Thursday, October 16, 2008

A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR UNITY '08: MY ADDRESS TO AMERICA

My fellow Americans,

We do have our differences with one another. Never is this truth more self-evident than in an election season, when fundamentally divergent first principles have the "reds" and "blues" at each other's throats. The strife inherent in such a cultural (if not actually physical) civil war can have a profoundly disruptive effect on a sensitive person's spirit.

That said, dear citizens, I must relate that I have great news! Having spent a good deal of time examining the roots of our societal conflict, I have reached a surprising and happy conclusion: We are not as different as we may think. Our nation need not divide into petty sectionalism or tear itself apart over divisive political and social issues any more. Rejoice, fellow Americans! Our seeming divide is nothing but an illusion. On one core matter, we are in fact completely in agreement.

Let it be said, nay shouted, loud and clear, and with pride. We are not Republicans or Democrats, left-wing or right-wing, Northern or Southern, black, white, brown, or yellow. We are Americans! Let us cease our silly, destructive, partisan rhetoric, and come together as one. Let us admit our most crucial commonality.

The fact is, we are all heartily in favor of murdering children.

We only disagree on which children ought to be murdered, and when. We agree on the principle, and differ only on the particulars.

Democrats, the so-called blue-staters, prefer child-murder to be carried out by abortionists, while Republicans, the red state faction, have a slightly different idea: they want children not to be aborted, but rather bombed and/or shot.

Really, when you look at it closely, are these two stances all that different? The red-staters are down on the blue-staters for condoning, even encouraging abortion, and wanting it in all cases to remain "legal and safe." Yet red-staters are adamantly in favor of "getting tough" in wartime. Their spiritual ancestors, whom they still revere for their "moral clarity," cheered when Air Force pilots reduced Axis cities to rubble during World War II, and in so doing murdered and mangled untold thousands of children, including many still in their mothers' wombs.

Today, red state America yearns for a return to an age when people didn't wring their hands over civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military, but instead simply understood that "war is hell," and you do what you have to do to prevail. Or as one red stater-- speaking for many others-- recently wrote, "A carpetbombed Nazi is better than an un-carpetbombed Nazi." (One could just as easily substitute "Jap," "gook," "commie,""jihadi," "raghead," Baathist," or whatever other term of derision is appropriate for the given war.)

Meantime, the "peacenik" blue state faction gets up in arms, as it were, about the red-stater's callous indifference towards enemy civilian casualties, without realizing how closely aligned this view is in fact with his own. Perhaps it would be helpful for him, if the next time he sees a picture of a dead Iraqi child on the internet, he pictures in its place the bloodied corpse of an aborted baby. After making this mental substitution, I'm hopeful that the blue-stater can put aside his petty differences with the red stater (that is to say, over which child it's okay to destroy and which it's a travesty to murder), and see the glorious commonality that makes them both such great Americans.

The red-stater, when forced to view an image that he doesn't like, such as bodies of Iraqi children killed by U.S. bombs or bullets, becomes angry-- not at the fact that the children were murdered (since he knows that war is hell and you do what you have to do in order to win), but at the people who took the picture, and what he thinks such an image will do to affect the war effort and the morale of the soldiers. The blue-stater, when forced to see the little body of a child slaughtered by an abortionist, has a strikingly similar response. The picture doesn't make him ponder the brutality and inhumanity of abortion; rather, he is angered that someone would be so "tacky" as to put such an image on display, when the real issue should be "reproductive rights" and "a woman's right to choose," and so forth.

Do you not see, red- and blue-state American, just how similar you truly are? Can we all get along? Does it really matter that one of our Presidential candidates makes jokes about bombing a foreign country and massacring its civilians, while the other has never met an infanticide he didn't like and didn't want funded with taxpayer dollars? Look at one another, "red" and "blue" Americans, and you will see a mirror image of yourself, only with a different complexion. Judge not by the color of the person's state, but by the content of that state's character.

To America!

God bless us, every one!

Thank you, and good night.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Andy Nowicki's Books and How to Obtain Them

I'm adding a post after a year and a half hiatus in order to give information regarding my recent written work, and the means by which you may obtain said work.

For starters, I still have some spare copies of my book THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LIBERALISM, published by Selah in 2002, which is no longer available on amazon.com (although a link to it still exists there). I have also recently completed a work, as yet unpublished, called LETTERS TO AN ABORTED CHILD, which tackles the tragedy of abortion from a unique perspective. Anyone who would like a copy of either should send a check for $8 to:

Andy Nowicki
724 Kadi Ln.
Hinesville, Ga. 31313

I'm also pleased to announce that a work I completed in 2006, entitled CONSIDERING SUICIDE, will be published by Nine Banded Books in 2009. Stay tuned for more information.

And of course, I continue to contribute columns to THE LAST DITCH, at www.thornwalker.com/ditch.

Adieu for now.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Greetings and Adieu from 2007

Well, as y'all may have discovered, I haven't been posting much lately. My motivation for posting here has just gone into decline in the last month and a half or so. I think that's due to a variety of reasons. I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish with this blog. I don't want to reflect on world events or culture wars or other dreary things (as I have many times before, here and elsewhere). So what else is there to write about? Myself? I'm not naive enough to think that anyone other than me would be interested in hearing about my day-to-day activities and thoughts. I could talk about cute things my kids have said lately, but I'm really not that kind of guy. And I don't think you're that kind of audience, either.

I'd like to be able to write something that may be of interest to a greater number of readers. I'm puzzling that notion over right now. But making cute little entries here about this or that just strikes me as pointless at this point. I'll keep "dyspeptic myopic" up just in case in the future I change my mind, which is possible. Anyone who wants can check the archives to see the incredibly clever and witty things I've said about life, the universe, and everything. Maybe I'll grow whimsical again, and return to this format soon. I'm leaving that option open for myself.

By the way, I've got something (relatively) new up at The Last Ditch. www.thornwalker.com/ditch -- then click on my name.
So long for now...

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Another New Chapter of POSSESSED BY DEATH posted

Chapter 5, that is.

Again at www.possessedbydeath.blogspot.com

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

New Chapter of POSSESSED BY DEATH posted

Chapter 4-- it's taken a while to compose; hence the Nov. 17 date over the top (that was the day I started the chapter; I just finished it today).

www.possessedbydeath.blogspot.com

APOCALYPTO Now

The critics are mostly grudgingly agreeing that Mel Gibson's latest, APOCALYPTO, is a well-made movie. After all, no matter how much you hate the guy, no matter how much you may want to see him fail and or witness his career come to an end, you can't just dismiss the obvious. APOCALYPTO is, in spite of its flaws, an extraordinary film. And it's a film that the critics wouldn't dare to criticize, were it done by anyone other than Mel Gibson. After all, it's subtitled, it features a no-name cast of Central American actors, and it's about Indians who lived six centuries ago. If not for the fact that Mel made it, disliking the film would be construed as small-minded, possibly even racist.

But since it's by Mel, a straight white Catholic male who's said some un-kosher things about Jews in the recent past, it's a little chancy to admire APOCALYPTO, much as the movie shouts to be admired (even if not liked) in so many ways.

Of course, if not for the fact that Mel made it, and if not for the fact that Mel's name is on it, there's no way APOCALYPTO would be seen by so many people, or be making the kind of money that it's making. After all... it's subtitled, it features a no-name cast of Central American actors, and it's about Indians who lived six centuries ago. Not exactly what most would consider blockbuster material, no matter how spiced up it may be with violence and gore.

What's truly interesting about the movie is the fact that is seems to be an allegory, designed to have relevance for our own times. As much is indicated by the fact that it begins with a portentous quotation from a modern philosopher about civilizations never being conquered from without until they are destroyed from within. The film depicts the ancient Mayan culture at its most decadent, with the practice of human sacrifice at its apex, just before the arrival of the Spanish Conquestadors. Since we too are fond of human sacrifice (albeit of a more discreet form), and we too find ourselves menaced by a foreign religious ideology (who threatens to conquer not so much through brute force as through simulatanous terror attacks and slow demographic absorbtion), it's hard to ignore that APOCALYPTO is not only about then, but now as well.

Despite a bit of puerile sexual humor, and lots of gratuitous mayhem (tigers chewing off faces, impalings, bludgeonings, and the like), APOCALYPTO succeeds beautifully as both a rip-roaring action-adventure tale and as a grim meditation on the downfall of civilization. In short, you should see it, whoever you may be.

Monday, December 11, 2006

I Find This Astonishing

It seems that British PM Tony Blair (known as Phony Tony by his enemies, after the fashion of Slick Willie on these shores) has made a speech declaring that the "multicultural experiment" in Great Britian is "over." From now on, he said, immigrants need to conform to British culture-- learning the language, abiding by the customs, etc. "If you're not interested in assimilating, we don't want you," was his message in a nutshell. Most felt that his speech was directed at Muslims.

Now he's Phony Tony, a consummate politician, so he probably doesn't believe a word of it. That's not really relevant. What's interesting is that he seems to feel the need to say these words at all-- that it's expedient to issue such a decree in jolly old England these days. As Limbaugh observed today, no American politican would dare to make such a declaration over here, and I always thought that as PC-whipped as we are, the Euros were far worse. So what gives, I wonder?

Monday, November 27, 2006

Kramer Vs. Kramer

(I flirted with titling this post "Kramer Vs. Nigger," but thought that might be easily misunderstood, enamored as I am of shock value. I have no sympathy for racial hatred, but I also refuse to be cowed by empty-headed liberal pieties on race-- it's a balancing act.)

Once more, we see an obviously already troubled and psychologically unstable celebrity destroy his career before our eyes by doing the one unforgivable thing: insult a racial or ethnic group designated as "extra-special protected." The guy from Seinfeld and Weird Al Yankovic's underrated comedy classic "UHF" is catching all kinds of hell for responding to hecklers at a stand-up comedy show with the dreaded "n-word." Of course, the guy from Seinfeld was also called a "cracker" over the course of this exchange, but equally of course, that's considered utterly irrelevant to the story. The use of the word that cannot be named but which rhymes with "trigger" is the main point here. Nothing else matters.

To be fair, I don't know who started slinging the racial epithets first, the black hecklers or the white comedian. The question of "who started it" is not irrelevant, and I don't mean to dismiss it here, but I do know one thing damn well: were it a black comedian getting called "snigger without the s" by a white heckler, it wouldn't matter if the comedian started the ugliness by calling the heckler a "cracker" (notice how I don't have to disguise the epithet for white people? Gee, why is that-- perhaps because whites aren't stamped "extra-special protected" in today's world the way many other groups are?) first-- the story would be about how the black comedian was called a name that no black person, under any circumstances, should ever, ever-- EVER!!!-- be called, no matter what.

Kramer is no Mel Gibson, but like Mel, he's likely to be ostracized by "respecable" people from here on in, no matter how much he apologizes for his rash and imprudent behavior on this one occasion. Like Mel, he's got tons of cash, so the end of his career really shouldn't be regarded as too great a tragedy. Still, fair is fair, and double standards are double standards; the upshot of events like this is to further fuel resentment among white working folks who can't just retire with their millions, like Kramer and Gibson can. This reasonable resentment, in turn, can only be exploited by true apostles of racial hatred-- Nazis and Klansmen and what-not. It ultimately benefits nobody to hold the screws to one racial group while giving everyone else a pass.

No Holiday Felgercarb Here

"Felgercarb," as I knew back when I was a sci-fi nerd, was the ridiculous invented profanity used in the old (and to my mind, the only true) version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Used here, it is meant to indicate that I have no intention of stopping down my incisive cultural commentary or whatever it is I do here in order to bore everybody by expostulating on What I Am Thankful For or What Christmas Means to Me or any other such thing. Holiday season is an excuse to get unbearably hokey for a lot of folks. Not moi. I plan to be as rude and as plain spoken as ever for the next few weeks and beyond.