I have written a lot of posts here now at TruthRevival.Org. I am proud of each. My main web site is down again and will be for awhile, partially for financial reasons, partially by choice. That site, PolSci.com, and this blog, and my other blog (For Those Who Never Had It) are intertwined because the blog posts are later improved a bit (grammatically corrected), and cataloged over at PolSci.com. The (previously referred to) Fall 2007 "issue" will be moved back to Winter 2007, and, if then at all, released at that time.

          For those who might get to see the corrected posts there, they would be able to see how they intertwine. The Bicycle Race post here was simply most of the times I referred to bike riding in my papers and notes, which had all been included at PolSci.com. Those bicycle references cut across some strange and different times, and the future, should George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decide to accept it, will probably hold much stranger things and times, and hopefully genetic mutants will not be among them (hopefully for a good few decades at least).

          I count among those writings, three essays which I am most proud of, and because that site is down, and may never return, I will post an excerpt of one still up elsewhere below. And of the one not up at all (but inconceivable now to be vanished completely) I will put up below in its entirety since, for the moment, is not available anywhere else, and since this is its second anniversary. 

          These three essays are not the kinds of things one could put on a resume or refer to on college application, not that college is likely for me to be resumed anytime soon, but they are definitely what I am most proud of at this point in time, politically speaking. They are, in chronological order, the original Radioactive Cereal Principle (RCP) (November 13th 2005), Constitution Cola (May 30th 2006), and When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again (September 24th, 2006).

          The original RCP, I am pleased to admit, I did not think once of myself before writing it and trying to get it out there. Only with the second one, RCP2, did I pause to think, what would writing this mean to myself and my life should things go badly, and things going well after that was never in any way likely whatsoever. As I said many times, getting it on record was solely the point, and what happened after that was up to anyone or everyone else. My life at the time, not that anyone necessarily would believe it, was not even much of a consideration. 

          What I omitted from that was only due to not wishing to "accidentally" increase what I thought I was trying to work or speak out against. They are often connected, and often it is the case, too often to count, that you make worse the things you tell yourself or others you are trying to avoid or lessen. Sometimes, often, that is out of your control, the effects, but when you know them or sense them, or damn well should or ought to try to know or sense them, you must take that into consideration because otherwise, you are a liar to yourself.

          Was there any point or effect to writing RCP? Outside of my own life, I cannot gauge and no one has yet claimed otherwise, it made little if any difference. The timing of lots of things, some still yet to happen, sure seemed to have gotten changed around. 

          For me, after a nasty bit, there was no gigantic retribution for having done so, the greatest threat to Low Fruit. But then yet there are always every day endless new potentials for other yet-to-be invented new shoes which might drop, so all I know that it did for me was to open up a little space in time where I could write a little while longer.

         Constitution Cola, the second one I mention above, was written out of anger. It was passionate, and was very well done, but that I can pretty much say had no effect whatsoever. It inspired no one. It made no difference to have written it, but it made me feel better. The anger was in at the Supreme Court’s throwing up a blockade against whistleblowers against Bush/Cheney. Not that the Republican and then Democratic Congresses where not all too eager to join them and make all the bad accusations of "crimes" go away and make the "crimes" not even crimes anymore. 

          Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had at that time recently been accused of blackmail by the Speaker of the House Dennis Hassert, a Republican no less, and the mainstream Press, the veritable Fourth Estate of government, the safeguard of Democracy, well they just sort of yawned. 

          Well, maybe they just knew they only had left their right to remain silent because he had just also warned/threatened reporters that he would arrest them if they pursued the illegal wiretapping program allegations, or any other ongoing illegal programs. And not too subtly let it be known their cell phones, among other things, had been tapped all along.

          The third thing I mentioned that I am most proud of, and will include an excerpt of below, is When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again. It was good, it was from the heart, and it was trying to imbue a perspective that our glorious leadership cannot for the life of them fathom, what if this is all there is? What if they never see their hometowns again, their children again? 

          For people (Congress) supposedly reacting out of constant fear thrown at them, fear of their constituents thinking they are weak, fear of a right wing press that even Republican lawmakers admit being terrorized by, fear of terrorist attacks, but seemingly completely without fear of handing over every last scrap of power the mythical magical wondrous "Founders" gave to their positions and legislative bodies.

          Seemingly their jobs now are to tear the Constitution to shreds, put little pieces of it into things called "bills" to send to the President so he can veto them and make its destruction, piece by piece, the new law of the land. 

          Habeas Corpus? (The right to some sort of charge and a trial before being imprisoned (and tortured), not even now, "indefinitely") A bill, not a writ, not a "self-evident right," or according the Attorney General, not even a right at all. Congressional approval needed to attack Iran? A Constitutional mandate or directive, and a foundation of our Republic? No, sing it from School House Rock, "I’m just a bill, a little ol’ bill, but I might be a law, … someday." Smack down veto threat, and little ol’ bill (and Separation of Powers) goes away. Not today thank you, can’t tie his hands. Can’t let a Declaration of War make the world an unambiguous place without undeclared wars, unrecognized occupations, and unmentionable, literally, US war crimes.

          The fear that motivates Congress and America these days is not even good fear. What are good fears you ask? Good fears make you act to eliminate what you are afraid of. Common sense you cannot eliminate terrorists if terrorists can become anyone or anyone can become a terrorist. 

          You cannot spy on everyone all of the time (though they will make a ton of money trying), you cannot control every country’s government (though they will kill a lot of people trying), and you cannot make everyone afraid of your weapons, not even while you are using them on people. You can, when you are done with an orgy of death, that attempt at making the world submit to your non-existent authority, ditch the fear by trying to make peace with them. That is how you kill fear, at the source. 

          The source of fear is not people. The source is, as many have countlessly said before, and will say later, fear is created by what you do not, cannot, and choose not, to understand or acknowledge. The fear we have is real and warranted because somewhere, in the back of our minds, we as a nation are aware of the truth of the terrors we are giving the world while claiming we do not see it ourselves.

          The greatest fears we have, and rarely as Americans will we admit, is that our fears are justified. That just because our Washington Press buys the fact that if the White House does not admit something, it never happened, or is left in a less-defined gray zone between what is real and what is not. That there are things we are doing now, things we are responsible for, which we should not, but will not doing stop either. And that it will come back to haunt us if it is not already on the way.

          Waking up and confronting THAT fear, that good fear, that can inspire people to wake up and do something to counter it, that is always just around the corner. Derrick Jensen in The Culture of Make Believe, (the best title IMHO for American Culture ever), similarly writes…

         As this dawning dissonance began to tear at my insides, again and again I considered that the confusion must come from within, that I must be missing some simple point: No one could be so stupid as to destroy their own planet, all the while chatting breezily about golf, "reality-based TV" (whatever that means), and How about them Cubbies? What seemed profoundly important to me seemed of no importance to most people, and what seemed important to so many people seemed trivial to me. … The United States bombs Vietnam to save the Vietnamese people, it arms death squads through Latin America to save the people there, it bombs Iraq to save the people there. I kept thinking: Is there something I am missing? 
         … I asked David Edwards how this plays out in our day-to-day lives. He told me, "We build our lives on certain beliefs, then spend much of our time protecting ourselves from conflicting beliefs. … It may seem that he has everything to lose and nothing to gain from that sort of self-examination, and so his unconscious will protect his sense of self from a very painful conflict by dismissing or ignoring any evidence that he participates in these atrocities. And it will do so in such a way that it never even occurs to him- even with the evidence staring him in the face- that there’s the slightest thing wrong with what he is doing. The same is true of journalists, for example, or politicians, whose livelihoods and self-esteem are based on serving corporate power; under no circumstances can they allow themselves to comprehend the true nature of the role they are playing."

          Yet reality is never shut out completely, even in the most extreme instances referred to above. One must know and constantly be working to suppress what one knows but is choosing not to acknowledge. This knowledge becomes fear, becomes dread, becomes the dark recesses of where we choose we ought not to look at what we as individuals or as groups, societies, countries, or cultures, are doing to others. And worst of all, that knowing or acknowledging that we have surrendered our right to question it openly and effectively without fear. 

          Dying is easy then, when having to live daily in denial at the obvious and increasingly frequent greater and growing injustices, and with the ever changing definitions of the official Newspeak insanity, and still yet choosing to think or consider oneself a rational being. It becomes then, the living is what is hard. Unless of course, you batten down the hatches, forget about any or all possible consequences, and try to let out on (what you think are) the right occasions what you know that others, by choosing not to acknowledge will get themselves, and possibly yourself too, killed.
 

1) The Radioactive Cereal Principle, November 13th 2005

Note: I have decided to link to it here rather than put it within this post, unlike as it was posted in the original post on TruthRevival.org. It is an attempt to save space and reduce redundancy a tiny bit. Click here if you wish to read it.

2) Excerpt: When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again, September 24th 2006

          Some may think me unworthy to speak of him, others would condemn me for calling him a great American leader, yet if he was not an American, who can say they are? If American's are not a race, as we like to point out, but many races, then why cannot an American be one outside of a government? Governments come and hopefully will go and give way to better and more just ones, but people and places remain. There was no doubt he was a good leader and an American, therefore it is not wrong to say he was an American leader to which any could be proud of.

          I have mentioned him before in my writings, and mentioning him now is because so many have not heard his most famous words, now dead in the hearts of Americans, many but not all, and need rekindling now more than ever. All that was great about America, the government at least, that small portion of what is America, has gone terribly wrong. Former President James Carter's belief in a self-correcting mechanism is unfortunately seemingly misplaced at the moment. We have been fed illusions of our worth, blinded to the suffering we are inflicting all over the world in the name of values it is apparent to all all over the world we are not living by and seemingly no longer believe in except to use as an excuse to take what we wish and do whatever is our will.

          Nothing can I remember having moved me more deeply than when I read the words below. It is not just words, not just pain or agony at the reality of war we have been sanitized from, protected from, and because of which, that distancing, we watch men and women without hearts advocating things on television to us and to children, what they are teaching to a new generation, advocating avoidable attacks that would cost thousands of innocent lives, without guilt over what they say, without hesitation in what they are advocating, and without regrets. Joseph's pain inoculated me against thinking like that, and his words will outlive the hate mongers, the torture advocators, and those who scorn diplomacy and the avoidance of war as "weak".

          These words, his words, will outlive those people because the world they advocate cannot endure, would not survive. A world which not only remembers these words but learns from them, takes them into its heart as I have into mine, that is a world which can endure. That is the future I work for, hope for, would live and die for, but the future we are creating now, what our present leaders wish to give the world, that is nothing I would want to be a part of. That world in which we have already recently killed tens of thousands of innocents in cold blood unnecessarily, and would kill millions if not billions to prevent the world from growing beyond the systems we have now, based on the need for war, the rewarding of aggression, and the sanctity of mass murders beyond scale in the name of country and in the name of God. May their notions not be passed on. Humanity could not long survive it if they do. The goal and the means to take us to that better world are found in the words below for any to hear, to know, and to feel, and to guide us back from the brink by remembering the slaughters we have done in the past, and are about to repeat again.

"It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."