STRAP IN AMERICA, IT'S 1952

I rolled over into anger this morning. Of course, a lot of people who know me think I'm angry all of the time. It's not true, I like to rock the boat out of boredom, a lot of my criticism is sharp, and sometimes I think of the most socially inappropriate or off the wall statement I can make for my own entertainment.

Today was different, I welcomed the day with a real anger, a real rage that isn't immediately extinguished by whatever comforts of modernity (though the computer screen light itself tried) when I realized I live in the 1950's. Fear, we live in a world of fear, and no matter how hard I try to not invoke Hunter Thompson in my writing, or how much I try to escape the words fear and loathing, it's all I feel and all I see in this world.

Counter-culture in the 1960's was about more than social unrest or political change, it was about crawling out from underneath the desks, putting sunglasses on, in case the nuclear blast was too bright, and actually going outside to experience humanity. All we do now is complain about our bills, feel trapped by our jobs, follow directions from our significant others or our families, and fear the consequences of stepping out of line. We live within the id of a control freak.

You see, if you really pay attention, the 60's counterculture happened but eventually, the 50's won. Both Kennedy assassinations, MLK, Malcolm X...those who tried to change the social setting of that time from the stage instead of the lawn, were cut down. People were experimenting with acid, and while the drugs opened many Doors, the Manson Murders came along, and only left open the door to madness. The Drug War found it's roots, the war against Communism amped up and the nuclear bombs kept replicating.

The 60's were about passion. There were about being fearless and finding what it meant to be human, that's why creativity exploded; ideas were shared, people were gathering to see what each other had to say. But the boots of the 50's came in and let everyone know; bullets would continue to fly, if not into the Vietnamese, into students at Kent State. The 50's wanted fear, they wanted soldiers and they wanted everyone to understand the threat of Communism, to fall in line, to produce, both babies and bombs. Every man was a part of the machine, a part of industry, a line to produce, over and over again until the very repetition and cadence of the factory turned each man into nothing more than another material. And though I try so hard to avoid invoking Mario Savio when talking about my disgust for our bastardized and Fascist form of Capitalism, it's too hard, because just like Hunter Thompson, he nailed it.

So today I woke up full of rage, because all of this History, these events, these social changes and all of the tears, all of the blood washed over me. I opened my eyes and waves of the past rolled unto my body, as if I'd finally crashed ashore from the vast stretches of numbness somewhere between the Pacific and Atlantic. I feel as if the past decade of my life has been stolen or wasted..there is no fulfillment, there is nothing but bills and fear, loathing, and machines and a constant oppression of being told what to do, how much I owe, what direction to go, what time to be there. I find nothing but orders that help me roll down the assembly line.

I'm twenty-eight and feel much older than I should, because the 50's won. All of my friends are married, raising families, in their ranch-style homes or their two-storied neutral colored homes, complete with fire places they never use or wooden decks they never stain. They all smile on Facebook or hash-tag how great it is to be themselves, but they all drink themselves into oblivion, and get entirely too emotional over a football game. None of them have any real or worthy thoughts about ISIS or Ebola, just irrational fear and deep convictions about how they do or don't stand behind whatever athlete or actor is caught in the middle of a scandal...and why it's a first or second amendment issue, while protests are stamped out by the 1950's, and our police are armed as if they are fighting Communism in our own back yard, or Terrorism, or whatever other ism that allots our government the opportunity to soak the Earth in iron.

I am bored to death. Nobody goes outside since 9/11. Occupy Wall Street was a blip on the radar but nothing happened, just like the 60's, Communist provocateurs came in and ruined the cultural revolution before it started. We're just one big family, trying to find freedom and individuality, caught between the loud screams and swift batons of Communists and Fascists. Kent State was a big deal in 1970, but now the cops kill so many people nobody cares. If you want the full attention of America you have to cut someone's head off with a Swiss Army Knife, or gun down a bunch of children. That's what get's headlines these days.

I live in a time where literature and poetry has been murdered by illiterates on social media and viral inspirational quotes, in a quaint font painted over a picture of a sunset. I don't even remember the last time I saw a sunset. The Republicans are becoming so Fascist and the Democrats are becoming so Communist that I'm starting to have a hard time telling a difference between the two. Everyone is afraid to take acid, and if you smoke a joint you just added 30 more days onto your sentence of working at a miserable job. Social change is what's trending, and ideas only exist on General Electric commercials. Music is made by computer noises and not instruments, free love is confused with free porn, and while the Berlin Wall is gone, all I hear in America is people screaming to put up new walls.

This is my rage America, nobody goes outside anymore. Nobody shares ideas, everyone is on medication because they have been told by a doctor who was given that title by the state, there is something wrong if they feel anything about anything. The 1950's won. The Beatles are dead and Apple is there instead. Everything is Eerie, and though I know what colors are, I swear everything is black and white. My loathing is your fear, of everything all the time. The news wants us to be afraid, our Fascist and Communist leaders want us to be afraid, our bosses want us to be afraid, and so do our families. Yes, I loathe it, I loathe all of it, because my biggest fear is to be just another part of the machine. They say you are what you eat, and I've seen how we process meat, and I fear I know where this conveyor belt is taking me. Welcome to 1952.

We've Lost The War on Terror.

Here is rant.

ISIS are using American weapons and artillery, and while our leaders pretend like they don't know where ISIS came from, we just called them "Rebels" a few months ago in Syria, when everyone else in the world referred to them as the Islamist opposition.

These "rebels" were caught releasing Sarin gas on innocents and trying to blame Assad, as a pretext for U.S.-NATO intervention. Now, we act like ISIS has come from nowhere, though they have obviously been trained and armed well enough to take large parts of Syria and Iraq, if you know anything about warfare, you know this shit doesn't just happen overnight.

Qadaffi and Assad both claimed "Al-Qaeda" forces were the ones trying to destabilize their government and create civil war. Both were laughed off by our media...now, both Libya and Syria are completely destabilized, and being ransacked by extremists who want to replace their government with a caliphate (pretty much the same ideology of ISIS)

Want an update on whats happening in Libya? 11 airplanes went missing in a Tripoli airport the other day, strange timing, not long before a pretty memorable day in September.

A few months ago, nuclear weapons went missing all over America, about the same time that Obama purged an unprecedented amount of military leaders. During this time, US leaders began warning of potential "nuclear" terror threats across America.

Speaking of this purge, it's pretty strange how they moved David Petraeus to the CIA, then ruined his public image and effectively neutralized his authority, or how diplomats and generals in the Middle East have been getting killed in rather freak incidents. There have been a string of incidents that has completely flipped our military leadership in the past two years.

One of Obama's big "changes" brought to America is the police state, we have seen in Ferguson, Boston, and other places where large protests or acts of unrest/terror have occurred how police forces in any major city can basically lock down an entire people in the form of military oppression in a few short hours.

While tragedies in Boston and Ferguson needed prompt action, it looks as if the action taken was to intimidate the American public, and let them see the strength of a militarized police power in the case of widespread unrest or protest in the country.

Also, Obama signed a document authorizing the assassination of US citizens without trial, arrest or jury. We saw this power used first with Awlaki in Yemen, during one of Obama's many un-declared war, un-manned airstrikes that have no regard for international law.

Now that ISIS is being rammed down our throat 24/7, and we are shown beheadings on a weekly cycle to instill fear, hate, and justification for war and more death.....

Oh, and we are told now, that many members of ISIS are American and British citizens, today there was a report that more than 100 members of ISIS are American. We don't know where they came from, or anything about them, but we know where they are from and their nationality on individual basis?

Get a fucking clue America, I'm not going to jump to conclusions, though I may allude, but I become more certain every day that the entire global policy of the UN, Russia, and other global leaders is just a over-produced game of fear, used against the human population to control our emotions and lives.

We're all a bunch of suckers, being kept in the dark about the truths of the world and how these events unfold, made to believe everything bad that keeps happening is unknown and unintentional, when every major event in modern times just takes humanity and the growth of our shared consciousness back another step.

It doesn't matter what happens, the end game is war, it is a loss of human rights, it is the loss of cultural identity, it is a guided clash of ideology, or civilization, or clash of anything that brings out the worst in our nature.

Whether you agree that our leaders are the real enemy or not, doesn't fucking matter. Everything you say or do on the internet or on your phone is monitored, they can take that information to find out what you do, who you know, what you buy, and what time they can put a bullet in your head.

We see cops killing Americans every day with no repercussion, we see moves made all over the world drawing us closer to destruction without any shred of Democracy, there is voter fraud to put certain leaders in, money moved to let certain companies create whatever monopolies they want, and constant laws made for our own safety in the name of terror that strip of of anything that made us proud citizens of something human.

The laws are in place to make you disappear without trial, be tortured offshore, or have an entire country ransacked by a private military that doesn't operate under the Geneva Convention.

You are fucked, regardless of your thoughts, whether you are gay, or Communist, or a consumer, or a feminist, or anarchist, it doesn't matter, your fate is in the hands of a bunch of psychopaths. You have no real control over your life, you aren't anything more than a social security number and a credit score to the powers that be, and at any given moment they can unplug you without any repercussion.

So what can you do about it?

Absolutely fucking nothing. But if you need a beer or a toke to calm your anxiety, good luck staying out of jail or getting a job.

Is this what freedom is supposed to feel like?

Fish Out of Firewater

 I'm flabbergasted by the gaseous flubber beached on the shores of my lawn. I used to go outside and enjoy the Sun, but now...now I can smell their carcasses, swelling and bloating. They are dead, but they still sweat, and talk about their favorite television shows. So much for resting in peace.

I'm tired of the shrill of sirens in the night, oblivious to the comforts of my dreamworld, regardless of whatever woman I'm sleeping with. I can feel the high pitch in my gut, a great annoyance pressing into the pit of my sanity.

"Shut. The Fuck Up."

"SHUT."

"THE FUCK."

"UP."

All I hear these days is noise for the sake of noise. When I've taken enough breaths to fight off the anxiety, and finally get a deep gasp of relaxation, my moment is interrupted by someone talking to a dog, or to a wall, or to themselves. Doors slam in every corner of my mind, a chainsaw massacre of my thought process. Every time a song plays, someone has to sing along or whistle to their own tune, butchering the moment.

All I want to do it flee the insanity and run outside, but I'm surrounded by these goddamn whales, swallowing everything without discretion, like a bedazzled whore out back of her favorite club. The sequence from her dress flags down spectators like shiny gills attracting sharks.

There's a fucking television on in every room, a yellow billboard screaming in the face of every color blind man on every road. It's hard to imagine hating the only color you know. That's real frustration, a mind-dulling ache that commands attention, like blue balls sitting in the front pier, woken from a shut-down night only to be kicked at the crack of dawn, deprived of sleep, but force-fed the notion that deprivation is a good thing.

We are all hypocrites, myself included. Always unfulfilled, never drunk enough, never fun enough, it's never extreme enough, the fall is never steep enough, the wind is blowing, but we refuse to listen. I can hear deaf pranksters slamming plastic bins on conveyor belts, blowing out eardrums and laughing as others jump in pain.

I'm told I can't dislike someone who is deaf, or dumb, or short, or black, or Hispanic, or has panic attacks, or went to prison, or had an addiction. I'm reminded how lucky I am, to understand this guilt, and to repent for transgressions I don't own. I know how God must feel, listening to a group of people he created, complaining all at once in his ear, telling him he didn't do enough, he didn't do the right thing, he didn't give enough, he doesn't listen enough. People demand answers from God, people demand service at a restaurant, people demand money from the rich, people demand jobs from the hard-working and drugs from the doctors. People doubt the hard-work, the doctors, the rich, and then people doubt their own existence.

Sometimes I find the fly-swatter.

I don't speak or express motive, I scan every corner of the house and kill without discretion. Sometimes I let the bastards hang from the wall by their guts. I let them dry-out like the whales in my yard. I amuse myself, batting flies out of the air, laughing at their helplessness, and my power. I win all over the kitchen. They shouldn't have come so close. The flies land on my food, they shit on my leg, they lap up their shit with my food and drag both onto my leg. The flies buzz into my ears or my nose, my eyes, or my mouth. Wherever I swat, they return to gloat, riding the waves of rippling air like juvenile thrill seekers. A bunch of stoned, shit-covered surfers flocking to the big wave.

CRASH. 

Hope it was worth the ride. 

The bodies wash up next to the whales. Beached and dead. Beached and dead.

I'm running to the desert, but thirsty in Ohio. Maybe I wash-up in Carolina or crawl to the Pacific. Maybe look to clear my mind, get away from the blabbering, the blubber, the masses. I hear there's a perfect storm, where the blabbering congregates, covered in broken glass and stupid opinions, brainwashed in the toilet, flushed out the drain. The overflow spills into the streets, it floods my living room, but I never drift to the sea. It's Fucking inescapable, I'm suffocating.

Vendetta Silenced

The Sea of Gallows hung over The Dead Sea. Steams of blood drained Jericho's consciousness; children in the slums felt the warmth wash over their ankles. Projectiles ricocheted through tunnels, rich and poor held hands in iron soaked puddles as masses funneled to The Great City. The streets spilled over with rage, a herd of shepherds flowed under bridges and crashed into walls, exposing assassins, sacrificing their lives in an unwavering ho! forward, brandishing no more than torches and robes to the doorsteps of The Moors.

Vendetta, O' Vendetta fell...reduced to silent cries laid before cataclysms of duality growing into the night; beneath interwoven pines, through pits of mud, beyond the tunnel, past low hanging Gardens, under, over, asunder vision, refraction of the word spread from the wild. Rolling clouds of remorse gathered the corpse, gathered the doubt, as jaws drug men to their knees, drops of silence in the crowd froze a moment, gasps suspended in the air. Stone glares. Lost cares. Fear. Fear pushed the moment forward before those left breathing forgot to worship a divine attention demanded.

Now.

The Day The Bombs Fell.

I remember when the bombs fell...in one moment everything changed, not for the better, but for the immediate. Some ran, some fought, died, hid, cried, some turned into rats with chatter or rats that scatter. Before all of these things came to be, there was the dust. Cement collapsed onto and through itself with enough force to cripple lungs within, Earth jumped from it's seat and fled; I witnessed mankind's shared consciousness for the first time within the gasp of a city.

God's tears made the moment to sink in. Heavy rain flooded low-lying areas, downhill alleys carried bloody streams over the feet of people who could only wonder who they just lost.

There was no lightening or thunder to follow the cloud, only changing winds. The gusts took many lives, but everyone knew they'd have to brave it. They weren't heroes, they were just numbers, ones that didn't get called, but sat in line with their neighbors, waiting for fate to be handed to them.

I remember the feeling of hopelessness, hunger, discomfort, and fear. Real fear, not a startled moment, but the kind of fear that can drive a man mad, the type of fear someone can only know when it finally occurs to them, death will knock on their door.

Before The Reaper, before the self-confrontation, and the mental-slide show, the horrors of Society's Mankind, and it's violent decay...I remember the day the bombs fell. I relive every moment before the blast constantly in my mind. I wish that minute never happened, but I recognize it's reality, as punishment deserved, punishment for the sin I'd had made if the bombs never dropped; I know, spoiled in the routine of life, I wouldn't have appreciated the moment as much as it deserved.

I will chase that peaceful moment, in my sleep, through the day, to keep my legs under me, and my mind yearning for the time after, the bombs didn't fall.

WAR WITH RUSSIA: LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Obama just acknowledged the phonetic existence of the words "propaganda" and "misinformation" for the first time. He then used them correctly in a sentence, hinting that he understands what they mean. Sanctions on Russia, pressure on Russia, an order of Ceasefire, and a big soup where "violence" and "separatists" all mixed up in a pot of "I'm never flying to or from Malaysia, ever."

Right before President Obama's speech I read an article that said Pro-Russian separatists had control of the crash site, and on CNN the political pundits pointed the finger on Russians, and said that the Obama Administration recognized any attempt by Russia to recover or hide the black box, would be seen as an admission of guilt, that doing so would incriminate Russia directly.

After Obama's speech, CNN released audio of Russian-backed separatists saying they had "one-hundred percent" knowledge that the plane was civilian. Within minutes of being warned of propaganda coming out of Ukraine, CNN has a direct order from a "Major" to shoot down the plane on audio recording. Coming from the same news station responsible for bringing you this fantastic war correspondence.

If you haven't been able to pick up what I'm laying down, this is how wars start. Nothing starts a war faster than a downed plane, and this one, had a plane full of international doctors working towards a cure for AIDS/HIV. Former President Bill Clinton was speaking at the same International AIDS Conference these doctors were attending. BFD.

Senator John McCain, former Presidential candidate, perennial war-drum beater and ironically, ex POW seems to want Hell raised on separatists, Obama confidently drilled into our minds that the perpetrators of the crash are separatists.

Separatists or not, I'm still asking the question, "Why was that plane flying over a war zone?" Well, it's because international airlines are going green.

So, the question is, "Does this add up to a war?"

I don't think so, not at the moment, but it looks like a storm of disinformation may be on the horizon, and many of us are going to be spending our time doing this.

We do know that Obama has ordered a ceasefire, and an international investigation, and demanded Russia be cooperative. Russia has already been sanctioned for their role in supplying arms, training, and intelligence to militants, effectively disrupting internal Ukrainian affairs.

More or less, President Obama just gave Russia an ultimatum, and I don't think KGB-Gremlin Putin, thinks his Boystown counterpart has the gumption to move. THIS, is how wars start.

The Divine American

You are nothing. Nothing, nothing besides calories, cavities, and calcium; emotion, eccentricities, and ego, skin, sin and sinew...bravado, bone and blisters.

Don't you see? Don't you get it? You are insignificant, unimportant, and so, so very expendable.

Nobody cares about your experiences, your empathy or your expertise, not your love or stories of lust, nobody gives one damn about your lively sense of humor. You are only borrowing your humerus, a handful of fingers and you're holding onto a helpless fight, you aren't special, or the only person who likes hummus.

You come from nothing and there you will return. You aren't the Earth or the Stars, only an illusion of carbon, only a trick of consciousness, and a rather insignificant trick indeed.

There is no Heaven or Hell, no God or Satan, no eternal inferno, no reckoning, no justice. There is only this vile life, full of pain and death, there is no Watchman, no Father of Time, no Steward of the River, no Ghost, no hope. And you? You are a disease, ruining this temporary rock, where a dash of luck and a beam of light let you last just long enough for a few short breaths, from your black-tar lungs.

There is no reason in faith, no reason in believing, and no reason in debating these truths, it's a waste of time, time that will someday expire just like you, and all your goddamned imperfections.

Do you still not understand? Are you blind? You. Do. Not. Matter. You are ignorant, ridiculous, destructive, and quite honestly...completely worthless.

Oh, you have money? I'm sorry, I-I spoke too soon, come on in, make yourself at home.

Newsburrito Bitch.

Newsburrito has been a sloppy mess of prose and half-ass journalistic spats of relevance teetering on the ranting level.

I'm re-dedicating myself to Newsburrito, to do what it was originally intended to, bring forth current events, and a unique perspective on them. The goal of Newsburrito is to get people to think, regardless of how much they want to avoid it.

I'm tired of the self-censorship of outside judgement, I'm tired of a lazy, pathetic lump of human minds that seem to measure all things by accumulation of wealth. We live in a time where people are defined by their bank accounts, and that is the most twisted, grotesque existence that any awakened being can witness.

So, for those of you that do care, about the world, about where it's going, about the truths and realities of where we stand in a global war, one we refuse to call a World War, I will promise well written articles with journalistic integrity with a mix of political and social criticisms. I will try to do my best to keep the two separate, though still on the same site.

For those of you who may enjoy the more creative side to my writing, poetry and short stories, I will be putting together a different venue for this work. If you didn't already know, I spent a year of my life, 10+ hours a day, writing a short novella, so you should be supportive and check that out.

To those of you who don't read, fuck you. I don't have any use for you, your opinions truly don't matter, because anyone who gets their information or semantics solely from television is a half-wit. Sorry for being sharp, but seriously, fuck you. You are lazy, you are wasting a human mind, and because of that waste, you are doing your small part in making this place an ill-informed, shitty, ignorant, and hopeless place to exist. They say that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but you probably ask them all of the time. I don't know what you spend your time in life doing, I really don't, it isn't hard to look at words a few times a day and learn something, we exist to grow and learn learn from the past, our mistakes, new lessons, and if avoiding this really makes you a lump of shit, I mean that as nice as possible.

Oh yeah, and one more thing, if you are offended by anything, this will not be for you, if you are so blind in your nationalism that you refuse to open your mind and look at political stories from a view without punditry or slant, this isn't for you. I would apologize for my language and the subjects to be discussed, but it is people like you that are the main culprit in the self-censorship of artists of any sort to begin with, and because of the disservice you have done to mankind, fuck you too.

Too all others, to those of you who are going to visit and READ, share this. Let's start a discussion, tell people, please, seriously. Putting a well written piece together is time consuming, it really is, please appreciate that. I can't fully express how important to me it is that I'm not taking large chunks out of my day to bring insight to the world for it to go on ignored. Give it a real chance, be a part of this. Give feedback, it helps fuel my fire and keep me motivated, just a shred of acknowledgement.

That's all for now. Things will be rolling out soon. But until then, did you know there are 80 original writings on this site that I have spent five years compiling? Some of it is lackluster, and at times there is a glimmer of really good writing, I recommend you give it a look, especially if you know me and never have, because to be honest if you haven't even given my work a chance at this point, you are seriously an asshole.

Wasting Life

I sat alone, in the dark, at the age of twenty-eight, and I felt the weight of time leaning on my bones and on my mind.

"I have nothing" I thought to myself, wincing at the thought of a hundred dollars in my bank account and a little bright green car I don't like, or own, with it's squeaky brakes and it's goddamn loan.

I sat there in self-pity, and thought about the military, thought about white collars and closed deals, hand-shakes and high stakes, money rakes and busted tables, broken banks and climbing ranks, the money of my peers and countless blank stares into mirrors. I thought about every time I asked myself "What am I doing?" or told myself to "get it together" and how many times I failed to listen.

"What have I done with my life?" another sour shot at myself rang out, as I beat myself up over wasted time and a life that seemed to slip away.

A voice interrupted the wallowing with the simple suggestion of "Well..."

You French kissed a girl from France, threw up all over your pants, fought a man, shook the World Heavyweight Champion's hand, went to a foreign land, made love in the woods, told a Governor how to run his campaign, brushed a horses mane, received a standing ovation, made people from the ages of 1 to 100 laugh heartily, crashed through a barricade, climbed a tree, shot a gun, swam in December, broke some toes, broke a nose, severed a finger, kissed a red head, an older woman, a younger woman, a short woman, a tall woman, a loving woman and a hateful one, you've been a son an uncle, a brother, a cousin a grandson, a friend, an enemy and a leader.

You've followed blindly, questioned authority, broken a window, won, lost, been on a train, on a plane, on a bus, in a boat, on a snowboard, a skateboard, a bicycle, a motorcycle, earned a degree, managed a political campaign, been in a play, on the news, on a show, in the paper, read countless books, written poems, short stories, wrote a book, got the hook, broke it off, fell in love, been kicked in the head, been an arsonist a vandal a vagrant, a manager.

You've drank beers with the homeless and the rich, been arrested, gotten away, seen the mountains, the ocean, a shark and a bear, You set a bee hive on fire, gotten revenge, trained animals, you've been robbed, put a knife to a man's throat, walked away from a car crash, blushed, changed a mind, took a picture, won a bet, flipped a coin.

The voice took a deep breath and said, "I'm too tired to continue, quit your bitching and get on with it, you're fucking twenty-eight."

Something Was Written With Thought

Bogged down in the marsh of insignificance in another March, struggling to deliver a message coded in languages unspoken and lights dimmed by the real, or the dreams far beyond reach, or the wandering eyes numbed by one-thousand bright lights and layers, fluorescent corneas weathered by Coronas and Parliaments, waiting for something that will not fall lest rattled, and a mind not fulfilled but battled.

Freckled or tanned, young or just in time, a woman cannot comfort a man for much more than a night. A real man fights the demons and wakes up alone in night sweats, hoping for the best and expecting the worst, the burnt bodies of saviors and the carcasses of thy ancestors, someone lost in the misty fourth dimension of a fogged perspective, wading through the unknown, trying to learn from mistakes blindly made as others watch on, too entertained by the struggle to lend a hand.

A real man is flesh, huffing and puffing to blow himself, larger than words or actions, the desperate lunge into ridiculous obscenities and despised actions, covered in hair, layer after layer, of falsity and defense, asking for it all to crumble beneath the feet of love.

All they lie before is another broad, broad connotation or broad cunt, flapping in the wind and hungry for the hunt, never a feeling of comfort but an answer demanded, a batted eye landed, and a young heart stranded...aged, ready to shake or soak, blown apart by the coke or the joke, battering valves, washes crashing into the now, eroded by the numb tyranny of sex and booze.

You will lose, the battle never joined, Kings anointed, cowards in the dark, confrontation avoided, did you void it? The clashes that come and the ditches that succumb to the peril of deployed id. 

We read each other like books with no ending, frantically befriending and always mending, relations with those we will come to love and come to lose, tending only to avoid an ending, or the soul's sending to the tabloid of a local shit newspaper, with lists of cousins and names and family and tears, mourning those we never knew quite as well as we hoped we did.  

The search may never end, the answer may never arrive, love may never be found, and the world may never relent, they say to repent, and that our failure is our sin, but win, win, is all we pretend.

Most dreams don't come true, and for those that do, good for you, rub the salt lightly for the majority of us who melt at it's pour, an open sore....or, lost hearts hoping for something more. A breath or a kiss, or a moment of deep breath where something fills our lungs and our hearts with a moment of safety, the long lost feeling or once being told, "it'll be OK" and feeling and believing, with both the mind and the heart. It's a young heart's world, but within a whirl, is slips into the furl, or the turmoil of daily mundane, and begins to spoil, in the hot, hot Sun, in all it's toil, but here we are...asking an pushing, fighting for cushion, waging war on ourselves, just to claim we will do whatever it takes, for a witness to peace, both inner and outward, backwards or forward, we search, we hunt, we starve, we want... 

Intel War.

Your second life has in many ways become more interesting than your first. In any moment you can have any girl you want naked, you can pretend to be whoever you want, in whatever community you aspire to be a part of. In a moment you can buy whatever you desire without leaving the home or combing through market shelves. You can work from home, sell from home, find transportation, create art, all from the comfort of a desktop. 

Computers have brought a technological revolution, there is now doubt, but for infrastructures, secret documents and private information to be so freely passed around and stored, make no mistake, this revolution could be crippled by Contras. In less than a generation we have plugged ourselves in, put everything at stake, for an alternate reality. A smokescreen.

I remember all too well how devastated I was when my first laptop melted down. All of my music, writings, pictures, everything I worked so hard on, gone without warning. Not only did I lose my documents forever, but I lost an expensive machine, one hard to replace. I felt cut off from society in so many ways until I bought a new computer, for the price of a low-end used car. A fragile piece of plastic, filled with manipulated sands and tiny slivers of weak materials, all carefully fused together to project a false reality and sense of comfort or power. 

Last night at the pub I discussed how "I could not imagine college without the internet", and today I woke up understanding how most people in first world countries, could not imagine life without the internet. The notion is somewhat terrifying.

As a society we are in a cyber war. The powers that be understand how empowering the internet can be from an informational perspective, and it seems they do anything in their power to give credit to horrible articles posted by borderline illiterate writers. In other countries, the internet is sparking revolutions and sparking free thought, but not in America, at least not on as large of a scale. Half of the material on major network sites like CNN are just quick disinformation blurbs with poor editing and worse reasoning, and unfortunately FOX and the likes have managed through their age to establish credibility. The middle aged are using the internet as a fast way to ruin their marriages, and young adults for the most part are finding themselves at the pinnacle of entertainment via the wondrous net. Countless, pointless hours on Candy Crush or Farmville, Facebook or other fruitless software. But it is the youth that is truly at risk. I worked for a while at a local YMCA after-school program, and currently work in a restaurant, and see what large parts of this next generation is becoming...mush.

The kids I tried to mentor didn't want to go on the bike path, they didn't want to play basketball or ping-pong, they didn't want to do anything physical. We had X-box's, Playstations, Wii, Nintendo 64, and about any other console you could think of...but they didn't want to enjoy the laziness of social gaming with others. The kids sat by themselves, ignoring any attempt I made to speak with them about life, their future, school, their teachers, anything attached to reality. I'll never forget the strange feeling of seeing young kids so plugged in to personal devices, bright screens never further than a foot from their faces.

Apologists can say "kids will be kids" or "they will grow out of it", and to them I say, you are just as ignorant of reality as these mindless children. This tech is new in the scope of things, I'm still considered young at twenty-eight, and the internet wasn't widely accessible until I was in my early teens. I experienced a real childhood, I met kids from the neighborhood, played games, rode bikes, broke things, caused trouble, played in the woods, partook in all the typical American adolescent endeavors. These kids aren't going to grow out of this phase, they have grown into it.

I judge my peers who play video games for countless hours, it's a waste of time in this short-lived life, and while you may have a "top-100 kill count" on your favorite device, you have actually produced nothing real in the physical, just bragging rights to who is best at diverting  attention from real problems. This gaming culture is so wide, that isn't considered nerdy anymore, grown men who do nothing but game are getting laid, in fact, they are a majority of males in their mid-twenties to thirties at this point.

There is a war taking place for the human mind, an assault on all fronts, sensory overload for most us. We are unable to produce thoughts, find words or obtain information, because we rely so heavily on videos to instruct us, Google to guide us, and Wikipedia to tell us. Imagine if our "laptop" shut down for the first time. An EMP, perhaps a real attack from one of the international enemies our Government has created since we've been sleeping, out in reality, with real guns, plans, economic strife, and political philosophy. We have been warned over and over by top ranking officials about how weak our infrastructure is, how fragile our power grid.

There is a large, worthless population in the United States, they don't formulate their own opinions, they are oblivious to what is going on around them, they are empathetic, they are pathetic. We have an obesity outbreak unseen in human History. It isn't genetic, it hasn't been a part of our DNA for thousands of years of existence. There are people who can't even wipe their own asses, let alone survive without the grid. Building a fire, hunting, building shelter, any of the skills needed to survive out in the real world of nature, are known by few. A lot of Americans would rather die than try to survive, out of shear laziness.

Some of us are on the front-lines of existence, learning Historical truths we were lied to about in school, staying up to date instantaneously on world events, being aware of our surroundings like never before. We are learning how to fix engines, build fires in multiple variations, create food, decipher what we can and can't eat. We are learning how to fight, how to assemble weapons, how make things, how to share. We are paying attention to which legislators are passing which bills, what these bills mean, how they affect us. We are using the internet to empower us, as it should, and how to survive without it if we must. 

In your second life you are constantly spied on, you voluntarily give up all of your privacy without any cares. Your credit, bank accounts, social security numbers are all floating somewhere; waiting to be plucked by any criminal with knowledge of computers. You willingly profile yourself on social media, you tell everyone where you are and who with, your phone and random applications ask if they can access your location and you agree. Youtube wants to link to Facebook and Twitter, with your email and Netflix. The NSA knows who you are, where you are, who you speak to, what you texted, what music you listen to, what your political ideologies are, what videos you watch, what you've learned, what you believe, and who you aspire to be. This kind of intel gathering makes tyrants and generals alike salivate. 

A few years ago, talking about domestic spying made you a "conspiracy theorist", doesn't matter how deep you dug into the facts, how well you understood the laws, how the government spelled out exactly what it was going to do. It didn't matter that protesters were constantly photographed and filmed for facial recognition databases by the police, didn't matter that more and more cameras appeared above traffic lights and on street corners without public consent. It's been the elephant in the room for some of us since The Patriot Act arrived during Bush's reign. We knew exactly what would happen. Wartime surveillance, wartime restrictions on personal freedom. They told us then, these things would be implemented, because we were at war. Our President told us the war could be one-hundred years long, or for their rest of our lives. But still, just speaking about these laws meant you were steeped in conspiracy, or potentially had a mental illness, or potentially were going off the deep end, or potentially a domestic terrorist...just for listening and remembering what you were told.

Enter Edward Snowden. Suddenly the claims of many become legitimate, years after programs were already implemented, and the ignorant continued to play ignorant. "We didn't know". Snowden didn't tell "We The People" anything dangerous, he told us we have no privacy, that we are constantly monitored by the NSA and CIA, he only told us what The Patriot Act already told those who read it, the difference now is media outlets decided to report on Snowden. Oddly enough it was print journalism (a business that is dying) which broke the story. Not our worthless 24 hour news stations, or their illiterate bloggers, that make livings from disinformation or no information. But it makes sense doesn't it? That the historically most honest form of media is dying during the War on Terror, during a war that has held the notion of peace on Earth hostage.

Our Government didn't come forward and have a discussion with America after the media finally did it's job and reported news, they hunted Snowden, called him a traitor and told any country that harbored him it would strain relations with the U.S. The government once again did the wrong thing, like an abusive boyfriend who beats you then says he loves you, right before a stiff right-cross. Our government constantly reminds us they are here to protect us, and then they smack us in the mouth. Occupy Wall Street got disciplined pretty well, the backhand of suppressed speech. 

Bradley Manning released documents about the War in Iraq, and is still imprisoned indefinitely, one can assume, he's been beaten and tortured by some of his captors. Manning, like Snowden, believed he was doing the right thing, informing the American public about the wrongs of it's government. In order for a Democracy to operate properly, should it not be informed?

Manning, has been, like Snowden, seen as a traitor.  A young life IS over because he released a video entitled "Collateral Murder". The video shows the true face of our War in Iraq, or war in general. Innocents being killed by air-fire, bodies desecrated by tanks. This isn't new. Once upon a time when television news mattered, reporters were on the ground in Vietnam, and viewers got to witness what war looked like, they didn't like it, and mass protests ensued. Since then, the government has never made the mistake of letting the true face of war be televised. 

To the average American, they only believe what they see, once again, they are fucking lazy, and rely heavily on video, possibly the easiest medium to contort truth through. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis haven't died out of the blue since 2004, it's been brutal. Bush and company sold us the war, told us we had to defeat terrorists, that we had to stop them from getting weapons of mass destruction, that Hussein was direct threat, but then they hid the truth, and managed to even hide a war. The private contractors, the Halliburton profits, the civilians death toll, the lack of a real military strategy, goal, or plan after the invasion. Just like the massive surveillance of American citizens, it was all hidden. Maybe on Facebook or Twitter these actions were reprimanded, in our second life, but in reality...there has been no accountability these traitorous deceptions. 

Snowden and Manning didn't give up locations or war strategy, they didn't release highly classified materials, they tried to tell us what is really happening in these wars and surveillance programs we are paying for, we are part of them, we are executioners and participants in the death of freedom we once had, freedom of privacy. Manning, once again was a Private, he didn't have access to much in regards to ground-breaking information, he's as low as you can get on the wire. Our government and President told us these were serious breaches of National Security, and vilified men moved by their moral code, men who only showed loyalty to their countrymen. They sacrificed themselves just to whisper truth in the ear of a Nation where truth is being stamped out. Get back to your second life America, we have reality under control. Plug back in, It's for your own good.

It's hard to believe anything we are told anymore, in the real or second life. That's the nature of war. Soldiers don't know if they are good or bad, or what side of History they will fall on. Anonymous was championed by many for uncovering truths and battling corporate entities around the world in their second lives, and the thirteen members who have been arrested will be punished no doubt to the full extent of the law in their first lives. Our Global War on Terror has turned inside out, or maybe it's just finally exposed what it really is, a war with ourselves, a war with our own identity. A war between our first and second lives.