looked at him in silence.

"I thought that going away from here I have you at least," Ivan said suddenly, with unexpected feeling; "but now I see that there is no place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, 'all is lawful,' I won't renounce -- will you renounce me for that, yes?"

Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips..




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The Masons & Me: Moloch, Mammon & American Gnostic Messianism

Arturo Vasquez, whose blog I admire, yesterday posted this video:



Commenting that he "found this guy’s approach oddly refreshing, in a masochistic sort of way. Hey, other people are thinking it, this guy just says it's allowed.."


I responded in the comments. I share the thread as is now stands, because I want to broach these themes sooner than later. I've been being chary, uncertain of how to begin. There's a lot to be said, and I want to say it as level and eloquently as I can.


No more hesitation, then. I'm just going to jump:


[The comments are ordered by time-stamp over the last 18 or so hours. The timestamps on Arturo's blog are 3 hours behind EST, so my initial post was 11 pm/2300 last night, and my last about a half hour ago, about 5pm/1700 EST. I've made a few small corrections here to mine and my interlocutors' prose. Click through to visit Arturo's site if you want to follow the discussion, assuming it continues..]



Charles Curtis (02:07:40) :

“I was head of the CIA’s Latin American Bureau and I had major role in overthrowing what’s his name.” British interviewer dude: “Salvadore Allende? That’s his name.”

Love it. God Bless America.

Just like I love it when the liberal (to clarify, nearly all of us are liberals, the libertarian capitalist is the arch-liberal) runs up against the scandalous reality that the state does in fact sacralize violence. That’s its entire raison d’etre. All the sanctimonious handwringing over abortion, war, capital punishment – all of it is effete decadent childishness. The Catholic Church has never shrunk from that reality, and that’s one of the reasons I am and will remain a Catholic. God has allowed it, it is thus. And he will finally judge babylon, not us.

Christ said give unto Ceasar, and then went willingly to Jerusalem to face judgment by the Sanhedrin, Herod and the Emperor’s duly appointed governor. Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas – not to mention our pope and all the current hierarchy, the Senhedrin’s heirs in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple cult – have all approved his act.

Christ’s submission in this, and rejection of satan’s offer of power after his fast, only highlight the fact that the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.

Tomas de Torquemada, pray for us.

Deus vult. QED.

--

James O'Malley (04:31:12) :

“the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.”

IMHO, that’s a pretty creepy (as well as false) statement. Even the Roman Catechism’s statement on capital punishment doesn’t say the government can kill whomever it pleases.

--

Charles Curtis (04:44:17) :

Hyperbolic excess. I’m amusing myself. Arturo always provokes me. Whatever I say is his fault.

It’s like when Cardinal Newman said it would be better for the whole universe to be destroyed than the least venial sin committed. Or when Luther said sin boldly.

Who’s right? God is. He let all this happen, and governments do indeed kill who they will. The bishops say abortion is homicide. Then we drop bombs on little brown people, salute the flag of a masonic republic, assassinate foreign heads of state, and then go back to our coffee.

It’s funny, is all I’m saying. Rock on.

--

The Singular Observer (20:06:13) :

Context:

Luther’s famous “sin boldly” quote is rarely given within context. The context was in a letter to Melanchthon, who was “hand wringing” over the question whether he’d be doing the wrong thing if he got married. So Luther advised him to “sin boldly”, i.e. make a decision and do it, and stop obsessing if it is sinful or not. Melanchthon was worried over the vow-breaking that marriage would entail.

Just thought I’d mention it.
Here’s the full quote:
“If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says [2 Pet 3:13], we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.

--

Charles Curtis (20:28:25) :

Which is to say that Luther resorted to hyperbole, to make a point.

Just as what I wrote is ad absurdum, from a rational point of view. Even if the gist of what Christ did is pretty clear. What he said was clear, too: “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He also uses a lot of Semitic hyperbole, to get people’s attention. That’s one of the reasons scripture is so challenging, and we need tradition’s context to understand it.

I’ll put my own take unambiguously: we tend to warp our pieties together, and turn patriotism into a religion. “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” and all that nonsense. The god on the dollar bill is not Jesus. It’s mammon, and that’s anti-christ. I’m sick of this imbecilic self-satisfied tribalism, especially when it leads to these howling inconsistent standards when it comes to killing. 60 years ago people demonized Jews, even normal Catholics and Americans. Now, we’re doing it to Muslims, and that’s leading us to act in hideous ways. Why don’t we put images of all the children in Afghanistan and Iraq that we’ve blown to viscera up next to those obscene photos of abortion effluent? Why not? I’ll tell you: Because those shredded children condemn us all. Everyone one. Not just the fags and abortionists.

You howl when Obama speaks at Notre Dame, but stay silent when that masonic clown (“Jesus is my favorite philosopher”) Bush pretends to be “one of us” and “pro-life?” I’m nauseous. What a joke.

One of the reasons I love Arturo, is that all his intellectual pretensions aside, he knows how to write good satire, and for that I thank him. Thus spake Vasquez. Skewer away, Arturo. Keep slapping us in our bovine mugs.

Christ said something about reading the signs of the times. Feel the way the wind is blowing? Notice how the gnostics have overrun the culture, and even our bishops have fallen oddly silent?

Arturo isn’t half scathing enough.



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The American Cargo Cult: The Preordained March of the Elect Nation & Prosperity Gospel

No worries. John Frum shall return, with yet more cargo.




"Cargo cult" is an anthropologists' coinage of the early 1950s, describing South Pacific religious beliefs that place extraordinary faith in mysteriously arriving commodities. The mid-century anthropologists who first documented cargo cults date their beginnings prior to WWII, meaning that by the early 1900s these cults were touting a doctrine that bizarrely foresaw events of the 1940s. Scholarship agrees that the chronology is correct—cargo predictions predated the arrival of the American military—but it offers no logical explanation for the coincidental timing. What is clear is that when the military arrived, cargo cult predictions were literally realized. This made fertile ground for wildly successful sects; it also thrust America into the heart of cult dogma. Postwar religious practices were largely based on the activities of the US military. Cultists built loading docks according to the logic that cargo would arrive when docks were built, just as it apparently had during the American occupation. Believers routinely had visions of "Jake Navy," the corporate logo from an American brand of cigarettes; captains and lieutenants were appointed and exercised together daily. Village layouts were reorganized and genders segregated; airstrips, roads, and barrack-like housing were constructed; observances ranging from English lessons to self-imposed sexual continence were instituted—all intended to bring about the return of American wealth by simulating the conditions of an American military base.

The best known of the archipelago cults was the John Frum movement, centered on an island called Tanna (from which the Americans culled laborers for Efate). This faction followed a prophet named John Frum, who may or may not have been an actual person; a series of men seem to have assumed his guise as leader. Dressed in a red jacket with brass buttons, a tall black hat, and veil, Frum urged a return to kastom, the traditional ways of the Tannese. He advocated communal living and kava drinking, and rejected the well-established authority of the English Presbyterian missionaries. For a time in the late 1940s, a man named Isaac served as Frum's mouthpiece, prophesying with a magic bag of stones; at other times, Frum took on characteristics of the Biblical Noah. On Espírito Santo, the corollary to Tanna's Frummists were the Santo Naked Cult, which arose in the early 1920s under the command of a man named Runovoro. The early phase of the Naked movement culminated in the murder of a British planter in 1923; six cult leaders were executed. Runovoro wrote in a secret language, predicted that savior ancestors "would arrive after a Deluge in a great white ship loaded with Cargo," and prophesied the end of white Europeans on the island. Cultists on Vanuatu began to talk of a "King of America" named Rusefel (Roosevelt) who was alternately John Frum's father, brother, or Frum himself. In 1941, John Frum claimed that "he would send his son to America to bring back the King"; months later, American fleets began arriving en masse on Vanuatu.

Evolving as creative hybrids of anti-colonial sentiment, American xenophilia, reclaimed tribal traditions, and traces of Presbyterianism, the cults rapidly gained a popularity that predictably concerned the Condominium. By their order, American generals publicly declared that they were not gods incarnate. Religious connections persisted, however, and the Condominium responded with forcible suppression; in 1943, two men were executed for impersonating John Frum. (In the following fifteen years, 140 more men were arrested for their religious activity.) Part of the government's concern arose from the fact that the American presence was destabilizing colonial hierarchies of race. The ni-Vanuatu were both terrified and entranced by African-American troops stationed on the islands and the appearance, at least, of racial equality. A pre-war cult goal—the expulsion of all Caucasians—was revised, and the colors black and white gained symbolic importance. The sons of John Frum, expected soon, were suddenly described as half white and half black; Frum commanded that all clothing and decoration on the island be white or black, instead of the traditional red and yellow. This particular understanding of color as a marker of Americanness was no doubt strengthened by the dozens of black and white road signs, "exactly like the familiar US highway markers of the homeland, but neatly labeled 'Efate, U.S. No. 1.," that homesick American boys had erected around the island.

In the same vein, all kinds of material objects and symbols of the American presence—from red wood crosses modeled on the Red Cross to marine hats—were adopted as religious paraphernalia, invested with meaning that seemed strangely independent of, yet intimately connected to, their original purposes. At sunup and sundown, cult members raised and lowered an American flag, salvaged from a military dump, and assigned a color guard to watch over it during the day. Lamont Lindstrom observed that:

US military uniforms and insignia ... are prized possessions. A few men were lucky enough to secretly retain the numbered dog tags issued to them during tours of labor for the US military. Others still recall the songs they learned from American servicemen and are pleased to sing creditable rendering of "God Bless America" and "The Marine's Hymn." ... Every 15 February, a military drill team marches with bamboo rifles and the logo USA painted in red across the marcher's chests and backs. The team is commanded by a sergeant, "with stripes," who calls out still recognizable commands (which are, however, unintelligible to the Tannese) such as "to the right!"

To the Western observer, cult doctrine and practice appears shockingly Amero-centric. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that America was not a static object of cult worship. "America," and all things American, were put to use as vehicles for challenging colonial authority. Emulating military procedures, adopting military lingo, and folding America into local religious history had the psychological effect of aligning the disenfranchised ni-Vanuatu with the all-powerful Americans; performance of American military ritual invoked power by mimicking the powerful.

The departure of troops reified faith in American salvation insofar as it meshed well with the doctrine of Christ's second coming as taught by the missionaries. Cultists immediately began to prepare for the Americans' return. Frum believers cleared a plateau on northern Tanna for an airstrip that would receive John Frum's American sons, just like the airstrip that had been built a year earlier on Efate. The airstrip was also expected to receive American goods, and Frum said that people who did not help to build would be bombed by planes. About the same time, members of the Naked cult built a dock on Santo in anticipation of American cargo, and cleared roads to transport it to the villages.

Not only did cultists prepare for the arrival of new cargo, however; they also began to actively demolish what they had. Ni-Vanuatu started collectively dumping their British currency in the water, and raids on colonially owned trade stores were organized to gather extra currency to throw away. Not only money was destroyed, but livestock and indigenous crafts. Since so many cult practices mimicked American behavior, one wonders if the dumping wasn't also a reenactment of witnessed events, such as the strange "construction" of Million Dollar Point. The spectacular dump has never been explicitly linked to cult activity, but the connection seems plausible; the ni-Vanuatu regarded the American military's conspicuous excess as a direct function of their power. Again, in the absence of oral histories from Vanuatu itself, other regional testimony may be instructive. An Enewetak chief of the Marshall Islands noted that the gifts the islanders gave to American GIs were later seen on the beach, discarded, and he explained why: "All kinds [of things], they throw out, for they add nothing. Such is their strength, they do not need them." Quite likely, the ni-Vanuatu aimed to evoke this godlike strength by casting their things away. So outside the perimeters of recognizable human activity, the military's expenditure was deemed the behavior of divinities: large-scale destruction of usable goods and a cavalier attitude toward disposability were inscribed in cargo cult religious practice. Million Dollar Point thus unfolds as a prescient symbol functioning in two directions: showcasing American capitalism's disposal imperative, it also speaks to the immaterial dimensions of material caught in cross-cultural exchange. One country's waste betokens another's independence.



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Odds, Ends, A Few Personal Notes.. And Lastly, An Invitation.

When I was down in Florida a couple weeks ago, I had no less than four people (3 family members, 1 friend) go "so what happened to your blog? I was enjoying that, and it just suddenly stopped!" I mentioned Edith (LPMF) to my friend in an aside (J-dawg, who I know for sure was reading the last blog at least occasionally, because he posted comments there, and emailed me about things I'd written a dozen or more times) and he was like "Edith? Who's Edith?"

So, that's how much you pay attention to me, now? I thought I'd spilled my guts in technicolor there, all viscose steamy and pink, for your collective amusement, for titillation of the teeming anonymous masses? And now it seems even my friends and family weren't paying attention when I cut my own heart out and threw it throbbing onto the stage..

Ah. Well. I was amused, and told them all that I had told them very clearly on the last blog what I was going to do, and that they'd not been paying attention (Ye gods! How could they not be utterly fascinated and obsessed with me?) and may not know how to set up an RSS feed.. But that I would set them straight only if they begged me..

Not paying attention, not a big deal.

The fact that I apparently lost half my regular readership when I started this new project, and am getting no where near the number of strangers that I did at the old one (where my most popular posts had been hit thousands of times) is a good thing.

I go through occasional spats of self doubt about blogging at all, actually, wondering if it's not foolish and exhibitionist to be doing this, a species of self-absorption run amuck, where I expose things best left private to the uncaring world.. Until the world becomes interested, and then perhaps in a way that may haunt me..

But I've basically put all that aside. I'm going to continue writing here, whether anyone reads it or not. I have several dozen ideas that I want to either write out, or express in other (visual) media. There will be photo essays and short documentaries that I am am going to film. This summer, J-dawg and I are going to cut some tracks and record a bunch of songs, and I think I may post some of them (that will be lyrically pertinent to themes I'm developing on the blog) here.

It'll be a folk country punk project, which I'm sure is going amuse the two of us if nobody else.. The production values will at least be marginally better than anything we've done (jammin' at a canopied picnic table out behind the officer's club at Goodfellow half in the bag or whatever have you) before..

I need to put some things down for my own sake, and they may be things that are interesting or helpful to other people.. Maybe. I'm going to write my truth, if this prejudices anyone against me, so be it.

The last couple weeks since I returned to Vermont have clarified a whole string of things:

First, I belong here. This is my home. (je resterai ici..) I am probably going to buy or perhaps build a house here. I'm feeling my way forward slowly on this, and am going to come to a final decision this summer. I'm thinking that somewhere within 30 minutes of downtown Burlington and 30 minutes from Smuggler's Notch, Bulton Valley and Stowe. There will ideally (and I will realize my vision) be a beer and root cellar, a large garden and orchard (I'm planting all sorts of things), a study and library, probably two bedrooms, a loft, a finished basement with bunks for at least eight, and probably a kennel and apiary, both these last sooner than later.. If I decide to do this, and I am more or less now decided, I aim to either buy in the coming winter or following spring, or start building next April and May.

Then, I am going to be much more deliberative, and do all the other things I've meant and am meant to do..

(Voca me cum benedictus, Domine. Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritum quasi cinis, gere curam mei finis..)


I made a list when I was in 5th grade of all the things I would do. I would lay in bed at night, saying my prayers dreaming about it all, and thinking about all those things. I'm now through about 2/3's of that list, as well as a good third to half way through the four to six score allotted a life, and a large percentage of the remainder (climbing Kilimanjaro, being a photographer for National Geographic, stuff like that) is now obsolete. I've begun a renewed list. Some of the new goals are more existential than discrete acts, and quite a few of them are extrapolations of goals on my old list.

I decided today to finally do something I've been thinking about for two decades: this summer I am going to make what I call the "Thoreau Trip."


I spent four summers working for the Boy Scouts as a Matagamon high adventure guide. We would take crews of 6 to 12 boys and adults on canoeing trips on the Penobscot and St. John's watersheds in Northern Maine. While I was doing this, I read and learnt as much as I could about the history (European and Native American), economy, and ecology of the area. One of the books I read was Henry David Thoreau's classic, The Maine Woods.


In 1857 Thoreau came to Maine.

He took the train to Greenville, and accompanied by an Indian guide named Joe Attean (Attean being the name of one of my hometown Jackman's two main lakes) canoed up Moosehead Lake, portaged onto the upper West Branch, canoed down and across the top of Chesuncook to Umbazooksas.

There, he portaged again to Mud Pond (and amazing an very aptly named place, by the way) which is linked by a stream to Chamberlain Lake, which along with its southern neighbor Telos (Greek for "the end" - those old Mainer lumberjacks were not illiterate, nor were the Algonquin Wabanaki tribes - the Abanaki, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Penobscot Indians - whose language marks so many of the place names of Maine and the rest of New England - they could not write and read, but they had a rich symbolic and narrative culture that is still partially expressed in the place names, for those who learn their poetry..) Lake is the headwaters of the Allagash, which is a tributary of the Saint John River.

At this point he had a choice. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand. He could have either paddled north up the Allagash to the Saint John's and out to the sea at the city of Saint John in Nova Scotia.

Or, he could do what he did. Turn south, and canoe to Webster Dam, and then south to Bangor.

Now, Webster Dam and the stream that flows south from it is not a natural waterway. You'd never know looking at it today, but the stream is in fact a canal cut by the lumberjacks back in the early 19th century to take the lumber they cut off the Allagash south by river drive to Bangor, then the lumber capital of the whole world.

It joins - and this is a beautiful and amazing thing - the two watersheds, making possible to travel by canoe from Greenville to Bangor and then to the sea (something human beings have been doing for 10,000 or more years) making it much, much easier than ever before those crazy Europeans showed up and blasted and dug us all a hole in the rock that divided the Saint John from the East Branch of the Penobscot..

The Kennebec is the major watershed of southern Maine (flowing from headwaters just south of Jackman, west toward Greenville, then south to Skowhegan, Waterville, Augusta and the Sea)..

The Penobscot is a lover reaching in from the Gulf of Maine embracing the entire center of the state. She flows up from Belfast to Bangor, up to Medway then to Millinocket. There were the mills. The river splits there into two arms around Khatadin (kha ta ande "the greatest mountain" leaping a mile high stretching into the sky at the heart of my state) - the East and West branches.

The Allagash wells up from between them, and like the Nile or Yukon flows oddly and seraphically north.

This last map lacks the Allagash. Imagine it running due north from Chamberlain.


There are many mysteries in those woods.

One that I think is very charming is that two of the three chief head lakes of the Allagash are named Chamberlain and Churchill, this a hundred years or more before the two prime ministers who led the British Empire during World War II.

I'm a myth making, homo mythologicus sumus..

Another is that I lost a friend there at Mid Webster, sat by his corpse there in the night, leaving my scapular on his chest with the dawn.

(it is not the wilderness that howls, but the heart and imagination of man..)


I, small and silly though I be, will haunt them myself when I've gone.

(Libera nos de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas Tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum. Sed signifer sanctus Michael repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam. Quam olim Abrahae promisisti et semini ejus..)


This afternoon on the mountain, I knew that I have to go back. I have to finally paddle it all for the first time entire, yet again.


So I called Kenny this evening and told him.


(the language of friendship is not in words but in meanings..)


I'll do it alone if I have to, but I'd rather do it with friends.


And now I tell you. This is the deal: if you want to come, we should begin the very end of June into the first week and half of July after the spring flood subsides yet while the rivers are still flush. Ten days, Greenville to Grindstone or Medway.


The precise details will be worked out over a campfire on the Bowtrip with Kenny over Memorial Day weekend.


There. Do with that what you will.



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Hillbilly Apocalypse: Us Countryfolk Can Survive.

Ol' Bocephus, he ain't worried 'bout that Rapture leavin' him 'hind.

Got no worries. Nossir..




The preacher man says its the end of time,
And the Mississippi River she's a goin' dry..
The interest is up and the stock market's down,
And you only get mugged if you go downtown..

I live back in the woods you see,
My woman, the kids, the dogs and me.
I got a shotgun, rifle and a 4-wheel drive,
And a country boy can survive.
Country folks can survive.

I can plow a field all day long,
I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn.
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too,
Ain't too many things these ol' boys can't do.
We grow good ol' tomatoes and homemade wine,
And a country boy can survive.
Country folks can survive.

Because you can't starve us out,
And you can't makes us run,
'Cause one-of- 'em old boys'll raise an ol' shotgun.
And we say grace and we say ma'am,
And if you ain't into that we don't give a damn.

We came from the West Virginia coalmines
And the Rocky Mountains and the western skies..
And we can skin a buck, we can run a trot-line,
And a country boy can survive.
Country folks can survive.

I had a good friend in New York City,
He never called me by my name, just "hillbilly."
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land,
And his taught him to be a businessman.
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights,
And I'd send him some homemade wine.

But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife,
For 43 dollars my friend lost his life.
I'd love to spit some beechnut in that dude's eyes,
And shoot him with my old .45,
'Cause a country boy can survive.
Country folks can survive.

'Cause you can't starve us out and you can't make us run,
'Cause one-of- 'em old boys'll raise an ol' shotgun.
And we say grace and we say ma'am,
And if you ain't into that we don't give a damn.

We're from North California and south Alabam',
And little towns all across this land.
And we can skin a buck, we can run a trot-line,
And a country boy can survive.
Country folks can survive..



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Three Choice Clips on Libya

This clip from a few weeks ago, struck me as interesting and amusing. It shows some books discovered in Qadaffi's rooms at a palace captured by rebels. It seems old wacky Muammar has a thing for the occult:



From right as the camera pans, there is a copy of the Talmud, a text on the Kabbala, a book entitled "Alliance of Satan." Second upper row, from left there is a book on the number 23 in Jewish esoteric tradition, another Kabbalistic text (I think) whose title I can't be bothered to translate, and lastly a book on spirits and ghosts.


Then, I offer you all this beautiful tidbit: here a former CIA analyst named Micheal Scheuer calls a spade a spade and throws the feral fembot newsdroids at CNN into a hideous tizzy:



Mr. Scheuer: "Both parties love to intervene in other peoples' business where there are no U.S. interests at stake and spend huge amounts of money at a time we are nearly bankrupt. That doesn't seem to me to be a wise practice of American statesmanship.." Fembot CNN Newsdroid: "The economy and the war are separate issues.." Scheuer: "They're not separate issues, you're just carrying water for Obama."


Then, because that's all so crazy, I thought I'd knock it up another notch on the batshit nutty scale just for laughs.. Check out this:

كلام الحكم من معمر القذافي المجنون



زنقة زنقة , شبر شبر شبر , دار دار , بيت بيت , الثورة الثورة
!!

Ah, yes. You want to know what I think about the Middle East? Given our ongoing and apparent insatiable need to fuck with and infuriate Muslims, I think anyone who is sane will keep as far away from that place as possible. Given that crazy is the new sane, I expect Americans to still keep banging the war gong while stuffing as many orifices as possible with plastic wrapped dingdongs of one form or another.

At some point they may bring back the draft, and then you'll start paying attention.

Then it'll be personal again, and probably way too fucking late.



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Dancing with the Mountain.. Skiing as Life Metaphor.

Skiing is an inherently un-American sport. That's because most of our sports stories and metaphors revolve around the idea of trying harder.. "Okay boys, go out there and really hit 'em!" Go drive harder, tackle harder, run harder, play harder.

Well, in skiing it's just the opposite. The trick is to try softer.

Work with the mountain, rather than attacking it. Adapt your movements to meet the terrain.. Ski calm and collected, with the least amount of energy possible.. Let turns happen and forces build progressively, rather than forcing them all at once. Skiing is about borrowed forces. Gravity, mediated by our own grace, propels us far faster than we could ever go under our own sole power. The role of a good skier is to dance with, and coordinate these exterior forces, to meet the mountain in her curves and move with her.

The more you are in tune and sync with your skis, the snow, winter, with your own body and the mountain, the less there is to feel aggressive about.

The French have a term for this: la glisse. Glisser avec delicatesse, is to eloquently slide. You can't force it, don't even try. Let the piste rise to meet you, then flow into her..


Adapted from Breakthrough on the New Skis, Lito Tejada Flores, pp. 274-5.



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Which Side Would You Be On?

One of my favorite thought experiments or problems is to try inhabiting different historical epochs and imaging what it would have been like to face certain choices in defining conflicts. It's of course an act of imagination, in which you impose your "current self," all your prejudices and understanding that you've acquired in living in this present material and cultural moment upon an alien context - Bill and Ted's Excellent Historical Mindtrip.. Groovy and fun, but always a bit of a farce.

One of the things that I've realized in my travels is that the "self" is very much a creature of context, and that when you change your context you become someone else. We can't see our metaphysical parts, see. We can only feel them with the mind and heart, and they are formed and conditioned by experience. So when experience changes radically and forcefully there is a moment in that frameshift in which the soul's malleable stuff reacts and becomes choppy, and you sense things in the heightened shifting contrast and texture of the moment of mutation and change.

One of the things that people who after childhood never - or rarely, and then only under duress - radically change often fail to understand is how much simple things like the weather, or more complex things like language deeply condition one's existential state. It's a type of ignorance, an inability to learn, a paucity of empathy and imagination.

Anyway, there are certain historical scenarios I like putting myself in, imagining what it would be like to face certain choices at different moments of historical crisis.

The American Civil War, for example: slavery was odious, but what about the constitutional issues? One of the primal struggles in the history of the United States is the state's rights struggle. It's with us even now. Ironically, the Republicans (the successors of the liberal Whigs and the Federalist Party) are now the anti- Federalists, and the Democrats (originally the Anti-Federalists) are now the federalists. In my twenties and early thirties I was fond of saying that while I oppose slavery wholeheartedly, I was more on the Confederacy's side on the issue of State's Rights. If the people of a state could petition and vote to join the Union, then they should be able to peaceably leave it, too. The war was really in a sense an imperial one, in which white southerners were forced by violent invasion to submit to a political regime that they had rejected. I said then that I would not have participated in such an invasion.

I'm not sure where I stand, now.

The War Nerd over at THE EXILED has no such qualms or compunction. He's for having slaughtered them all:

I’m a Union man and a serious militarist about it. Sherman was just getting warmed up as far as I’m concerned. In fact when I read about how shocked the people of Columbia, SC, were that he burned half their town I have to laugh. Americans need to get out more, especially Southerners. If they had any notion of what the province that talked all the others into a dimwitted, doomed rebellion would’ve had in store for it anywhere else in the world, they would’ve thanked Sherman’s bummers on their knees for being so lenient. Sherman’s way of making war was so mild by world standards that if a panel of military CEOs from all of history had watched him march through Georgia and the Carolinas, there’d have been some serious tsk-ing about what a wuss he was. The consensus by all those Roman, British and Mongol ghosts would have been that the North should have expelled the whole white population of the South like the Brits did the Acadians—a way more harmless bunch—or sold them into slavery in West Africa, a nice bit of poetic justice. “How much am I bid for this fine specimen of Tideland gentry, ladies and paramount chiefs?”

The US benefited just from having four years when those jerks weren’t part of American politics. That’s what most surprised me when I went over McPherson’s book: how damn generous Northern law got as soon as the damn Planters were taken out of the political system. When you hear all these neocons talking about Lincoln’s administration as evil and totalitarian, what they mean is that without having to cave to the slave-owning loonies down south, Northern law started showing this incredible respect for the working people. Seriously, the laws they were enacting then would get Rush, Sean and Glenn screaming about Communism today. Take the Internal Revenue Act of 1862; it wouldn’t have a chance of passing today, because it’s way too sympathetic to the working people and doesn’t suck up to the super rich the way we do today. It was one of those laws made by the radical Republicans, back when “radical Republican” meant you wanted ex-slaves to have land to work and the right to vote, crazy socialistic stuff like that. Here’s McPherson’s summary of the new law:

“The Internal Revenue Act…expanded the progressive aspects…by exempting the first $600, levying three percent on incomes between $600 and $10,000, and five percent on incomes over $10,000. The first $1000 of any legacy was exempt from the inheritance tax. Businesses worth less than $600 were exempt from the value-added and receipts taxes. Excise taxes fell most heavily on products purchased by the affluent. In explanation of these progressive features, Chairman Thaddeus Stevens of the House Ways and Means Committee said, ‘While the rich and the thrifty will be obliged to contribute largely from the abundance of their means…no burdens have been imposed on the industrious laborer and mechanic…The food of the poor is untaxed; and…no one will be affected by the provisions of this bill whose living depends solely on his manual labor.’”

Incredible, isn’t it? That’s a congressman from 1862 talking. He couldn’t be elected now; they’d call him a commie and he’d be lucky to stay out of jail. Why, he doesn’t even suck up to the super-rich, the freak. That’s what America was like for a little while when the crazy white South went off on its big tantrum. Just imagine what the place could have been like if they’d stayed gone. Actually, you don’t have to imagine, because Grant laid out what would have happened to the two parts of the Union with his standard cold hard sense:

“The South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. [The North] had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. [The South] was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated “poor white trash.” The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.”

Sounds like a happy ending to me. Too bad we spent all that blood and treasure dragging them back into the family. Might as well lose an arm or a leg dragging your crazy bipolar brother-in-law back. In fact, I agree with every word Grant says there, up to the “but” in the last sentence. Good policy, probably: believe everything up to the “but.”


He's got me putting U.S. Grant's memoirs on my list of books to acquire and read. There's a bunch of other stuff from the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, to the letters of figures such as Jefferson and Hamilton, that I am resolved on (re)reading, now, too. American history.. It's amazingly fascinating stuff, really.

A few other conflicts I imagine being a party to are the American Revolution or Anglo-American War, as I've heard people educated in the English Commonwealth system call it (I'd definitely be Tory and Royalist. I'd be off to Canada in a heart beat..) to the Mexican American War (I'm with Thoreau in jail - Emerson, please come and bail my sorry idealist ass out - screw the Halls of Montezuma.. leave Tejas to Mexicans like it belongs. I'd love to give it back to them, now. As long as they'd agree to take all the nasty assed Bushes with it, too..) to the Spanish Civil War ..

That last one is a bit of a dilemma to me. It was pretty damned complicated, after all.. It's like visiting an alternate universe, putting oneself in that imaginative milieu. Every shade of ideology from monarchism through communism was represented in that fight. Spain was really the culmination of a series of wars begun in the Reformation and French Revolution (royalist there, too. With the rebels in Brittany, the Vendée and Maine. « Vive le Roi! Morte aux Maudits Patauds!») It was the last huzzah of the old order against the Enlightenment demons first come with Napoleon's troops, in many ways.. The Catholic Church was at the center of the conflict, as a major opponent to land reforms and secularism, and usually supportive of monarchy and the traditional rights of the landowner.. The small landowners of the North were largely Carlists (supporting the claims of a Catholic traditionalist Bourbon pretender to the Spanish throne).. The North was the part of Spain that had never been Islamicized, and had been the base for the Reconquest, not incidentally. In the south were the ancient latifundia, that economically disenfranchising labor system of the Roman era persisted in its basic form and dynamics under Islam and into the modern era, creating a large property-less rural and urban under class, giving rise to 20th century socialist and anarchist agitation ..

I am sentimentally attracted to the traditionalist and monarchist position, but am also drawn to the Basque position, also embraced by many Catholics, in favor of regional separatism and against the unitary federal state based in Madrid. I am also, like Orwell and many others, drawn to the anarchists.

It's the totalitarians, the fascists and communists that I can do without..

I'll say a few good things about Franco: he kept Spain out of WW II (very, very wise) basically flipping Hitler a well deserved bird, not even allowing him to take Gibraltar. Hitler called Franco (who is of a converso Jewish background like so many other interesting Spaniards) a dirty little Jew. That's endorsement enough for me to like him, at least a little. Franco's boys also were (according to Stanley Paine, if I remember correctly) guilty of fewer political executions than the left, a point not often mentioned by people attacking the Nationalists.. Both sides had very bloody hands, but the Reds' hands were apparently just a bit bloodier than the Black Fist.

Like with so many things, the resolution of Spain's Civil War was not clean, the results were mixed. One the one hand, it is clear that had the Republicans won, their victory probably would have been subverted by the Soviets, and the history of WW II would have been very different..

Europe could well have burnt at both ends, as Trotsky had dreamt.. That alternative history would have been a nightmare, probably.. Hitler like Napoleon mired in Spain and Russia simultaneously, a post war Europe likely dominated by Russia.. Spain would have suffered immensely in that circumstance, I think.

The problem from my perspective with Franco is that he actually in the end basically prepped Spain for neo-liberalism, and the conquest of the bankers. Given that I have several good friends who either work for or are themselves Iberian bankers, I cannot wholly condemn that order.. But I am still not overly impressed with it.

I have another post in me about Spain, that I may write this spring. I know you can barely bare the suspense of waiting. I feel your voracious need. What ever could I have to say about Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca and the Work?


Ah, as much as it pains me to see you suffer..



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The Pleasures of a Simple Man, Redux..

People say I'm no-good,
And crazy as a loon.
I get stoned in the morning,
I get drunk in the afternoon.
Kinda like my old blue tick hound,
I like to lay around in the shade,
An', I ain't got no money,
But I damn sure got it made.

'Cos I ain't askin' nobody for nothin',
If I can't get it on my own.
If you don't like the way I'm livin',
You just leave this long-haired country boy alone.

Preacher man talkin' on the TV,
He's a-puttin' down the rock 'n' roll.
He wants me to send a donation,'Cos he's worried about my soul.
He said: "Jesus walked on the water,"And I know that is true,
But sometimes I think that preacher man,
Would like to do a little walkin', too.

But I ain't askin' nobody for nothin',
If I can't get it on my own.
You don't like the way I'm livin',
You just leave this long-haired country boy alone.

Instrumental Break.

A poor girl wants to marry, And a rich girl wants to flirt.
A rich man goes to college,And a poor man goes to work.
A drunkard wants another drink of wine,And a politician wants a vote.
I don't want much of nothin' at all,But I will take another toke.

'Cos I ain't askin' nobody for nothin',If I can't get it on my own.
If you don't like the way I'm livin',
You just leave this long-haired country boy alone.



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The Pleasures of a Simple Man..

Lyrics:

I ain't nothin' but a simple man,
They call me a redneck I reckon that I am.
But there's things going on
That make me mad down to the core.

I have to work like a dog to make ends meet,
There's crooked politicians and crime in the street,
And I'm madder'n hell and I ain't gonna take it no more.

We tell our kids to just say no,
Then some panty waist judge lets a drug dealer go,
Slaps him on the wrist and then he turns him back out on the town.

Now if I had my way with people sellin' dope
I'd take a big tall tree and a short piece of rope,
I'd hang 'em up high and let 'em swing 'til the sun goes down.

Well, you know what's wrong with the world today is
People done gone and put their Bibles away.
They're living by the law of the jungle not the law of the land.
The good book says it so I know it's the truth,
An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.
You better watch where you go and remember where you been,
That's the way I see it I'm a Simple Man.

Now I'm the kinda man that'd not harm a mouse,
But if I catch somebody breakin in my house
I've got twelve guage shotgun waiting on the other side.

So don't go pushing me against my will,
I don't want to have to fight you but I dern sure will.
So if you don't want trouble then you'd better just pass me on by.

As far as I'm concerned there ain't no excuse,
For the raping and the killing and the child abuse.
And I've got a way to put an end to all that mess..

Just take them rascals out in the swamp,
Put 'em on their knees and tie 'em to a stump,
Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest.

You know what's wrong with the world today,
People done gone and put their Bibles away,
They're living by the law of the jungle not the law of the land.
The Good Book says it so I know it's the truth,
An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.
You better watch where you go and remember where you been,
That's the way I see it I'm a Simple Man..


Watch were you're goin' remember where you've been..

That's the way I see it, I'm a Simple Man.



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Brief African Lecture on US Democracy

This one is from the War Nerd over at THE EXILED:


Africans told a great joke about our 2000 election fight: “Do you Americans expect us to believe that the election was decided in favor of the former leader’s son…in the province where his brother was governor…because the voting machines did not work and the ballots were lost? And you people are lecturing US on democracy!”



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