This is kind of a long one, but bear with me. I don’t do these long ones much anymore, but this warrants it, and I have a lot to say about it.

Morality and Iraq

The Iraqi constitution contains, among its many flaws, one word that renders the entire document and all the work thereon useless. It ensures that each and every death in that country, be it American or Iraqi, means nothing.

“Morality.”

Specifically, in Article 17, Part 1: “Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality.”, and in Article 36, where rights to free expression are guaranteed, “as long as [they do] not violate public order and morality.”

Now, the word in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, of course. The problem is more with the concept the word represents. An exercise: Try do describe the boundary between “moral” and “immoral”. Is killing an aggressor to save your family moral? After all, it IS killing. How do you make the distinction? How do you determine the boundary? (If you think “the law” is the unquestionable answer to that, stop reading this and please, right now, go and take all the bottles out from under your bathroom and kitchen sinks and drink from each one of them, especially anything labeled “ammonia” and “bleach”. You’re only making things worse with your blind ignorance. Because, after all, according to German “law”, it was perfectly “legal” for Hitler to kill the Jews.)

Of course, that’s Iraq. You kind of expect that Islamic people would have something like that in their constitution. This is America. This is the land of free speech, where even if something isn’t necessarily “moral”, we still have the right to say it, right? Right?

Obscenity and America

Well, no, actually. Thanks to the new FBI porn squad, we no longer have that right. Fundamentalist Christianity, neoconservatives, and weak-spined Democrats are to thank for the removal of your first amendment rights. That’s right, in THIS country: America.

So again, we have a problem with a single word. This time, it’s “obscenity”. But, see, just like with the other one, there’s nothing wrong with this word; it’s the concept it attempts to describe wherein the problem lies. What is obscene? Ask John Ashcroft–the guy who draped a purple cloth over the tit of a statue–and then ask me and see how dramatically the concept can differ from one person to the next. Try it at home! Ask your friends and family what they feel is obscene, and see how their responses vary. Then, you can write down their responses, enter the data into a computer spreadsheet, and e-mail it UP YOUR OWN ASS because it’s MEANINGLESS. How do you make “obscenity” a policy? How do you make “morality” a policy? Whose definition will you use? The politicians’ collective opinion? Have the people vote on it every year and see what you come up with? Put everyone’s names in a hat and draw a hundred at random? Paint various potentially “obscene” concepts onto people’s backs and have them fight to the death?

And where will it end? Will I eventually be asked to take down my site because I use “the f word” too much? Will it expand from the internet to paper materials? Books in which anything sexual is depicted? Subversive literature? Sexual humor? Again, what is “obscene”? Some die-hard religious types might think it’s “obscene” for women to read. Some might think the idea of women being equal to men is “obscene”.

By the way, if you think you’re safe just because they claim they’re specifically targeting fetish porn and you’re not into that kind of thing, don’t think they’re going to stop at piss, shit and BDSM. What would be the point unless they went after everything? Why would someone be more traumatized from seeing a woman tied to a chair than seeing a woman being penetrated in every orifice? And, you know, I don’t recall anything from their little magic book that addresses consenting adults tying each other up or pissing on each other for sexual arousal. So on whose morality are we operating, here? Certainly not the Bible. I’d also like to see these jerks go after fetishes for specific parts of the body, like feet and hands. “Oop, can’t show your foot on the internet or you’ll get arrested or fined!”

The Market, God Save the Market

Of course, the really ironic thing is that this is coming from the people who for years have claimed that “the market will take care of any problems”, and that the government needs to be “smaller”. Just like the Cunts For America and their Starbucks cup, really. If they really believed what they claim to believe, they’d just stop patronizing these particular businesses–BDSM pornographers and such–and let the loss of business eliminate the “problem”. After all, that’s what they told blacks in the mid-1900s. They told them it was wrong for the government to make it law that businesses can’t discriminate based on race, and that the market would solve the problem. People would stop patronizing those businesses, and eventually the loss of business would mean that the businesses that didn’t serve blacks would disappear.

And, of course, if this is their definition of “smaller government”–invading the internet looking for pictures of consenting adults engaging in fetish behavior–it must be fucking Opposite Day or something. In fact, it must have been Opposite Day for the last, like, five years! Maybe it’ll be an Opposite Decade! Hell, it started with the country saying they, on the whole, wanted to elect one man into office, and then his opponent got in. To me, that’s a GREAT way to start Opposite Decade. I think we really hit the ground running with that one.

So, here in Opposite Decade, “small government” means “spending money on the military, domestic reconstruction efforts, and tax cuts that go mostly to the wealthy, not only racking up a record-level defecit, but doing so by adding tons of fat to what we pay private contractors”. And “an obvious mandate” means “support from about half the people involved”. And “family values” means “shutting down internet porn sites while at the same time being some of the most corrupt, filthy human beings on the planet, whose deeds eclipse a video clip of a girl getting spanked like the sun to a baseball orbiting on the opposite side from the Earth”.

How about, instead of going after internet pornography, they start targeting the forced prostitution of little girls in the Marianas islands? ‘Cause, see, those girls aren’t really consenting to what’s being done to them. I mean, it’s essentially rape. If not actual rape, it’s at the very least statutory. And then, a lot of the time, the bosses force the girls to get abortions if they get pregnant. But, hey, DeLay says that it’s a shining beacon for what the conservatives want to accomplish in the U.S., so it’s GOTTA be a great place, right?

But, hey, we’re just letting the market manage itself over there. If we intervened at all–even to save little girls from being prostituted–we’d be interfering with the Market, God save the Market. And God forbid we ever even question the Market, God save the Market. And after all, the rules of Opposites Decade dictate that “culture of life” and “family values” mean “letting little girls get raped in the Marianas and be forced to abort any subsequent pregnancies in the name of business interests”.

An Aside: Market-Oriented Ideology

The War for Freedom Begins at Home

This is total lunacy. This is beyond the most apefuck levels of insane, right here. This is the kind of shit that makes me start fantasizing about getting some investors to buy me a heavily-armed old ship in the middle of the ocean with satellite hookups that I can sail into international waters and use as a completely free data storage facility. (By the way, I’d had this idea long before reading anything by Neal Stephenson.)

There will be no end to it, because “obscene” is a completely relative term. Sure, they’re starting with scat and urine and BDSM content, but soon it will be anything referencing that. And regular porn. And then things that are generally offensive, like things containing words like “fuck”, “shit”, et cetera. And books. And movies. And pretty soon, your neighbors will be turning you in for hearing you moan too loudly while you’re having sex. And your friends will be turning you in for mentioning you like to be tied up.

That’s not freedom. That’s not even close. That’s Gilead, a place where women are refused the right to read, and where they have to put on superfluously concealing dresses to hide their shameful bodies, and they have to sit back and be fucked by sterile, limp-dicked old religious nuts because women are–according to popular “morality”–subservient to men, and only useful for making babies.

And of course, if you actually fully support all the things these people are doing to turn this country into that, I have this to say to you: Fuck your vision of America, you dystopia-craving assholes, and fuck you, too.

For your enjoyment, this picture of bondage:

I’m not sure of the source of this image, but honestly, if they know what’s good for them, if they happen to stumble onto this site, they’ll let me keep it up.

And I’ll be god-motherfucking-damned if I take this down for George “The Doubleyou Stands for ‘Washed-Up Alcoholic’” Bush and his little Censorship Crusade.

More on this to come. And yes, I said “come”. Go ahead and fucking arrest me, you FBI “obscenity laws” fucks. Go right ahead and lock me up for depictions of consenting adults tying each other up. Fuck you and your shitheap vision of a dystopia America, you brick-raping goatfucks. And Democrats–yeah, I’m talking to you; take your heads out of the ground and listen up–you’re just as much in on this ridiculousness as the rest of ‘em. If you don’t put a stop to this, I don’t support any of you, either, and I’m going to go ahead and set up my own goverment and army and convince people to pay taxes to MY outfit instead.

The war for freedom begins at home. Check your hands, America: We don’t have many straws left for them to take away.

P.S. – Conservatives: Is this your idea of “small government”?

(Also: A note to my readers: Sorry if you were browsing this at work and saw this and it freaked you out. In the future, I’ll post a warning, and hide the image behind a “hover” for people browsing at work. I did it the way I did in this post to make a point. Hope none of you got fired or anything.)

So the Concerned Women for America–a.k.a. Ladies Against Women, a.k.a. A bunch of dill-cunted Stepford breeding trolls–are now turning their attention to Starbucks drinking cups with–GASP–a piece of text by a gay man telling other gay people that they shouldn’t torture themselves by trying to repress who they are.

On a superficial level: I like how they’ve never mentioned a damn thing about Jeffy “Lube” Gannon–a “Christian” Republican “news” “reporter” who, according to security logs, would enter the White House and not leave until the next morning, and who ran a gay escort service–but HOLY SHIT, something a QUEER wrote on a CUP! STOP THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ PRESSES by JAMMING AN ORPHAN INTO THE GEARS!

But, see, here’s what I feel is being overlooked with this situation: Aren’t these the same people who argue that the private sector should govern itself? Aren’t these some of the same motherfucks who think that the civil rights movement of the mid-1900s was a bad thing because the private sector would’ve regulated itself? (That is, they claim that people could have stopped patronizing businesses that wouldn’t serve blacks, and that the loss of income for them would mean that only the businesses that served blacks would remain open.) So, uh, why don’t the fundamentalists just stop patronizing Starbucks and hope that the private sector will govern itself? Why should Starbucks have to serve these miserable hate-matrons coffee in cups bearing only phrases acceptable within the framework of their fascist fundamentalist agenda?

Because they’re fuckin’ hypocrites, that’s why. So, uh, tell me again why we allow these people any say in public policy? Tell me again how it’d be the least bit fucking possible to make any laws at all that would coincide with their hypocrisy without conflicting with each other?

In any event, may every negative thing that has the opportunity to befall those miserable CWFA bitches (and assholes–at least one of their major programs is headed by a non-woman)–who spread hate like oil droplets atop a water puddle–succeed in doing so.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” –George W. Bush, September 1, 2005

No more than they’ve been anticipating global warming. No more than they’ve been anticipating eventual oil shortages. No more than many anticipated the tax cuts would create a major deficits and financial problems for the nation. No more than they anticipated some Al Qaeda terrorists would hijack some goddamned airplanes. There are quite a lot of things that nobody anticipated, by which I mean really did anticipate but in conflict with the ideology of the Bush administration and its supporters.

So now what do we have? We have a major U.S. city converted to corpse soup. We have an important U.S. port taken at least two-thirds out of commission for a good part of the immediate future. A port which, by the way, accounts for twenty percent of U.S. imports and exports. We have gas prices that jumped, in the last year, by around a dollar a gallon. We’re still “recovering” from a recession that started about five years ago. Five years! If our recession was a child, it would be old enough for kindergarten. And any notions that we’re somehow “recovering” are bullshit of a most insulting caliber. They keep telling us, “American people, you are doing well!” The response is usually, “as an American person, I beg to fucking differ!”

What else do we have? Oh, right, some collapsed buildings in another major U.S. city, ruined by a bunch of fuckasses that someone in our government at the time predicted would attack us. He wrote a report about this prediction, in fact–a report he tried desperately to give to the president, who procrastinated even acknowledging the document until it was too late. What did they say afterward? Nobody could have anticipated it. It wasn’t a prediction, it was “a historical document”, said that canine-faced, lying cunt who was promoted to Secretary of State for her bravery in the face of certain truth. A fat lot of good her education did her. Anyone can make up a bunch of bullshit. It’s not a skill that requires a degree from Stanford.

And even as the weather becomes noticeably warmer and more humid, they continue to tell us that predictions about global warming are wrong. Of course, when they’re editing the scientific reports to lasso them in to ideological acceptability, it’s no wonder they have such an easy time refuting results. I’m willing to bet my entire circulatory system, though, that when major global warming effects begin to take their toll on the world, if the same brand of motherfuckers are still in power, they’ll claim that “nobody could’ve anticipated” it would happen.

Oh, and, by the way, nobody could have anticipated that an entire country with an entirely different society wasn’t going to shower us with flower petals and garnish us with excited spurts of ecstatic jism when we sent soldiers from a country where a large number of its citizens refer to any Arab as “sand nigger” or “raghead” to forcibly invade and occupy their country indefinitely, either.

The people of this country are finally having to meet the eyes of the Inept Ideologue Monster. His approval ratings are now down to 36%. Which, of course, doesn’t include the opinions of all the people from New Orleans who can’t answer their telephones because they’re underwater. (And yes, you can read that as either the phones or the people being underwater, if you wish.)

I was recently re-reading the article from The Onion, titled Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’, from January 17, 2001, and it’s startling how accurate a joke article from a satirical newspaper turned out to be. It seems “completely failing to react promptly and effectively to a massive natural disaster because you hired a chief emergency manager whose only qualification was that he was a college buddy of the former chief, and because you let ideology supersede the needs of the people” is one of the few things this administration has done that wasn’t entirely predictable. And no matter how many layers of “brownwash” they try to paint over their response to Katrina, I don’t think they’re going to have an easy time lying their way out of this one.

The predictions that were made about this administration aren’t ones I’m at all happy were vindicated. But maybe now that they have been, some of the people living in this country will finally come to their senses, and realize the only predictions Bush has been heeding are the ones where he predictably follows his own agenda over utility, and serves his own interests over those of the people of this country.