Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted

This pretty much sums it up. No cohesive force for change can come from #Hashtaggery or any other form of impersonal, social-media-centric communication platform. Revolutions need leaders to shape and manage the goals and methodologies of the movement and Twitter and other such platforms don’t provide that.

At most and best, all that #Hashtaggery can provide is a generalized awareness and emotional connection with a general ideal and near-instant communication of meeting places and times. At worst, it creates a climate of generalized outrage that capitalized upon by individuals and groups looking for more generalized chaos, e.g., ISIS’ recruiting of Muslims within America’s border.

Tags: #Hashtaggery | Change | Insurrection | Mob Rule | Politics | Revolution | Social Media | Society | Twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2015 at 8:38 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Time passes but rarely truly changes. Peoples and nations plod head down and with heavy, stenorous tread through the well-worn ruts of history, marching like blank-faced automata through the pageant of birth, rise, stagnation, tyranny, and fall.

In The Trade Of Liberty Tools Do Not Change Much

Certainly, America has it players for the parts of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the persons of Barack and Michelle Obama. So too do we have a clergy, in the form of the intelligentsia, preaching the Divine Right of our would-be king and that of their aristocracy.

It then devolves to the American people to play the part of the Girondins or, needs must when the Devil drives, the Jacobins, for are we not already a society of the friends of the Constitution? Because, be it through means of Brissot or of Robespierre, something must be done to save America from the fast-approaching tyranny.

~*~

The Universe spirals downward to dissolution while the Reaper sits by, drinking tea sweetened with dead stars.

Tags: Girondins | Guillotine | History | Insurrection | Jacobins | Liberty | Obama | Politics | Revolution | Tyranny

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2014 at 8:58 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I’m sad, really sad, but I’m also pretty comfortable with everything.

In their satirical article, “Man Terrified To Realize He Could Easily Go On Like This” The Onion is more true than funny. Indeed! This is high scorn and social commentary barely couched in sarcasm and irony.

FARMINGTON, Despite being deeply dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of his life, local man Paul Gallardo told reporters Thursday that he was terrified to realize he could very easily continue to exist in such an unhappy state and probably would do so indefinitely.

Gallardo, a part-time file clerk who is unmarried and has few meaningful relationships of any kind, stated that although his personal and professional circumstances were an ongoing source of distress, he feared they would never be sufficiently unbearable to compel him to remedy his situation. According to Gallardo, after more than four decades of living with his painful but entirely manageable loneliness, he was unlikely to ever improve himself, a fact he said has filled him with dread.

“I’ve always been miserable, but I guess I haven’t been quite miserable enough to do anything about it,” said Gallardo, 44, who added that while his daily life is consistently unpleasant, he has never felt the need to abuse alcohol or drugs to numb his emotional anguish. “I still go to my awful job, still pay my rent, still eat a whole frozen pizza pretty much every night. I hate every minute of it, but it’s not making me panic or reassess my life or anything. I kind of wish it did, though.”

“And that’s what’s so scary,”continued Gallardo. “I’m sad, really sad, but I’m also pretty comfortable with everything. God, I hate to say it, but I could see myself doing this for years.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is why we can’t have nice things. Clothed in the velvet glove of sarcasm or not, the iron-fisted truth of the matter is that this sums up the lives and attitudes of the majority of people in the Civilized World, especially those within America’s borders.

We have, as a whole, degenerated into a society of drones, comfortable in our malaise and complacent in our misery. We don’t ever truly consider helping ourselves and our sole exercise in helping other has been reduced to #hashtagerry.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but a soft sigh of ennui.

Tags: America | Complacency | Cowardice | Fear | Humor | Misery | Revolution | Sadness | Sarcasm | Society | The Onion | Weakness

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2014 at 7:33 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

237 years, 10 months, and 5 days ago General George Washington issued these general orders to the stalwarts of the Revolutionary Army:

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army—Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect—We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

— George Washington
General Orders, July 2, 1776

Today, the orders are the same. Once again the time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them.

Once again it is not some foreign power threatening Americans’ basic and natural rights and freedoms. It’s our own government doing so, just as the Crown did so in days gone by. Once again we’re divided in our loyalties, with some 20% supporting the cause of freedom, some 20% staying loyal to the “Crown,” and the rest just hoping to weather the storm. And once again, we can expect the majority of Blacks to align with “Crown.”

As it stands and has always stood, the order remain the same. Let us hope and pray – and act as the God(s) hands to fulfill our prayers – that we are as successful as the Founders were.

Tags: America | American Revolution | Civil War | Freedom | George Washington | History | Insurrection | Politics | Revolution | Tyranny

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2014 at 9:36 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Sometimes revolution and the extermination of a nation’s rulers is a necessary medical procedure for that society. It’s the surgical removal of cancerous tissue in the body politic in order to save that body.

Call A Doctor! Citizen Barack Capet Needs Treating

Of course, the questions remains as to whether Obama is a “suitable case for treatment” or something other and lesser – a mere symptom of a problem that might not be best served by palliative care.

Tags: Capet | Guillotine | History | Humor | Politics | Revolution

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Humor, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.