The Currency Of "Freedom"

Which paper is really at play here?

American "patriotism" seems to be killing Americans. But it sure leads to fat profits.

In a typically American gruesome turn of events, this July 4th broke mass-shooting records. Of course it did.

According to you, America, this is the appropriate and inevitable price you pay for some words on paper written in the 1700s by a bunch of all-white all-guys to be batted around your “freedom” cage match ‘til death do you all part. And it is.

I can only assume, America, that your guerilla warfare way of casting off kings became deeply embedded as a way of life, like hotdogs and your strange definition of “football”. So many rights as defined by small bands of individuals that national rights are impossible to conceive of, each militia a different colony with a different governor, unwilling to truly form a Federal authority that goes beyond artificial lines of statehood as sacred and inviolable.

Then you divide it up even further, such that each county and city line becomes a different country of its own, where five minutes down the road the laws and regulations are unrecognizable. Hell, each PTA organization would probably be recognized as a different nation in the E.U.

You’re still just a bunch of constantly arguing colonists who see no value in coming together, and you’re all still armed to the teeth screaming over ancient paper as a rationale for weaponry never conceived of by the ancients who put quill to parchment. It is simply patriotic and proper to be beholden unto your own personalized definitions of what that paper means today. And even when it means you’re dying in record numbers in completely unnecessary ways, such that one could be forgiven for thinking of you as war torn failed state, and certainly a most unstable and untrustworthy ally, you still know best, I’m sure.

After all, your almighty deity of the Second Amendment was handed down in stone by demi-gods, to hear you describe it. It seems you take no part of the Constitution to be even half as relevant as that one paragraph. The rest of the words get rather short shrift in comparison to the time you spend trying to convince people of your own self-serving definitions of a clause that, let’s face it, likely 80% of you have never read.

If I were a sane person, I’d tell you to shut the fuck up and get real. Dude, those dudes you bow down to like a pantheon were freaked out the empire might take them back so they gave themselves the legal right to have another militia assemble on the Boston Commons again. With freaking musket balls. And perhaps this is a where a historical and contextual reading of “We won’t pay your damn Window Tax! Now let me hand-load my deer-hunting rifle..hang on this thing couldn’t hit a tree..oops I knocked Bob’s hat off...fuck tea, I prefer laudanum…” might be appropriate?

Besides that massive “duh” moment for rational human beings, I’d also say you’re missing out on one of the most important angles here. One that has nothing to do with your ancient paper and everything to do with your current one.

What I know about you, America, is that you’re all about the money, honey, and not much else matters to you. That could even be true of all your guns, viewed by millions as simply a household essential like paper towels or bread. And who that’s convenient for, sweetheart, ain’t much different than those who collect the fat paychecks from products at your grocery store. Rights? Freedom? Meh. It might all be more about your wallet than they’re willing to let on.

They want to con you into thinking it’s about freedom or rights. That’s what they want you divided about, distracted from, grieving over. You’re playing right into their hands. Because you’re not paying attention to who profits. While your typical foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy-theory-numbnut may think they’re winning the day, it’s doubtful they have a winning investment portfolio.

But you ought to know who does. How dare you forget the epic words of Watergate so quickly, you upstart bloody Yanks. “Follow the money”. Like fools, instead you’re following some half-assed argument about how nothing is allowed to move beyond the late 1700s or the fabric of the universe will be torn into pieces.

Honestly, 1775 can suck it. If you stay permanently stuck there, you’ll be dying of dysentery in the back of a horse-drawn wagon after eating shoe leather all winter. You’re cool with having indoor plumbing, electric stoves, cars, HVAC systems, and, inexplicably, Hostess Dong Dongs, which were all things your founding fathers did not have.

So, somehow your rights aren’t threatened by switching from carrier pigeons to telegraphs to telephones? Somehow your rights aren’t threatened by switching from food to extruded factory product? I mean, these just ain’t in the original documents, anyhow. But your rights are absolutely threatened by any attempt to keep more schoolkids alive by demanding limits on weaponry unimaginable to the creators of the Second Amendment. Why are you like this? Look back at the first two questions in the paragraph.

As long as robber barons old and new profit from it, I guess you’ll never feel threatened enough to change together. As long as there’s money to be made off of it, you’re supremely easily hoodwinked into the usual American norm, which is a form of profiteering unique amongst nations. In other places, it’s known as arms trafficking, murder, human rights abuses; you know, the things that can wind one up in extensive legal battles in both national and international criminal courts. But aren’t you clever, America—you’ve turned it into a sacred duty, a household good, an argument about rights that you’ll be having until the stars fall from the sky. While your allies vomit and your enemies laugh.

When it comes to big business, America, you score big. But I wonder how much the American people feel like they’re winning because of it. I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t matter how much you messed up your translation of the Second Amendment. I don’t think for a second it would factor what had been written in or left out of any of your documents. Your corporations run your politics, and thus fund your legislation, in a whopping display of corruption made legal that you call “campaign finance”. It’s the tune your primary legislative body dances to. And it’s killing you.

But, since you love corporations to the degree that any technological change that beefs up their profits is good enough for you, and you’re fine with your laws being purchased by SuperPACs of the ultra-wealthy businesses and individuals who will always have the last laugh at your expense, you’re unlikely to push back. Guns are money, and money is the only thing running your American shitshow of policymaking. And since you’ve been fractionated into violently disagreeing feudal fiefdoms since your monstrously genius founding of a thousand systems supposed to be called a “country”, that lends itself well to eternal contention. I would venture to ask, in the name of both these moneyed and maze-like arrangements, have you ever met your ineptly-named “healthcare” system?

I know that the words of your founding documents are not sacred and not much considered at all when it suits you. Or, when it suits the corporate suits. I know that because of other words you’ve thrown by the wayside. Did you know, America, your postal services get more than just a passing mention in your Constitution?

It’s fascinating that the misappropriated Second Amendment is sacred to maintain the American killing field of profits, yet the Post Office—yes, in your Constitution—is not sacred at all. Why did Congress defund a public service specified by your founding fathers and force it to privatize? Oh, yes, some say “the internet”. Yet are you aware of how many legal documents still have to be paper and be sent by humans to other humans in 3D physical format to be considered legally valid at all in your systems? Oh, not every system has gone digital, especially if it’s your average nobody’s ass on the line. And somehow you’re going to acknowledge some partial technological change in arguing to kill the post office but you won’t acknowledge any technological change in your weaponry to ever consider the Second Amendment differently? Wow, I guess you get to cherry-pick what tech trends you hold as sacred versus meaningless, huh?

If the words of the past are so clear and so inflexible, the post office would not have been gutted. It would be as lauded and defended as the Second Amendment. It would actually be about specified rights, services, and the exact form that was meant. Instead, if we go with an uninterrupted love of corporate-styled profit-mongering greed as our hypothesis, we’re in the clear there. We’d be right “on the money” as they say, wouldn’t we? Defund the public service of paper and shipping that’s often still required by the legal system, but make sure the arms dealers profit. Check and check on where the money flows and who benefits, no matter the supposedly Constitutional scenario. Again, have you met your monstrously-termed “healthcare” system? No words, lots of words, in the Constitution, left out of it—a noticeable trend becomes the currency, every time.

So, does it matter? All those fancy words in script? Some are sacred and some are not, depending on what serves the fat cats and who they can seduce, blind, manipulate. There’s this thing in your Constitution that you can privatize and gut, but there’s this thing in one amendment that’s sacred, no matter what. Whatever story line they can get you to believe that serves their bottom line—you better believe that you’ve fallen for it, America, and how! That’s some kind of sick adaptability to have, and then expect no one to notice. I don’t know what kind of independence you think you’ve got, America, but you sure haven’t freed yourself from being fickle, hypocritical, easily-led, and even at the price of the lives of your young people, oh so easily bought.