Chilling on Jefferson\'s back porch in 2004

I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to celebrate the same quality of independence that a group of extraordinary individuals meant when they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to when on that very day, you must now forfeit your 4th Amendment rights; when on that day you are still denied access to put substances into your body which grow naturally from the earth but yet are encouraged to smoke, drink, and pop the latest boner pill. And finally a county built on the value of rugged independence and pursuing unfettered happiness provided you don’t tread on your neighbor’s life or property now finds itself in a state of perpetual war for perpetual peace.

I now watch the equivalent value of my labor (the dollar) decline each day as more and more of our tax money goes to fund means detrimental to the general welfare of the human spirit. I see more and more that preserving the union for its own sake has lead us into the daily act of patting ourselves on the back while cutting ourselves off at the knees.

War Economy, despite being the plot of the entire Metal Gear series, has become an actual viable term to describe how billions of dollars have been made in the last 8 years and I feel more culpable than most because I gave the man responsible two OHIO votes–and those ones mattered more than most in the last two biggies (as Archie Bunker once called the Presidential elections).

I will be apologizing for voting for George W. Bush for the rest of my life but in the end, could anyone else have done any better? Does it really matter which wooden corn doll sits at the podium and deflects the real question with platitudes and fear mongering? In the end, don’t we each know in our hearts that the dance would continue with or without a President, a Congress, or a Supreme Court? War over the remains of the last fossil fuels on earth may be as inevitable as a dying man’s gasping few last breaths. And perhaps we are not, as I fear, living in the final days of degradation of the human heart.

Perhaps instead we are preparing for another cosmic leap of the human spirit into a platinum age of inner and outer exploration. Perhaps we will begin diverting resources from killing other human beings into conquering the darkest spaces of the human spirit and shedding the light of science and reason into the wormy depths of the twin demons of human history–The Will to Power and Petulant Worship. The Will to Power bubbles up from absolute hatred and the mental weakness of Petulant Worship branches from the root of absolute fear.

I have to believe that we’re on the precipice of a new greatness. The alternative is just too depressing.

Photo: While the President admitted he had never before been to Monticello to a crowd of people as he spoke from the steps of Thomas Jefferson’s back porch on the 4th of July (just before he was practically booed from the stage as protesters screamed “War Criminal” at him); I can assure you I’ve been there before. The photo above is me sitting on the same spot in 2004 doing something greater than petty worshipping–pondering greatness.

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