jeremyjarratt.com

Even on FOXNews, they’re bashing that poor moron. She doesn’t even understand the concept of Africa being a continent and not a country? Wow. That’s really something.

Finally, the United States of America has confidantly voted into office its first black President, and today is the first day of the Future after all. I am so proud again to be an American.

We owe a tremendous debt to black, female, latino, and other “minority” voters, many of whom have until today been disenfranchised - not just for what they have done today, but for what they have done in the past to bring us to this moment.

I can’t help but recall the more joyful lines of Walt Whitman’s loving ballad to his President:

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won.

(Of course, i have omitted stanzas which are not needed and do not serve this day; the poem, after all, is an elegy.)

This is an open letter to white people, to poor people, to working stiffs, and everyone in between. This is not directed at those whose conditions are extremely comfortable.

I have a number of friends who have confided in me their fear that if Barack Obama gets elected, he will work to ensure that blacks thrive and whites suffer, or something to that stupid effect. This is something i simply do not understand, and i hesitate to call those people ignorant buffoons - but it’s difficult not to.

I believe that one of the biggest social problems in America today is that minorities feel disenfranchised. I know from experience that it’s hard not to wallow in misery when you’re depressed beyond the will to live. Maybe i’m completely wrong, but i think that minority groups are overflowing with people who feel that there is no real hope - and the natural fringe elements that are set to negative action, either in abject hopeless despairing nihilism, simple apathy, or as a means to an end. It’s sad to see this happen in the colorful but hopeless ghettos across America (just as it is sad to see it happen in salt-white Appalachia, etc., only perhaps more so within minority communities, due to the fact that it almost certainly could have been prevented generations beforehand).

Can you imagine the positive potential of having a President who is not white, inspiring people of all colors, all over America, with the idea, realized, that anyone truly can be what they want to be, do what they want to do, and become who they most wish they could be? Can you imagine people - of all stripes - actually living up to their full potential, or at the very least, earnestly trying to do so? I don’t know, it just sounds like a promising idea to me.

“But I feel disenfranchised,” whines the white friend, in mock-misery, either not realizing or not caring that they sound as if they truly believe themselves to be somehow more important than anyone else.

And of course you do - there’s no need for the belligerent, dramatic moaning. But you are not just an angry white male. Of course you feel disenfranchised - you are; you make less than half what your boss makes, while doing more than twice as much actual work! (Should your boss pay more taxes than you? Perhaps we might ask: should you, who makes far less than your boss does, pay less taxes than your boss pays?)

You are a member of the largest single group in America today: the working poor. You are a member of the majority. If you are a white male, you are a member of multiple majorities. What can the largest group of people do if they pool their efforts?

What can the majority do?

You are not without power. You can affect change. We can change the world. And we will, but we have to do it together.

The real minority in this nation is the wealthy. But they are not without tremendous power! The power that the rich have been enjoying for centuries dwarfs the kind of power that you and i can ever even imagine yielding. And yet, we are the majority.

I have heard many claim that the United States is a meritocracy; it is no more a meritocracy than it is a magical wonderland of lollipop-cities filled with rainbow-riding unicorns. The United States is currently a plutocracy; an oligarchy; an aristocracy, ruled over by a minority of the extremely wealthy.

It’s time to take our country back from the hands of the merciless, the pitiless, the rich plutarchs who tell the rest of us what to do and hold us down so they can continue to sit on our breaking backs with their sacks of pilfered riches. Stand up, you workers, and let those riders fall where they may!

Homeless.

Here is the text of an e-mail i never sent to the editors of the Dayton Daily News and some other locals. For whatever reason, it was abandoned. This was concerning a recent Forbes article asserting Dayton, among several other Ohio cities, was among the top ten fastest dying cities in America. Our local media, far from investigating the underlying reasons why we should be so included, instead insisted on defending our [un]fair city, claiming that Dayton wasn’t really dying - just changing.

You know what else is a change? Death.

(Note: this is not very well written and equally badly edited. As i’ve said, it never got beyond an early stage.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Comedian George Carlin dies in Los Angeles at 71

Former U.S. soldier droppin’ some Truth about this bullshit war in Iraq. Do your self and your conscience and your country and your fellow human beings a favor by watching this and then doing something about it.

I totally just felt an earthquake! In Dayton, Ohio! I have not experienced that since way back in the 80s!

The house vaguely shook, and i heard a slight rumble, followed by the house creaking and popping, woodly. My first thought was that we were being invaded by something [non-supernatural].

Wacky!

Ben Stein, who we no doubt all know and love from his appearances on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Win Ben Stein’s Money, has made a little movie. It’s called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (my thoughts exactly), and it’s a cute little rickroll of an adventure flick with Pro-Nazi Chuck Darwin leading the hoary brigades on a fell mission of genocide and eugenics. Only problem is, it’s a big fat fart-sucking lie. Unfortunately for Mister Stein, he got all of his facts wrong. Well, nearly all, as the credits (both opening and closing) do appear to be accurate.

Here, then, is Scientific American’s John Rennie and Steve Mirsky, reporting on the pitiful, outright lies perpetrated in this ridiculous movie.

Oh my god. This creepy, unthinking mechanical thing is the precursor to the terrible things that will replace us. I, for one, welcome them with open arms.