Freedom is

choosing

Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close
Said he couldn't go on the American way
Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the West Coast
Now he gives them a stand-up routine in LA

I don't need you to worry for me, 'cause I'm alright
I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home
I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone
~ Billy Joel, My Life, 1978, “Fifty-second Street”

If this post is to have a theme song, let it be My Life by Billy Joel from his 1978 album, “52nd Street.” The album is named for a street in Manhattan which I would pass under and over many times in the years I was a student in New York. The album was recorded in a studio near there, and released by Columbia Records, which at the time was headquartered in the CBS Building, today notorious for where political reporters go to get fired and have their private records stolen by the network to expose confidential informants in another desperation move in a long series of desperation moves to preserve a dying empire.

In my youth, CBS was well-known as the network of the evil Westinghouse military industrial contractor company. George Westinghouse is known in the truther community as the guy who hired Nikola Tesla and didn’t treat him quite as terribly as some of his other employers. Westinghouse Electric created the CBS radio network which produced CBS news programmes that eventually included the CBS Evening News with demon worshipper and voice of Moloch in the Bohemian Grove demonic rites Walter Cronkite.

I walked away

One of the reasons “My Life” was a song that I liked immediately when it first began playing on a radio near me in 1978 was because it spoke to that desire to get away from control. I’ve written elsewhere about the violence I experienced as a child, year after year. Quite a lot of it was violence at home, mostly from my dad. Some of it was violence at school. Of course, there was also violence on television.

My dad had made a fateful choice in 1968. He really thought the presidential election that year was important. I don’t believe it was, but the extent to which the radio licences and the television licences only went to a few big corporations and the extent to which regionally important newspapers such as the Kansas City Star were owned by a few corporations, made the kind of propaganda that has been attempted again in recent years much more successful back then. Anyway, dad wanted to watch the political conventions that year, so he bought a television. Previously we only had a vacuum tube radio in the living room, along with a record player. One of my brothers owned an old shortwave radio and would practice with his telegraph key and listen to remote stations bouncing their signals off the ionosphere, and dream of a wider world.

So I saw quite a bit of the war in Vietnam on television as a young child. We read a lot of books and magazines and newspapers at our house. My dad was a nuclear physicist and took us on tours of nuclear reactor facilities. We would have meals together because that was simply the way of our family, and of many families in those days. Every day at breakfast we would talk about the news and the day’s events ahead. Every evening at supper we would talk about the day that had just passed and news and other topics. So I had a pretty clear understanding by the time I was turning 9 years old in the middle of the second semester of third grade of the nature of nuclear fission and the dream of fusion power.

I knew that my dad knew the men who had worked on the nuclear bombs that were used to destroy cities in Japan. I knew that there were missile silos all over the country, including some near me. Later I would have the experience of watching a film based in my home town, filmed in part on the streets of my home town, which depicted nuclear missiles rising from corn fields just outside town.

But I was nine years old, and it was the fourth month of the year, and I couldn’t go on the American way. Nothing made sense. School wasn’t difficult, it was boringly easy. Recess was mostly about avoiding the kids who wanted to torment me, because I was a smaller child at the time due to the lengthy illness the previous year. There was a substitute teacher that week. Mrs. Mott was away, I don’t remember why. She and her husband would host her second-and-third grade elementary classes at their orchard and horse ranch every semester. But that experience was behind us now. Not something to look forward to.

The idea of just walking away came together in my mind during our morning recess. So I thought it over, sitting with my friends at lunch, not talking about it. It seemed like a good idea. So I sat through the lesson after lunch and awaited afternoon recess. Then I walked outside, and walked to the far end of the playground.

It was just as I had anticipated. Nobody cared. They were gathering with the other class years, older and younger students, and forming up to play dodgeball and kickball and other games. I walked along the grassy strip between the playground asphalt and the fence, where some trees had been planted long ago. The fence to my left was chain link, only about three feet high, topped with a cross bar between widely spaced metal posts. I walked along it toward the baseball backstop.

Just where the asphalt for the playground ended, there were two basketball hoops. The further one was lower, for the little kids. Some of my classmates were there, tossing a basketball at the hoop, but mostly watching the older kids playing at the regulation height hoop. I walked on by.

Nobody was at the baseball back stop. No baseball equipment was provided at recess, and none of us wanted to mess around with whiffle ball. It was undignified or something, I’m not really sure. I had a limited perspective on recreational athletics because I wasn’t good at it owing to my extended illness in second grade. Past the back stop there was a long field. At the far end was a solitary goal post set for football practice, but there was nobody on the field.

I’m pretty sure I was wearing a simple jacket over my button down plaid shirt. My shoes were specially made by a cobbler downtown who had added a Thomas heel and arch supports to each shoe because I was also burdened with flat feet. Most likely I was wearing corduroy or blue jean trousers. And I walked to the far end of that less-than-standard length football field. There was a short declivity there at the far end, and I walked down and looked back.

My head was just level with the ground over which I had come. I could see the kids playing on the playground. I could see the teacher with her whistle. When recess was over she would blow that whistle and hold the door for everyone until the playground was clear. I wouldn’t be there.

I turned the other way and hopped over that fence. It would be more accurate to say that I did a kind of muscle up on the top cross bar and then levered myself over. Dropped on the far side. Walked on down the sidewalk.

About three blocks away there was a 7-11 store. When I was a teenager I told my friends that it was named after the month and day in the year 1804 when Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, the freemason architect of the plantation slavery constitution. We would drink our slurpees and talk about the narrowing accommodation for freedom. Perhaps we were ahead of our time, or simply precocious in the way of children of academics in a university town.

When I got there, I walked in like it was just another day, found a roll of Lifesavers fruit candies in front of the cash register, and proferred my change. It was probably about ten cents. When I was in first grade the candy bars were about half as much. I can still remember when Nixon betrayed mankind and ended the Bretton Woods accord, refusing to redeem dollars for gold and beginning the merciless stagflation of the 1970s. The nickel candy bars went to a dime, and didn’t sell as well. So after about a year of declining sales, Hershey came out with a new bar that was labelled as being “fifty percent bigger.” It was stupid, of course. You were paying twice as much for a bar only fifty percent larger. But by then people were used to what the evil Feral Reserveless scheme and the perfidious filth Nixon had done to the money, and sales went back up a bit.

I was hassled by the clerk. To be fair, he was old enough he might have been the store manager or something. He asked why I was out of school. I looked at him and the roll of candy on the counter next to my money and thought about walking away. But his tone was genuine interest. I said, “Oh, the other kids will be by in a little bit. We’re off early today. Teacher got sick.”

He perked right up. Rang up my purchase and bid me good afternoon. I walked out and turned a corner. But it got me thinking.

What if he hadn’t reacted the same way? He could call the cops over my truancy. I thought about that for a minute. He’d have to get out the phone book, there was no 911 service in our town, we didn’t even know about it in those days. I thought about going back to look through the window to see if he was on the phone. This idea was over-ruled by the thought that he’d see me looking. But this running away from school wasn’t as simple as it had seemed at lunch whilst eating tater tots and rubbery chicken.

So I stood there in the parking lot of the 7-11 and decided to head home. Which got me onto a sidewalk away from traffic. And I began thinking about how annoying it would be to show up at home. Was dad teaching classes on campus or was he going to be there when I arrived? He’d be upset.

Mom would understand. She would hide in a tree reading a book when she was my same age. She had no use for other children, for rigid rules, or for bullies. But she was teaching class in Baldwin City at Baker University. Her shiny PhD was only a couple of years old at that point. So she would not be there when I arrived, which brought the whole mom-dad-violence dynamic into play. Dad would be angry and mom wouldn’t be there to intercede. This point was a difficulty that needed further thought.

So I turned toward the school and away from home. There was just no getting around it. I’d have to go back to afternoon classes. Fortunately, the playground door was still unlocked. So I headed to the bathroom, washed my hands and left them wet, then went to the classroom. The substitute teacher was startled when I opened the door, but looked a bit relieved to see me. I held up my wet hands and said, “hadda go bathroom.” My adventure in freedom from boredom was over.

Not Being Left Alone

Conformity was never an option for me. I knew the rules, I knew the expectations. The closest I got was being on the debate team in high school. We wore suits to debate tournaments. It wasn’t allowed to wear anything else.

My mom thought this was glorious fun. We would try on me the various suits that my brothers had cast off as they outgrew them. In my junior year of high school, there was no possibility of me wearing any of those, for various reasons relating to height and shoulders. I was extraordinarily thin in those days, so we ended up downtown at a clothing store. I was fitted for a new suit. It was a nice grey one, looked good on me. New black shoes, as well. I had outgrown Thomas heels, but still had arch support inserts.

My dad wasn’t much good at conforming, but he was big on knowing what the rules were. There were rules for cub scouts and for boy scouts, so we learned those rules. There were rules for table manners. So he had a very old copy, possibly a first edition, of Emily Post that his mom had given him, I think. Anyway, we would review topics when it would come up. There was always a resource for knowing what to do, in any situation.

The difficulty, of course, is not in finding out how to eat an artichoke with hollandaise sauce in a separate dipping bowl at each place setting. The problem is, caring to actually do it. Which, as far as not getting beaten for embarassing my dad at a family outing or event was sufficient motivation. But once I got to college, dad was 1,500 miles away, and nearly no one had any intention of telling him or anyone else what I was doing.

I was really good at debate. So we won tournaments and brought back trophies. But the school had this idea that the trophies belonged to the school. Our debate coach found the school’s ideas on trophy cases annoying. There wasn’t room for all the debate trophies we kept winning, and the school wouldn’t make room except for more athletic competition trophies. So our coach would have an event at his home after the debate season was over, and graduating seniors would each take a trophy home with them. Any left over trophies ended up at a pawn shoppe or something.

In college, there were fewer occasions for wearing a suit. But as one of the John Jay scholars, I was expected to attend these monthly suppers at the faculty club. The other scholars were there, and a guest from the city. We would have cocktails. Then we would have supper.

There was this long time after the young people of the late 1960s made it clear that they were unhappy not being able to vote but expected to go fight in wars. So the constitution that the demon worshippers had craftily written to enslave Americans was modified to provide for voting from age 18 instead of from age 21. It had previously been amended to make sure that freedmen could vote after the war between the states, and to make sure that women could vote.

So nobody actually thought it was possible to have a drinking age above 18. It would take a bunch of crazy mothers getting MADD to raise the drinking age, but that would be substantially after I had graduated from college. We drank when I was in high school.

To quote a line from “Let’s Get Small,” the stand up comedy album from Steve Martin, “I remember my first beer.” I was 14, it was at a Pizza Hut, and I was dating Daphne Stannard. Her friend Elizabeth Maurer was dating a sixteen year old, whose name escapes me, and he ordered a pitcher of beer with our pizzas. The waitress brought the pitcher, the glasses, and later the food. The Earth didn’t open up and consume us, there were no fireballs from heaven, life went on.

But it kept being more and more restrictive. I remember comparing notes with my older brothers as we grew up. “More barbed wire,” was our metaphor for things that they were expecting I would be doing but which were no longer permitted. Like taking a girlfriend from a different class year to the junior high school dance. No, not allowed! You must date exclusively in your age cohort. Excuse me? These are the rules. There is no appeal.

My mom told me there was always an appeal, you just had to get someone to ask around. So she asked around. They told her no. And there really was no appeal.

A Little Power

The problem might well be with the freemasons. There are millions of them. And they want to train up their youngsters to run other people’s lives because at the higher degrees they all worship demons. And the demons want to enslave mankind. So the experience we have of little power mongers having a little authority and then wanting to use it ruthlessly might be a cultural thing, dating back to ancient Rome. I don’t know.

But I do know that freedom is choosing. It is choosing whether to obey and participate. It is choosing whether to walk away. And, having figured out the limitations of that course of action, whether to walk back.

When I got done with high school there was a contest to see who would give the valedictory and salutatory addresses to our graduating class. So I wrote a speech about “declaring our independence” and quoted heavily from the Declaration of Independence which invokes the name of God and of Divine Providence four different times. To my surprise, the student council members who had the authority to do so chose me to give the valedictory speech.

So I did. I still have the original text of that speech, which I typed up and re-typed until it was a clean copy. It is in a box about 2,370 miles from here. One day I have the ambition of getting that box and 210 others much like it, some of which hold the two thousand books of my personal library, and look at that speech again. Re-read some of those books. Read some of the ones from my mom’s collection that I kept after she passed away which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. Soon.

The context of the speech was that as high school graduates we were going to be free to do things as we saw fit. We were, that evening, getting our diplomas and celebrating our independence. And we would be held responsible for the choices we made after that point. I remember that I changed the speech from what I had presented to the student council, giving some examples of things we could go and do that very night. I remember after one such suggestion received a hearty round of applause that our principal, Brad Tate, stood up and looked at me. So I smiled and kept on giving my speech. I had completed my good works of non-conformity for the evening anyway.

But there he was, a man of compromised morality looking at me as if he were about to use his power to take away the microphone. I suppose if he had come over, I would have asked him about Ms. Borseth, the psychology teacher with whom he was cheating on his wife. I knew this from the state of undress he received my second oldest brother delivering pizzas to her apartment. But the situation didn’t arise, and the night concluded with bonhomie and good spirits.

Your Choices

A few years ago, Donald Trump was persuaded, right about the Ides of March 2020, to shut down the economy. Lock you in your homes. Close your businesses. Two weeks to flatten the curve and many other lies later, they no longer pretend that there is a pandemic in most of the places I visit. I still see crazy people walking around outside wearing face diapers, and I still look at them to see if they are dangerously insane, or just obedient to insanity. Earlier this weekend I saw the Libs of TikTok lady Chaya Raichik interviewing Taylor Lorenz who seemed to feel that wearing a cloth face diaper was a poignant and meaningful choice. To me it just seems dimwitted.

Today, Donald Trump is running for president. His putative opponent is the incumbent, Joe Biden, but it seems very unlikely that we’re actually going to have a “re-match” of the disgusting 2020 election. Even the people who ought to be charging Biden with crimes think he’s non compos mentis (from which phrase we get the Dutch-American expression “nincompoop”). Maybe we’ll see them roll out Big Mike Obama, the first man who pretended to be a first lady. I don’t know. But you have a choice in November, if they bother to have an election, and I’m sure you’ll choose wisely.

I also have a choice, and way back in 1991 it was clear to me that I didn’t choose to be governed. I had become ungovernable, so I stopped voting. I did not vote for the re-election of the cia guy GHW Bush, and I didn’t vote for the Rhodes scholar guy Billy “Arkancide is real” Clinton. I also didn’t vote for the funny government software contractor with the big ears, Ross Perot. I stayed home from voting. And look, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Most likely I would have voted for Andre Marrou if I had gone to the polls.

I see you now with your mouth slightly open, about to go hunt up a reference. Who dat? He was the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian party in 1988, when Ron Paul was the presidential nominee of that party. So I did vote for him in 1988. But not in 1992 when the Libertarian party decided to trot him out as their presidential nominee. Because? Well, because you have to run someone if you have a political party posing as a fount of liberty.

South Carolians who are members of the GOP went to the polls on the 24th day of this second month of 2024. They chose Trump over Nikki Haley. To my delight, Nikki has chosen not to throw in the towel. She is going to continue spending the money of the Charles and David Koch family. I am really glad to see them throwing their money away on her. Maybe they figure the cia and fbi will join forces with them to orchestrate a JFK moment for the Donald. I don’t know.

But I do know that the people involved in libertarian politics in the USA have had plenty of nonsense from the Koch family. So much so that Samuel Edward Konkin III, the philosopher who came up with many of the central ideas of agorism in his New Libertarian Manifesto (novelised by J. Neil Schulman in Alongside Night) referred to their group as the Kochtopus. I won’t take sides in this matter, except to say that I find it hilarious that a neo-conservative war monger, Nikki Haley, is who they want you to choose for president of the United States. No doubt they don’t consider any of the Libertarian party prospective candidates to be worthy of their enormous financial backing. I see my old friend Bumper Hornberger is on that list, so I shall wish him well. By which, of course, I mean that I wish he doesn’t have to go through the stress of winning the nomination and pretending there is anything like a free and fair election in this country.

Do I care who wins? In a sense, sure. I care that the person who actually wields the enormous power of the presidency is a good, decent, kind, God-worshipping man or woman. Do I think there’s any reason to expect that outcome? No.

Donald Trump pushed the vaxxajabs with his operation warp speed. He was, in 2021, still forbidding entry into Trump Tower in New York without proof of vaxxajab. Those jabs have killed at least 17 million worldwide, and damaged hundreds of millions. He was against bump stocks so he banned them in a thoroughly unconstitutional move. He has a lot of other drawbacks, including a long time as a Democrat. He’s about as Republican today as Reagan was in the 1940s. But, look, is he better than the Biden monstrosity and its handlers? Yes. Is he better than the Big Mike man who pretends to be a woman Obama? Yes. Is he an actual threat to democracy or a threat to the deep state? I very much doubt it, or they would be doing to him what they are doing to Julian Assange and what they did to JFK. He had four years to drain the swamp and dug it deeper cess pits to expand. I’m not inclined to put any faith in him. Indeed, I strongly discourage you from putting your faith in princes, or the people, or the powers that shouldn’t be in this world.

Choose Ye

Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
~ Joshua 24:14-15

Elijah asked the question: how long halt ye between two opinions? I wrote about the context for that passage in my essay Sons of Elijah. In it, I conveyed the request from Jesus Christ that you defend Michael Cassidy in his battle against spiritual wickedness. You should probably be aware that he has been charged with a hate crime. All the newspapers in Iowa and all the liberal socialist Demon rat politicians are lining up against him. But he did the right thing. You should, too.

If you see a display promoting demon worship you should take action to see it torn down. If that has consequences, trust in God to defend you from evil. If you see that people who do these things are deliberately tormented by prosecutors, then the prosecutors are on the side of evil, too. You should act accordingly.

It is time for you to take choices. Freedom is choosing. The only real freedom any of us has is to choose. Choose for yourself. Choose what you will do. Choose whether to obey. Take the jabs. Wear the masque. Lick the boots. As Sam Adams said, crouch down and lick the hand that beats you and may history never remember ye were our countrymen.

Or stand up for God, for family, for decency, and for righteousness. Do what is good and moral. Be an example for your children and for generations to come. If there is to be war, let it come in my day, that my children may know peace, as Tom Paine once wrote.

It is your life, just as Billy Joel sang. What are you going to do with it?

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That’s all I’ve got for today. Come back next time when I have something new. Or old.