Haiku Hump Day: America - Fuck Yeah!!!

(I'm rushing this post into publication without much editing. I apologize in advance for the extended Stan long-windedness. And sorry about the unnecessary third person reference, too. I am BURIED by work at the moment, hence the Wednesday-ish late night Tuesday posting. West Coast, jump right in...)



In retrospect, leading up to the July 4th holiday, I wanted to have this as the topic, but the ship had already sailed on Fights, which had exponential, historical results.


This was the only pic I could find from the match in progress. Right after this, Hogan powered out of the Camel Clutch, kicked Iron Sheik in the face, and dropped the Big Leg on him. 1-2-3, new champion. And America was saved.

In any event, I thought that we could reflect upon why this country is so seriously awesome, and what makes our way of life so great. And also, how our way of life allows for some of the most seriously retarded things to become important.


Ah, Photoshop. So believable…

The Founding Fathers, a bunch of wealthy land-owning lawyers, came up with the crazy idea that we could have a country based on the concepts of individual liberty, religious freedom, personal accountability, and the strength of capital as the driving force behind our economic system.

• shaking blog awake *

I know this is reading like a high school AP History exam, but hear me out: America has been described as the world’s “last, best hope" (by all sorts of people). Ayn Rand, to paraphrase, described America as the first country in the history of humanity NOT founded or created by seizure of wealth, or territorial conquest. This is important shit.


I’m a big fan, and I’m the furthest thing from a right-wing wacko. Important ideas going on here. Please read the book.


If you think about it, and if you believe what we’ve been told in terms of history, humanity had finally exhausted its search for new lands in the mid-First Millenium, content with sailing around Europe, Africa, and the totally wacky Far East.


“LOVE that hat and sword you’ve got there – have you seen our guns?”

That’s where America comes into play. A heretofore (six-eight, who-do-we-appreciate) undiscovered land, ripe for colonization and statehood and conquest, with nary a soul to stand in our way.


“Oh, pardon us, we won’t be here long.”

Undiscovered country. At least by white people. And discover the hell out of it we did. And kill a bunch of brown people along the way.

In this day and age, it’s sort of crazy to think about things like North Carolina and Tennessee being in a big fight over the lost state of Frankiln (happened), or Texas being largely part of Mexico, before a bunch of dudes did some kick-ass shit at the Alamo.



In fact, the whole Civil War seems almost unthinkable; at least, it seems unthinkable until you realize that it's STILL being played out in our political forums and culture today, and if I didn't have the time to sift through the countless Youtube clips of Southern Senators spouting fountains of absolute rhetorical dogshit, I wouldn't have had to settle for this picture:



We are a nation of division, of dialogue, and of voices. What we have lost in our media-barraged age is the concept that yes, everyone has a voice, and we have freedom of speech, but the more retarded elements of that speech should be discounted in favor of the intellectual higher ground. That’s what the Founding Fathers were going for. A new, mind-based country. We’ve lost that, and become complacent, and as Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots.” So therefore, we have to kill a whole lot of people.




It always sends chills down my spine to do the Freedom Walk in Boston, and see the places where the Shit Really Went Down. This is the real deal, where Paul Revere actually did his thing. Where we fought for the liberty of our own minds.

I grow increasingly nervous about the “Christian-izing” of the country. The demonizing of atheism is the first step down a slippery slope into a state of the exact opposite of what this country started out as. Watch this to be devastatingly horrified. The thought of an atheist President or Supreme Court Justice, in our current day and age, is actually laughable in its impossibility. People should be free to believe in whatever they find holy, be it a box of Special K cereal, or a vision that some guy had on drugs which made it okay to move to Utah and marry a bunch of women simultaneously, or a totally believable story about an extra-galactical overlord Xenu and how we might best serve him.



The point is that this country was founded on the idea that you can believe what you want to believe, but you just have to keep it out of the business of the state, and out of the capitalist system in general. THIS is what makes the country good. I would encourage all of you to read Atlas Shrugged – it doesn’t inform my every opinion of how things are or how things should be, but it’s got some seriously relevant ideas about how this country should REALLY be working, and not from a ridiculous right-wing conservative crazy place either.




In short, God doesn’t Bless America. Americans Bless America. So, in the spirit of the tireless patriots who fought for our rights, like Hulk Hogan, Sgt. Slaughter, Corporal Kirchner, and Hacksaw Jim Duggan (who was basically a fucking retard who carried a 2x4 to the ring as America’s pot-bellied representative – totally shameful), I encourage all of you to give me your best 17-syllable poetic rendition of what America means to you, in all its glory, warts and all. Feel free to get extremely political and religious and righteous.

Otherwise, the terrorists win.

(Suggested haiku directions and some motivational video here: Abortion. Flag-burning. Hot Dogs. Baseball. Strippers. Strippers With Apple Pie On Their Boobs. And Hot Dogs. Republicans. Christianity. The American Indian. The Boston Tea Party. The 2010 Tea Party. The Ridiculous, Gaping, GLARING Difference Between The Two. That Kentucky Fried Chicken Thing With No Bun. And so forth.)

U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!! Hor-ror-THON!!! Hor-ror-THON!!!