Reflections on the 4th

I think about the country sometimes when I'm not hunting Aborigine Lava Lizards or Tightrope walking between skyscrapers. In fact, today I was thinking about a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson - perhaps you've heard of him - and something he once said:

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. Trust and protect your troops, your farmers, and your daily toilers, for they are the seed from which the tree of liberty bears fruit"

Today - Independence Day - we are swiftly becoming a dependant state, beholden to the government instead of the vital cog that makes the governmental machinery run. You know what I mean, all that "We the people" stuff. Well, we the people work long, hard hours to provide for our families and to make them prepared for the rigors of life, but we the people are awakening ever-too-frequently to see the results of those efforts are tantamount to trying to push the paste back into the tube. We the people are now being made - not asked mind you, made - to not only continue to provide for those who have no interest in providing for themselves, but to give more of our children's college monies, our families retirement dollars, more of our daily living sustenance to increase the financial benefits for the people to whom hard effort and achievement are merely words on a piece of paper, and not something they have any interest in pursuing themselves. We're being told they're shooting for bigger checks and better medical care for the people who watch "The Price is Right" for a living, while the rest of us dig ditches, care for the infirmed, or whatever else it is the slovenly Middle Class folks do to pay for their Rice-A-Roni and Chicken dinners. And the best part is we the people get to pay for it all. (What? Did you think Billy Bob Clooney was gonna help out? Fuuuuck no. He spent all his available cash on campaign contributions to help fund the ACORN people, and at last check, Billy Bob only made $40 Mil on his most recent shitty movie, so times are tough in the Clooney household. Yessiree buddy, it's a bitch living in the Hampton's and having to commute to Los Angeles, sometimes - gasp - commercial). So little Jared's school shoes are going to have to wait...that "price is right" guy needs more money to ignore those 7 kids he's fathered through 7 different women, aaaannnnd he needs us to pay for the doctors appointments he makes every 90 days or so to get his justification note as to why he still shouldn't go back to work. He remains unemployed - and has been since 1996, but now he's on the precipice of getting a pay raise and a sweet benefits package. It's a good gig if you can get it. Wait! You CAN get it, but you might have to downsize to a Chrysler 3000, if Chrysler is still making cars, that is. I haven't checked the news today...

We the people are being systematically raped to the breaking point, and soon the only escape will be to place our trust - our individual and collective lives - in the very hands of those who broke us in the first place. 60's counter-culture freaks who figured out the way to win their retarded war was to change the context of the battlefield (Not a real battlefield of course. Real battlefields make your hands dirty). The flowers in the rifle barrels were replaced with a law degree from Berkley, Princeton, Harvard, or wherever, the patience to wait it out, and the gavel that eventually came with it. Their time is now, and they have the assets and resources in place. With the possible exception of AM talk radio and one network on T.V., the communications apparatti are monitored and cleansed to the desired specifications, and they're pouncing on what they currently can't control with a swiftness and visciousness that makes the brain reel under the stress. Give 'em some more time, they'll get there.

Until the middle and lower-middle classes finally realize they are the prey, the slaughter will continue until all the meat has been removed from the bones. They have words for this phenomenon, words for this type of culture, those same words which used to strike a violent chord in our national psyche, words that were applied to other nations that we usually had to enter and give tens of thousands of our lives to rescue them from their plight, words which we are now perilously close to adopting, voluntarily or not, for ourselves.

The America I now live in, the America I spent the majority of my adult life defending, the America I pray every night my children and grandchildren can take solace in, bears no resemblance to the America that I once knew. And it gets more unrecognizable by the day...not the decade.

God only knows what Mr. Jefferson would think if he were standing on the steps of the Capital today. He would look across the city and see the beautiful monument built to himself, and although surely humbled and honored, he might wonder why they spent so much time and money on that building when what he really wanted was for his words to be built upon. Instead, they are ignored by people far less intellectually gifted than he, and he never even read the Harvard Law Review.

At the very least, Mr. Jefferson knew what he and his patriot friends crafted almost 250 years ago was a culture who's title began with the letter D, and in no frame of reference, inference, or intention, was it ever intended to begin with any other alphabetical symbol.

But then again, like I said in the beginning, I don't think about the country that much anyways. I'm too busy herding chinch bugs across the vast plain and hot air baloon bungee jumping to do much of anything else. Hey, just curious... do you need a home loan?