Informing Consent

Informing Consent 

by Alfred Lehmberg

Flying Saucers And Science—A Scientist Investigates The Mysteries Of UFOs by Stanton Friedman -- A Commentary

For the whole of my ufological life, actually, I've appreciated Stanton T. Friedman. A decided high point in it was an occasion for Stanton to introduce me to "Aztec 1948" expert Scott Ramsey in Charleston, West Virginia, years ago, as "one of the good guys."  I suspect I have a valid justification to feel so honored.

See, from the beginning, with regard to UFOs and expert method, Friedman has unstintingly prosecuted only top drawer professional behavior and best practice. This is even during the rare and obligatory ufological "turf war" deemed necessary—if unfortunate—in times past.  Remains: he's played by the agreed upon "Queensbury Rules" where others have not. ...And it's him making justified bank for the effort, reader, contenders in smoking ruin. I say true.

Found in arrears? All my recall signifies he will mea culpa and clearly indicate "no contest." This means that caught in rare error he backs the "fup" off, reader! That won't be happening; however, when a reasoned and reasoning science is ever on his side or believes he holds the higher ethical ground.  Prepare, then, to have your loins successfully ungirded.  That's got to hurt, eh?

On reflection, I'm hard pressed to recall even that single instance of Friedman being caught "wrong" and provoking the remembrance alluded to above. Maybe he could give me an example... he would, you see.

An unapologetic world trekking lecturer's lecturer, it remains that there is a lot vituperation extended from his conflicted critics and other "noisy negativists."  Frankly, these are "persons who don't do their homework," who are "apologist ufologists," assorted skeptical ideologues (to be kind!), liars, cheats, intellectual thieves, and obligatory betrayers... calling a spade a spade, eh? 

Still, this aforementioned vituperation is handily dismissed with citation and then calmly endured. Dogs and spots, you know. Another metaphor: a gentleman's gentleman, a sober butler of the ufological; Mr. Wayne's Alfred, if you will, but we're stretching.

The vituperations directed at him, on reflection, are explained by the fact that he has managed to stay "cutting edge" and "relevantly contributing" with regards to UFOs... for decades! These aforementioned vituperating others find they are decidedly "out" of "contribution" of late, themselves, never had a relevant "leg" to stand on at the start, or are crass intellectual cowards on fire with what must be base envy of the greenest and most gravid of jealousies, jealousies provoked by covetousness and the outrage of scurvy snakes with their stones abruptly overturned!  They were so comfortable.

The preceding precisely explains, I suspect, a lot of vituperative angst on the issues extant. Remains, Friedman makes a regular substantive contribution.

See, when one takes on an "Alienview" as Stanton Friedman frankly has, contrives to avoid having a canted dog in the investigative hunt, and then weighs the evidence or rebuttal of same?  Well, one makes short work of even serious criticism and is ever the only one left standing on the debating field scratching themselves, distractedly. Friedman has crushed his detractors and seen them driven before him; he has heard, thews rippling and debate dripping gore, the lamentations of their fanboys.  There's some portraiture!

Friedman looks marvelously unruffled standing there, too, shrugging as if to say, "Next," but noisome and uninformed nay-sayers lay crushed and broken at his feet like shattered little dolls moaning pitifully and gnashing their tiny brittle teeth. Such is so.

When antagonists lack the rationality and good sense to avoid engaging him on national radio and television, has he ever lost a debate? I don't believe so. I recall aftermaths of hair, teeth, and eyeballs not Friedman's.

See, Friedman is a scientist, a real scientist, so... "back off," eh?

Though seriously, he is the type of scientist to follow data even when ax-grinding "others" pretend not to know that the real process of science actually precludes them from throwing out the data ticking them off!  Yes, these discard Data not fitting their preconceived world view. True, they discount Data not conforming to their outdated "conventional wisdom." It's what "reductionists" do.

Further on, they deride Data not currying favor with their psychopathically reptilian "corpocracies."  Finally, they dismiss Data not pandering uselessly to their corrupted mainstream.  Stanton Friedman gives consistent notice to this corrupted, duplicitous, and niggardly mal-science, decisively!

Consider.  The latter "science" just described is the science of uninformed and moneyed mountebanks like a smirking Dr. Shirmer. It is the inappropriately mal-Occamed science of vapid company popinjays like Dr. Nickell, Dr. McGaha, and Dr. Shostak.  It is the misleading and so falsely conceived science of bubble-gumming sneerer Bill Nye* the ironic "Science Guy"... or anyone else Larry King trotted out on his periodic Friday night UFO show for "Balance." 

The blissfully ignorant Ben Bova, too, a late Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan, it would appear... ...demonstrably uninformed!  Don't bother them with facts, boys and girls!  These are "minds" made up!

No, the preceding does not promote real science, reader.  They arrogantly mope a ready travesty of same, at best, or at worst, work against it in spirit and practice.  What hope of real progression, there?

Stanton Friedman, on the other hand, is a scientist practicing science as science is meant to be practiced: out of the wholly reductionist box, with due diligence, and with facts at the spring-loaded ready, pursuant to following the data wherever it goes!  The smart, brave, and progressive Friedman won't have it any other way!

To wit: Friedman has written an illuminating book describing these iterated suspicious failures of "mainstream" science, its scientists, and its assorted commentators or spokes-puppies.  It is called Flying Saucers And Science—A Scientist Investigates The Mysteries Of UFOs (Career Press Inc, 2008).  Friedman's is a key read, folks!

See, in this extremely cogent, organised, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful economic masterwork, all the "noisy negativists," "apologist ufologists," obstinate skeptics, errant critics, uninformed commentators, boastful "experts," conflicted dis-info specialists, government shills, and pompous character assassinators bumping fractious gums for years... are decidedly put paid, in spades, for their scrofulously sullen inflexibility—invalidated themselves as they would pretend to invalidate—with intelligence, appropriate humility, and decided flair. 

Gloves no longer remotely justified should come off with all of the preceding persons, reader, and do.

See, people can get too comfortable with predictability and investiture and let that desire for security bleed over, inappropriately, into their professional lives and their personal practice.  They cheat intellectually, fudge a peer review, publish falsehoods, sometimes, as noted above. They don't consider who has to play so they can play, to a degree.

I'm going out of my way to be civil, here, reader.

Too, the badly played rank and file, vulnerable to fear and made fearful by those just described "criticized"... not because a fear is valid or not (those knowing—suspiciously—won't let us know) but because they like it right where they are, catbirds in their well-appointed seats, thank you, and so ignoring potentials in the aggregate intellectual profit to disclosure... only perceiving their personal loss of power, prestige, and control—valid or no!

Your garden variety rank and file human "bean" on the abused left half of the Bell curve and employed in their service, deserves more consideration than that, actually, than to be mere cannon fodder in unjust wars, assets to be liquefied when the man on the hill comes up a little short, retirements and pensions to be gutted and devalued, or individuals to be sold out and disrespected like they were expendable fools and dishonored dolts.  I perceive that Stanton Friedman believes such is so. UFOs, allowed, are enlightenment.

...Which is something else Friedman makes clear in this volume, reader!  Individuals need complete information, of needs, to make informed decisions regarding their informed consent.  Do individuals have access to appropriate information regarding UFOs so as to be able to give an informed consent in their regard?

Well, if the "mainstream" attitude to information as it pertains to UFOs is remotely similar to similar informations gained by the individual regarding Government, Institution, Church, Medical community, Foundation, or Agency... the answer must be a booming NO!

Does Friedman believe that aggregate humanity is rewarded—in the aggregate—with more forthcoming "official" info about UFOs?  I perceive he does.

Does Friedman believe that aggregate humanity "can handle the truth" about this decided "other," perhaps visiting us in ships not of our manufacture?  I perceive he does.

Does Friedman have a cogent plan for how that "truth" about UFOs and their occupant accouterments might be "disclosed" so as to provoke the minimum amount of social kafuffle?  Consulted, yes he does, reader. 

That solution, simply stated, is drawn from the experiences of our own human history!  These proffered solutions pertain to "mainstream" adjustments which become required, reader, as once new—now old—ideas involving race, gender, sexual preference, and creed are conceptualized and implemented.  Friedman points out that human beings are ever their own solution and that "ET (?)" is just a previously undiscovered people, across a presently impassable river, on the ultimate and final frontier!    

In closing his final chapter regarding why our attention to UFOs matters, Friedman asks:  "Can we not step back and see ourselves as our visitors see us?"  No equivocation there!

The very essence of the individual taking the Alien View, Friedman points out same in the one book anyone really needs to read about UFOs.  Friedman reports that the conjectured ephemeral occupants of UFOs have abundant and effuse reason to be exceptionally careful in their approach to us.  We might have the sense and humility to feel the same way... and in not a little shame. Shame, reader!

Charming "monkeys making mouth noises" able individually, perhaps, to make beautiful things or to have an intrinsic beauty, in groups they are, or can be, egregiously monstrous and coldly reptilian... insentient, generally.  If Friedman can understand that, then the presumably "advanced" ET —EP, CT, ED, or TT et al, don't quibble— may have similar "understanding."

Let me tell you something else I got between the lines of Friedman's state of the art look at a bona fide Science and its genuine investigation of UFOs.  There is, he hints at throughout the compelling read, another substantive reason to get this ufological "dentist's office visit" behind us.  See, we can do anything if we do it together.  That sounds trite, I know. Remains; however, true.

Consider, its reality is excitingly and astonishingly powerful!  Advantaging ourselves with the fact that sorrow is lessened in company while joy is increased in same, we push ourselves into an expanded reality—jumping to one whole new energy level of consciousness that is by definition expanded!  We need to do this!  We have to do this.  The future is this.

Stanton Friedman believes perhaps, I would not presume, but that we'd be well served to gird our own cognitive loins and perceptual cockles—make appropriate disclosure our "task at hand."  ...Be at last what we were born to be: a reflective humanity achieving the stars.

Friedman's book, reader, gives salient hints to a path accomplishing exactly that.

That's enough.  Read on.

*Apart from his tediously unconstructive attitude regarding UFOs, Nye can be spot on regarding other subjects like climate science and energy production. I am loath to add him here, but he will atone for his ufological treachery. [g].

"No Free Degrees... thank you."

The Mothman "Futility" Syndrome

Real? Imagined? ...or something "outside" an "in-between"?

The "Mothman Futility Syndrome"

by Alfred Lehmberg

People suffer needlessly for the gloating convenience of craven psychopaths. I say true. Avoiding that suffering is a bullet dodged. Here's another kind of bullet, its recognition, and avoidance. 

A syndrome is defined as a Pathology where a group of symptoms—together—are characteristic of a specific disorder or disease, or something else resembling such, though something in the existential. Additionally, it follows, then, that it can be a group of related or coincident things, events, actions, or affairs. All this hallmarks a pathology biologically or psychologically indeterminable from a state that should be describing a "well" person, except for lettered and educated guessory, frankly. 

It's obvious that a "bigger picture" is lost on mere monkeys making mouth noises. A talking monkey, myself, I only suspect that. Don't look to me for a dead-lock nut on the universe... Still, I have eyes to see and ears to hear. I make my report.

Back to syndromes. Sometimes, a syndrome is the pattern of synchronous symptoms characterizing or indicating even a particular social condition... if humanity can be looked at as a whole entity. Finally, a syndrome is that predictable and characteristic pattern of behavior, action, etc., which tends to occur under certain circumstances. These circumstances are of the "default and existential highly strange," especially those occurring to persons previously thought of as sane and rational. Finally, like all syndromes, this is one which slowly and painfully (if needlessly) kills.

Legions of persons down through history have self-destructed on cruel paranormal shoals thrust upon them without their foreknowledge or informed consent by an official reaction to highly strange events. Then they are made to pay for their innocent exposure. I say true.  

Affairs and activities regarding these individuals... (where these same individuals are prosecuted [none dare say persecuted] by corrupt governments, mendacious institutions, and dark agencies... corporate golems indifferent to the revolting excesses of their masters... beyond even a duplicitous oversight... and then prosecuting their easy betrayals of the public trust attendant to these "mal-trusted entities")... do not get illuminating scrutinies.  

Questions get begged, eh?  Google Paul Bennewitz for an example.

Damaged in these encounters, these persons are then denied succor and redress for grievances perpetrated on them—suffer by their own self-loathing if nothing else—facilitating gainful persons who "know better," eh?   ...Ethically superior, then, to the aforementioned organs of a duplicitous society and expecting greater or at least equal ethical behavior from it, these persons are ironically sacrificed on the self-serving alters of same... for the pecuniary convenience of same!  

Dr. Jim McDonald is another example.

The pathology of the strange syndrome is revealed.  We observe that it is indeed strange... strange that it is not the alleged affected harboring the real disease but the affecting! 

Verily, I'm reminded of an observation by Timothy Leary that LSD is shown to provoke cognitive pathologies and mental illnesses in persons who have not taken it. The aforementioned McDonald, by way of example, was a portrait of rational health adored by thousands for his attitude, intelligence, and leadership.  His persecutors, not so much. Chief among them was company stooge and media hit-man (the late) Philip Klass. Klass was visibly chief with regard to harrying McDonald to depression, despair, and suicide... Why? McDonald could opine intelligently, scientifically, and convincingly on the subject of UFOs.

A distinctive or characteristic mechanism of a patterned and manipulated behavior, the "Mothman Futility Syndrome," then, is at base defined as the authoritatively prescribed—and so largely inevitable—defeat, ruin, and despair visited upon an individual who fails to get to the bottom of—or provide adequate personal explanation for—a paranormal experience manifesting itself to him or her and which that person cannot, in good conscience, ignore. 

A sane person wants a reason explaining the "actually extant in the existential" ...flying pink elephants if they were perceived, by damn! An explanation of the unexplained is demanded by that reasonable person. One wonders for their sanity questioned, after all. Concern for one's sanity is eminently understandable. Society is not helpful.

Clearly, this imposed malady is NOT self-caused.  This societal insult is an imposition not from within, but from without.  Civil rights implode!  No, one should not be betrayed, targeted, or penalized for seeing what is actually there to be seen or there's no such thing as fair play.

Everyone has heard tales regarding someone who went "over the edge" or "off the deep end" chasing UFO's, or some such... Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster-type affairs.  Some of these persons lose jobs, loved ones, self-respect, and even their lives regarding "mainstream derided" incidents—incidents regarded as paranormal snipe-hunting excursions—reportedly, of their own accord.  Examples are Dr. Jim McDonald, Paul Bennewitz, and John Ford.  These are men lost as a result of not getting support, or targeted outright, for chasing a tantalizing, if wholly and ironically demonstrable, ephemeral.

The aforementioned were lost to death and /or despair.  At the far less dire end of that syndrome is myself, as example.  I've lost over a decade's real wages as a certified teacher discouraged employment as same.  There's a freight to be paid investigating discouraged investigations.

True, it would appear that these persons drive themselves "crazy" trying to "know the unknowable," or, in other words, chasing "obvious" folly. I was on the way. In the words of one man: making the wrong choice between "not finding out" about "something" and... "...living a normal life..." I've finally opted for the latter.

Still, that's not the issue.  Self-aware persons can know what they saw, eh?  The default villain in the piece is seen in relief to the self-aware person alluded to, but I move ahead of myself. The victim shall not be blamed!

This conjectured syndrome is best illustrated by the Gordon Smallwood character in the semi-recent hit film, "The Mothman Prophesies." Smallwood was the tortured and tragic character alluded to, played by Will Patten. This poor soul was so taken by the "Mothman" and the strange portents that it 'communicated' to him... that he lost his job, family, and even forgot to eat or dress for a dangerously inclement weather.  

He finally died of exposure waiting for the ephemeral and enchanting "Mothman".  ...A true story?  On some level, I'm betting, and to many.

"Smallwood" died, "close" to something he felt, so very close to *something*... but he died in despairing futility, regardless.  Everyone would agree. Then, where is the implied provenance and necessary genesis for that futility, and who actually bears the brunt of responsibility for it?

"Gordon Smallwood"?  I don't think so.

You see?  Gordon Smallwood was just trying to make sense of what he KNEW was occurring around and to him.  He knew something was happening because a well credentialed, reasonably decent, and big city television 'News' man was very supportive that something WAS actually happening to the both of them, over an extended period of time, and to a LOT of other witnesses too, including Smallwood's predictably deserting wife.  What's a remotely curious human being to do in such a circumstance?  What would the reader do (and they're more choices than merely two)?

Just another anecdotal tick-tac for the impacted klasskurtxian or reflex reductionist to pole vault over?  Probably, but still very symptomatic of other chronicled sightings of the paranormal by sober, competent, and reliable witnesses during mass sightings similar to Belgium in 89 and 90, Exeter in 65, and Illinois in 2000... the list is long.

How many "Gordon Smallwood's" of one degree or another have dashed themselves damagingly on the rocks of this 'facilitated' futility during the aforementioned sightings?  How many lost wives and husbands, jobs, or positions over it?  Some were affected, surely.  More illustration?

There are major motion pictures made about the concept as archetype, most notably the Roy Neary character in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"...walking away from humanity betrayed by society, wife, and children but, why SHOULD that sociological loss occur? He was driven to it, not driving.  

The witnesses are righteous, something inexplicable actually occurred, and innocently ordinary people were confronted with the extraordinary... why is their destruction necessary in a pursuit of it? Why indeed, but that it makes corporate catbirds skittery...

In walks an obfuscating, corrupt, and completely hijacked mainstream represented by its erudite and lettered mouthpiece, shill, and unabashed apologist, CSI.  The aforementioned Philip Klass was a starring member of this sham scientific society back when it was CSICOP.

CSI (all the publicity it gets), a corrupt Committee of Serial Insentients, is primarily invested employing its murder of uber-reductionist crows: eloquently canted little pundits in eager attendance and capering around their idea-burning fires like evil imps and busy nixies. Here are the facilitators of the syndrome sufferer's toxic futility, and the real reason the "Gordon Smallwood's," of NEEDS, must dash themselves senseless on the rocks of those self-same and surreal existential shores.

Lost in an informational VOID that a corrupted mainstream nourishes, encourages, and otherwise advances, the inevitable "Gordon Smallwoods," while knowing that something really unusual—is—occurring, are forced to try to make some sense of it on entirely their own!  Here, reader, is our outrage!

See, they are DENIED open-minded but rational, competent, and learned counsel.  Though, how can they get quality counseling when their concerns, reports, and fears are met only with shrill admonitions that they are one, MISINFORMED, two, LYING, or three, CRAZY! The problem is with the observer!?! Classic gaslighting at its finest! This is all the Mainstream CSIcopian can allow.  ANYTHING else is "outside the box," and so a slippery slide back down the slopes of their accommodating and ongoing duplicities. "Alternative facts" are their current admonition. Maybe Jesus really did ride a dinosaur? That's insult on too many levels to name.

Misinformed. Misinforming. Mentally ill. "M" cubed!  HERE is the trinity of their "truth" and from which the mainstream controls the worldviews of millions!  HERE is the suspicious mechanism keeping a ufological disclosure at bay!  

HERE is the mainstream agency that complicates at best and destroys at worst, knowingly, the lives of innocent Joe Sixpack or Jane Wine-cooler, when they see a UFO or suspect they've been abducted—what sets them up for ridicule, failure, and despair! For control... ignoble, unethical, and pecuniary.

THIS is the genesis of the "Mothman Futility Syndrome," then, and not, inexorably, the infirmity of the innocent individual attracted like a doomed moth—as would be any one of us—to a true burning flame of the purist imperative. UFOs! Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Hard to ignore when it walks up to punch you in the face! It is the learned SOCIETY that won't produce the tools with which to deal with the braver investigation of that flame extant!  Liability revealed!

HERE is your villain!  There is much, good reader, that is outside the tiny box of mere craziness, simple error, or outright misdirection. Yet, the mainstream professes this is not the case and proclaims it science.  Nonsense.

Enforcing those kinds of philosophical limitations and intellectual confinements does NOT go where the data leads.  If one does not go where the data leads one is NOT doing science, one is not being rational, and one is, finally, opting for base cowardice, intellectual and otherwise! 

Finally, and most importantly, respect is not being shown.  This is the crime for which heads will roll eventually.  Our leadership, elected and non-elected, had the information all along to lessen our confusion, fear, and despair and didn't respect us enough to do anything but shine us on.  Heads will roll, eventually.  The correct ones at the last.

...Think they WON'T?  Be disabused of that baseless notion, eh? History is clear.  Read on.

Free Expression?

Fact is? I have no free expression. If I don't have it? Then, neither do you.

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Truly, I am being persecuted (denied a wage), frankly, for expressing rational views on interesting subjects that are piece, part, and parcel of our human consciousness or experience. They are subjects in no way irrational, violent, or prurient even as they are discomfiting subjects. They're just critical. What's the problem?
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Is it the interminable essence of my PAQ ("Prosery" of Arguable Quality)? Is it the starkly conscientious contentiousness of my social commentary? Is it my rational interest in UFOs and the abduction phenomenon and all their other astonishing ancillaries? Is it that I won't suffer an unjustified sneer?
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Is my graphic art that disturbing and unsettling—a lasting reminder to you of something that seems convenient (if unethical) to forget? Is my very amateur music that discordant and exasperating? Machine elves shall not be denied... minus even the substances required to encourage them to manifest themselves...
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Do you think that I might confuse the kids... (forgetting for a moment that it is better to confuse them than to bore them)?
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...What?
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None had seen fit to challenge me directly on the foundations (or the appropriateness) of my rational convictions or teaching style. All my evaluations were top drawer. I graduated college Summa cum laude. One teacher evaluator on record even said that I inspired her to continue teaching... Yet... no one did me the courtesy of an eye to eye sit-down for a little logical and fair-minded counseling or appropriate mentoring.
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I'm not a know-it-all, reader! I live to learn, and I will only admit to a fairly low toleration for dogs (of any stripe) that won't hunt... as advertised! Regarding those *dogs* (ideas, methods, and techniques et al)... why bother, otherwise?
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My dogs must hunt successfully, then feed exceptionally well. Well fed, there is digestion. I'll leave their comparatively more efficacious and fertilizing deposits where I suspect they need to go. No apologies here. Your Post Toasties are not safe. ...And they shouldn't be.
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I write epic "songs," as affected as that may appear to some. They are in me to express, and I find them singularly exhilarating, personally! That's enough, eh?
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Each of them has its own little jazz/folk tune to help carry it along and, collectively, they are like little keyholes into the universe for me. Rap a la Lehmberg. Sincerely. No apologies here, either.
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On the astonishing ride that these variegated songs have become for me, I am in some way allowed to see a little deeper into the murk—actually a lot deeper—than I ordinarily can or remotely did before... My songs are like literary Blue-Blockers, sincerely. Ironically, glare reducing, eh? 
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I add, nothing you couldn't do yourself, reader. See through fog, I propose.
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I go *somewhere* with my prose songs, for sure. ...Some folks share that they can go along, too. I'm abundantly satisfied in that venue. Though, my *satisfaction* is not the provenance of my explication. I don't think it would work that way.
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Every sentence of them aspires to provoke an essay which could stand alone. Every word is carefully chosen and even a mini education if the reader should have to look one or two of them up... There're not too many of these aforementioned.
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They are the *right* words, and they are an honest attempt to switch out verbal lightning bugs for literary lightning bolts. No apologies here.
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I'd write them, have to write them, even if I was the only reader. I have some small indication that there are a few more reading than just me, so the worst possible thing has happened... pause for effect...I've been encouraged. Cue the scary organ music!
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...Now you've done it... Abandon all hope ye who enter here! Sincerely.
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Abundant enough, the positive response to my situation by far and away exceeds the negative response. Too, none have suggested that I should NOT be a teacher in a substantial amount of personal mail, while my cowardly attackers and arbitrary detractors continue to hide in the anonymity of faceless "officialdom" or officious little nyms. So, again, what's the problem?
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What are you scared of?
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Why am I paying this unreasonable social price for writing songs of conscientious expression (if that's the problem)? Why do I have to endure this back-shooting dismissal for exercising guaranteed rights? Why should I allow this totally unexplained and completely unjustified reflexive disrespect for my very reasonable and conscious sensibility — a sensibility well within the assumed bounds of a refined civility...
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I mean, really, if I'm not WRITING about this stuff, UFOs and ancillaries, popular culture is otherwise shoving it up my... ...nose... !
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You might argue that I'm cut from a cloth not presently suited for public (and certainly private) schools, and that I would cause a disruption in the status quo. You might even be right... but one must struggle to REMEMBER that that is simply not the point!
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The POINT is that education largely fails in this country, is an uneven academic smear of regressive, grudging, and minimal effort, and that it only teaches children how NOT to lead (or intelligently follow) in the 21st century!
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That's the point.
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The POINT, moreover, is that American public education is a place where the exuberant are drugged to a convenient conformity, the creative are dulled and discouraged to the lowest common denominator, and the intelligent are summarily broken to suit short term faux-social goals. The special are largely ignored at both ends of the academic spectrum! I say true!
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It's an environ where the academic penny is saved at school... to incur the pound debt occurring later on at the freaking penitentiary... you all know this to be true. Indeed, I sugar-coat it, reader!
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You better hope and pray that persons like myself question the status quo! You better hope and pray SOMEBODY does. The "status quo" creates more misinformed criminals and rational psychopaths than ever before. Moreover, the status quo deserves every test and question leveled at it. There is growth no other way.
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The "status quo," the reader discovers, is just another societal dog that won't hunt! Besides, the status quo by definition must remain unchanged, even knowing that to remain unchanged is to die suffocating in your own wastes. Verily.
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Moreover, the multi-verse appears to love novelty as much as it hates the aforementioned status quo. There's a lesson in there, reader! The multi-verse is about CHANGE and the conservation of its evolving complexity! We are about to experience that cutting edge complexity.
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Are these preceding thoughts the expressions that I am to be pilloried for? My apologies! Not!

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I have eyes; I see. I have ears; I hear. I'm sentient. I feel!
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Besides! I have every right of free expression this side of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, don't I? Hell, I even have the obligation to do that given there's a real fire!
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Fire! FIRE, damn it!
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My expressions, further, do NOT: require my expiation, justify my continued persecution, nor do they warrant the arbitrary dismissal I continue to suffer!
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The aforementioned persecution has cost me 500,000 dollars in lost wages all told as the crow flies, reader... while GWB made that in base salary every year for eight years and still sodomized our whole country! There's real irony for you! Enter Herr Trump!
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As I have said before, mash something down without GOOD reason "here", and just have it pop up over "there"—meaner! I'll leave it to the reader to appreciate what that might mean.

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For my money, all would have been better served by figuring some way to employ me in the system, but it is too LATE for that now. I was made, much too casually, an item on a social blacklist. McCarthy LIVES. No, he thrives!

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It remains to be seen what the end result of that arbitrary assignation will be. A victory by either side is likely to be Pyrrhic, but I cannot go quietly away for having been merely dismissed by just ANY convenient, contrived, or arbitrary functionary or witless juice-sucking idiot and jingoistic mouth-breather! You know who you are.

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Those times are drawing to an accelerating close. Fasten your belts.
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NO, I'll NOT be silent about this new McCarthyism. I'll do as I promised 68 moons (or so) ago and be VERY proactive about reporting any persecution I've experienced as a result of my ufological interests and the unfettered artistic expressions of those interests. I'll also keep making lawful expressions of conscience and social commentary. I owe it to the best ideals of this nation (myself and our issue ) to continue, and I've not forgotten that this is America even if everyone else in the United States Education System... CAN.
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I was of your bosom, America. I patterned myself after the best of what you taught me! For conducting myself in our best traditions I'm to be turned away and cast out?

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Given opportunity? I'd reconsider.

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The implication is that if you can't accept me at MY low octane level... ...then you won't be able to accept what you MUST accept later on to survive a future that roars down upon us all like a long-tailed comet from deep space!
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I'm no enemy. I'm that friend who breaks the inconvenient (but needed) news to you!
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Also? I AM you.
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Read on.

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This Is Now

America In Divisive Distress And Courting Disaster!

Ameri~ka The Brutish Rule?

By Alfred Lehmberg

This essay is about UFOs only in as much as current political behavior must inspire a reasonable trepidation in a UFO's conjectured occupants. We earn, and decisively, our conjectured quarantine... ...Buckle in.

To start, the wife is a wee bit upset with me as it stands, I say true! She won't avoid being more non-plussed upon finding out about the present controversy I'd engage, or otherwise whack with an outraged literary stick. ...But hey, as you'll come to see, I really do love her and so could do nothing less and remain a proper husband. 

My wife ~is~ an innocent in all this. She's never been to a paranormal chat room, surfed internet fringe forums, made an online friend, constructed a website, or contributed to a special interest internet group. The technology only very peripherally exists in her "meat-space" world. She has other—more traditional if no less valid—interests.

She is ambivalent to UFOs—if concerned regards my interest—a moderate/centrist politically, and she's blissfully unaware regarding a global affectation of an *internet* to move, touch, sway, and stir upon the collective sensibilities of the people who choose to plug themselves into it. Seriously, if I don't tell her myself, she'll likely never even hear of this essay. Her internet innocence is that complete.

Additionally, to further ornament the point, she's spent almost half of a century as the valued wife of a retired military officer who spent 25 years, herself, driving a bus for a federally funded school system without accident or incident. In that referenced time she went out of her way to pay her taxes, was always clean, forever thrifty, gracefully respectful, and certainly brave. 

She still is. She hasn't changed!  Her adopted country; however, seems to have taken some bad options and morphed into something altogether different... ...if... familiar...

More point ornamentation! Her husband had had many top-secret military clearances whilst on active duty as a career aviation officer, so, as a German National, she'd been through numerous Government Intel sieves in her own right over the years. She'd had to jump a huge hurdle agency-wise when we were married, 43 years ago, to get the clean bill of intelligence-health she obviously enjoyed. To wit: I was never denied clearance of any type for any reason and was even on operative stand-by for nuclear surety missions.

So what do I do to turn her crank so hard? I make it sound like I must be using or trafficking in controlled substances, be part of some radical political effort, involved with a terrorist cell, or cultivating some kind of twitchy internet sexual activity...

Well... no, no, no, no, and (...Let me think...) no, reader. At this point evidence for any of the preceding or remotely similar activity would have to be planted, frankly. Put a fine point on that. It may come up again!

What did I do, then?

Well, in a nut-shell, when he had a 90% approval rating post 9-11, I once wrote rather glaringly that our very certainly faux-mandated, apparently vote-thieving, and obviously ethically bankrupt and now former CIC, George W. Bush (...so there's no mistake...) was a "dumb-assed-dry-drunk-double-deserter with an inferiority complex, a paucity of intellect, and delusions of dangerous grandeur." Currently, come to my arms my brother...

...But that scared her. She remains "scared." Should she be?  If so, why? Here's the rest of the story.

She's a German National, remember. A resident alien. She was born in 1950 and raised in what was West Germany to a maturity decidedly foreign, if acceptably so, to the sensibility of a garden-variety American citizen. Her father was a German artillery Captain who was captured early to spend the war as a guest of the US at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Her mother worked in photo intelligence and image interpretation during the war. Nothing twitchy there, then, or later... nothing that precluded, at any rate, the top military clearances I've already mentioned. My wife is no member of Paperclip.

Let's cut to the chase...

Her mother and father told her many of the dark, dark tales about what it was like in Germany prior to and during the awful war years. Her now deceased second father, at that time a keenly edged 86 and a retired Regional Finance Minister—a survivor of the Winter War seeing duty and wounded on the Russian front, additionally—is able to draw... ...comparisons. Others, numerous friends and relatives of contemporary and advanced years that she regularly talks to over there in the "old world", are making the same unsettling... comparisons. Is there a comparison?

Their concern, fretfully reflected in the apprehension of my wife, is that the United States seems to be aping the same kinds of *attitudes*, *behaviors*, predilections*, and *activities* they'd seen before—the same kinds of hateful emotional fire, political irrationality, and nationalistic mayhem and malevolence. The same kinds of blurring of church and state. The same kinds of voter fraud and voter suppression. The same kinds of "rights" reduction.

The same kinds?  ...As Nazi Germany?  ...Ouch!

The same (...much worse, actually!) intelligence surveillance. The same cruel Machiavellian-ism. The same unilateralism. The same predatory corporatism. The same institutional duplicity. The same gnawing and depressing fear, worried care to thought and speech...

The same kinds of hell, reader... as was provided by Nazi Germany's Fascists of last Century. Is it the same?

I report, now, that they see in us the rise of what they themselves endured in the previous 30's and 40's, can sense the same approaching catastrophe that that behavior traditionally precipitates, and feel that their concern is more than appropriately justified. Is their fear justified?

My wife is fearful of an eventual Republican-league *Gestapo*, cheerfully facilitated by a powerful and sizable minority of adoring if deluded and terrorized sycophants, breaking down our door and dragging us away for re-education camps, imprisonment/torture, or even arbitrary execution.

She's not unworried about the continuance of our hard won military pension upon which we must depend. She's worried about the falsely punitive attentions of predatory institutions, corrupt agencies, and a rogue government hijacked by demonstrable criminal elements. She's worried about future persecutions imposed upon us at the whim of lawless sociopaths and their willing functionaries.

She's worried about us being falsely identified as an enemy of a 21st Century fascist state, and dealt with accordingly, outside of any law, so with the obligatory extreme prejudice. A true innocent in every respect, should my wife of 42 years be worried?

Fascism is defined as a system of *government* marked by centralization of authority under a *dictator* (preferred figurehead), harshly stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of even lawful opposition through crafted terror, and the use of manipulating censorship or propaganda. It is typically characterized by belligerent nationalism or some kind of baseless racism and sexually motivated hatred. Ultimately, it is a whole political philosophy or movement based upon or advocating such a sorry system for an even sorrier State.

Moreover, it has a penchant for an oppressively dictatorial control mechanism that is passionately, even joyfully, prosecuted. It likes what it does. Reflect a moment on the horror just described...

It puts corporate entities in charge of Government, combines state and church into a *sturch* or *chate* resembling neither, and it is the jealous enemy of an individual's desired freedom. It engages in adventurous wars of empire, as it profits from them, and it lavishly rewards the predatory few at the terrible expense of the manufactured many. It is a singular and perfidious evil in all ways, all matters, and at all levels. I've spent my whole life standing against it.

It HATES liberalism and egalitarianism. It abhors a bill of individual/human rights. It detests due process and equality under the law. It loathes independent thinking. Do we as a Nation begin to resemble any part of the preceding?

I'm a writer of admitted small talent, but a writer nonetheless. I'm also an educated, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen/retired soldier/officer and combat Vet. I'm intellectually placed, medially, near the top of the aggregate bell curve... nothing really special or pointedly seditious about me according to the references I'd mentioned (forgetting a proudly admitted cant to liberal philosophies if not politics) ... but I'm detecting a resemblance to nazism.

Friends of mine far smarter than myself and more professionally experienced and educated than myself detect a resemblance. Persons abundantly experienced with the full-blown examples of same... detect a resemblance. Some of us have to squint the eye a little harder than others, thank your God of choice, but a resemblance seems plain, regardless. Is there a resemblance?

Why would I shoot off my mouth and tempt fate, then, if there were? The answer is obvious.

How could I not, reader? How could I close my eyes and harden my heart to something I know, historically, would threaten me (and mine) right along with you (and yours)... something that would ponderously grow, eventually and certainly (!), to metastasize like the foulest National cancer, later (soon!), if not now?

How could I have any respect for myself, feel confident about the quality of life for my children and grandchildren, or live a proudly valued life on my own... if I didn't speak up now before our seeming National wretchedness was a foregone and egregious conclusion? 

How could I remain silent if I recognized that the present day was quickly becoming the antithesis of everything I had learned in school, defended in combat, and internalized in college about these glorious United States and the brave grace of its conjectured contribution to progressive civilization?  I believed these manipulating lies regarding "home of the free" and "land of the brave"!  Freedom's leader!  

I would make that manipulating lie so, efficaciously, of, by, and for the people! How could I not speak up, reader?  How can you remain silent?

I'm a writer like I said. I've a spotless record, top drawer references, decorations, citations, and awards... I'm a quality citizen, an intelligent patriot, and I have given my life in service to our nation as a career military officer and certified (...if underemployed...) public school teacher. I've been a proper *boy scout*, reader, as I've written before, if one with teeth.

No, I've not changed in the interim, become traitorous, or gone, in any way, bad. I've been consistent. ...Not so my Nation, seemingly.

Conversely, it seems to be my Nation, threateningly and unsettlingly, which changes, worryingly, around me! It's taken a hard right turn to convenient and authoritarian ~brutishness~ I can neither respect, rationally support, or remotely admire.

Truly, my nation seems to abandon me, not me it. Hijacked by an apparently if ironically faithless gang of neo-con political radicals scurrilously bent on using our Democracy to destroy that same Democracy... (another talent of the fascist!) these co-opted mechanisms of government betray me, deceive me, are disloyal to me!

...Who the hell am I?

I am you, reader! I'm another guy on site heating our culture's boiler-water. I'm one of the ones, along with you, paying the big freight in blood, sweat, and time! I'm one of the ones, along with you, at the whim of powerful sociopaths hard-wired to discount us, and so by ready extension, you, reader! This is regardless where you think you come down for a political positioning left or right of center. Still, to an ironically vast minority... you're just another steer in the herd they prey upon, even as they pretend to lead your prayer!

I look around myself and see widespread and pointedly unheralded voter fraud (!), political murderousness (!), and life/career-destroying dirty tricks! I see hijacked mainstreams, rollbacks of middle-class nurturing New Deal social programs, and insentient journalists pretending to be oblivious to it all! I see murdered investigative reporters, mindless network TV programs, rampant censorship, and the easy/ignorant complacency of the very purposely dumb-downed to all of this.

I see docile-herd-producing educational systems, insultingly banal and duplicitous textbooks, and all of this atrocity of patent disrespect is officiated by brain-dead and dispirited reproductionist teachers numbingly teaching too many students with too little resources. I see managed illness not cures, multinational corporations without the remotest civil responsibility, and the business of America as only unrestricted, and therefore historically dangerous, business.

Verily, I see hungry men jailed for stealing metaphoric bread while rich men are rewarded for stealing factories producing same...I see no less than the death of our National soul, the corruption of our finest ideals, and the radical rightwing degradation of all the better principles and ethics to which we should adhere, or why had Abortions gone demonstrably UP during a Bush Crime Family watch by a percentage recorded in double digits?  The answer might surprise... Down in an Obama Administration not so ironically...  I digress.  Trump, currently!

I'm not the only one seeing such. Given a conjectured potential for all the aforementioned, I won't be the only one persecuted for reporting it either, presumably. ...If I am to be persecuted. 

Am I to be persecuted?

Yes, my wife is scared and angry with me for stirring this unsettling mess with my equally scared—but outraged—literary stick. Though fear remains... maybe if I'm just a little bit brave now, raise my voice with others, now... others seeing the same kind of wrongness and egregiousness, NOW...

...Maybe I won't have to be consummately brave (...brave to death!) later on. That's my hope; however, wishful; that's my wish; however, hopeful...

I'll keep you posted. If things start getting dicey for me, if it looks like I'm getting singled out for Special High-Intensity Trouble of a "persecutorial" (sic) nature, I'll try to let you know. I mean there shouldn't be any trouble, you know? It's still America, isn't it?

Or is it? Is it Ameri~ka, and we just have yet to cop to it?

I wonder... "America the beautiful" or "Ameri~ka, the brutish rule"? How hard do you have to squint your eye, reader? How scared are you? How afraid?

Be very afraid, frankly, and speak out. You just might save us all. The country you'd save would be your own.

Read on.

Those Smirks & Sneers

It's all there... the Kingdom is at hand! Intention secures same!

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The future, for all of us, is all open-ended. There is all the potential for limitless choice. But we're stunted, or blighted, and kept where life's harried ... yes, much more controllable! Though... ...without informed choice.
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The stuff we had *learned* was an ax grinding dodge? Our History's "written" for the grace of a few? Grammar and High School were tools of the landed... ...Would they break, bind, and chain us... before they were through?
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Yes, whining that their struggle was "in everyone’s best interest." Whining that they "knew best," and were "guidance, God bestowed." Whining that the richest were, indeed, "maligned minority." Whining that "mere rats" would threaten treasured pleasure domes!
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...Read some Friedman; study Dolan; glean some Hastings; scan Feschino. These refute the errant pablum that is what will pass for "school." There IS, and so verily, a conspiracy afoot! It's a fraction of our populace surely plays the rest for fools!
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James Loewen describes it as cognitive dissonance, a behavior less than constructive. Truth is corruption's anathema, friend... keep kids in the dark, as adults... ...they’re "instructed."
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...And what's this then, this disrespect... to lie, mislead... malfease, then to keep an errant status quo, promoting that disease! It's clear who's served in all this mess, if we review the facts. Just following the money, then, provides for all of that...
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It's the lifeblood of our nation, then; 
to connive and then, conspire?
It's "politics as usual" 
that would fan us into flame? 
It's the richest and their *interests* 
that must fuel our culture's power, 
while the poorest bear the unjust heat, 
and their children take the blame?
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The "truth"? It may be horrible ...too horrible for real, but it festers 'neath the scab by which it's covered. So, to keep us in the dark, obscured, without some honest reason ... is to cripple our cognition so a truth goes undiscovered!
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...But where are all our "rich folk," one percenters, "getting off," then, do ya think? What profits those who sneer at these who toil? What profits those who truly surf the crests of waves provided by these entombed, alive, in toxic soil.
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Those who scrape and hoard their pennies... they're too tired for revolution; they're enduring misled lives... fearing "God" and "evolution"! Glamoured by their TV Sets and putting kids through school, betrayed by their religions and absolved the "golden rule."
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These fuel the richest's pampered lives; 
these have built their institutions!
These are cheated and betrayed at every turn!
These pump the filtered waters
of those overprivileged privileged…
These are, in stunning fact, 
made short what's earned!
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So where’s that sneering come from... when a *lord* beholds his *serf*? The peasant is an "underling"? His eyes best in the dirt?
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Beneath concern or cruel contempt? A "convenient" lot for "service"? A knob on which to place one's foot? A "well abused" made nervous...
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...A useful grease for your convenience that you use up like old socks. Some one without the where-with-all to complement your stocks…
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Well these "poorest" have the "richest", then, assaulting dwindling breasts... and these *rich* are sucking hard those straining nipples! They prosecute a turmoil for positions on our teat, while they work their deeds to keep our spirits crippled!
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...What's this to do with UFOs? You shouldn't have to ask. It's all about the "status quo." What hides in that tall grass?



• lehmberg2002@gmail.com
• http://www.alienview.net/

This goes for anyone who looks down their nose as a matter of reflex.
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This is for anyone with a proud look.
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This is for anyone who sneers.
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This is for anyone with a canted smirk.
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This is for anyone who wrongly detests the working stiff holding them in his or her providing arms, and manufacturing their complete convenience out of thin air—you lofty, sneering, clueless, and non-appreciative Fascist Elite!
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Conversely?
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Have respect for the builders/maintainers of your world, and we may lose our fear and mistrust of you—we may begin to learn a respect for you... ...a respect you'll never experience, you sullen uber-privileged, as more and more human beings slip into undeserved, abject and inescapable squalidness presently facilitated... by you! A squalidness YOU impose... illegitimately. A unrequired squalidness you encourage for convenience, if at your peril, in a final analysis...
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...I guess the plan then is to herd them all into Church, where they get their minds right—or butcher them in civil wars, unjust wars, or senseless wars... why? So, Neil Boortz can have a spot in Dick Cheney's pleasure bunker?
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…It's all so avoidable.
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Jeez—what the hell am I talking to you for?
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Melania? How in HELL can you look at yourself in a mirror, girl? Who pays so you can play, eh, Ms. Trump?
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...nice shoes...
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...Send the ACLU and SLPC each a phat check, would you? There's a girl. It'll knock a few degrees off the temperature of the hell to which you later consign yourself, I'd wager, eh? Thanks.
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