The Outer Darkness

Don't trust the commercial lie that its controversial
We were born morally upright even from the very start
As highly evolved mammals, we're empathic animals
One might say that nature's law was written upon our hearts

Until a few random defects spawned the odd psychopath
Hatched civilization as so many sinister plots
Took advantage of innocence, taught pack intolerance
nurture passed down misanthropy until love was forgot

Superstition burning behind an impregnable door
Powering the engine for unconscionable horror
Their machine separated mankind on it's threshing floor
When it broke the common bond they called the product war
a cacophony rising up as gears churn out the gore
Why must those teeth keep gnashing evermore!?!

It came to the attention of those who pulled the levers
That even superstition left bonds that need be severed
To thresh them more thoroughly they needed turn the tables
Infused superstition with egotistical fables

Dropped just enough crumbs to entice a clamor for status
saddled us with weight of the world, then said "call me Atlas!"
For the cost of your life you you might ascend one rung of rank
If you enjoy life perpetually guarding your flank

Lustful hubris burned behind a brightly glowing red door
Boiling the steam for their unimaginable horror
To exchange devalued beings upon their trading floor
Ever pitting man against man and wagered on the score
A cacophony rising up as gears ground down the poor
Why must those teeth keep gnashing evermore!?!

Chemicals helped keep the moving parts lubricated
Because even cogs had consciences to be placated
To turn a deaf ear as spilled blood cried out remonstrances
So that we might pretend not to all be accomplices

As machinery aged, fear and greed were not still sufficient
They found incendiaries volatile but efficient
Eventually the machine couldn't handle the stress
Cogs fell apart amid an unrecognizable mess

The inferno spread outward unrestrained by the great door
Science foretold plainly that indescribable horror
Warnings issued in vain for mere cogs were bound to ignore
Ashes fell from the sky and creosote lapped at the shore
Night and day became blackness like never before
At least those teeth aren't gnashing.. anymore...

Death by Misadventure

Hanging about in the graveyard of empires
We start to wonder how we got here.
It happened through adventurism.
And public apathy in the face of fear.

Our taxes went to training the zealots
On the plains of Afghanistan
Even the one called the Ace of Spades
In those days he was our man

The enemy of our enemy
Was our friend, we were seeing red
Years later that adventurism
Left thousands in lower Manhattan dead.

Death... by misadventure
Self infliction is tragedy
Death by misadventure
Another lesson for history

After adventurism burned us
Nothing left to do but double down
Another bad friend from the eighties
Season ripe to reap what we'd sown

We fought for freedom of the Iraqi people
Shiites to cut their sons on the head
Kurds free to circumcise their daughters
With just hundreds of thousands left dead

Death... by misadventure
Decider created anarchy
Death by misadventure
Another lesson for history

After many years of adventure
There is trouble down at treasury
Debt piled up like stockpiles of swords
When what's wanting are plowshares and seed

Seems the experiment's come full circle
From the blood of the Bourbon king
Whose adventurism sealed his demise
And gave birth to this murderous spree

The Decade of Decalogue

 (A remembrance of the ideas that characterized the mid 1990's through the mid 2000's)

Come with us and worship the Lord of Hosts they say
We meet here before class every morning to pray
But don't stop to read what the scriptures really say
Like lord's order: wipe out the Amalekite race
Kill the men, women, children, and even wee babes
What could a moral person do but recoil in shock
No Lord of Hosts, but instead lord of holocausts

I'm the gov'nor of Texas, won'cha vote for me
I reckon we share a sense of morality
We both know earth's been 'round but 60 centuries
We'll invade Babylon to fulfill prophecy
I know during my life the world will cease to be
Since the end is near, there's no need to count the cost
For waging war pleases the lord of holocausts

Elect those for democracy's usurpation
Because this world must be one of domination
For scripture tells that there must be a tribulation
to winnow the grain, from that chaff which must be burnt
Multitudes will suffer fates we equally earnt
We'll be saved for serving as apologists ought
Tried to warn others about the lord of holocausts

We await the day the sun be turned to darkness
waiting anxiously till the moon be turned to blood
humanity will be tread as in a winepress
with gladness we wait, for the terrible day of the Lord

Market Day

Inspired by an account of what happened to a Guatemalan village during the 1980's.


Soldiers came into town
on their Market Day
Freedom fighters for the
American way
Set fire to all of their
fields of standing grain
Took the men and boys out
and blew them away
Next for women and girls
after they had their way
sent them down the village well
to a mass grave

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day


To secretly fund the thugs
who embraced our side
a monopoly for drugs
tangling webs grew wide
Evil empires have to tell
their own people lies
like scandalous gangsters
exchanging drive-bys
collateral damage mounted
how many lost lives?
maybe even God lost count
if our stars aligned!

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day

Governmentalities

In understanding those grave powers that are not unique to the State, it may be helpful to examine the earliest forms of government. 

One or a few families formed tribes so that the deadly force of the whole would protect their fellows from one another, and from outside threats. This was the first form of governmentality.

Men came to swear oaths to one another, so boundaries were recognized along with the resources therein.  And the society became bound to defend boundaries from threats as if defending the individual himself, and this became and extension of the first governmentality, though still requiring the consent of the whole, not yet another governmentality itself.

Tribes typically adopted a set of beliefs in order to explain the world around them, and some tribes adopted a hierarchy to serve as intermediary between humans and the subject of their belief.  And some tribes came to assimilate outsiders into the tribe if they accepted these beliefs.  This mechanism, served as an establishment of social norms within the group, and served as another extension of the first governmentality

Though the young of the species were always at the mercy of their mothers until such time as they could fend for themselves, belief established a hierarchy of familial authority, which became an extension of the first governmentality that had consequences for individual autonomy long after the ability to hunt and gather was manifest.

Eventually belief required scribes in order to maintain traditions intact for posterity, and in time we began to have written laws, and then written title and deed, and officers of the written law serving as proxies for the deadly force of the whole. This we call the "civilized" State

The interpretation of law led to yet another hierarchy of judges and advocates.  And this lawcraft dismantled a degree of the original governmentality, for no longer did individuals need to rely so much on the consent of the rest of society for their boundaries to be recognized.  And for better or worse the deed of ownership became a franchise of the deadly power of State; and thus churches and families became governmentalities within a government.

States produced legal tender, so that once labor was extracted, it could be stored up, and this form of  riches allowed enterprising individuals the franchise of governmentality as well.

Monied wealth became both the means and inducement of many technological advances.  And in time the deadly power of many officers of law was available to be wielded even by an individual of modest means, and even by the thief that was able steal it from his home or wrest it from his cold dead fingers.

Some centuries back, it began to be thought necessary to limit the power of government and the power of franchised governmentalities, for all had been shown able to wield tyranny.  This revolution was meant to meld the consent of society with the civil state, so that the individual would not be subject to the whims of either mob or king or any other dangerous corporate body or individual.  Clearly, our American revolution still has a long way to go.

"where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists... for who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him?"

-- John Locke; from Second Treatise of Civil Government, CHAP. VI. Of Paternal Power

On Our Modern Wild West

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him. And, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third."

-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to Francis Gilmer (June 7, 1816)

Elections and the Valuation of Life

We keep seeing these "Energy Voters" on TV who are so concerned about oil and gas industry talking points. The site vote4energy.org delivers the spin this way: "A Vote 4 Energy is a vote for more jobs, higher government revenues and greater energy security."

They forgot to mention a shorter life. You see , the EPA is in the process of implementing regulations limiting industrial fine particles emissions (such as those found in smog and haze) to between 11 and 13 micrograms per cubic meter (by contrast, the World Health Organization guidelines recommend 10 micrograms per cubic meter [1]). The analysis the EPA provided used before congress included an $8.9 million-per-life cost-benefit analysis figure. It might sound shocking to the general public that our government puts a dollar value on human life, but regulatory agencies have done this for years, and the valuations vary depending on who runs the Executive Branch (and thus the EPA) as illustrated in the graph below:
 

Despite the life-enhancing promises made by the fictitious energy voters, The Texas Public Policy Foundation (A fossil-fuel-centric right-wing think tank) is more transparent in their views of the EPA valuation:

' The EPA’s favored studies find that the median age of people to whom additional life expectancy accrues is 80 years. And the increased life expectancy is estimated in several months, not years. But when aggregated into one statistical life, the EPA sets a value of $8.9 million per statistical life-year gained. That figure is more commonly used as a monetized value for a healthy 25-year old adult. The monetized value of additional life expectancy for an 80-year old is more typically estimated at about one-sixth the value of an individual 25 years old. '[2]

To add to their morbid cynicism, the article is headed with a photograph of an octogenarian couple sitting by the beach, looking out into the ocean--presumably waiting for Mitt Romney to appoint an EPA death-panel to put them out of their misery.

If such a scenario seems as absurd as my sarcastic tone might imply, consider what Romney's campaign literature states:

' Other EPA regulations targeting the entire American industrial base pose a similar threat. The EPA has issued a 946-page “hazardous air pollutants” rule mandating “maximum achievable control technology” under the Clean Air Act.  Even the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, an unlikely source of criticism for the President, said the rule would place 250,000 jobs in jeopardy. In conjunction with other regulations that the EPA is seeking to impose, the total number of lost jobs may come to be much higher. '[3]

And this isn't the policy of one who is ignorant of the consequences... 




If you ask me, we can't call any arrangement by the name "Civil Society" that regards life, limb and health as commodities to trade at market--for sale to the highest bid, or the largest political contribution!

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[1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/

[2] http://www.texaspolicy.com/center/energy-environment/opinions/statistical-lives-are-not-alive

[3] http://www.mittromney.com/sites/default/files/shared/Energy.pdf