Tag: Tropetopia

(compare to the Declaration of Independence)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the political and legal bonds which have connected them with others, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the free and equal station to which the laws of nature entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of people everywhere requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to liberty.

We Americans – we peoples of the Americas – from Tierra del Fuego to Point Barrow and every point in between – hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life and liberty, as well as just and equitable conditions of life. That whenever any form of government – be it corporate or statist or otherwise – becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute various forms of democracy and free association that function to secure these inalienable rights, and that work to create a flourishing and relative equality of condition, without which these inalienable rights can neither be met nor fulfilled. When a long train of abuses and usurpations designs to oppress people under various forms of despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off corporate and state governments and other oppressors, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the people of the Americas, and beyond; and such is now their need to alter the oppressive systems of corporate and state authoritarianism and malicious neglect. The history of the present corporate-state systems of rule is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an intolerable tyranny over the people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. Continue reading Declaration of Emancipation

Iran today accused the US of invading Iraq over 5 years ago in 2003, and claims that the US has been “deliberately meddling” ever since by “conquering Iraq, by causing and creating wanton bombing and slaughter and refugee flight” in that country, as well as in Afghanistan. Iran, however, a leading oil exporter, did put in a good word for the great increase in oil price that the purported US invasion has created and sustained.

Through its chief spokesman Stan D. Garde, the US denied that it “invaded Iraq in any traditional sense of the word” but instead has made more of a “preventive visit” only to find itself “invited to build a few bases and stay on” by the Green Zone Iraqi government that the US defends from the vast majority of the rest of the country still known as Iraq. As for any refugee flight, reportedly involving millions of Iraqis, the US spokesman acknowledges that there has been some “limited well-advised and optional relocation of Iraqis but that Iraq is a more lean and harmonious nation today because of it.”

Continue reading Iran Accuses US of Invading Iraq; US Issues Denial

With gas prices at record levels and oil costs on the verge of going even higher here in the US and with record-setting killing (1,000,000 – best estimates) in and refugee flight (about 2,000,000) from Iraq, there is only one solution that Stan D. Garde can see: make Iraq the 51st state.

Now I realize this may disappoint folks in Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and England, Australia, and Israel, etc., all of which at one time or another have seemed to vie to become the 51st state, but given the recent surge in gas and oil prices and the ever pressing need of the US to run the world, I think there is no time to waste in bringing Iraq formally into the Union.

Iraq has already had elections so there should be no problem making the change official, little more than a few minor bureaucratic details. Surely Uncle Sam is strong enough to twist the arms of elected rulers for their signing on as number 51.

Of course the name “Iraq” will have to go. It’s too — what shall we say — foreign, or, I don’t know, Native. Something like Oila would work, I think, since Oila is rather euphonious with, say, Ohio and Iowa, a couple of rock solid middle American names and states, with limited refugee flight.

  

Now, some may object that Iraq, aka Oila, has already become the 51st state for all practical intents and purposes since, thanks to the invasion and occupation, the oil is essentially under control of the United States, being under its guns, and since the U.S. is already pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the land. So it may seem very little else is to be gained by Iraq’s formal incorporation into the Union as Oila. It’s true, Iraq and its oil are basically ours now (any impending legal formalization aside) — and not only on the noble you broke it, you bought it, so you might as well go ahead and keep breaking it principle — especially given the ongoing planning and construction of the fourteen permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and the U.S. embassy the size of a town (heavily fortified) from which ultimate power can flow, along with other gated communities and neighborhood stockades. 

  

However, failure to formally incorporate Iraq into the States will mean we have learned nothing these many years from the wisdom of U.S. policy planner George F. Kennan who explained the reality of the world so well over half a century ago:

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. … In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…. We should cease to talk about vague and…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

Building on this theme of “straight power concepts,” it seems obvious to me that international sovereignty must be increasingly a relic of the past. There can be only one State, the American State. It will give that Patriotic phrase “Love it or leave it” a whole new meaning.

The Iraqis, I mean, Oilans, will just have to get used to saluting the stars and stripes and singing God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner. Why should they mind? I don’t think they will mind really, once they learn to forget themselves for the greater glory of the State, just like everyone else.

Puerto Rico, we’ll get to you, especially if a diamond mine, or something, turns up that you might foolishly attempt to keep control of yourself. Of  course your little land and ungainly name will have to go the way of “Iraq” too. New Diamond as a new name might work. Or, say, Shinola.

In the meantime, Welcome, Oila! The 51st American state. An idea whose time has come.

—————————-
The Bush Plan to Abolish America
The US Conquest of the Middle East
Warhawk Guns For Hire
Dimslow – ‘08
Wholesale Withdrawal
Dimslow Calls the Cops
Anti-War Novels Are Treason
Compassionate Cannibalism
The Up Side of Climate Change
The Tropetopian Age

For once, my everlasting opponent, John Doe Dimslow, seems to say it best:

Universal health care in America? Far better to harvest the ill.  

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is complete lunacy:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

We may be born equal but we surely do not have the right to live and die equal.

Why should it mean anything to me that my neighbors have a much greater chance of dying early because they don’t have health insurance, and that my own family has to scramble to keep ourselves covered when we need to change jobs, or that we have to pay spectacularly high fees? Necessity is the mother of invention, is it not? Even if it comes at the price of a preventable death or two, or three, or…. 

Why should I care that the government — ruled by truly benevolent big business — invests next to nothing, or less, in preventive health care? Aren’t they saving me money? Saving us all?

My idea: call it compassionate consumption, or compassionate cannibalism. Maybe a corporation could get a charter to run a business that identifies the weakest among us, beginning at, say, age thirty or forty — or, hell, any age — and then harvest these ill, or maimed, or mere weaklings for amputation or termination and processing into food, or a broad abundance of other commercial products.  

Surely this plan would help ease insurance rates since the sick would not be using up all the funds. And the profit of such an industry would be good for the economy.  

I mean, who needs universal health care and a decent health care system when selective harvesting, processing, and bio-retail will grease the gears of finance for the economy? 

After all, the U.S. has the most expensive and profitable health care system in the world even though it does not come close to covering everyone — a remarkable accomplishment of which any CEO and good citizen should be proad to boast. 

Since treatment is available often only for those wealthy enough to afford their health care plans, which leaves out in the cold an awful lot of John and Jane Does, I ask that rulers in both the private and public sectors both, along with good voters, show some compassion for us Dimslows — harvest the ill and injured.  

There are plenty of possibilities for compassionate consumption. If the internal organs of a person to be harvested are diseased, then, say, the skin could be used to make car seats.  

Or if a person has skin cancer, which leads to harvesting, then make use of the internal organs for, say, dog food, until the advertising industry gets up to speed and successfully markets upscale cannibalism of select organs to the highest class of fine diners — those who in any case are used to living off the backs, the more traditional sacrifice, of those of low income. 

The pharmaceutical companies may scream that this will cut into their stupendous profits, but it seems to me that they, like anyone, could use a little more competition in the cutthroat, so to speak, free market. 

We just need to make sure that the government doesn’t get involved in the body harvesting and processing business, since government sector work is more likely to be unionized than private sector work, and having unions almost always means better wages, more vacation time, and other benefits, like health insurance — and it wouldn’t seem right to have health-insured and at least modestly well paid workers doing such a job.  

I mean, we have to have standards.  

Let ill and poorly compensated workers harvest and process the ill and maimed, who are themselves so often poorly compensated. It only seems Right. 

Harvesting the ill for commercial consumption — is that a great Dimslow idea for correcting the health care crisis in America, or what? If I do say so myself.  

I mean, the alternative is to just let people suffer, and force them into the agonizing decisions of trying to decide whether or not to buy medicine or food or electricity or heat or fuel or shelter or transportation or education, and so on. And that’s not a very nice thing to do to our families and neighbors, now is it?  

Better to kill them early for their own sake, and for our own peace of mind as well. And kill them also, let’s not forget, for the glowing good health of the economy. And kill them too for the logic and wisdom of the big dollars that rule our political system. It only seems Right.

Some have asked me, Stan D. Garde – “What is a Tropetopian Age? What do you mean by Tropetopia?”

First, the etymology —

trope:

Latin tropus, from Greek tropos turn, way, manner, style, trope, from trepein to turn — a word or expression used in a figurative sense; figure of speech — a common or overused theme or device; cliche

topia — by way of utopia:

Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place — an imaginary and indefinitely remote place — a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions — an impractical scheme for social improvement

Of course, my slogans and policies are the furthest from “impractical” — that’s why the u in utopia is dropped. I’m not talking noplace here. I’m talking the world today. Tropetopia.

Unfortunately, book critics such as the ones below, though extraordinarily well-meaning, just don’t get it. It was sad really what these good men and women had to say about my previous book, Youthtopia:

A terrible book. Irresponsible.
   – Dean Obay

This book should be banned.
   – Will Servile

No one under 21 should be allowed to read this book.
No one over 30 could have written it.
   – Connie Sireton

No reputable publisher would go anywhere near it.
– Amanda Thority

Ban it. Burn it. Bury it.
– Newt Baas

I thought well only of the review by Dimn Flattary, in which he wrote, “High School like you’ve never seen it. High school like you’ve always known it.”

(I can state authoritatively due to many years of service in lovely Rockview Terminal, the Terminators never forget that our children are our greatest resource, and they do everything in their power to make sure our children are mentally cleansed, as thoroughly and as efficiently as possible — patriotica, electronica, Americana: YouthTopia — which is exactly what my mentally cleansed kin above value as well as I. Actually, I think the critics were simply afraid the book would fall deleteriously into the hands of those who have not yet been properly mentally cleansed — youth. Of coure the book is not for youth, and I give strict orders in the book to keep it out of the hands of all youth. I wrote Youthtopia for thoroughly cleansed eyes, ears, and minds only — those of mature adults, of course. Wishful thinking, I suppose, since the ban was quickly broken — but to few ill effects, apparently. So I now feel free to write Tropetopia for everyone.)

Whereas Youthtopia revealed school as if people (parents in particular) had never seen it though always known it, with Tropetopia I hope to illuminate the world entire by way of this Global Campaign Journal that may strike many as if they never had known such a global campaign for the benefit of all humankind even existed though they’ve always seen it.

Don’t look now but this is an age of massive public relations. A very large percentage of the Gross National Product consists of advertising alone. What civilized institution anymore isn’t advertising a great deal — or isn’t in and of itself a sheer monument of PR? The realm of trope.

The more you think about it, the more you live, the more you come to see: All is trope — living, breathing, thinking, believing, buying, selling, living, breathing, thinking, believing, buying, selling – more than ever, we trope to live, we live to trope. Tropetopia.

The power of trope – we couldn’t think a straight thought, live a straight life, or put our world on the straight and narrow without it.

You know how some people say something that says something they haven’t said? They speak indirect to communicate. I’m not one of those people. I mean what I say.Other people say, “It sure is a hot day today…” then swallow hard when they are at your place and you’ve forgotten to offer them something to drink.

Continue reading Tropetopia X — I Mean What I Say

If this American Campaign Journal, Tropetopia – more realistically titled, Global Campaign Journal – were anything more than a humble vessel of the popular will (the good loyal vendor-consumer will, of course) then I would be forced to point out that my notes here form the makings of an epic that easily has the potential to reveal more and far surpass in all elements any and all great works heretofore, including any and all works of the imagination and of fact – such as all epics of poetry, fiction, history, philosophy, sociology, theory, religion, science, and any sort of literature whatsoever, the novel, not least.

I would be forced to state that Tropetopia is sort of a history of histories, a philosophy of philosophies, a religion of religions, a theory of theories, a science of sciences, a novel of novels – a literature of literatures.

But – since Tropetopia is merely a modest old campaign journal, I can admit to nothing of the kind, however true it may be.

All right, damn it. All to the Right.

Time to face facts. That’s what I do. That’s my role. I look the nasty facts in the face to keep all us loyal DemRep Vendor-Consumers one step ahead of reality.

I read all the polls and then I redesign them and I poll the more. No matter how heinous – it is my job to confront reality.

Here’s reality –

95 percent of VC admit to calling the DemReps by either the old slur of Dumblican or Repugnocrat at least once during the previous year.

These curse words are what have got to stop.

98.5 percent of VC polled admit (meaning the number is probably far higher) to calling, or at least thinking, of the DemReps as the DamnRips (short for Damned Ripoffs) – or some version thereof (i.e., DumbRips, DimRips, DipRips, DopeRips, etc).

These are absolutely libelous names and appalling numbers, as any good VC should know.

This shows that we good VC are far from fully consuming and internalizing the best in Terminate DemRep Sloganeering offered today – at least on any consistent basis – periodic triumphs of TDR sloganeering aside.

As Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer, I intend to fully correct this abysmal situation.

The corrections shall heretofore commence, in public and private both.

It begins with you – each and every loyal and faithful Vender-Consumer alive today. You must internalize each and every slogan that is good for you and your country and world. You must buy in and not opt out. You must produce on a regular basis your own such slogans and carry them on, pass them out, and not pass them by.

We good VC produce and consume many important wonders these days – including a dizzying variety of electronica, foodstuffs, and subsistence gear – but nothing so vital as our daily nutritious assortment of slogans by which and only by which (brute force excepted) our great age may profit and thrive.

I urge you then, and now, good VC of the world, go forth and slogan, as will I – in proper VC fashion and style — the most profound, the most fitting, the most rewarding way known…

…the most constructive, the most benevolent, the most efficient, the most democratic — you get it — way of life known to humankind.

Indeed, in deed, the distance, insofar as it is detectible, between being the next great President of the United States and the Official Sloganeer is unimaginably small.

As that greatest of all Presidents once said, the job of the Presidency is basically to “catapult the propaganda.” It can’t be writ any better. I challenge any sloganeer. 

Think about it — a catapult is an ancient device for firing missiles and comes from the Greek words hurl and down. Meanwhile slogan comes from the Scottish Gaelic words meaning army and cry, or war cry. Thus to “catapult the propaganda” – or slogans – that is, to be the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, a Chief Executive Officer, or the Official Sloganeer – is to hurl down war cries, upon the country and world, to throw down, to cry out in battle – O thrilling and blessed state of affairs.

“‘Do Less with More’ – How’s that for a great terministration, excuse me, I mean, administration and campaign slogan?”

The first definition of campaign is “a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war,” and the word is derived from the Latin word for level country, if not a country that has been leveled into perfect uniformity by the determined catapulting of inspired campaign slogans – the propaganda.

I suppose it would be unbecoming at this point in this fastidious war, I mean, campaign journal to go into the combined religious and sexual origins of the word propaganda. Possibly another opportunity shall arise. For now we will limit our examinations of the potency of words, names, speeches to those which are more militantly related to power and might – as most befits any proper campaign journal.

“I love it,” said the Arranger, “Less with More – as in, lower expectations with more effort, reduced role of government with more PR, less disobedience with more authority, less complaining with more pride, less agitation with more religion, more border patrol less immigration, more weapons fewer uprisings, and fewer people controlling more money for the benefit of country and world – of course we won’t go public with that last one, and possibly some of the others. They will be for internal consumption only. It’s for the best.”

“I couldn’t agree more if you had said less,” said I. “This new job you’ve bestowed upon me is so awesome. I can’t wait to get up every morning and hurl the propaganda. It’s such a great time to be a sloganeer.”

“It certainly is,” declared the Arranger. “As always. To slogan is to live, I like to say. What could be better than to slogan away the glorious day? Hurl on, my Good Man. Hurl on.”

“There has been a terrible mistake,” the Arranger told me the next time we met.

“Not the Living Wage, again?” said I.

“No, no. But that puts things in perspective, Stan D. Garde. Thank you. Nothing so terrible as that. It’s you we must terminate.”

I will say this was not the first time I began inexplicably to distrust the Arranger. But I will say no more at the moment.

“I thought I was in good standing.”

“Oh, you are Garde, you are, undoubtedly. And far more than good standing, I might add, for you remain indispensable to the DemReps, and, well, in so many ways to us all. However, the Party does not want you to run for President, after all. Apparently, I was given the wrong instructions. We want you to write speeches, talking points, sound bytes, inspirational memos, news releases, and other publicity texts. We’ll pay well – quite a bit more than the subsistence wage you made back at Rockview Terminal.”

They would have to.

For I sorely resented being jerked around so severely, and I vowed it would never happen again. Gone were my visions of personally ordering the bombing of disobedient third world countries. Gone were my visions of restoring the United States to its pre-Civil War bucolic days and ways. Gone were my visions of, well, being a PVI – a Presidential Vision Itself.

I was outraged, infuriated, scandalized. I swallowed and burped softly. I wondered how I could be sure the DemRep Party was about to offer me a real position for the future. There was only one way, I decided firmly – I would create a position myself and demand it for myself.

“We would like you, now,” said the Arranger, “to be The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer” (– the United Corporations of course having adopted the inspired school district lingo of Terminal to their purposes many years ago. Thus, corporate became terminate, and corporations became terminations – as in the United Terminations of America and the World, the illustrious ruling global body. Of course, the schools had further changed the formal titles of administrator and superintendent to terministrator and superintermident, but terminations had been content to stick with their old fashioned yet powerfully allusive term, executive).

“The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer” – I mulled over the newly offered title. Highly attractive – I had to admit and could not resist. Gone was my good intention to retrench, stand firm, act on my own initiative. I coughed. “I am deeply disappointed,” said I.

“I understand.”

“I accept.”

“I understand that too.”

“The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer. It has a nice ring,” said I.

“A grand title.”

“A great honor.”

“One which we are more than glad to bestow. OTS, for short. Very good.” He clapped me on the back so powerfully it almost sent me toppling. But not quite. “I look forward to hearing your very first OTS, tomorrow, Stan D. Garde.”

“You can count on it, Sire. Excuse me, of course, I mean, Sir.” And not the French word from which Sir is derived, meaning Father, or Master.

“Outstanding, Garde. See you then.”

“Yes, Sir,” said I. “On the morrow.”

A slogan instantly popped into my mind: Never stab a man in the back who may as easily be stabbed in the chest.

On second thought, I decided to put that one away for a later day.

What would I come up with? A thousand and one possibilities seemed to flash instantly through my mind.

But first and foremost, that is, after “Conquer the World, Now,” came a blazing, blinking, short and sweet, concise and neat slogan that I knew would be the one to get the whole thing going – We Promise to Do Less with More.

And its various grammarizations — 

Doing Less With More.

Have More, Do Less.

More, Less. More, Less. More, Less.

And so forth.

Numerous understandings and examples of this inspiring slogan seemed so evident that I would scarcely need spell them out for the Arranger and any others tomorrow. The point, the barb, the hook was in the catchiness, the catchingness, the absolute grab you by the ganglia and not let you go nature of the trope — the twist and turn. Some call it spin.

All in all, it may seem quite a tumble to go from being candidate for the next great President of the United States to being the Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer.

However, anyone who thinks about it for any length of time whatsoever cannot help but see that the distance between the President and Official Sloganeer is so slight as to escape notice. 

After all, the President “catapults the propaganda” in the words of one of the greatest all time DemRep Presidents, George W. Bush, and in this way one “builds a bridge to the future” in the words of his colleague in arms, that other former great DemRep President, Bill Clinton.

And the Sloganeer of course tropes into shape that which is to be catapulted.

What a great future we catapult, indeed.