The Tree Of Your Liberty:  Honoring Those Who

Watered It With Their Blood, Sweat, And Tears

A Memorial Day (USA) tribute from Bjorn and Shawn
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For many Americans, Memorial Day marks little more than the start of summer and a chance to barbecue with friends and family. This co-host of TheBSshow.com® laments that he has been one of those many benighted, and let’s face it, ungrateful, Americans until only a few years back when one thoughtful son of a veteran apprised me of my fetid ignorance.  Or should I say “confronted” me? Being told that you’ve essentially been acting like a shortsighted pile of self-centered poop is not gratifying; admitting it and changing feels even worse. But important. I’ve since endeavored to do both, if imperfectly.

A little study of history helped. An observant walk through the gigantic veterans’ cemetery in West Los Angeles will transform all but the maniacally committed narcissist — if only by way of reading the myriad names and noticing how often so few years passed during each respective dash between the dates of birth and death.

Last year we attended a fairly formal municipal service in the blazing sun. Live military bands, jets flying overhead, veterans from several wars. For the first time I took notice of flesh and blood survivors, several carrying 8X10 framed photos of those lost. Those who helped pay my way for reasons I know not.

We at The BS Show® and TheBSshow.com® strongly recommend that Americans take a coterie of friends and family with you to a veteran’s grave or to a veterans’ cemetery this (and every) Memorial Day.  Turn off your cel phone. Walk through.  If you are lucky enough to be an American count the cost of the liberty you’ve likely done little — or even more likely, nothing — to earn. Count your blessings. And count yourself one of the luckiest people alive.

Driving through the financially poorer parts of my city today I saw for the first time that abjectly retarded and inadvertently revealing bumper sticker which presumes to quote President Bush as saying, “There ought to be limits to freedom.”  Hmmm. Please forgive me but at that moment I mourned having even 2% more sense than the broad base of ideologically underdeveloped nitwits and narcissists who are taking up space — and presumably voting — in this bastion of reasonable liberty created by the founders of America.  (I’m painfully reminded of one colleague who recently observed that most of us are not accustomed to thinking about thinking.  Thanks Brian but tell the driver ahead of me — or use his own espoused ideology to forcibly remove the dangerously obtuse preachment from his vehicle.)

What follows will be my freedom to inveigh intelligently against such immiserating ignorance.  No doubt along the way, this co-host of The BS Show With Bjorn and Shawn® will even further offend our most arrogant and under-informed readers.  Let us be as succinct as possible by way of an irrefutably logical, five-step exercise; the brevity will allow the most close-minded of readers to scurry back to the familiar enabling safety of their variously irrational and left-leaning blogs and manias.

First, I ask that you release your overwrought, “highly educated,” apoplectic hatred of The President of The United States of America — just temporarily.  Perhaps pretend that I’m Copernicus telling you for the first time my crazy theory that the sun, not the earth, is the center of our universe.  You can chide me about such “extremist” notions for the next fifty years, as did his contemporaries, before realizing that the black and white case he was making was right and objectively true.

Second, assume that the level of discourse in most of our culture is stunted, prejudiced, and insincere – just temporarily.  Because it is.  Surmise that we’re often so lazy, self-righteous, and addicted to sound bites (if not atrophied by systemic mediocrity) that little of substance is discussed, let alone understood, and, Heaven forbid, actually acted on for the morally laudable benefit of the greater good.

Third, follow along with me but think for yourself.  Using a heuristic which is native to those irritatingly accurate apologias used to make a point on The BS Show and TheBSshow.com, let us reduce the entire world to one big backyard.  Now instead of 6.5 billion roommates, you have 65.  (Quick aside: if this is the first time anyone’s been bold enough to try to free you from the imbroglio of postmodern and relativistic worldviews, prepare for a shock; and an impulse to hug, or hate, me for the sensibility put forth by my worldview.)

Fourth, assume that the aforementioned denizens are all subject to your leadership.  You are the de facto rule maker; the all-powerful President of The World! “Finally, freedom,” you intone, “the world as it was meant.  No more manipulative Bush, or the like, to limit us.” 

Now, don’t go vainglorious or glaze over just yet my open-minded friend.  THIS is meaningful political discourse as concerns the real affairs of humankind. This mature excursion, courtesy of TheBSshow.com® puts YOU entirely in charge.  And just for kicks, let’s say that guy with the retarded bumper sticker is handy to advise you.  Cool.  Turns out, by the way, he took the liberty of hanging a gigantic banner apprising the entirety of your population that their “freedom will be limitless” just to jump start the great progressive process.  One of your talented taggers then appended the message with “Bush is dead” in a color he called “blood.”  (No one present would risk “limiting” that particular graffiti “artist”; even when he later tried to set it on fire.)  Sound good so far?

Push your indoctrination aside and picture the scene accurately, especially all you haters of absolutes, boundaries, FISA, and The Patriot Act.  But stay with the logic of the analogy.  Your world — the world YOU control — is filled with all manner of folk.  With delightful and diversely disparate ambitions, appetites, agendas, ages, needs, tastes, strengths, worldviews, motives, fears, and potentialities.  How to manage it all?  Oh, and here comes your mother and daughters asking the whereabouts of your spouse and son.  Could be important; I’ll wait.

Fifth, (as in, a fifth of scotch, because you might need one if only to escape your own God-given conscience at the conclusion of this argument) please assure those most nervous among your citizenry: Will you really be true to your world’s banner?  Will you steer clear of the imposition of pesky limits?  Judgments?  Enforcement?  Will you really not limit fragile and precious human impulses, i.e. freedoms???  Uh, better decide quick, one of your strongest world citizens paid you the compliment of taking your worldview seriously — he apparently eliminated the lives of four others weaker than he. Perhaps it’s not as bad as you think — somebody counted a very pregnant victim as two.

Well, good luck with your limitless world.  Thanks for ridding mine of the awful doxies of that thorny, oppressively limiting Republican monster we elected by three and a half million votes.  Hey, by the way, you’re not going to limit bumper stickers, are you? And what about a limit on blogs and talk shows which meaningfully engage the mind and pique the conscience? 

The co-hosts of The Bjorn and Shawn Show with former Speaker Of The House Newt Gingrich

The theatre was packed with all manner of vips and celebs, including those intractably august co-hosts of TheBSshow.com AND The BS Show.  A very famous American from the political side of the aisle which is said to be narrow-minded, selfish, ontologically backwards, and out of step, was introduced to politely enthusiastic applause.  But instead of gloating or bloviating like so many pompous windbags about his own agenda he reminded us that a great veteran of American polity whose views and bills I often disdain and disagree with is gravely ill; let us bow in a moment of silence in order, he asked, that those so inclined might pray God’s mercy and intervention for my colleague and his family and friends.  Today, there aren’t two parties; today, we are brothers and sisters all of one heart.

In those few moments I did pray, focusing on someone whose new diagnosis caused my life to look like a walk in the park by contrast. America felt like a greater place than usual.  This co-host fought tears for someone else’s dad, brother, uncle, colleague, grandfather, and friend. This day we were fortunate to feel much more deeply the power of (and responsibility for) Goodness, Beauty, and Truth.

* GBAT (pronounced JEE-batt) is a construct of The BS Show with Bjorn and Shawn, and TheBSshow.com. An acronym for Goodness, Beauty, And Truth, it is meant to encapsulate those macro essential elements which we hope our life’s work propounds and promotes.

Back when the venerable and charming co-hosts of The BS Show and TheBSshow.com were nascent social observers one of us jokingly threatened to ride the tailwind of the overwrought mania of animal rights extremism movements by founding an equally febriferous “vegetable rights” do-gooders type of organization. We thought it completely childish at the time, worth, at best, a scornful laugh or two which might in some absurd way show the inhumane and irrational places where such pagan-friendly sophistry could eventually lead.  (Like an ill-advised, but clever, new “scared straight” campaign.)

Turns out we at The BS Show are more prophetic than pathetic. At least in Switzerland. The Swiss federal Gene Technology Law allegedly stipulated recently that any scientific research there should respect what they call the “dignity of creation?”  (The Swiss choose the word “Creation?”)  All plant biotechnology grant applications must now state how they take plant dignity into consideration according to the presumably judgmental, black and white guidelines of The Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH).  Wow!  I guess the old maxim “education is the key” is sustaining even further damage.

Rather than waste time chiding these philosophically dangerous dunderheads and educators at length we’re going to merely make mention of it at this time while taking further encouragement as to our ability to be perceptively frightened about the ineffable hubris of post-postmodernity’s mindset and where it’s trying to (mis)lead the human race.  That will entail focusing more on root issues — no undignified pun intended -– which we’ll get back to as soon as we forward our suddenly useful (and long ago copyrighted) slogans to the Swiss:  

1.  Don’t hate the veggie like you hate the wedgie!

2.  Vegocide is Homocide.

3.  Stop the senseless, unfeeling PEELING and slaughter!!!

4.  Hating the veggie hater is no hate crime.

5.  Outlaw juicing extremism NOW.

6.  Aborting baby ears of corn is murder.

As usual, dear readers, don’t shoot the messengers.

Them veggies are for lookin’ not cookin’ !!! 

There are rigid conditions of commerce and honesty we must “put up with” today in the USA. For instance, if “Reeder’s Company” wants to sell cartons of merely amber colored sugar water in our local grocery market they are not allowed to call it “orange juice.” It seems that the people with the money to exchange (consumers) have decided quite stringently (judged) that such an inappropriate (deceptive and wrong) labeling practice would be painfully irritating (intolerable).  

Even where the product actually is orange juice the company is required to divulge whether or not it is from concentrate, or a blend, etc. Most consumers’ minds are just not “open” to (tolerant of) a less clear (black and white) standard of commerce. Call them legalistic or control freaks if you like; in this setting it is easily evidenced that the more or less mentally and emotionally healthy consumers love the benefits of rigidity.

Many of the socially observant and dignified blacks in the USA will celebrate the courage accompanying the release of a brand new book “Stupid Black Men” by nationally syndicated broadcaster, author, and attorney Larry Elder. I and all my anti-racist pals of every race celebrate with them.

What would be even better news is an en masse din of remonstration which asked “Why are we still discussing racism as if it’s big news? Blatant racism in America is dead — largely replaced by rampant opportunity and a sort of meritocracy.”

However, given our largely culturally ignorant, and Goodness-challenged temperaments as humans, we must resolve to cheer on Elder’s desperately needed discussion and exhortation if only for his authoritative reminder that the knee-jerk reactions which we (humans) are prone to, which assiduously presume “I’m not at fault,” “I’m a victim,” “Life’s too hard,” “I deserve further entitlements,” are still one of the most problematic and enervating causes of our own limitations.

By way of example, at an L.A. diner yesterday I clearly overheard the banter among one customer, waitress, and cook. The customer’s simple special order was written on the check, cook ignored it, or didn’t care enough to read it. Food comes out wrong; customer sends it back. Cook says, “How was I supposed to know?” (i.e. “It’s not my fault.”) Waitress responds, “I wrote it on the check.” (i.e. “It’s not my fault.”) Cook reacts, “You should learn to write more clearly. (i.e. “It’s not my fault.”) Waitress opines, “What good does it do if you’re not going to read it?” (i.e. “It’s not my fault.”) Welcome to another of the far reaching problems of this world: excessive pridefulness / lack of humility. It is pandemic, cutting across all races and cultures. [For any of our hypercritical -- not to mention hypocritical -- secularists following along at home, those aforementioned moral categories are well hammered in that Book many of you hate so much.]

The individual races of those in the anecdote is of no matter, though their own perceptions of same might differ. The point is that human nature, for the most part, will assume that problems of all kinds in this life, must very often be blamed on others, or blamed on outside circumstances. For crying out loud blame anyone but me for my woes. Welcome to the denigrated victim-mania which used to resemble a somewhat useful culture replete with decent values.

If nothing else Larry Elder’s book will challenge somebody somewhere — hopefully tens of thousands of kids of any races — to step it up individually as regards work ethic, resiliency, manners, initiative, lucidity of thought, and clarity of tongue.  And to extricate themselves from the enervating presumptions which would keep them addled by the too-often-delusional ideologies spread by the “victim-mania” types.

Would that such a revolution were so overwhelming that those who continued to preach the draining doxies and vanities of racist ideologies would be run out of town by a new group of those I would label “culturists.” A group whose wisdom encourages the much more fruitful mindset of meritocracy and recognizes and appreciates the massive, undeserved abundance of opportunities here in The USA regardless of which color we “Stupid Men” (and Stupid Women, let’s be inclusive, huh?) happen to be.