Bile XLVIII, All-Star Bile

We're here in real time now, people...stand the fuck by.

As I sit here, on this fine Sunday afternoon in July, the torrential desert downpour having washed the top layer of sand from my front and back yards into the street, the humidity in the high 80s, the temp in the low 90s, I reflect on just how quickly this year has passed. It seems that the older I become, the more quickly the world seems to move around me. Of course, in my present job at TTECG, this may be a function of the fact that my job deals with 28 day training periods, which discreetly pile one-on-top-of-the-other, to the point where I measure time not in days, or weeks, or months, but in overlapping training cycles. It disturbs me slightly that I'm ceasing to think of Fridays as such, but identify them as either "Training Day 1", "Training Day 15", or "The Friday before the Final Exercise". (It really bothered me the day before yesterday, when I only realized that a Friday was upon me after a woman who served me coffee wished me a "good weekend".) All I know is that I woke up this morning and found that we're midway through an election year, and the only candidate who is talking about change is one who wants to eviscerate this entire nation in the midst of a shooting war against Radical Mohammedism (note: not all change is good, please inform any idiots who think so, thank you).

Which leaves me with the only satisfactory segue into the main argument: Anytime the mass media wants to sell you anything, whether it be a tenet of political philosophy, a manner of aligning your priorities as a human being, or a candidate for the office of the President of the United States, that product should be questioned intensely...with a microscope...because they are doing so for reasons that do not line up with your long term self interest or the interests of this nation. Yes, we have become that shortsighted as a people. The media is what we've allowed it to become. They sell us things that they think we want to buy, tell us things that they think we want to hear, and try to keep us from challenging the status quo because that would leave them bereft of currency. They wish us to consume, and we do so, as complacent and compliant as Hindu Cows. As Tyler said:

"We're consumers. We're by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty -- these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Olestra, Martha Stewart. Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man! So fuck off with your sofa units and your green stripe patterns."

I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say let's evolve and let the chips fall where they may."

But that's me, I could be wrong, maybe it's a terrible tragedy."

My good friends, this is your mid-July wake-up call. It's your...

BILE
Volume XLVIII
All Star Break Bile

1) "I'd like to say that I'm for change. Yeah, the change that you have in your pocket." It is with little in the way of reservation that I report that the people who want to be your next president are idiots. McCain has been adding to the size and intrusiveness of the federal government since he left Hanoi, and Barrack Hussein wants to change everything by basically repealing the entire constitution. My youngest son, Daniel, asked me the other day if I would vote for McCain this election, since he knew how opposed I was to Barrack Hussein. I told him, "No, Daniel". He asked me why I would not do so. I replied that, since 1984, the American people had been forced to choose from the lesser of two evils at each and every turn. There seemed to be no individual to take up the standard of Reagan, there was no "good" choice to be made. So we did what responsible adults do: when forced to choose between a bad choice and a clearly harmful choice, we'll generally opt for the bad choice.

"The lesser of two evils."

I told Daniel that I'm thirty-fuckin'-seven years old, and I'm tired of making bad choices. In the whole spectre of "the lesser of two evils", I will never vote for evil again. Any evil. Never again. I expect none of you to follow me in this folly, for it is one of principle. Principle counts for shit these days, so most will vote out of habit for whatever asshole is standing atop their respective party banner. Original thought has taken a holiday.

My friends, we are at a complete standstill in this nation. From Bush I, to Clinton, to Bush II, to whomever comes next. The man who enters into that office has sold his soul to get there, and spends the next 4-8 years making it up to the people who paid cash money for him to be president. Each and every one of us sees the millions of dollars that is spent in the campaigning for the office of the Presidency, and none of us, not one of us questions where it comes from. I haven't donated, and I'm quite certain that many of you haven't either. Which might cause one to wonder just where in the hell this money is coming from.

We all know, deep down, where it is coming from. It is coming from those whose long term self interests align with whatever asshole they are giving money to. To enumerate the cause is to split hairs, and is irrelevant to my argument. Wealthy interests give a mind boggling amount of cash to whomever they think will mitigate towards their long term goals. I have no problem with this, actually. It is the way of things. And ever it shall be.

But consider for a moment how it used to be in the beginning of the Republic. When Jefferson ran against Adams in 1796, the money involved in becoming a legitimate candidate was not a factor. Those two gentlemen were both men of means, with knowledge and experience in the administration of the country. However, their relative ability to pump money into the local newspapers was not the central tenet of their campaigns, as it is today. Jefferson and Adams stood for alternative things: Adams for a strong Federal Government, Jefferson for the overarching rights of the States relative to the whims of the Federal Government. The winner of that campaign, John Adams, did not ever leave his hometown of Quincy, Mass. to campaign. It was a contest of ideals, of principle, and the principles of the many prevailed. There was no talk of what John Adams had done as an undergrad, whether or not he had fought in the revolutionary war, or whether he had inhaled or ingested anything that might have, at the time, been thought intemperate. The campaign was about direction. Whether the nation wanted to adopt the Federalist ideals of Adams or the Statist views of Jefferson. This was the world at the outset of the Republic. We should be ashamed at the state of what it has become, by God. Truly, and I'm really serious here, I could give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut that Barrack Hussein has been going to a church run by the black version of David Duke. That does not matter to me, people. What I care about is what he intends for my country, not what classes he took in high-school. So far, he has said that he wants to treat with the nations that we have been fighting intermittently since 2004 (Iran and Syria). I don't like that. So far, he has said that he wants a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. That scares the hell out of me.

Now, McCain is better only measured fractionally, in my opinion. He has, during his tenure in the Sentate, managed to augment the size and intrusiveness of the Federal Government, as has every other Republican except Ron Paul, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Newt Gengrich, and Ronald Reagan since the Sox lost the Series in '86. As I see it, the only difference between McCain and Barrack Hussein, regarding the distribution of wealth, is that Barrack wants to redistribute it to the welfare state, and McCain wants to redistribute it to the banking system to prop up a system that is failing utterly under the Federal Reserve. That too scares the hell out of me.

And so we find ourselves, yet again, with the choice between two evils. People, I'm done voting for evil. Lesser or Greater. Done. Finished. I will not, for the rest of my life, vote for evil ever again. I will vote for Ron Paul this election, regardless of whether or not my vote contributes to the election of either one of the alternative assholes. People, we need to wake up. And this is how it happens. Me talking to you, you talking to another. At some point, the voting for evil, Lesser or Greater, becomes moot. Whether the solution is of the Tyler Durden model, or that more mild version that is the result of mass unrest as a result of ineffective policy matters not. What matters is that we start talking amongst ourselves, leading those who would be swayed, to that place where the framers intended...a nation free. Not guaranteeing a litany of "rights" to such irrelevancies as health care, employment, housing, education, or economic dependence. But only three wonderful things:

Life

Liberty

Property.

Because once you've got those three, and nothing else, you've got the motherfucker licked, by God.

2) "I've lost my car keys. Quick, someone call the FBI". I was about to go off on a two-hundred word diatribe about Barrack Hussein's campaign, followed by another two-hundred words about McCain's. Then, while I was researching on McCain's website, I found the nugget that ties the two...

Both of these assholes think that they need to take care of me.

Now, this is a result of expectations that are societal and hearken back to the depression, but they are as unfounded now as they have been since before the Second World War. People, neither you nor I need the Federal Government to make our lives better. We don't. The Federal Government has managed to fuck up every task assigned to it since its inception. It cannot succeed in making your life better for you. It cannot take care of you in any appreciable way. At all.

Only you can do that, my friend.

True that. I was once an undergrad, with a live-in girl friend. She had a child. My sainted mother, perceiving the likelihood that I might not finish school and be wonderfully successful made the following argument:
"Larry, I will not continue to help you pay for school if you stay with her."

There it is, no? I told my sainted mother to keep her money, got a school loan, and here I am twenty years later. Laura and I did it our way, and Joel is in his Sophomore year in college with a 4.0 G.P.A....

The lesson here is this, my friends. The minute you accept a dime from someone else, be it a complete stranger or your own mother, that person will expect you to conduct yourself in a way that they expect and approve of. Human nature. Look it up.

As is the motif here in this little missive, let us look out there and read what is being promised you in this election year, with corresponding interpretations based on reality.

Ready?

Exercise.

From the McCain Website: "John McCain's HOME Plan Will Keep 200,000 To 400,000 Families From Losing Their Homes. McCain is calling for aggressive federal action to help keep 200,000 to 400,000 families from losing their homes. That plan has many of the elements of a proposal by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., requiring participating lenders to forgive part of the loan principal and then write a new loan that would be backed by the federal government through the Federal Housing Administration."

How It Works: Individuals pick up a form at any Post Office or download the form over the Internet and apply for a HOME loan. The FHA HOME Office certifies that the individual is qualified, and contacts the individual's mortgage servicer. The mortgage servicer writes down and retires the existing loan, which is replaced by an FHA guaranteed HOME loan from a lender."

Translated: First, who the fuck is picking up the tab on the defaulted interest? Huh? "Forgive"? One can only forgive if one has something in store. Banks ain't got "forgiveness" stacked in their vaults. They have cash in there. And if you've defaulted, whether McCain's your President or not, you're fucked, pal. You've entered into a federal beauracracy that involves something like judgement with regards to whether you deserve the relief. You don't. Unless you've got video footage handy of being set on fire by Nazgul while defending Frodo at Weathertop with a baseball bat and a can of mace, you're fucked nine ways to Sunday. Money has been set aside for relief...but not for you, you worthless piece of shit.

From the Barrack Hussein Website: Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.

Translated: The leaders of Mexico and Canada will chortle briefly before giving Barrack the finger and possibly dropping trou and showing him their browneyes. Caveat Emptor motherfucker. We punted NAFTA into the stands and can either invade said countries or help them industrialize in a more significant way to make this mutually beneficial. "Fixing it so that it works for American workers" would entail granting American workers Visas to move to either Quebec or Chihuahua. When given the choice of learning french or Spanish, and making less than $5 a day on the assembly line, I think the American workers in question will punch "2" on the touchpad and opt for English...and another president.

Bottom line last: We need the Federal Government taking care of us like we need a third nipple. When given the choice between the Government providing me with anything, I must ask the question "at what expense to my right to self-determination will this entail?" If I ask the government for something, and they give me something that is sub-standard, to whom do I complain? God? Will He send a plague of locusts or a pox among them?

No, so don't ask the government for shit. If any guy stands before you and says that the government can help you, you have a civic duty to punch that guy as hard as you can. We need to tell both Mr. Barrack and Mr. McCain to shut the fuck up and worry about the Federal Reserve, not my mortgage or health care. People, these two guys have big designs on increasing the burden of the Federal Government onto your shoulders. Each one of you might oughta ask a fuckin' question here pretty quick...and then question the answer. Both of them want both your money and your liberty, and this is the state of where the fuck we are in 2008. Learn to swim.

3) Epilogue. Well, some genius managed to make me the assistant Operations Officer of TTECG within the last month, until the new Asst. OpsO gets up to speed. This means that, while I have less fuck-off time, I do get to finally express myself at work like I've been wanting to for the past ten months. "I celebrate competence". Do not call or come by unless you have a clue, lest I become sarcastic, cynical, and caustic. Do not drink the last half-cup of coffee without making more, I have rubber bands, by God...and an endless ability to follow you down the hall decrying how lame you truly are for leaving me a half a fucking cup of coffee...

It's me, Andy Watson (aka: Leon), Scott Conway (aka: Rowdy Yates), and Matt Good (aka: Woodrow) training every single Marine Ground Combat Element to go to combat. If that doesn't scare you, then you need to stay in Quantico, by God.

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack, and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya
They say jump and ya say how high

Ya brain-dead

Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in ya head
-Rage Against the Machine, "Bullet in the Head"

Immundus saecula saeculorum,
Unclean