May It Ever Be So Humble...

In Extremis, July 4, 2009

A DECLARATION OF PEONAGE

By one slightly pissed-off American - solitarily assembled.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a few of us in the moneyed class to betray the Democratic liberty with equal justice for all under the rule of law that has kept Americans free, and to take unto ourselves the lunacies which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God could not care any less about, a decent respect to the opinions of the hapless descendents of all Americans requires that we worthy few declare the causes which have impelled us to our aforesaid betrayals and lunacies.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are deceit and denial, predatory banking and the unsupportable perpetual indebtedness of all so that they might always live well beyond their means!

That to secure these rights, Governments damned well better be instituted among men deriving their just powers from our advise and consent, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is our right to bribe its officials so as to best co-opt it, thereby instituting new Government, laying its foundations on such principles, and originating its powers in such form, as to us shall seem most favorable first and foremost to the advancement of our power, profit and privilege at the expense of everybody, and everything, else…thank you very much!

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be co-opted for light and transient causes, but not to worry! Experience shows that when faced with great wrongs humankind are more disposed to stand mute and awe-struck before the hideous enormity of it all, and so suffer while evils are sufferable, than to be consciously aware, thereby threatening their myopic obedience to “business as usual” to which they are so pathetically long accustomed.

But should a long train of Democratic abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evincing a design to reduce we moneyed folk under an absolute despotism, it is our right, our duty, to rise up and throw off such abuses and usurpations so as to provide new guards for our future security.

Such has been our patient sufferance in these troubled times of late, and such is now the necessity which constrains us to insist upon and have enforced on pain of going legit and denying our financial support to all public officials the government’s so-called “Bail-Out” package now all the rage, courtesy of the American taxpayer. (Why, we’ll never know!)       

For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the jollity of Divine Providence and in the spirit of our sense of opportunistic entitlement, our utter contempt for people and our hard-won mediocrity, we mutually pledge to each other the coveted wardrobes of our wives, the inflated school tuitions of our kids and our sacred undocumented workers at home.

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When this noble endeavor has come to a successful completion, let a new, more circumspect Constitution be written so that all humankind might know their proper place in the world, thereby enabling them to experience for themselves all of the myriad blessings of lasting joy, happiness and prosperity that life has to offer. In that spirit, the following preamble is humbly offered for your generous consideration.

“We the leaders of the inviolate corporate interests of the United States, in order to establish more perfect greed and privatization, consign to ourselves exclusive ownership, development, production and distribution of all material resources worldwide, bring into a state of abject peonage all general populations, obstruct Democratic freedom with equal justice for all under the rule of law, promote unquestioning deference to ourselves and a spontaneous obedience to our ends, and to overall pretty much co-opt all power, profit and privilege for ourselves and our posterity at the expense of everybody, and everything, else, do herewith proclaim our sovereignty over ourselves, our neighbor, our god and the world-at-large to be absolutely absolute with this constitution because the original one never happened, but if it had, don’t worry: herewith, the stuff on that dusty old parchment with its goofy Germanic script is now deemed to be null and void forever! (Hay, shit happens!)  Good luck to us all.”