For the sake of baseless hoopla last week, the world was entranced by another apocalyptic prediction, by a man who touts no more special powers than being elderly and fatalistic in his views of the Bible. May 21st, 2011, the world ended, just as it did on January 1st, and just like it will December-twenty-somethingth 2012.
That will be the third publicized hocus-pocus brewed through the popular believes of those who really have nothing else to look forward to besides total global destruction, the unleashing of Hell on Earth, and mass disease, death, and suffering. Who wouldn't be psyched? Society is the most bass-akwards it has ever been, when people get off to the idea of human extinction. I've read the books, and not just the Christian ones, and few times do I see Jesus, God, Allah, Zeus, any of them celebrate the demise of people like people do. Most of the time History and fable alike show us the repeating theme of, "I am my worst enemy". Man is both a suicidal and homicidal maniac, Hell bent on creating fear and raising tension, perhaps that is why there is a tick in the public pulse to pray for the end in this generation. Maybe people just want to be put out of their misery.
There is no reward for being cowardly or submissive in this world or the next. I've never seen those who beg for pity rise to any occasion, it isn't in nature or God's code, and I've been paying attention.
If you believe in God simply because you want to be special, don't even kneel. If you think going to church once a week and listening to another human tell you about God, then wake up every day and go on about the rest of your life in routine fashion, you missed the point. Don't tell me about the destructive force of God, or his hateful inferno that will burn "faggots" or sear the insides of those living in sin. Save your breath, you missed the point. Take the hate, the sense of superiority, the feelings of destruction and turn them on yourself, because you aren't making the world a better place, a realistic place, or a place worthy of any holy entity's surveillance.
We are now a people of lazy patience, waiting for something greater than us to arrive, ignoring the wrong before us in our daily lives, taunting the forces of nature, tempting the fate we don't even take time to analyze.
I don't go to church, and I can't claim to have ever read the Bible in it's entirety, but I do believe salvation lies within, take it how you will, just feel free to keep it between yourself and God. Instead of living in the shadow of doom, masturbating at the prospect of widespread death throughout the world, make yourself useful enough to at least add a shred of positive energy into existence. "Live every day like it's your last, learn every day as if you will live forever" It's powerful sentences like these that drive the human spirit and inject us with a sense of wonder about the things hanging above, don't celebrate the prospect of a death a majority fear too much to confront, and there for live irrationally.
Every time an end of the world scenario heats up, I don't look forward to a bloodbath, I reflect on my life and self, then wonder what I could do better, what I would regret never doing, and that usually makes the next day a lot more meaningful, especially when it's still there. I don't fear the end, I don't celebrate the end, I simply celebrate now and know every moment that passes before me ends forever.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Ding Dong Osama's Dead, the Wicked Prince, the Wicked Prince
Half way through the depths of a lager, after a long night of work, I learned American troops slaughtered the Boogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, the first person in History to be in the eye of a technological global manhunt. My intense glare gratefully looked at the glistening beer before me, the only thing in that moment that seemed to matter.
"Obama just won re-election" Is the first thought that hit me.
I didn't rush home to gawk at the T.V. or excitedly ask the bartender to pour my nationalistic side a celebratory shot of whiskey. I already knew the images and words our media would submerge the public in. The moment seemed surreal through the scrolling words of a newsline beneath the Red Sox game, and I can honestly say I didn't care emotionally, no tears or smiles...I felt nothing. When I arrived home to force myself to the television, I was just in time to witness the empty soul of our modern fuhrer, President Obama, taking credit for the action, and delivering one of the most important speeches of our time with the same emotionless face that stretched across my guise. Obama's words, "The War on Terrorism is far from over" rattled through the cracks of my brain. To me this was stating the obvious, as the manhunt for Osama has deviated to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability in Egypt, Bahrain, and bombings in Libya, soon to see the soil of Syria. I saw a War on Terror become a dissolution of guaranteed rights like freedom of speech, press, and assembly, I saw the war turn home as American citizens are treated like terrorists every day, groped by the TSA and herded through the x-rays of advanced screenings.
Visions of brutal police pummeled unmarked vans filled with government agents and headphones, scrolling slowly through green neighborhoods. I saw WTO protestors in Pittsburgh maced, beaten, and deafened, as the quiet screams of a man plummeting from the upper levels of the World Trade Center plunged into gangs of depressed stockholders frantically selling off shares to compensate for loss. One thousand tickets in their hands transformed to political signs reading "Obama/Biden" as a wonder-struck fifteen year old walked into Geometry on a fateful day and saw America as he knew it die in a brisk September.
I watched in shock as thousands of whites in D.C. suddenly all appeared at once to celebrate, simultaneously with drunken puppets in Manhattan and Boston. Citizens cheered and ran with flags around the streets in a more "civilized" manner than the cavemen of Pakistan and Palestine who cheered the day the towers fell, overcome by their thirst for blood and joy in death. I reflected on the thousands of innocent men women and children who died on September 11th, the innocent casualties and children carpet bombed in Iraq, the American soldiers who gave their lives fighting a war that only seemed to grow over time without any clear objective. I thought about the onslaught of laws and regulations that came home, the general fear people began to have of their neighbors, and the cold stares of those in burkas who patiently waited to be flogged in the streets. The world will never be the same, Osama is dead, and so is our dream.
I question everything, especially when the "conservative" network FOX boasts the victory for Obama, and the body of our tormentor was immediately cast into the sea without thorough evaluation. The most important corpse in the world caused people to jubilantly cheer and scream without any contemplation of it's significance, and vanished into a watery abyss before speculation, in line with Islamic tradition, because in War, God knows, one must respect the fallen, even the body of a murderer, whom we raked the Earth for a decade to find. I believe the term is "catch and release". I always catch my biggest fish when I don't bring them home.
So relax America, the boogeyman is dead, though you forgot about him over the years, as the beginning of something more sinister festers inside our nation. Worship your leader, because his campaign is rolling and he needs your votes. Celebrate a man who was incapable of worldly expression as he walked into his defining moment. I saw the face of a man who expected the outcome, I saw the face of a man dancing in arrogant victory, who cared more about the delivery of his words than the significance of the day.
The sweeping War on Terror is in fact far from over, but now it needs a new face, and as others jubilantly dance like fools in the streets, I sit and wonder who the next boogeyman will be, and when he will strike. The lust for power inside the core of man has not dwindled, and now we have a man sitting on top of the world, with a feeling of invincibility, and a haunting stare that causes me to tremble.
"Obama just won re-election" Is the first thought that hit me.
I didn't rush home to gawk at the T.V. or excitedly ask the bartender to pour my nationalistic side a celebratory shot of whiskey. I already knew the images and words our media would submerge the public in. The moment seemed surreal through the scrolling words of a newsline beneath the Red Sox game, and I can honestly say I didn't care emotionally, no tears or smiles...I felt nothing. When I arrived home to force myself to the television, I was just in time to witness the empty soul of our modern fuhrer, President Obama, taking credit for the action, and delivering one of the most important speeches of our time with the same emotionless face that stretched across my guise. Obama's words, "The War on Terrorism is far from over" rattled through the cracks of my brain. To me this was stating the obvious, as the manhunt for Osama has deviated to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability in Egypt, Bahrain, and bombings in Libya, soon to see the soil of Syria. I saw a War on Terror become a dissolution of guaranteed rights like freedom of speech, press, and assembly, I saw the war turn home as American citizens are treated like terrorists every day, groped by the TSA and herded through the x-rays of advanced screenings.
Visions of brutal police pummeled unmarked vans filled with government agents and headphones, scrolling slowly through green neighborhoods. I saw WTO protestors in Pittsburgh maced, beaten, and deafened, as the quiet screams of a man plummeting from the upper levels of the World Trade Center plunged into gangs of depressed stockholders frantically selling off shares to compensate for loss. One thousand tickets in their hands transformed to political signs reading "Obama/Biden" as a wonder-struck fifteen year old walked into Geometry on a fateful day and saw America as he knew it die in a brisk September.
I watched in shock as thousands of whites in D.C. suddenly all appeared at once to celebrate, simultaneously with drunken puppets in Manhattan and Boston. Citizens cheered and ran with flags around the streets in a more "civilized" manner than the cavemen of Pakistan and Palestine who cheered the day the towers fell, overcome by their thirst for blood and joy in death. I reflected on the thousands of innocent men women and children who died on September 11th, the innocent casualties and children carpet bombed in Iraq, the American soldiers who gave their lives fighting a war that only seemed to grow over time without any clear objective. I thought about the onslaught of laws and regulations that came home, the general fear people began to have of their neighbors, and the cold stares of those in burkas who patiently waited to be flogged in the streets. The world will never be the same, Osama is dead, and so is our dream.
I question everything, especially when the "conservative" network FOX boasts the victory for Obama, and the body of our tormentor was immediately cast into the sea without thorough evaluation. The most important corpse in the world caused people to jubilantly cheer and scream without any contemplation of it's significance, and vanished into a watery abyss before speculation, in line with Islamic tradition, because in War, God knows, one must respect the fallen, even the body of a murderer, whom we raked the Earth for a decade to find. I believe the term is "catch and release". I always catch my biggest fish when I don't bring them home.
So relax America, the boogeyman is dead, though you forgot about him over the years, as the beginning of something more sinister festers inside our nation. Worship your leader, because his campaign is rolling and he needs your votes. Celebrate a man who was incapable of worldly expression as he walked into his defining moment. I saw the face of a man who expected the outcome, I saw the face of a man dancing in arrogant victory, who cared more about the delivery of his words than the significance of the day.
The sweeping War on Terror is in fact far from over, but now it needs a new face, and as others jubilantly dance like fools in the streets, I sit and wonder who the next boogeyman will be, and when he will strike. The lust for power inside the core of man has not dwindled, and now we have a man sitting on top of the world, with a feeling of invincibility, and a haunting stare that causes me to tremble.
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