It wouldn’t have been long, I’d figured, before my tour of the Cruz White House would bring me peering into the abyss. I’d’ve maintained long enough to make it inside and past the surly Marine guard who would never buy my having served with the infantry.
Then, the Victory Gin consumed all too late the night before would drive me to the nearest restroom where the trouble would all begin. I had intended to tell Mr. Cruz my thoughts on bathroom policies if I’d ever run into him. A fellow resident of my San Diego apartment complex, who had frozen their dead cat, had inadvertently inspired me to bemoan the crumbling status quo, exclaiming, “Oh, that’s legal!” but it never would’ve gotten said, as there is the gentleman himself. POTUS-elect Cruz is halfway underneath a bathroom stall, pointing up at the individual atop the toilet, raving wildly, “Are you wearing heels?!” I’d leave discouraged in the end because I’d never gotten to address justice. And now, with Senator Cruz, at least, I likely never will.
I had a bad habit when I was younger of getting blamed for everything. Looking like a sullen rebel but quacking like a man ultimately disappointed with God and the sum total of the parts of an existence that had never amounted to what anyone had quite expected. Two current ModState staffers are gentlemen I literally grew up with. Resident artistic scenemaker Samuel “DSamuel” J. Wheeler was 7, I was just over 8 and J. “I’m just sayin'” Leo Coker was about 10 when we all met at a restaurant-turned-church that to this day ranks amongst the most hideous structures ever to exist as far as I’m concerned. Regardless, we had been through, have gone through and driven others through so much, and yet the socialites we were (high school and college years/early twenties) came with two strings attached: first, due to the scowl perennially perceived to besmirch my otherwise handsome face, those who did not know me well thought me more akin to anti-hero than hero, and that would be the hallmark of an era ranging from 17 to when I enlisted in the United States Navy at 26. Second, ModState staff writer J. Leo Coker and our art director Samuel James Wheeler, as a result of the first attached “string”, would have a much smoother time juxtaposed to my actual, physical presence on outings during which I drew fear and loathing.
The truth is, I had always desperately attempted to personify the nobility of the timeframe (in terms of when he existed) of my oldest known relative, a 11th century Norman Frenchman by the name of William d’Aubigny. I learned the hard way, however, that while it’s good to be a gentleman, “you gotta be a man first, Pilgrim.”
Determined to press forward in honor of brave fallen felines e’rr’where, I sought new refuge in the clarity the general election had always promised to bring.
Where in God’s name is the [expletive deleted] runoff in all federal elections, above all for POTUS?! Problem solved: every party gets their nominee on the ballot; any first-place finisher w/less than a plurality (50.1% < total) faces a runoff (redo election/do-over) against the 2nd place finisher. Have the runoff/redo election exactly one week later, dubbing it “Redress Election Day” (also, amongst those familiar with the “Live Action” group and their kindred spirits and followers in part for their strange obsession with babies and their equally-bizarre hatred of sex, leading their most familiar detractors to colloquially quip that their marriages are so pretensious and synthetic that their seemingly scripted, rare date nights and related frolicking should be recognized as “Pro-Life Fringe-Dwellers Mandatory-Monthly-Minimum Conjugal Wrestling Day.”
This is then followed by anti-litigation ads recognizing the importance of timing, as in, “It had better be night time when y’all commence ‘marital conjugal wrestling day’ and neither of you had better be excitedly counting down the days till the next scheduled occurrence. The whole “day” bit is merely a nod to tradition simply because use of the term “Eve” might suggest that woman had done something, anything that man had not, and there’ll be no worship of Mary amongst these gangsters. Just count them down in that historically drab way that the English kid themselves as being ‘cool’ and/or ‘classy’. And what of, pray tell, the Catholic Renaissance Establishment in Avignon? The Germans called theirs “The Reformation” and The French called it a day and now the Americans call the kettle and the stove “black” as its flames seem to scream over all of them.
With juvenile much ado about nothings (proverbially) a bygone relic of a near-forgotten period, I’m shifting gears without near the apprehension of popular perception. I don’t seek to offend others deliberately, but if an inconvenient truth I convey or me inhaling Newports, glass of Saffire n’ Fresca in hand, if either scenario hurts someone’s feelings regardless, I’m not in favor of you getting hurt. I’m not out to wound you, but if through harsh language, unorthodox items you have to look up in order to understand a point I make, comedy with a plethora of levels, tie-ins, in-jokes, et cetera, or if in my own domain you resent my omnipresent reminders of favored members of The Pantheon (Leah Wright Rigueur, Napoleon Bonaparte, Richard M. Nixon, et al), that I don’t find regrettable.
If you resent my respect for France among a litany of things I love and admire about Europe and find my having no shame for my European genes despicable, I say again that I mean no harm and welcome all others to be proud of their heritage, be it similar or in contrast to my own. With that, conversely, I will sooner be ground to powder before I admit to some misguided sense of guilt conjured up out of thin air for who I am, my own private faith or compromise the moral integrity, i.e., the principles of ModState. Christianity, and its emergence and subsequent unification of greater Europe (ensuring its survival and seeing it through to massive, dominating success, thriving in the long term), has brought about some of the greatest reforms in the history of the humanities.
Property rights? Civil liberties? Women’s suffrage? The End of slavery? Look at where slavery exists today, now look to America and Europe where it is absent today, and let’s get to where the proverbial “Words in Red”, fraudulent (as to the existence of their purported author) or not, let’s get to the crux of the matter, and I’ll say this plainly: by the time I finish my undergraduate in economics from (God-willing) Pennsylvania State University World Campus (PSU’s celebrated online university) I hope to have published in a literary journal, magazine, online or otherwise (whatever I have to do to get it out there when complete in terms of expression), “The Words in Red,” Judeo-Christian values or whatever label you want (it has been called worse at some point, I assure you). Those concepts and their spiritual/academic family of thought are what, again, unified Europe, defeated the encroachment of Islam and drove it out of the Iberian Peninsula, inspired the Serbs and Co., fueling their legendary resistance against the Islamist onslaught for eons. This dually ensured survival and proffered the collective date with destiny that extended into lingering bonds, resulting in the marriage of the fate and welfare of the world with the well-being of Western Civilization. France sneezes and Europe catches cold whilst America sneezes and the rest of the World catches cold, right? Well, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Mongolia sneeze, catch cold and slide into downright pneumonia, depression and failure to re-emerge (if you believe they emerged to begin with) back onto the stage of history, the world’s stage, the global theatre, The Pantheon.
Then there’s those espousing Christian socialism, individuals such as Senator Bernard Sanders (the only good thing to crawl out of the contrarian leftist cesspool called “Vermont” since became one of two states to vote against FDR all four times he sought to be/stay POTUS; the other state to do so, should you be quizzed about this by some pseudo-intellectual waxing philosophical and quoting Doctor Spock, is Maine).
Senator Sanders, obviously a predominant anti-capitalist and this Argentine George McGovern supporter, Pope Francis (his socialist dogma simultaneously betrayed and demoralized John Boehner upon his first ever Papal invitation to address the joint Federal legislature from The Speaker of The U.S. House of Representatives), they’re misleading the American people, the people of Europe and, Hell, the people of the world whether they mean to or not.
In the case of Senator Sanders, given the fact (as I’ve stated previously on ModState) that you can go on YouTube and see evidence to suggest the truth of my assertion that, as the man has been spouting the same leftist, progressive garbage on the record since 1991 (the earliest relevant example I’ve discovered thus far), he is sincerely mistaken but I do believe him sincere nevertheless. Conversely, as far as the Hoy Father is concerned, do I believe that he is deliberately misleading the masses into favoring socialist “reform” and undercutting the free enterprise (capitalist) system? No and yes, respectively. No, I don’t believe the Pope is the antichrist (combat exercises forced my withdrawal from RCIA twice but upon settling in New Orleans again I intend to be confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church) and I don’t believe he’s espousing things that he knows will hurt people and make things worse. I believe that he wants to help the less fortunate, but where my “yes” response comes in was in the latter portion of my ventured sentiment(s) in that I do believe he would favor seeing capitalism fade away. In this, like Senator Sanders, I believe the Pope to be sincere, yes, but ultimately I know beyond a shadow of doubt that he is sincerely mistaken. While this veers far too near the territory of another episode of this column for comfort, in pivoting to the real issue of the sacred importance of property rights, civil liberties, suffrage, social reforms, the vivid intertwining of the arts and Christianity (during the Renaissance), each of these is integral to the sovereignty of the individual over the state (as it was intended).
The Pope most assuredly wants the hopeless masses behind the veneer facades keeping the Berlin Walls of today from the penitent tools of righteous indignation via way of ignorance. It’s not cool to study economics and reveal how the vile amount of debt, both structural (intra-agency) and contrived (QE? Pretty label for inflation), that the President who campaigned on several massive issues, and one of the tenets of his endless droning was a Constitutional assault (he’s a Constitutional lawyer) on the Bush 43 presidency’s massive spending increases (largely because of the formulation of DHS and the two wars begun after 11 September, 2001) saying that it was treasonous and that he would never increase the deficit. Nearly 8 years later, Obama far and away “owns” (in terms of political capital) more of our National Debt (which Congress audaciously calls the Public Debt) than any other president. Bar none. Period. Anyone who tries to suggest that President Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) has been anything remotely close to less than a fiscal nightmare for America is selling something and they can sell it somewhere else. We’re chock full of crazy on this planet and as long as we’ve got property rights, the last line of defense (land ownership, i.e.) that is critical to even be permitted to own a gun which, yes, makes the chicken and the egg scenario here like this: “You wanna take 90+ in just Federal taxes from me? You wanna audit me and read the last seven years of my records?” 
Then the click and the rush of color from their face when they realize they’re staring at the hand-cannon from “Blade Runner”, the business end of it, me with the “permaFrost” clenched jaw and the blue eyes befitting el Blanco Franco Diablo, accompanied by my growl: “Read THIS! What’s it say? I’ll tell you what you can have one hundred percent of…”
Without property rights, there are no guns to own. Without guns, there is no “ultimate sacrifice” to be made/paid in defending one’s property. Without recognition of property rights, there is no legal respect given to being the genetic relative of another man just as Secretariat’s relatives end up in these and other specially-marked cans of Alpo nonetheless. How do I figure? Because we’re all the same, all just animals, no? Because animals have equal rights, as with no Creator there are no souls and no life beyond this mere flesh. A caveat: this is not directed at or towards the Nihilists in our midst. Although, do “extreme nihilists” exist? What is extremism without God? It doesn’t exist, not because religions cause wars but because without the Judeo-Christian “establishment” in power nothing is “too extreme” to be considered “a department too far.” Extremism will cause bloodshed one way or another, be it in the name of god or The State. But religion, as given witness in the “historical” words in Red, be they His or not, they are acknowledged as forged (if it be of such derivation) or otherwise but they are universally accepted as documents from ancient history (at least from since widely agreed-upon parameters for earliest things recorded and/or made by humans). Did fallen angels build Stonehenge? Or was the likes of some damned group of aliens, the untanned and green kind, mind you, that it was them, the green ones y’know, that built the Pyramids and Turner Field, was them behind it?
It’s been a long time since France rock and rolled. We remind them in their former colony, New Orleans, of how to do it. When a green sky, forty miles per hour winds and rain of the “Blade Runner” variety constitute a reason to party, either by waking up or meandering your way there, you’re in La Nouvelle-Orléans.
The whimsical direction of my laissez faire, “Live and Let Die” approach must not’ve been as appreciated from without as it was from within and by most with a sense of humor. I fostered greater discussion, even in my youth having recognized the prépondérance of debate, of the 10th man. And yeah, a decade and some change later, and one of the biggest proponents of my having often played the antagonist (or at least the antihero) in high school is selling leathers while clutching jungle cats. It’s like “Little Oil Pumping Camp On the Prairie.” The “Mad Max/Road Warrior” look had taken complete control of the wardrobe up for discussion, and yet somehow a hush still would fall over the room as word of my eminent arrival took hold.
House cats were being frozen. Jungle cats were being oddly clutched for unknown reasons. The greatest question looming over these proceedings was, without a doubt, “Who is funding this Post-Apocalyptic rap on Freud?!”
The Economist, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Salon, Breitbart, Slate, POLITICO, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, National Review…
…the list of political magazines which I generously consider our “peers” is rather impressive. However, bear in mind that I am being generous to the aforementioned media outlets by mentioning them alongside ModState, and I say that with calm, confidence and conviction for a reason other than arrogance. We are the only political magazine in existence that explicitly aspires to “classical, laissez faire, Renaissance-style liberalism”, where all viewspoints are welcome at the proverbial table to then be re-crafted a bit as potable storylines and intertwined in the very fabric of ModState.
This is precisely why we will not, as a whole, endorse a candidate in the 2016 POTUS election cycle. Our intent is to do a roundtable editorial feature coupled with media generated for our YouTube channel where each member of the editorial staff (sorry, DSamuel) weighs in with who they’re supporting and/or who they’re predicting will win the most powerful chair on Earth. As I have no one I approve of regardless of there being at least one dog in the fight, I will simply be reciting my prediction(s), complete with a detailed electoral map for augmenting and driving home my case for being correct, right down to the exact states to be won by Clinton (D-NY) and Trump (R-NY).
For all twenty-nine of you who care, no third party candidate will carry a state this cycle, and the recent spike in the segment of the population interested in voting for the Libertarian Party ticket will not last. Johnson (L-NM) will get 7 or 8%, tops, but it won’t be enough in the right states to benefit either candidate. We simply must demand a run-off in the POTUS election. That would provide such a drastic switch in terms of choices and the corresponding freedom (or lack thereof) as a result. I know I’ve already barked up this foul tree and I digress…every [expletive deleted] day.
