Meet Steve. He’s homeless, but instead of panhandling for money, he works when he can, and practices piano in his spare time.
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Our government is like a fat, rich, spoiled child, who has never been told no.
Propped up on an oversized throne; Under armed guard, in a gun free zone.
Feasting on a buffet of corporate interest, drunk on free money and fucking every warm hole he can find.
Mom’s too busy getting high to notice that the house is on fire and the kids are fast asleep.
Apparently someone unplugged the smoke detector because it was making a weird noise.
Oh well… maybe just one more bump.
After all, who’s gonna know?
We’ll just hope for change tomorrow.
I stumbled onto the CommonGround website and spent some time reading and listening to what they had to say. They are a non partisan group promoting a peaceful but aware revolution. One that starts with ideas but is backed by the understanding of power and the use of force if necessary.
From their website:
Very few would disagree with the assertion that our current system has us headed for a disaster. However not everyone agrees on what that disaster will look like, and it’s virtually impossible to get people to agree on the solution. As a result forming a unified front to face these challenges has been next to impossible.
The Common Ground is an approach designed to deal with this issue.
Their core philosophy can be found here, but the main premise is that they understand that there is no way we are going to be able to agree on everything (ideologically that is) so we should break our process down into its core components, agree on at least a few of those and then move forward from there.
Their three main tenants:
- No more wars of aggression.
- End the surveillance state, and the militarization of the police.
- Hold the corrupt political and financial systems accountable.
Those were all things I thought I could get behind so i wanted to explore more.
If you click their Get Involved link you are directed to another video which mentions some strategy on how to get organized as well as some suggested reading. There is no official organizational structure (at least that’s what they claim in the video) and their message revolves around the idea that the leaders of the movement will present themselves as leaders by actually leading. Anther philosophy I can get behind.
I often talk about the Raymmar Revolution and part of my initial goal with this website, is to make it a resource for people who are ready to look at the world from a different perspective. I want to provide links, resources and other pertinent information that you can then use to form your own ideas and opinions about what is going on all around us.
My desire is not to get people to think like I do, it is simply to get people to understand why they thing the things they think. I want people to think for themselves and be firm in their findings. I want you to know what you stand for and why you stand for it.
I am not endorsing the Common Ground organization by any means and advise you to consider all of the information they present for yourself and come to your own conclusion. I just thought it was in line with what we talk about on this website and I wanted to share it with you.
Download the book they mention in the second video
I also grabbed a few other books on Amazon that I thought were relevant to the topic.
- The Crowd; Study of The Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon
- Propaganda – Edward Bernays
- From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation – Gene Sharp
I am working on a video for this poem but I decided to share the audio now instead of waiting a few months or however long it takes to produce the video. The concept is relevant considering our social situation and well, I’m also kind of impatient like that.
I am interested in creative collaborations, so please, feel free to download the audio above and use it as a backdrop for your footage. Then share the link with us and maybe we will publish it on our site. Be sure to attribute the audio properly in your video.
Send submissions or any questions to: submit@Raymmar.com
Scroll down for the poem text.
The Poem
I stand beside you and feel all alone staring at my feet, then down to my phone.
Maybe inside of this small screen I’ll see, a friend thats been patiently waiting for me.
Someone who “likes” the things that I write but still no one’s here when day turns to night.
But no matter how long I stare at that phone, I still end up feeling completely alone.
Then I look at you and it seems to me, that you are as popular as anyone can be.
How do you make the friends that you have, and why do I never see you feel sad?
Is it that you’re so much stronger than me or is there something else, a thing I can’t see?
But there you sit holding your phone, and I Instantly wonder, if you too, are alone.
Could we all be lost, together as one, always connected but friendships with none.
There is a mass of we’s and a slew of you’s, but its getting harder to find the few who are true.
Everyone wants but few want to give, everyone dies, but not all of us live.
So unplug your mind and set down that phone, we can’t solve these problems together alone.
“Oh no he didn’t…”
“Oh yes I did!”
Let’s start with a question:
How many ways are there to make a baby? Naturally that is.
I say naturally, because I am assuming someone who is getting artificially inseminated is probably not making an abortion decision so lets presume I am also using common sense for the rest of this article as well. If you are incapable of forming logical thoughts, you should probably go read something else.
Now back to the question at hand…
How many ways are there to make a baby?
There is only one way to make a baby naturally; last time I checked at least. A male puts his penis inside a woman’s vagina and ejaculates. The sperm and the egg do some high five shit and next thing you know cells are splitting.
9 months latter a little version of you is screaming all night keeping you from your precious 8 hours of sleep. (Parents, feel free to use that as your birds and bees speech!) #YoureWelcome
So now that we understand that…
We send you back to your regularly scheduled programming, which is already in progress:
“Uhh oh…. I don’t want a baby” said someone somewhere, after a drunk night of playing hide the salami. But, isn’t it already too late?
Couldn’t you argue that at this point the decision has already been made. That you have already done the deed. “Made-your-choice”, if you will.
You had sex; you knew what you were doing. You decided not to use a condom, take the pill or otherwise protect yourself from the one specific result that the act you committed is designed to produce. You may think sex is about the orgasm but really it is about the insemination and propagation of your species. If you cannot understand that concept then do us all a favor and please stop reproducing.
Cant you see that the entire abortion argument is based on a false premise. One where pro-life is different than pro-choice? Cant you see that they have succeeded in getting us to spend our time fighting among ourselves in an attempt to change the wrong part of the system altogether?
We scream at the state for their meddling while we collapse internally as a family? As our entire society rots from the inside out?
Sex is fun but it is also a huge responsibility.
Much like drinking alcohol or doing drugs, deciding to have sex is not something that should be taken lightly.
Think about it. If you go get drunk and kill someone on the drive home, you don’t get to just decide at some point during the trial that you just want to pay some money and erase the entire event from the timeline that is your life.
You don’t get to tell the judge that you made a mistake and that you don’t want to face any of the consequences. Instead, you get to sit in court and probably spend some time in jail. You get to live with what you have done and try to make the best of it.
The difference is that in this case you get to see the pain you caused. You get to look the family of the person whose life you took in the eyes, and feel their pain course through you. The baby has no choice, no day in court and his only family is the one sentencing him to death.
Sure, you can come out of jail and try to get your life back on track and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes again, but you can never go back. You cannot change the past. You can never take it back.
Back to the point
I go back to my article title… “Why All Conservatives Are Actually Pro-Choice”. Conservatives are typically pro-life which happens to be the other CHOICE when deciding to abort or not. Why is that choice diminished among our current pop-culture?
Why is the choice to chose responsibility looked at with scorn or somehow relegated to anything other than what it is… Responsible.
Why is ending life the only “choice”? Why is the argument fought as if there were only one choice to make when facing the decision of an unexpected pregnancy.
I would even argue further, that it takes more courage to keep the baby, but don’t run out of here thinking I am completely complicit with the entire conservative ideology on this argument.
What about rape?
The whole abortion discussion is such a touchy issue. There are so many nuances and you almost always upset someone’s ideology, which is often the collection of everything that makes them, them.
I acknowledge all of these things. I am just trying to approach it with a level head and some rational thought. Anyone who screams at you like abortion is supposed to be a cut-and-dry, black-and-white issue is just plain ignorant.
I could never pretend to tell a woman who had been raped that she has to keep the baby.
That is not my decision to make. I can love her and support her and encourage her to give thought to the choice of life.
I can encourage her to bring the child into the world and at least let them fight for themselves.
I would try to convince her to give them the chance to go out and make something of themselves. To let another family give her unborn child the childhood that she doesn’t want to, or cannot provide.
I would push her to think about the weight of this decision. A weight she will have to carry from that moment forward, but at the end of the day, it is not my body. It is not my decision to make. It is ultimately her choice to make.
The beauty of being human, is that we have to make our own choices. We have to live with our decisions and we are the only ones who can make them. That’s what makes this a pro-choice vs pro-choice debate! One which we must wage on a level stage of ideas and away from emotional attacks.
If there were only one option it would not be a choice. You cannot then, argue the issue from only one side of that choice! You cannot simply discredit the other side of the argument simply because you disagree.
There is a choice to be made, and allowing it to be argued on any premise other than the ones of that specific context is just plain disingenuous.
I still struggle with this issue
I know there are a million other issues at play here. There are a lot of places this thing could go next but I am just trying to start a conversation. I am just trying to get you to think about the premise of the entire debate and understand how we allow these issues to divide us as a nation!
All I am saying is that there is only one way to make a baby, and we all know what it is.
There are some situations in which the process is taken out of the hands of the woman (forced sexual relations, rape, date rape, etc) but for the most part, people having abortions are there because they already made one bad choice. Because they chose pleasure over sense. Because they had sex and got pregnant, and now are either not prepared or are unwilling to accept the results of their actions.
Instead, they are sitting in the courtroom, signing a contract with the judge, trying to erase history. Cashing in on one of the few instances in life where you can actually apply for a mulligan.
So… I’ll leave you with a couple questions:
Does that mulligan come at the expense of a potential life?
And, is that a choice you are really ready to make… especially for someone else?
