Kōan Fragments of a Distorted World #18

with nods to Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the title riff and William Blum for his "The Anti-Empire Report" (2003-18)

Imperialists’ Day
I’m not naive, i’m a good citizen. When a president says something, i believe him. So for President’s Day i picked out some choice quotes.

“…and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.”
~Thomas Jefferson, 1780
&
”…and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government.”
~Thomas Jefferson, 1809

“Empire of liberty” is an oxymoron (more details about that below). And, “since the creation” huh?” Makes the current president’s “art of the deal” style of hyperbolic braggadocio sound like child’s play.

“In short[,] the foundation of a great Empire is laid, and I please myself with a persuasion that Providence will not leave its work imperfect.”
~George Washington, 1786

Seems that in the “pursuit of happiness” the so-called founding, so-called father knew how to “please” himself, and, gosh, who wouldn’t be pleased if backed by capital P “divine guidance.” In 1786, Washington must have scratched “Pursuit of happiness” off his bucket list.

Republic? Democracy? The Great Experiment?

Empire “mid-14c., ‘territory subject to an emperor's rule.’”

Empire from “Latin imperium "a rule, a command; authority, control, power; supreme power, sole dominion; military authority.”

“Territory” is rooted in “terror” and “Empire” in “domination.”

Some would argue, but the verbiage and various actions attest that it was an empire and GWOfT (Global War Of Terror) from the get-go.

“General George Washington in 1778 declared that all of the Haudenosaunee be destroyed.

“The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more. I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.”

&

According to Alan Michaelson (Mohawk):

“The title by which Washington was known to Native nations, Hanödaga:yas or Town Destroyer, was one he inherited from his great-grandfather, John Washington, a slave-owning planter and colonel in the Virginia militia who, during Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, had the chiefs of several tribes killed. His great-grandson lived up to the name of Town Destroyer in his treatment of Indigenous nations both during and after the Revolutionary War (1775–83). Wanting to remain neutral but forced to choose sides, some Haudenosaunee nations fought alongside the colonists during the war. Others, like the Mohawk, fought with their longstanding allies, the British

“In 1779, Washington launched a full-scale invasion of Iroquoia, our extensive homelands. In his orders to campaign leader Major General John Sullivan (after whom Sullivan Street in Manhattan is named), he wrote: ‘The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.

“Town Destroyer’s armies burned and plundered 60 of our towns and hundreds of our farms, fields, orchards and livestock, forcing our people to evacuate. Hundreds perished of starvation, disease and exposure – a Haudenosaunee Trail of Tears.”

As to “capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible,” quite the projection statement considering that the Declaration of Independence accused the Natives of that very thing: “…merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the unfairest warfare of them all?

As to the more current version of GWOfT, according to a recent NY Post article:

“The controversial US Agency for International Development (USAID) shelled out thousands to send an al-Qaeda terrorist with ties to 9/11 hijackers to college in America decades ago – an education he used to help recruit and groom terrorists for future attacks on US soil. …

“American-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki received “full funding” to attend Colorado State University in 1990, USAID documents obtained by Fox News show.”

Again, especially on this day i believe the words of a president, in this case George W. Bush, from September 20, 2001: “…they hate our freedoms.”

They do; they hate our freedom to not be terrorized. How do i know? Because i believe the August 5, 2004, geopolitical Freudian slip words of President Bush:

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

A 2020 article reported “...the death toll of the so-called war on terror at 801,000 and the price tag at $6.4 trillion” and “Ultimately, displacing 37 million—and perhaps as many as 59 million—raises the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage inflicted on those displaced.”

GWOfT…one of the biggest saddest horror show con jobs going—and now a distant memory for, seemingly, a high percentage of Americans.
Long gone are the color-coded terror alerts, replaced by and also now long gone, pandemic six-foot asocial-distancing terror alerts of which, “…in testimony to the House Oversight Committee, [Anthony] Fauci conceded that there was no scientific evidence to justify the six-foot social-distancing rule that was in effect, pretty much everywhere in the country, during the Covid pandemic.

“Fauci: You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be five or six or whatever. It was just that six-foot is –

Q: Did you see any studies that supported six feet?

F: I was not aware of studies that — in fact, that would be a very difficult study to do.

Q: I know. I’m just trying to figure out why six versus three or four or five.

F: Yeah. Yeah.”

Verbiage was AI long before AI
Another one of the biggest con jobs of all historical record is verbiage. But not just the verbiage itself, you have to include verbiage’s younger sibling sucker, the believing/swallowing of verbiage.

One is “the word of God.” Harold Bloom’s book Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005) begins:

“There are no verifiable facts about Jesus of Nazareth.” Later on Bloom qualifies that by saying “only a few verifiable facts,” but the larger point here is: Masses of humanity go along with the “word of God” as if there is no doubt about said words being the verifiable words of God, or of his son.

Where are the fact-checkers when you need them?

Another one: Holding on to that glimmer of a beacon on the hill that the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” rings true. Well let me tell all you doubting Thomases that it does ring true . . . as true as the cracked Liberty Bell.

“Fundamentally flawed when it first arrived in the United States, the Liberty Bell would go on to play an important role in Revolutionary War, the rise of abolitionism, and women’s suffrage. Yet some parts of its story are hazy.

“Though the Liberty Bell came to symbolize American Independence, it came from England. Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly Isaac Norris ordered the bell from the Whitechapel Foundry in London in 1751 for the Pennsylvania State House (the future location of debates over the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and called Independence Hall today).

“But when the bell was tested, it immediately cracked. According to the Independence Hall Association, the bell was then melted down by metalworkers John Pass and John Stow, who added copper to make the bell less brittle. But they apparently added too much and ruined the bell’s toll.

“‘Upon trial, it seems that they have added too much copper,’ Norris complained in a 1753 letter. ‘They were so teased with the witticisms of the town that they… will very soon be ready to make a second essay.’

“The bell was recast again. And though its toll still didn’t satisfy Norris, it was hung in at the Pennsylvania State House, inscribed with Pass and Stow’s names, as well the Biblical quote: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

A contradiction or fundamental flaw in the Declaration of Independence is that it states: “…endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…”

If “all men are created equal," then that means that the founding fathers considered themselves “merciless savages” too. And if “all men are created equal,” then “our Frontiers” would have allowed the Original Inhabitants to maintain their original lands, their original Liberty not needing proclaimed and certainly not needing “Empire of” added to it.

While the phrase itself, “all men are created equal,” carries some weight, in practice it has been mere words not deeds; ask the Natives, Blacks, women, and non-property owners who from the get-go got the short-end of the equal stick.

Unequal Imperialists’ Day!

Craving human energy
Aside from mostly the news, business transactions, trendy entertainment, and a personal fave, self-educating, i see the hyper-attention to the screen-world as: human-beings craving energy from and with other human-beings.

My observation comes from myself as guinea pig and generally what people spend a lot of time doing online, whether selfies, showing and commenting about whatever it is they happen to be doing or eating, eagerly awaiting likes/comments and any kind of attention so as to fill some kind of emotional satisfaction gap.

There’s a natural tendency for human-beings to do all that, but as most are aware of nowadays, such e-cravings and their fulfillment or lack there of have diminished actual face-to-face meetings, processing of feelings/emotions in real time, and larger scale group activities that can make a positive difference in the non-electronic world.

Of importance is considering who one is feeding off of and who one is attempting to feed, and by “feed” i mean energy, knowledge, consciousness, counsel.

As well, it is important to consider who is being neglected, because fixating on fulfilling individual emotional gaps creates more of a gap between human-beings and the natural world aka Earth.

Since the etymology of “empire” starts with “rule,” consider that “rule” is from “reg-, move or direct in a straight line, rule.” This is the very aim of empires, to keep you in line and/or online, while they hoard the loot and the land and the food, and maintain “supreme power” and “military authority.”

Whether with holidays, verbiage, or linear behaviors, some kōan questions to ask are: Who’s being fed what? Who’s doing the feeding? Who’s eating it up? Who’s spitting it out and, instead, genuinely forging a balanced, benevolent, blessing, healing way?

Speaking of food, in the year before Jefferson’s “empire of liberty,”….
”Town Destroyer’s armies burned and plundered 60 of our towns and hundreds of our farms, fields, orchards and livestock, forcing our people to evacuate.”

So you see, the “Empire of liberty” was meant for a select few and not for “all men are created equal.”

Unequal Imperialists’ Day!

“People say, ‘How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?’ You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in’s house and say I love you.”
~ President Bush, 2002