Black Flag

For Andrew

I have writer's block.

It's not that I can't find stuff to write about, but rather that everything that I write ends up in the recycle bin when I proof it. It ends up there not because it lacks substance or the delivery is less than what I set up as a standard for myself, but because I read it and realize that it is a meaningless exercise.

My blog, Boiling Frogs, is the space where I organize my thoughts, where I put down ideas (some complex, many rather simple) in as intelligent a fashion as I can.

Idea ... supporting argument/facts ... conclusion.

Simple enough.

Right?

That format isn't working any more.

Sure enough, I can dutifully follow it and an entry appears, but then I proof it, and "delete" just follows naturally. I delete it at that point in the proof reading process where having stopped trying to identify all my spelling and grammatical errors, I read my work and ask myself "does it matter that you wrote this?"

The response these last few weeks has come back "not in the slightest," ten times out of ten.

I've lost my mojo.

Here's the next thing that has me out of sorts: I don't read anything that remotely resembles news or political commentary. I don't watch TV news any longer, and my satellite radio has been pretty solidly stuck on "The Pulse," with occasional excursions into "Little Steven's Underground Garage," "Siriously Sinatra", "BB King's Bluesville," and when the day calls for it, "Lithium."

I just want to shut everything out.

I am so absolutely disgusted with the current state of affairs in this nation, and in the world at large, that I want to stay as far away from both as I possibly can, and when they simply refuse to stay away, I have SiriusXM, one Hell of an audio system in my car, and "Lithium."

Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello!

With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us!

That song's opening line is the best...

Load up on guns and bring your friends
It's fun to lose and to pretend...

I don't want to fucking pretend.

THAT is probably the root of my writer's block ... I no longer want to fucking pretend that intelligent debate, logical arguments and opinions grounded on facts and history have any meaning at all.

They don't, or at least not to people who lack both intelligence and the ability to grasp logic, and who couldn't give less of a shit about facts and history.

Those people don't read my blog because reading it probably gives them a headache.

Now, I know that there are a few people out there who do read my blog and Babalu, and I must apologize to you. I appreciate your support and your loyalty, but you need to understand what I've come to understand.

We are a small echo chamber of logic and substance trapped inside an insane massive bell tower cacophony of fucking stupid, and the stupid is growing by the day.

Listen, I know what's supposed to be going on right now: Bloggers and the alternative media are supposed to be leading the fight against stupid, we are supposed to take up the forgotten standard of unbiased journalism, wipe the shit off the canton of intelligent reporting, and lead America back to a place where sanity reigns and "good night and good luck" meant that you had just been enlightened about the world around you, not indoctrinated.

But I don't think that's going to happen. It may happen some day in the future, but not right now.

Not the way things stand.

Today we live in a nation divided. A three way split of the entitled, the disinterested and the chattel that pay for it all

We live in a nation where condoms to be used for premarital sex are an entitlement, and should you forget to use them, abortion on demand is a right, but the exercise of our unalienable rights protected by the Second Amendment are subject to the approval of people far too stupid to understand that you cannot possibly be safer by giving up the most effective way to defend yourself from someone who doesn't give a shit about laws to begin with.

For the record, I would be willing to personally pay for a college to menopause supply of condoms for Sandra Fluke, if that was a guarantee that doing so would mean that she wouldn't bear children and add to the legions of stupid that we are being overrun by.

We live in a nation where a growing segment of the population wants to label health care and a college education as "rights" to be made available to all for free. Not being able to think sufficiently clear to figure out that the most basic definition of slavery is one person claiming a right to the fruit of another person's labor, they demand as a right the fruit of the labor of those who must bear the cost of that which they wish to receive for free.

We are a nation divided, shouting at each other from behind our respective barricades, not hearing a thing the other one is saying, and to be fair, not giving any more of a shit about their opinions than they do about ours.

The time for dialogue is over. It's time for something else.

I remember the day, many years ago, when I had the first of my many political epiphanies. The day when I ran across something so elemental, so damned politically organic and centered that it moved me off the shifting ideological hill where I stood with uncertain footing, and transported me to this mountain of hard-as-granite, indisputable political logic where I still stand today.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'

Shuttered windows clouding my vision flew open, preconceived notions lay shattered and scattered across the landscape of my juvenile perception of the role of government in the lives of citizens, and understanding assaulted my eyes with the brightness of a midday sun.

It was my time for choosing, and choose I did.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that 'the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals.' And he said, 'There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.'

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

***

That was then, but this is now. We've taken more than just the first step into the darkness, and I don't want to pretend that there is choosing left to be done by anyone

The time for choosing is done.

Look around you, everything is politicized.

I don't listen to music I used to love to listen to because the musicians I used to follow are mostly leftist assholes.

I don't watch movies because so are most actors and directors.

I don't speak to a significant number of people who I used to be "friendly" with, because they are fucking blind leftists who look at me with their fucking condescension-filled eyes, as if I were some sort of fucking monkey boy just rescued from the deep jungles of Borneo that needs to be taught how to act around civilized people, when we discuss politics.

The time for choosing is done... it's time for something else now.

I have absolutely nothing in common with the morons who seem to think that they are in charge in this nation at this time, so I choose whatever side it is that they are not on.

H. L. Mencken once said that "every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."

I don't know about the throat slitting part of that, but I am all about hoisting the black flag. I am all about spitting on my hands and getting to it with these fucking morons.

The time for intelligent debate is no more. I don't give any more of a shit about what they think, than they do about what I think.

We've chosen, sides. There are very, very few undecided, and they have labeled themselves insignificant via their indecisiveness.

It's time to get to it. Time to hoist the black flag, fling the grappling hooks and board their ship.

The time for choosing is done.

The time for "fuck you" has begun.