“There are 11 million reasons to pass common-sense immigration reform that mends our broken system — 11 million stories of heartbreak and suffering that should motivate Congress to act,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said
In reference to the millions of immigrants currently in the country illegally, President Obama said, “Yes, they broke the rules; they didn’t wait their turn. They shouldn’t be let off easy. They shouldn’t be allowed to game the system.” Doc Thompson covered this complicated issue at the video below, with more detail at the following link:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Speaker, thank you for doin’ this. Let’s talk first about these– revelations about the National Security Agency. Edward Snowden has come forward, said he brought the documents into the public eye. His supporters say he’s– a whistle-blowing patriot. His critics say he’s betrayed the country, broken the law. Where do you stand?
JOHN BOEHNER: He’s a traitor. The president outlined last week that these were important national security programs to help keep Americans safe, and give us tools– to fight the terrorist threat th– that we face. The president also outlined that there are appropriate safeguards in place– to make sure that– there’s– there’s no– snooping, if you will– on Americans– here at home. But– the disclosure of this information– puts Americans at risk. It shows– our adversaries what our capabilities are. And– it’s a giant violation of the law.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As you point out, the president has said these programs are effective. They’re fully constitutional, fully approved by Congress, and limited. Do you agree with all that?
BOEHNER: I do. I’ve been briefed on all of these programs. Remember, this is all past– and– and broad bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate. And– and when you look at these programs, there are clear safeguards. There’s no American who’s gonna be snooped on in any way– unless they’re in contact– with some terrorists somewhere around the world.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So even though all of these phone records, not phone calls, but all these phone records are being scooped up– you believe that Americans’ privacy is still protected?
BOEHNER: Absolutely. And every time– that I’ve been in a briefing, nine of the ten people in a room are lawyers– there to protect– the privacy of the American people. George, throughout our history we’ve had this– we’ve had this tug– between our principle responsibility as the government to– to keep Americans safe– and at the same time, protect their privacy.
And so there’s this balancing act– that goes on. And I believe– that when you look at this program and what it does– we– you’ll find– that we protect the privacy of the American people– while at the same time, giving us tools– to keep Americans safe and to go after the terrorist.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator John McCain– I think he agrees with you in large measure. But he said that there should be an open hearing so the American public can be reassured about the program. Senator Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee also says she’s open to that. Do you think that’s a good idea?
BOEHNER: Well, I’ll let– the– the chairs of the Intelligence Committees– make that decision. But there is heavy oversight of this program– by the House Intelligence Committee on a bipartisan basis and the Senate Intelligence Committee. And that’s why I feel comfortable– that– that we can operate this program and protect the privacy rights of– of our citizens
The real issue with the NSA, the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security and every other government expansion program that was created in the wake of 9/11 is that the terrorist attack created by Osama Bin Laden against the World Trade Center was allowed because government did not do its job to begin with. It failed to recognize that radical Muslims are dangerous, it failed to teach people that they should over-take an airplane hijacked by terrorists carrying only box cutters, and it allowed the training of those terrorists to learn to fly an airplane when they showed no interest in landing. The FBI and CIA were aware of these terrorists from the start, and no amount of national security gathered by snooping can overcome incompetence, which is what happened during 9/11. It was incompetence that allowed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and nothing more. Many alarms were raised and nobody acted on them.
The same alarm flags were raised when the participants of the Boston Bombings of 2013 participated in radical Islamic rhetoric which migrated to the level radicalism in killing and maiming hundreds of Americans during the Boston Marathon, yet nobody acted on the information. Without question the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA all had hundreds if not thousands of emails, phone calls and other surveillance information indicating that the Boston Bombers were a threat to national security. Yet all those agencies because of the presence of political correctness were unable to call evil, evil for the sake of safety and act on their hunches, because they were paralyzed by the Muslim faith’s radical behavior and fearful of being targeted by their aggression. So nobody acted on the information gathered.
Because the government is incompetent they have decided in the wake of 9/11 to over-react and throw endless amounts of government jobs at every possible terrorist threat so that nobody in the public can ever accuse them of not doing everything they can. However, the issue of government failing to do their jobs time and time again to begin with is never brought up, so Boehner is as guilty as Obama for being an incompetent fool who has spent too many years in government and needs a private sector job to calibrate his rationale. Conspiracy theorists who appear more right than wrong will add that all this NSA nonsense has been established for years under the New World Order strategies that were outlined in the Jim Marrs book, Rule by Secrecy. Those same conspiracy theorists will say that the government has always had these plans in mind and simply were waiting for a good excuse to capitalize on the next terrorist attempt for which to launch the full NSA surveillance program that had been long-planned.
In the interview between John Boehner and George Stephanopoulos it is clear that what separates John Boehner the Republican from socialist (Democrat/Progressive) Barack Obama is very little. They both support an over-reaching government that snoops on every aspect of our lives so that they can never be held accountable for not doing everything possible to protect America from evil. That is everything except name evil by its proper name and hold people who are terrorists and breed terror accountable for their actions. For bureaucrats like Boehner and his golf buddy Obama, it is easier to just spy on everyone and hope that it serves as a deterrent for terrorism which the Boston Bombings proved false. Unable to act, or name evil by a proper name, all government can do is infringe on everyone so that nobody dare step out of line—thus keeping their incompetent political class out of the hot-seat, and in office long enough to become rich by looting the American tax payer, while never having to do anything substantial to earn the money.
Over a long period of time, the American presidency has degraded itself to the frequent diatribes of “spinning” the truth. The most widely accepted blatant history of this behavior can be seen in the actions of the Bush administration justifying the war with Iraq by declaring there were weapons of mass destruction present to justify the attack, when there really wasn’t at the time. Another would be the sexual liaisons of Bill Clinton when he unquestionably lied about his affairs even when he was pinned down and caught red-handed by the entire American public. Over the last thirty years, American presidents have become extremely proficient at misleading the public away from the crimes they are caught in. During this time, Presidents have learned that they can actually commit crime trusting that if their spin machine was good enough, they could get by with anything as the American public tends to look upon them as royalty who are above the law. This way of thinking is wrong of course, and a disgrace to the American system of republic government. The climax of this failure is occurring presently during the Obama presidency who has taken lies and manipulation to an entirely new level never attempted by previous presidents. Watch the following clips to review how many lies President Obama has been caught in, and to what treacherous degree they have been executed.
The evidence after 5 years of Barack Obama indicate that all the fears many have about the current president are true, that he is hostile to The United States, is a socialist, is likely a closet Islamic radical, and was not raised in America. He attended college under a foreign student status and has worked very hard to conceal his school records. Obama has a lot of red flags in his life that should have been seen right at the beginning, and was by many. He is not a Trojan Horse who is attempting to sneak in enemy ideas behind the lines, because he is doing everything right out in the open. There has been no attempt to hide who he is—he has been extremely open about it all. Rather, the strategy of the Obama administration has been to attack those who disagree with who he is with thug like pressure. The lies of the Obama administration therefore has not been in hiding who or what they are, but in lying about their desire to use pressure to force Americans into their way of thinking. Under that strategy, the Obama administration will go down in history as the most corrupt of all presidential administrations as they have lied about their desire to use force to impose progressive beliefs on the masses undermining The United States Constitution.
Reflecting back on the things I’ve said over the last three years at this site, and out of all the radio work I did with Doc Thompson in the early days of the Obama debacle, I am proud to report that my comments even if they seemed extreme at the time, were right on the mark. The lies have mounted up to a level now where Obama’s spin machine cannot contain the stories any longer. It’s not just his fault; this is an avalanche that has built over three decades, and the mounting pressure created by presidential manipulation for years. Obama’s administration with all its arrogance assumed that the lies could forever be mounted one upon another perpetually, and they were wrong. They are crashing down now, and I am extremely proud to have called the collapse from the very beginning.
The social trend created by government schools to lean society in a progressive direction has been to remove recognition between right and wrong from society which has left voters unable to determine success and failure from truth and lies. Obama’s administration has sought to exploit this progressive creation to their own advantage to fulfill their radical social agenda. The fault is on those who sought to strip away logic and reason in society replacing them with irrationality, and emotional justification. This is how the great lies of Obama’s administration have been perpetrated upon so many people in full light of the day. I am proud to be one of the few who did not fall victim to the grand seduction of progressive terrorism which is the Obama administration.
The evidence is massive, and by watching the clips on this article, the mode of operation is quite clear. It is ironic in review that the president said the exact same things when he was confronted over the Fast and Furious gun running scandal that he said about the IRS scandal where his White House has been caught using that branch of government to harass his political enemies. Obama declared with Fast and Furious that he first learned about the scandal like everyone else—on news reports. He then said exactly the same thing about the IRS scandal which is a bold-faced lie as The White House worked with the IRS to put a cap on the story for over a month before Lois Lerner planted the question in a public speech designed to slowly ease the story into the public to minimize the damage to public perception for all involved. Now the lies have mounted up and even the most devious spin doctors available cannot remember who said what and when they said it, and contrary statements are being revealed quicker than they can be contained. This is what happens when an avalanche of lies comes crashing down. It doesn’t matter at this point how clever the spin doctors are, or how much they are willing to lie about, because the structure of the manipulation has fallen apart.
There was some criticism when Rep. Darrell Issa’s congressional investigations of the IRS lead him to call Jay Carney who is The White House spokesperson a “paid liar.” For Issa to make such a statement there was outrage in his statement that has its origin with learning like the rest of America that we have all been scammed. Issa has heard the evidence so far and sees where it is going, and he knows that to release premature information to such bandits and thieves at The White House could damage his case. But he knows what I have been saying all along, and Glenn Beck has done show after show after show on—Barack Obama’s administration is one of the most corrupt in all of American history and is a disgrace to our republic. For Issa to say such a thing, the evidence is clear, and he is naturally upset about it, as every American should be.
My favorite Shakespeare play is Titus Andronicus and Obama reminds me verbatim of the character from that story of Aaron the Moor. At the end of the play before Aaron the Moor is executed for gross manipulation and treachery at virtually every level of the empire, Aaron proudly proclaims his evil with the following words:
Lucius says to Aaron.
“Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?”
Aaron responds.
“Ay, that I had not done a thousand more. Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think, Few come within the compass of my curse,— Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death, Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, Accuse some innocent and forswear myself, Set deadly enmity between two friends, Make poor men’s cattle break their necks; Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night, And bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digg’d up dead men from their graves, And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors, Even when their sorrows almost were forgot; And on their skins, as on the bark of trees, Have with my knife carved in Roman letters, ‘Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.’ Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly, And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”
Being an academic, Barack Obama as a young foreign college student who hated America and wanted to spread Muslim influence into the back door of a Christian nation, but lacked a strong father figure made his plans to enter political life in some capacity. The strong men in his life were socialists and communists who looked to the type of characters that Aaron the Moor was to inflict evil upon The United States. Being a fatherless despot little Barry Obama identified not with the heroes of Shakespeare’s plays, but the villains. As all intellectuals of modern academia can relate, it is the soothsaying evil of characters like Aaron the Moor which communicates most strongly to their otherwise impotent lives. Just as the public stood at the end of the Titus Andronicus play not able to comprehend the evil Aaron the Moor demonstrated throughout the tragic circumstances of the story which destroyed many lives maliciously, spectators represented by Lucius failed to comprehend the vast treachery of Aaron the Moor even as the vile manipulator uttered the words boldly, and without remorse. The modern academic knows that few people in America read, so they are unable to see the evil that people like Obama perpetrate for the same reasons as Aaron the Moor committed, for the sheer pleasure of it. Little Barry Obama was no different from the millions of modern children who love movie villains like Darth Vader because they are strong characters. They do not care that they are evil because the villains are strong. Academics understand Aaron the Moor more than they understand Titus and build their lives around the former as opposed to the later.
Liars like Obama’s administration where they have shown a tendency to lie about lying just for the sake of lying are no different from Aaron the Moor. They wish to commit evil for the sake of evil because they enjoy it. For the evil doer, goodness is the villain, and they seek to destroy all goodness so that villainy can propagate. This is contrary to how most people see the world so they are unable to identify evil in the same way that Aaron the Moor was able to commit vast acts of evil against mankind—because good people have a hard time seeing evil.
But I don’t. I have read and loved Shakespeare for the beauty of his written language. I love the passion for which he writes. And out of all of Shakespeare’s villains Aaron the Moor is my favorite. I love to hate that particular character, so it didn’t take much for me to realize that in the current White House from a very early time was a character very similar to Aaron the Moor and he was President of The United States, and he loved evil with every fiber of his soul. That love of evil is revealed in the multiple lies that the President’s administration has committed and is now caught. Obama and his minions of deceit will continue to lie until they are eventually painted into a corner with nowhere else to turn—because that’s what they do. Which is why severe justice is due to them in a way that is so aggressive, that all future presidents will think twice about lying again to the voters who put them in office. At that point, I would expect from Barack Obama a speech every bit as colorful as Aaron the Moor and for all the same reasons.
Below is the first of several public service announcements MB Studio Productions is producing to demonstrate who gun laws really affect and why they don’t work. The video is well made, and accurate. It creates a scenario where two scum bags decide to raid a random home because it looked like a viable target. The home owner detects the threat, and opens fire once the first assailant enters the home. I have been on both sides of that type of scenario and can confirm that it is very close to the re-creation. Every pin-headed politician who does not understand why a home owner needs a gun with multiple round clips, or firearms that are military designations in their performance, they are naively foolish in not understanding the kind of evil that pushes the behavior of criminal activity. I know evil very well and the scene produced by MB Studio reminds me of several friends I’ve had in the past who fear nothing, have no care for the lives they wreck and a completely absent sense of right and wrong. It is from those kinds of people who the Second Amendment is designed to protect our property from the forced confiscation of wealth and dignity.
Progressives in their war against goodness have decided that a fully government managed society is the only one they desire. They do not care if individual lives are wrecked by criminal behavior because they regard the individual as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of society. They see such home invasion robberies shown in the dramatization as “collateral damage” to their progressive cause. Progressives do not like private property, so they certainly don’t support a Second Amendment to protect it. Rather, they support the type of managed society that calls the police and the meat wagons to clean up the dead bodies. Progressives only care when they find themselves the victims of crime, but calculate the odds of such a thing happening are as frequent as being struck by lightning. So they are happy to “sacrifice” the Second Amendment for their version of the “greater good”.
It is because of the vile, statist progressive that home invasion laws favor the criminal to begin with. In the case of the video shown, the home owner fired first, which would have caused him trouble in court later as aggressive county prosecutors looking to make names for themselves justifying eight years of college attempt to prosecute home owners to advance their government sector jobs with progressive ass-kissing—which makes great headlines in progressively owned newspapers—who love government schools, large police departments, massive fire departments, and more government bureaucracy on every city block. Anything that advances big government ideas are supported by the progressive even if the man defending his family with a firearm by blasting criminals who enter his home goes to jail for murder. Progressives do not care if the father is thrown in jail as the children can be raised by their government schools and the wife can be placed on government assistance. If she cannot afford to keep the home provided by her marriage to her husband, then she can move to government housing, as all statists know that under Agenda 21, that is the eventual goal anyway. For the woman who loses her husband to years in jail for defending their home, she will simply see those days sooner than later—as all members of society will join her under progressive plans. In this way, the tax payer supported prosecutor sides with the criminals and is the enemy of the homeowner.
Progressives see all property as everyone elses, so the laws which have been shaped in our modern society reflect this trend. A home invader cannot be simply shot on site as they may not be armed. They may only want food and water and these things are entitled to all human beings under the version of reality that the progressive functions under. The progressive thinks in essentially the same fashion that the communists of the Soviet Union once believed, or the people of current China. The greater good is more important than individual life—this is how progressives can support abortion causes and the occasional death of home invasion victims, because they know that reckless sex makes more women desire government assistance and crime expands a community’s desire for more police—all of which are activities that grow government workers. If individual lives are ruined in the process, the progressive does not care.
The way the world should work is that such bandits as shown in the video above should be eliminated before they ever enter the property parameters. The laws the way they are currently written protect criminals from the homeowner so they care nothing to knock on a door at any hour of the day and demand to use a phone, or seek shelter for some emergency. Once a bad guy is on the front porch, conflict favors him and the homeowner is at a disadvantage. The home owner should have the right to eliminate a threat just for being on their property—which would discourage bad guys from even making the attempt. For those who have never known pure evil, they can claim ignorance—which is the way the progressive functions with everything in their life. They intentionally strive to be stupid so they can have plausible deniability. This method doesn’t just work with President Obama and his IRS—who are massive progressive government advocates, but with just little details in everyday life, like who is going to pick up the child from soccer practice, and what day is trash night—as one spouse may not enjoy the tasks and seek evasion to keep them out of the activity. If one does not wish to take out the trash, they can simply say they forgot which day it was, because they had plausible deniability beforehand. If a progressive wants to end private property, individual rights, and expand government support of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the local police, then they will attack the Second Amendment so that citizens need government for safety. Their supposed intentions toward justice are simple plausible deniability schemes to expand government.
The greatest fault of the progressive is in their commitment to intelligentsia for solving all social problems with a version of civilization that is built upon evasive ignorance. As society is “bigger” than any one individual the society gets the attention and any number of individuals are to be sacrificed for the “greater good.” In this way the progressive feels they are nearly a religious cult against the individual whims of gun owners who desire to selfishly protect their properties which have no value to the progressive. The progressive believes that they can manage all aspects of human life from food supply, sex, and intellectual stimulation—and that once they are in every part of a human life, then all human beings can be “managed.” Progressives believe the criminal in the video above is equal to the homeowner, so they do not pick sides, and do not care who kills who in the grand scheme of things. But they will side with the criminal by restricting the home owner with laws so that the crime can advance their progressive causes for more police, more government dependence, and the ever-present fear of the unknown. In the grand reality of our modern-day, the criminal is more valuable to the progressive than the responsible home owner because the criminal advances progressive politics, where the homeowner does not. The gun takes away the fear that progressives need to advance their statist government philosophies.
Progressives are just as dangerous as the criminals in the video. They both wish to impose themselves upon individual lives. The criminal is simply the foot soldier of the progressive politician—allowing the politician to have deniability while the dirty deeds are done by the criminal. The progressive hopes to have a certain percentage of the population that is hooked on drugs, or working for the criminal element, because it gives government something to do, and a reason to expand. If there is peace, and if the home owner can simply end all threats to their home and families with a gun, then the progressive is at a loss, which is what they fear most.
What does the New World Order look like once all the forces at play today have their way tomorrow? Have a look at the map Glenn Beck assembled with a couple of his guests as they put together the pieces of a world few are willing to acknowledge is a possibility.
I thought it was a joke when I saw the video of IRS workers practicing their dance moves for an upcoming training conference in Anaheim, which lasts just under three minutes, and comes out weeks after it was revealed that agency workers produced two other videos parodying the “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” TV shows.
In the video at the link above where my local public school of Lakota was doing a large music video to raise money for Spina Bifda it doesn’t take much looking to see that the effort was driven by the adults of the school, in some bizarre attempt to be young again with their students. When it comes to acting silly, and being “crazy,” young people are allowed some behavior fluctuations as they are still growing. They’ve only been on earth for 15 to 18 years and have a lot to learn. But when adults crave with every essence of their bodies to be “young” again, there is a real problem when such people are put into positions of authority. There is a section of that Lakota video, shown below for review, where the school superintendent and the school board are seen dancing like a bunch of lunatics. The superintendent actually held up a sign saying something to the effect as “superintendents’ rock.”
If an adult has a desire to “re-live” their youth so they can enjoy the so-called best days of their life—there is something wrong with their minds. It wouldn’t take much effort to prove that those minds are suffering a varied degree of mental illness. These types of psychologically deficient people are often found running for school boards, chaperoning school dances, and hauling their children to every social event so they can be on the “inside” as much as possible with the lives of young people. The behavior really becomes a problem when it is considered that such neurosis is the root of millions of dollars of wasted money as such minds are incapable of proper management of their own lives, let alone guarding tax payer resources.
The IRS workers in the Anaheim training video is but a window into the world of the typical government worker—the undeveloped mind of the typical bureaucrat who craves desperately to return to the pubescent body of a 15-year-old child to be forever young. The workers thought their video was cool, and socially hip. Like a bunch of teenagers who have no value for money, or the worth of real life things, they saw no reason to avoid spending vast sums of money on a stupid video showing other IRS workers how cool they are, and how they can self-parody – which is the new cool.
The trend of a statist, collectivist oriented society is to declare to the world that one is imperfect and is in essence no better than the next person. The best way to do so is to perform public actions that display humility. This lets others know in a group that one does not take themselves too seriously, and are prone to self-sacrifice for the good of the many. This is the culture of government and why teenagers behave so badly in public after being taught by government schools for 10 years of their already short lives. They are taught by idiots to be idiots—so we shouldn’t expect anything less of them. But for years, the behavior was hidden from the outside world as only those who worked for such institutions saw what really went on. That was how life was before YouTube took away censorship, and put up honesty for all to see good and bad. That is what we can see in the IRS video, and the Lakota music video, government institutions who think they are doing good, that are actually displaying a gross desire to be simple teenagers.
The cost of the federal government as it is operated by these insufficient bureaucrats is incalculable. Leaving such people in charge of anything is similar to leaving teenagers alone at home while vacationing. As soon as any responsible party leaves the house, the teenagers want to have some kind of destructive party and the house gets trashed. These are the type of people who are running the government. They are grown adults who think like children, and they simply duplicate in their government offices replicas of their glory days in high school—the government institution that shaped their thoughts. The IRS officials saw no problem with their video production. They didn’t care what the cost was, because like teenagers, they have no value for such things. Their emphasis was completely on what’s “cool” and shows the greatest humility in a public setting.
I find the IRS video appalling. It’s not cool. It’s not cute. And the people dancing in the video look like idiots, I feel sorry for their kids who have been robbed of a proper role model—and given a tremendous disadvantage in life. The behavior points to how easily the culture of the IRS was able to turn the power and fury of the federal government toward conservative Tea Party groups as the odd balls in society just as children in a school are taught to identify children who are not “cool” as targets of social bullying, and peer pressure. The culture of complacency is in place by the very nature of the typical IRS worker, who is simply a grown teenager, and just as irresponsibly dangerous. Only those teenagers are given authority over our society in every context, and that is an abomination that needs to be revisited with a dedication to a flat tax that would allow us to dismantle the IRS as it is now so that taxpayers aren’t forced to pay for such silly employees with their hard-earned money. If there was ever a rally cry for such a need, the dancing training video done by the IRS is it!
“Flash, I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the earth!” With that line of dialogue from the 1980 film Flash Gordon I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. When Dale Arden said those words to Flash Gordon, Flash was battling a rival on a floating circular platform in a bullwhip fight to the death as metal spikes came up out of the floor to puncture the fighters. If the fighters fell off the platform they would fall from the sky for miles to their death. The movie was cheesy, and unrealistic as viewed by my adult eyes, but there is a swagger to it that I love to this day which is exhibited so clearly in the theme song done by the rock band Queen, which can be seen in the music video from that long ago time in a film forgotten to modern ingenuity.
It was Flash Gordon and the old Zorro films from the 40s and 50s Republic serials that captured my interest in learning to use bullwhips. After watching the 1980 version of Flash Gordon at least 10 times at the theater I set up a mock platform in my back yard to learn how to fight with bullwhips on a similar platform so I’d have the skills to save the earth the way Flash Gordon did in that famous movie. I was in the sixth grade at the time and my career choice was made for me after watching that movie. I didn’t want to grow up to be a doctor, a dentist, or a mechanic. I wanted to be a superhero who would save the world with my own two hands and a bull whip.
For three decades now I have played that Queen song from my car stereo and blasted it from my home theater system incessantly. At times I have played the song over and over for hours never growing tired of it—because I always identified with the message. As the rest of our modern world looks to the conspiracies of our day with anxiety, I am excited. I look for the black helicopters to circle the sky, and for the hummers to storm my neighborhood releasing me from the social shackles of order for which we all live day by day. I am eager for the day I can defeat the Ming’s of Merciless tyrants I hated as a youth, and still hate as an adult with more than fiction and metaphors, but with action brought from imagination to grim reality.
In that regard, I can report that I am in a blissful existence. The world is corrupt with evils beyond imagining, and they are obvious. The villains are as obvious as the sun in a cloudless sky at noon in the desert. And those villains require valor to defeat, and souls willing to meet them on the battlefield of life. It is in that spirit that I wait patiently with yearning at the first moves of the real life Ming’s of Merciless to advance their plots in a way that defies the law and provides license for action to extend beyond the realm of thought, to actual existence. I still practice on a type of “disk of death” in my back yard so that the skills are present when they are needed.
Most people supposedly grow up and away from these kinds of thoughts, the hero fantasies young people have of saving the world. Sadly, almost every living, breathing human being in the entire world stops growing physically and mentally by the age of 15. The typical 50-year-old wants the same things that the typical 15-year-old wants food, sex, and social status. Our current society considers this—maturity. But the higher needs and desires come from the youth of a mind uncorrupted by age and cynicism, which has not yet hit puberty and developed a desire for the opposite sex. In this phase, a young mind sees the big picture without interruption. It is during this phase that young people think that saving the world is realistic, and they endeavor to do so all by themselves.
However, once young people start submitting themselves to hazing rituals to belong to a sports team, or surrender themselves to a classroom bully, they start making concessions for which there is no return. Once they’ve kissed the feat of the Ming’s of Merciless’ in their life they turn their attention to their social status, sex and food once they’ve learned their place in the social peaking order. I have always felt sorry for these terribly lost fools. They have lost the magic of youth, the knowledge in their own minds that they are ruled by nobody but their own imaginations. Once they are broken—socially—they stay that way for the rest of their years nearly 100% of the time.
What I always loved about Flash Gordon—especially the cheesy 1980 version of the classic character was that he wasn’t afraid of anything. He also survived everything the bad guys threw at him and had to peel the girls off him with a pry bar. Flash Gordon was fearless, and he never felt he needed to apologize otherwise.
Years ago I worked for a conveyor manufacturer who had a big contract with Amazon.com. I was clearly one of the best assemblers out of the 400 person work force. It was a union shop, but due to a recent strike, they had allowed Right-to-Work provisions. I was one of the first after the agreement to take the job without accepting union representation. Because of my work ethic, I was put on the big sorter job, which was the most complicated conveyor segment this particular company built. They were big and had a lot of moving parts which had to be precisely measured. The very aggressive building hours on those units was 16 hours, which required two 8 hour shifts of a union employee building them at 100% efficiency to complete. However, most of the time, the union employees performed at a 40% to 60% efficiency, so even with two assemblers, the job still took two days. When the shop foramen put me on the job he warned me that if I worked too fast, that it would cause trouble. But he admitted to me that he was putting me on those units to expose the poor performance of the much more experienced assemblers. I gladly went to the cell and set up. Within one week of working on the very technical job, I was building those units every 7.5 hours. Within a month, I had the time down to 6 hours. When I worked double shifts, which was unheard of at this manufacturing facility I could build two per day by myself and have the next unit for set up for first shift construction. This earned me the nick-name, “SUPERMAN.” It’s a name that has traveled with me everywhere I’ve ever worked and people do not mean it in a complementary way. Quite the opposite, they mean it as an insult. The union employees believed that by signaling me out with such a name, I would feel self-conscious and stop trying to “be so good.” So in response to their “insult” I would start my shift every day with the theme song to Superman on my personal boom box sitting on top of my tool box. I put together a mix tape back then, and right after Superman, the Queen song “Flash” would come on to drive my point home. My co-workers would scratch their heads and try to turn up their radios onto classic rock to attempt to drown out my movie classics.
After a while of these music wars, they decided to step up their harassment by threatening to fight me in the break room, bathroom, and parking lot. Different groups of individuals attempted the deed until the whole plant had stacked up massive collective failure. When that didn’t work they tried to rally the whole plant against me with a giant fight in the parking lot imagining that the threat of a mob would put me in my place. But it never did, instead they learned the same lessons that many have had to learn about themselves under such circumstances—that they were cowards in their adult lives discovering that valor had left their lives. Those same adults tell their sons to “grow up,” not out of a desire for their children to have better lives than they had, but to prevent their children from stepping beyond them in social stature. Those adults tell their daughters “don’t hold out for a hero, because there are none.” The truth is not that society lacks heroes anymore, but that the hope is that those heroes will be suppressed so that guilt doesn’t riddle the minds of all the 15-year-olds who have stopped dreaming of honor, and traded in their ambition for social security as 40-year-old slobs whose new idea of success is to save the world by schmooze politically on the golf courses of life.
The plot of Flash Gordon would have been boring if Flash just did what he was told, and kissed the ring of Ming the Merciless. But he didn’t, and that’s why Flash Gordon is such a great and honorable character. The same holds true in real life—it is easy to kiss the rings of those who wish to rule us. But there is also opportunity for honor and adventure when such rings are offered and the ring is spit on instead of kissed. That is why I look at our current world and have a hard time containing my excitement. There are a lot of modern spiked platforms that contain a million perils upon them. The danger is what I yearn for—with the same ambition that a 7 to 8 year-old kid looks upon a fantasy film with wide-eyes declaring that when he grows up, he will also be fearless and heroic. For me the biggest difference between the adult and the child is that the child at such a young age has no choice but to dream and ascertain images which they find attractive, so they can set personal goals to live up to. The adult has to take the responsibility to live those dreams, and to have the bravery to stand on their own ideals even if the world or universe stands against them. It is in such moments that I hear the theme song to Flash Gordon, from Queen, and relish that I have fought on many dangerous platforms and heard in my mind the words of many metaphorical Dale Ardens without turning away from the danger. But I never get tired of hearing it, and yearn for more of it every day of my life.
When I was a child, I simply bought another movie ticket and watched the same movie over and over again. But as a man, I simply get out of bed and face the day with a smile on my face for the danger which awaits me. It’s a wonderful time to be alive!
Comparing the video of Obama’s current scandals and those of Nixon’s, it is bewildering how such crocked men could have misled the American people right up to the last days of their offices. With Nixon we have the benefit of hindsight, and know that when the President was declaring to the public that he hadn’t done anything wrong—that he in fact did. He was impeached and forced from the American presidency in disgrace—as he should have. With Obama we are seeing the denials of wrongdoing in real time—before he has been forced from office as the multitude of thuggish political maneuverings executed by his administration are coming unraveled—leaving the befuddled current president to use the same silly excuses that Nixon used, because there simply aren’t any other excuses. Obama has been caught and he knows it. Watch the video for yourself.
Nixon continued to perform White House functions and speak to the press knowing that the end was coming, and Obama is currently going through the same thing. But watching them perform in the past and now in the present, it only proves how diabolically soulless these people truly are, and how little what they say really means. They are such good liars that they can get up in the morning and conduct their life as usual without being crushed under the sheer guilt of their arrogant stupidity.
As we are learning about the Benghazi murders, the first thing Obama did about the deaths 5 hours into the catastrophe was not to call in forces from the next town, or across the Mediterranean to provide assistance, it was for his own self-preservation. He called Hillary Clinton and the two worked out a cover-story for their sheer incompetence as they had been caught in an apparent gun running scandal far worse than Fast and Furious. Obama and his minions found a fall guy and attempted to blame the deaths on the maker of an anti-Muslim video—who was totally innocent of any wrong doing other than making a crappy movie. Obama was happy to lie about the terrorist event to cover up the lie of another lie his administration was embarking upon, and he didn’t think anything of looking the American people in the eye to propose the ruse.
Obama and his people are in a lot of trouble. The IRS scandal is directly tied to a union leader who met with the White House the day before the targeting of conservative groups, and the IRS is accountable to Obama. Eric Holder who has been found in “contempt of court” by Congress is guilty of spying on a Fox News reporter just a few weeks after stating before Congress that he would never think of doing such a thing, and he too works directly for President Obama. Hillary Clinton completely screwed up Benghazi causing the deaths of 4 Americans, and she worked directly for President Obama. Yet Obama claims he knew nothing about any of the incidents proclaiming just like former President Nixon did when he was caught in the Watergate Scandal that he learned about all these events on the news just like everyone else. Nobody with half a mind believes Obama.
If I were in Obama’s shoes, which I never would be as it would require a level of incompetence that seems impossible to me—but if I where, I would be so worried about all these events that I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. I wouldn’t be able to eat, enjoy television, or even reading a book. That is why it’s astonishing to watch Obama give fundraising speeches and addressing the public as if nothing were going on. But it just proves how much Obama participates in “evasion” in his personal life—how much Obama does not pay attention to the facts in the world around him—and to what extent he is simply a talking head who believes nothing, stands for even less, and will utter any word provided to him by his financial contributors. Such people are not real people—they are such good liars that they can continue to function because they have no sense of right and wrong to measure themselves against.
The only difference between former President Nixon and the current President Obama is that the former has not been forced from office yet for his crimes. In many cases, Obama’s crimes are far worse than Nixon’s because people died due to Obama’s mishaps. It also appears that Obama has many more shady people working for him than Nixon did, so the problem is exacerbated with even more incompetence. But other than that, Obama and Nixon are two peas in a pod. They are both crooks. One is a former president of the past, the other is a former president of the future.
For twenty years I have been puzzling out the reason for two things, why the first and largest city in America fell into abandonment by 1300 AD, and why to this very day thousands upon thousands of people drive by the ruins outside of St. Louis every day on a highway that passes by the third largest pyramid in the world by volume without paying any attention. I have the answer, and I write about that answer here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. But my arrival to that answer took a long time so naturally the information here is extensive. It will take a while to read and watch all the material on this article, but its worth it to understand the complexity, and context of the claims. The result of my investigation was chronicled in a screenplay I wrote, which won a few awards but was not desired by Wilshire Blvd agents for the radical violence, heart pounding action sequences, and dire political revelations it contained. That screenplay was called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia and was about two college anthropology students who are given a scholarship task of writing a thesis on the demise of the lost city of Cahokia—America’s first city, and was at one time larger than London which is to this day hidden in plain sight just a few miles east of downtown St. Louis.
The hero of my story was Cameron Loveless, a mixed martial arts fighter who was paying her way through college by cage fighting. Her rival was named Tina Lane, a young “progressive” beauty who decided to sleep her way to the top of the anthropology field instead of doing the hard work of digging. The story was based on my experiences at the time in college, my work with the Joseph Campbell Foundation—particularly my experiences in Washington D.C., and the many adventures I had been on in a particular region of the world with a good friend who sometimes shows up here as The Oracle. The point of the story was to explain my theory for why the ancient city evaporated from the earth as a region of immense political power to just a collection of abandoned earth mounds that developers wanted to build East St. Louis upon. The plot of the story would take Cameron Loveless and her friends to the deepest hells of earth, through dank caves flooded with cold rising water, dangerous insects, and many other perilous natural disasters as she puzzled out why the city of Cahokia had failed. But there was no danger that she or her friends encountered which would prepare her for the ultimate horror, the Lost Cannibals of Cahokia which were deformed descendents of the ancient city who needed to consume human flesh to abate their illness. At this point in the story, I took some creative liberty with the facts so to create a metaphorical analysis of the real evil which destroys our world then and today.
The story is a favorite of many who have read it, and it did bounce around Hollywood for a few years. The general opinion from the Hollywood community was the story needed to figure out what it was. Was the story a high adventure action story? Was it a horror story? Or was it a political drama? Ironically the number one problem that agents had with The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia was that Cameron Loveless was “too strong” of a character, and that she got along “too” well with her fiancé Shane. Several agents told me that I needed to re-write the story with an emphasis on one of those themes, and that Cameron needed to have more “conflict” with her relationship to Shane.
I couldn’t endure to do such a thing as make the story weaker to make it relatable to a general audience, so I shelved the story for some later time. My oldest daughter and my son-in-law love the story so much that they want me to turn the screenplay into a novelized version. After all it was my experiences with that screenplay that turned me to writing novels instead of movies as a passion. With a novel, there are no Brand Blvd parties to attend, and if people don’t like the book, they don’t buy it. Writing a novel is one of the most solitary things a person can do, which is why it is so appealing to me. Screenplays are much more collaborative, which I quickly lost interest in. But as to turning Cannibals of Cahokia into a novel, I had already passed my point of interest on that particular story. I wrote it in essence during my late 20’s and I have moved on. At the time it was freshly learned by me what ended the city of Cahokia that many scholars still debate. But where I succeeded and they failed, and still fail, are they ignore one key ingredient of what all societies that fizzle out have in common–a sense of “collective sacrifice.” A city like Cahokia during its growth phase embodied many of the attributes that would be considered “philosophic capitalism” at the time—an idea of growth, of individual profit, and a yearning to become better. The cycle usually takes 200 to 300 years, but eventually once the growth is done and the adventurers who establish such cities die off or move away, a parasitic political class is emerges in the wake, and these entities use religion to control the masses not with profitability, but a sense of sacrifice.
In Cahokia’s case, human sacrifice was as common as it was among the Aztec, Mayans, or any Mesopotamian culture. Once sacrifice becomes part of any community, the destiny of the society is in the hands of “the gods” and not the individuals who build pyramids, city walls, or perform warfare against their neighbors to gain new territory. While some of those activities might be destructive, they do involve thought—which is the lifeblood of any culture. But when a culture stops thinking, and starts sacrificing to the “Gods” they turn off their minds and return to the state of a typical primitive. Ayn Rand in her great little book Anthem described this process effectively, and it is the missing element in explaining why societies fail.
Modern scientists and political engineers wish to believe societies like Cahokia didn’t even exist, because it does not fit their version of what the American Indian was. When the lawyer and amateur historian Henry Brackenridge found the massive site of Cahokia in 1811 he tried to get his friend Thomas Jefferson to get the word out about the wonder he had discovered in the middle of the North American continent, a city that rivaled the Egyptian pyramids. But newspapers paid little attention to Jefferson’s wild ideas. After all, America was in the middle of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and could not afford to think about the North American Indian being sophisticated and capable of building cities larger than any in Europe. Indians were to be considered savages. The result is to this very day, the evidence is right in front of millions, but nobody wishes to see it—because the evidence does not fit the anticipated reality.
In my story Cameron wanted to prove that Cahokia didn’t fail by lack of rain, or crop failure like many modern anthropologists suggest. Cahokia ended because its political structure collapsed on itself in the same way that modern-day Detroit is failing. The result of social sacrifice 100% of the time leads mankind back to the state of the primitive, not the sophisticate. Her rival Tina simply slept with her college professor, adopted the theory of those giving out the foundation grant she wanted, and played along like so many modern-day scientists who wish to have funding for their projects, surrendering their thinking to the politics of their institutions no matter what the facts indicate. Cameron wanted to prove otherwise, and did so with overwhelming evidence. To get a taste of my screenplay what follows are three scenes from it taken from ACT I, ACT II and ACT III. Scene changes are indicated below with terms such as “DISSOLVE TO:” and when characters are speaking, they are centered on the page and shown in all capital letters. It takes some getting used to, but is worth the effort. To make it even easier, I put all the character names in red so that the reader knows they can ignore that text as it is intended to be read by the actors only. All the action and crazy cannibal stuff is left out, featuring instead only the parts of the Cahokia story that are known to be true as they are relevant to the case at hand.
——————————————————————————-
The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia
By
Rich Hoffman
Draft 2
Current Revisions by
Rich Hoffman 4/15/2006
WGA #116135
CUT TO:
EXT. UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI – DAY
College students rush across the lawn to get to their classes under a splendid afternoon sun.
INT. ANTHROPOLOGY CLASSROOM – DAY
PROFESSOR TIPPIT is a tall, 55 year-old bald man dressed in a blazer that covers a t-shirt. He wears jeans and some dirty hiking boots. He’s poised confidently in front of a class of about thirty students pointing to drawings on the chalk board.
TIPPIT
Many of the 120 mounds at the
Cahokia site have been wiped out
by farming or modern construction.
On the sheet you have in front of
you, which I have drawn on the
chalk board, is a replica of the
site as we now know it.
We see all the students fumbling though their papers, looking for their diagram. Next to the window along the east wall we see Cameron sitting calmly in her chair studying her copy of the diagram, rubbing the fresh bruises on her face. She is clean and looks very well-groomed. Her hair is in a pony tail just like Jose who is sitting next to her looking pretty much the same as she did the last time we saw her.
TIPPIT (V.O.)
Only 92 mounds appear on this
diagram. The original shape of 47
of them are no longer
recognizable.
Tippit points to a group of object drawn on the chalk board.
TIPPIT
The remaining 45 fall into four
classes. Single platforms, double
platform, mounds marking the north-south,
east-west axis, and conical
mounds.
Josie nudges Cameron’s arm.
JOSIE
(whispering to
Cameron)
The “blond wonder” is checking you
out.
Cameron looks to her right on the far side of the room and notices TINA LANE gazing right at her. Tina is a woman about their age with dyed white/blond hair. She’s wearing black eye shadow and wears several earrings on her right ear. Her nose and lip are pierced. Her cloths sport the “grunge” look to a tee. Tina blows her a kiss.
TIPPIT (V.O.)
Now we need to address the issue
of Woodhenge.
Cameron and Josie give each other an anticipated look. Tippit points to a spot on the diagram to the west of the large square in the middle. Over the large square is labeled “Monks Mound.” the spot he points to is a circle. Above the circle he writes with ABRASIVE FRICTION, “Woodhenge.”
TIPPIT
Those of you that went on last
summer’s dig at Cahokia, know that
during the spring equinox you can
stand at this spot–
(pointing to a spot
in the middle of the
circle)
And witness the sun appear to rise
out of Monks Mound. This
astronomical observation device
was rebuilt several times over the
centuries and ended up over 400
feet wide, resembling an
elliptical shape. The Cahokians
used red ceder posts 15 to 20
inches in diameter and they stood
20 feet tall.
We can see that everyone in the class seems to be bored except for Cameron, Josie and Tina. One guy in front is asleep.
TIPPIT (V.O.)
I think it’s safe to say that the
current belief is that the
Cahokian leaders used this site to
prove they had mastery over the
sun to their people. They could
point to the horizon on a given
day and show which key post the
sun would rise on, and which one it would set.
The sleeping guy comes alive and rubs the drool from his mouth.
SLEEPING GUY
(sarcastic)
Wow.
A gentle RUMBLE OF LAUGHTER moves throughout the classroom.
TIPPIT
It’s really quite amazing. We
have a culture here in the
Mississippi valley dating 700 a.d.
To 1400 a.d. That is very similar
to early Mesopotamian culture of
3000 years earlier.
SLEEPING GUY
So what? I really don’t
understand why that’s important?
Every primitive culture seems to
recognize astronomical
observations.
TIPPIT
(laughs)
If you hadn’t been sleeping, you
may see the significance.
The class LAUGHS, this time louder. Tippit scores a point.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Can anyone explain to our sleeping
friend here the significance of
this observation…keep in mind,
Mound 72.
(he turns and draws
more images on the
chalk board)
Those of you that didn’t go to
last summer’s extravaganza to the
sight wouldn’t know this, because
we haven’t covered it yet, but
when Mound 72 was excavated they
found an apparently important man
in his 40’s buried on a bed of
about 20,000 shell ornaments, and
about 800 unused arrows. With him
were buried four men, we think
they represent the four cardinal
directions of the compass. These
men were buried with their heads
and hands cut off indicating human
sacrifice.
The classroom gives a disgusted reaction to this news. The sudden shift in talk from numbers to human sacrifice has woken everyone up. Tippit senses this and runs with it. Cameron and Josie get a laugh out of the sudden shift in attention, a satire on the human condition.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Also buried with this apparent
king was 53 women between the ages
of 15 to 25 years old. So imagine
this. You are living in Cahokia,
and your leader dies. You are
virgins—
The whole class BREAKS OUT LAUGHING at the impossibility that any girl in the classroom in that age group could possibly be a virgin. Cameron and Josie again laugh to themselves, it’s a private joke between them. Another satire on the human condition.
TIPPIT
(continuing; laughing)
You are virgins and you have been
summoned. You must escort your
king into the next life. So what
do you do?
A guy that looks like a mop sitting in the back of the room raises his hand.
MOP HEAD
Why would anybody willingly follow
some old dude into death? I still
don’t understand this whole mass
sacrifice stuff.
TIPPIT
As we’ve studied, it’s common in
all planting cultures. Human
sacrifice, whether cannibalism
mass graves or both, is a dominant
ritualistic practice.
MOP HEAD
We are European descendants, and
we didn’t do that kind of thing.
We planted sit and stuff just like
these people.
TIPPIT
Sure we do. Only our culture does
it symbolically. In the Roman
Catholic sacrificial mass, you
break bread symbolizing the body
of Christ, and drink wine, symbolizing the blood of Christ.
SLEEPING GUY
That’s not the same, man.
TIPPIT
Sure it is. The Roman Catholic
Church realized what these mass
grave cultures overlooked, that
religion requires subjects, and
the Catholics figured out that if
everyone died, nobody would be
left to go to their church and
give them money.
The class ERUPTS IN LAUGHTER.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Back to the mass graves. In
Mesopotamia we have the Royal
Tombs of Ur, during 2500 to 2350
B.C. Here we have hundreds of
people going to death for their
kind and queen. They even buried
chariots, and horses, and courts
of musicians. So here in Cahokia
we have mass burials just the
same, right here in our own back
yard, just under a thousand years
ago. So again, imagine you’re a
young woman, the same age as most
of you now, and you look upon life
for the last time. You are
prepared with ornaments and then
strangled, most likely, ’till you
die. You do this so you can
accompany this great king, who
lived like a God atop Monks Mound.
Would anybody like to explain why
this is significant, and what can
we learn from this?
Cameron and Tina’s hands shoot up. Tippit isn’t surprised. He looks a little disappointed that the rest of the class is sitting on their hands.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Funny, the only two students in
this class, the same two students
competing for the verbal
presentation on Cahokia’s demise.
By the way–
(looking from Tina to
Cameron)
After class I have information that will be useful to the two of
you in your research. So see me
after class.
(he looks at Tina)
All right, give us the
significance in the Woodhenge
construction for sleepy here.
(putting his hand on
the sleepy guy’s
shoulder)
TINA
Well, first, by showing that the
Cahokian leadership could predict
the movement of the sun, they
could prove to the citizens that
they were significant, and had a
special relationship with the
Gods.
TIPPIT
(looking at the rest
of the class, then
to Cameron)
Good. But why is that important?
CAMERON
It’s important to study the
primordial effects of dependency
upon the human psyche. By showing
their dominance, they justified
their existence and their desire
to abuse power at the hand of
their infantile ego systems. They
do this by using the public to
serve their needs, much like
modern-day politicians. They
created a sense of urgency and
then volunteered themselves to
fill that need.
Tina is looking angry as competitive aggression oozes from her eyes.
TINA
I’d like to add that by placing
the spring equinox at rising out
of the kings home, atop Monks
Mound, the people by default
identified the king as a heavenly
figure. This is why they
willingly subjected themselves to
the mass suicides.
Cameron and Josie look at each other shaking their heads at Tina’s need to outdo her.
SLEEPING GUY
This is all very interesting,
but we have cultures like this
already in Mexico. The Maya and
the Aztecs practiced the same type
of rituals.
CAMERON
(cutting in)
This is true, but Cahokia is
isolated from them. It seems to
have developed totally on its own.
The strongest argument made for
the rise of the Maya and later the
Aztecs is that they moved across
the Pacific from Mesopotamia, and
after a couple thousand years of
parallel settlement, established
themselves in Mexico. Most of
what we know of the Native
American Indian tribes of North
America would indicate diffusion
across the Bearing Straight,
coming from China, Siberia,
Alaska, Canada, then spreading out
into tribes into the rest of North
America. The Maya were on their
way out by 700 a.d. 200 years
before the slightest hint of
activity at Cahokia. The Aztecs
didn’t rise to power until early
1300 a.d. Cahokia is a mystery
totally self-contained, not
following the logic of its
neighbors.
The class stares open-mouthed at Cameron. Josie is laughing to herself as she stares out the window. It doesn’t matter if she’s in a boxing ring, or in a classroom debate, we see that Cameron Loveless will fight with everything she’s got. Tippit looks proud. But his proud look quickly dissolves as he turns around and writes “Spinden’s Correlation” on the chalk board. He turns around and smiles at Cameron. Cameron understands immediately and covers her face from mild embarrassment.
TIPPIT
You are forgetting Ms. Loveless,
that the Mayan dates when
translated to our own calender
gave us false dates. The common
practice is to use the Thomas-
Goodman correlation. When doing
so, add about 260 years. That being the case,
we can look at the fall of the Maya to be around 900
to 950 a.d.
The bell RINGS and the class jumps out of their seats wasting no time. Tina is smiling as she makes her way to the professor’s desk. Josie is already there, but Cameron is still sitting. After the last of the students leaves the room, Shane walks in looking secure. He is dressed in black swat team type pants and a t-shirt covered with cartoon characters. He makes eye contact with Cameron and that brings a smile from her. It’s a soft smile that we haven’t seen yet. She does the same for him. She gets up and meets Tippit at his desk where he is sitting down.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Sorry Cameron, I was just keeping
you on your toes.
CAMERON
That’s ok. I ran right into that
one.
TINA
(staring at the
bruises on Cameron’s
face)
Looks like that’s not all you ran
into.
JOSIE
Why don’t you back off for a
change!
TIPPIT
Ladies! Ladies, let’s not fight
again. Chill out.
Shane steps up behind Cameron and puts his arms around her stomach giving her a gentle hug. Josie and Tina eye each other than give their attention to Tippit.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
Cameron. Tina. I have some bad
news, and some good news. I
waited ’till after class to tell
you because it really only affects
the two of you.
TINA
What is it?
TIPPIT
Well, remember Paul P. Jacobs from
last summer’s dig at Cahokia?
TINA/CAMERON
(together)
Yeah.
TIPPIT
Well, this may be tough. You two
are the only ones from this
University to take part in his
scholarship opportunity for post
graduate tuition.
CAMERON
Yeah, two years of paid tuition
for my masters. I’m depending on
it.
TINA
(to Cameron)
So am I. If I don’t get that
money I’m sunk.
TIPPIT
Well, this will make things harder
for you two girls than they
already are. I know you both need
that money, and only one can get
it. I wish I could change it, but
I can’t.
JOSIE
What about Jacobs?
TIPPIT
Well, you girls knew he’s been
missing since the fall.
CAMERON
I didn’t know that.
TINA
(to Cameron)
I did.
Cameron gives Tina a look of pathetic disgust.
TIPPIT
Yes, he’s been missing for about
six months. Well, he turned up
last week. At least part of him.
TINA
Part of him?
TIPPIT
A fisherman found his head in
a lake in Tennessee.
There is an uncomfortable silence among them.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
He was down there doing some
research for Cahokia.
JOSIE
(trying to lighten up
things)
Did his head still have skin on it?
Cameron pushes Josie in a playful attempt to silence her.
TINA
Why would he be doing work for
Cahokia down there?
TIPPIT
Before I answer that I have to
give you the rest of the news.
the Paul P. Jacobs foundation has
decided to have a funeral to give
closure to his family.
JOSIE
I hope it won’t be an open casket?
Shane can’t help but laugh, and Cameron fights back a smile.
Tina is horrified.
TIPPIT
I should think not. But I’m
afraid that something has happened
that will affect the scholarship
award.
Cameron and Tina’s faces drop to an expression of gloom.
TIPPIT
(continuing)
This weekend is the spring equinox
and the Foundation is gathering
there to pay tribute to his life’s
work at Cahokia. They’ve already
cremated his remain and they plan
to spread them over Monks Mound.
JOSIE
That’ll be a real small vase.
CAMERON
How’s this affect the scholarship?
TIPPIT
Next Friday, one week from today,
the Foundation is going to award
the scholarship to one of you.
TINA
But we haven’t turned in our
essays yet.
TIPPIT
They don’t want just an essay.
They are going to release some
unpublished work of Dr. Jacobs and
they are holding a special
ceremony to award the scholarship.
CAMERON
So what do we have to do?
TIPPIT
They are asking that you give a
verbal explanation on the demise
of Cahokia based on the incomplete
evidence of Dr. Jacobs’ latest
findings.
They will judge your presentation
and the winner will get all of
your post-graduate studies paid in
full for two years and your
presentation will be published in
the book their planning to release
in tribute to Paul.
CAMERON
(looking at her
friends, then at
Tina)
That’s not enough time.
(then leaning against
the desk, her fists
clinched)
I can’t afford to blow this.
TIPPIT
Don’t panic. You both know
Cahokia very well. Probably
better than the Foundation people.
Just do your best.
(beat)
I do have some information that
Dr. Jacobs E-mail me right before
he disappeared. I could forward
it to the two of you if you wish.
You may find it useful.
CAMERON
Why? What’s in it?
TIPPIT
Well, Paul was studying possible
trade routes from North Carolina.
You know, mica origins. He
stopped by a little store in some
tiny little town on the border of
Kentucky and Tennessee, close to
where he was found. Anyway, he
bought some jewelry.
JOSIE
Jewelry? So what?
TIPPIT
Sea shells…sea shell jewelry
mixed with mica figures dangling
from the shells. Very elaborate.
TINA
For once I agree with Josie. So
what?
TIPPIT
They are very similar to the kind
of ornamentation found in Mound
72. He believed they were
connected in some way.
TINA
In the middle of Tennessee!
TIPPIT
Like I said. He was looking for
trade routes, and he thought he
found one. These ornament were
far too elaborate, and primitive
to be made by the locals. At
least that’s what he thought. He
never was able to get a carbon-14
on them. Maybe if one of you
could get an age on those
ornaments, and put them at around
the time of Cahokia’s height of
power and influence, it could help
prove something, or make a
connection to your theories.
TINA
My theory can’t be proven like
that.
TIPPIT
Well the information is there if
you want it. I’ll E-mail it to you both. Also, I’ll be going to
St. Louis this weekend to meet the
foundation members. They want to
spread the ashes tomorrow, so
you’re both welcome to come along
and meet them. It might give you
some idea as to what they’re
looking for.
(beat)
I know this is short notice, but
you’ll both have to make the best
of it. I know you were going to
have all summer to put together a
theory, but this is the way things
work. Make it work to your
advantage.
TINA
(looking pale)
If you don’t mind, I’d like to go
with you Professor. I’m not about
to waste valuable time hunting
down sea shells.
Cameron looks up at Shane who stares back nervously.
JOSIE
(agitated)
Surely there’s some way to delay
this.
TIPPIT
I’m caught between a rock and a
hard place here. Both of you need
the money. Both of you expect to
win. All I can do is tell you the
rules. I’m not the one holding
the money. All I can say is there
are two possible options here.
You two can meet the people who
will judge you. You can get to
know hem, learn what they like. or
you can see if Paul was onto
anything new in this Tennessee
place.
(picking up his books)
But I have to go right now. I’m
late for an appointment. I’ll Email
the Dr. Jacobs message to
both of you as soon as I get home.
I’ll be leaving for St. Louis
around 3 P.M. If either of you
want to go, meet me here around
2:30 with whatever you’re taking
along.
Professor Tippit leaves in a rush. The atmosphere is tense.
CAMERON
Damn.
TINA
Please tell my you’re not planning
on going with me.
CAMERON
I’ll go where you don’t.
(getting closer to
Tina’s face)
I’d rather work than kiss ass.
TINA
Good. Then I won’t have to
compete for attention.
JOSIE
No, you can just take off your
clothes and dance for them, like
you do everyone else.
TINA
(to Josie then to
Cameron)
You guys are just in denial.
You’re mad because he money has
come easy for me, and you have to
struggle.
(beat)
Look at you. You actually think
your way is better.
CAMERON
I sleep better.
TINA
You haven’t been over to see me
sleep lately, now have you.
SHANE
No, but everyone else has.
Tina gives Shane a piercing gaze but quickly retreats when
she realizes it doesn’t affect him.
TINA
(storming out of the
room)
Good luck. You’ll need it.
(from out in the hall)
I’ll be sure to guarantee my luck.
SHANE
(looking at Cameron)
I just had to throw that in.
JOSIE
Man, is she a slut. You know what
she’s going to do don’t you?
CAMERON
(chews on her cut lip)
I’m not going to mingle with a
bunch of fruitcakes. That’s her
way. She bullshits. I dig.
that’s what anthropologists are
supposed to do.
Shane rubs the side of Cameron’s face. She yields to it. The tough talker suddenly melts like butter. She falls into his strong arms.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. JEEP – NIGHT
It is dark outside the confines of the jeep. The only light is a soft glow given off by the laptop. Cameron’s face is excited, lit with a blue hue from the screen.
SHANE
So what’s our objective? I know
you have to prove how Cahokia fell
from power but how are we going to
do that?
CAMERON
Well, the theory I’ve been working
on deals with competition from
other settlements along with
Mississippi as being the primary
cause of Cahokia’s fall between
1200 a.d. And 1300 a.d.
(shaking her head)
Tina believes that a small global
cooling trend around 1250 caused
the fall by damaging the growing
season.
SHANE
Is there any validity to her
theory?
JOSIE
Sure there is. But Cameron’s idea
is far more practical.
SHANE
(to Josie)
Are you just saying that because
she’s your friend?
JOSIE
No, see even if the crops failed
around that time, we had buffalo
migrating across the Mississippi
in this same century. So that
should have made up for the poor
farming results.
CAMERON
Tina only clings to that theory
because Tippit suggested it last
summer. Mr. Jacobs on the other
handmade much more sense.
JOSIE
She’s got a crush on Tippit.
CAMERON
She’s got a crush on anything that
moves. That’s why she’s so
disgusting. She’s like water.
She’ll take on the shape of
whatever you put her in. That’s
how she gets her way.
SHANE
Is there anything in those notes
about where we’re headed?
CAMERON
Well, Dr. Jacobs says that he went
to a little gas station just south
of the Tennessee border and found
elaborated Cahokian style
ornaments on sale at a tourist
trap bait shop.
SHANE
Tennessee has a long border.
South of what. Give me a
reference point.
CAMERON
Looks like Monticello, Kentucky.
That’s the only major town he
mentions.
JOSIE
Are we going to stop and eat
someplace? I’m starving. I
haven’t eaten since this morning.
CAMERON
Monticello is probably the last
reliable place to eat, so we’ll
stop there. Everything south of
that at that time of night will
probably be closed. It’s the
Bible belt.
Josie opens a map.
JOSIE
You’re right. There’s like
nothing south of Monticello.
Definitely hick land.
SHANE
So what’s the back-up plan if this
turns out to be a dud.
CAMERON
We don’t have one. All I can say
is that this better work. I was
planning on working on this all
summer. Now we’re supposed to
come up with something out of the
blue. I need that money.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY
Six days later, it’s the same hotel the Foundation had been staying at for the funeral ceremony. They are all seated at a long banquet table situated in front of a single podium. They sit there like judges, determining the fate of the speaker at the podium. Tippit and Tina are sitting off to the side along the partition wall. Tina looks happy as she holds Tippet’s hand. Shane and Josie are sitting at the opposite wall, watching Tippit and Tina, shaking their heads. A sad example of the effects kissing ass can have on a lonely man’s heart. Alone, confident, and poised for greatness, Cameron gives her presentation at the podium. Behind her are drawings, pictures taken from the video tape they made, and enlarged copies of the pictographs she and Josie had discovered. Hanging on the front of the podium was a picture of Birdman lying on the bed of shells. With all the visual aids and the revelation of new discoveries about Cahokia’s demise, Cameron is a sure win for the scholarship.
But Tina seems too confident. The scene begins where the explanation left off at the cave. Cameron has already told the story we already heard in the burial chamber.
CAMERON(professional)
…and so we can say with
certainty, with all the given
evidence that I have provided,
that our friend here, Birdman, a
dissident of Cahokia’s rigid
political system, went south and
encouraged other settlements to
rebel against this great trade
center. We know this because he
traveled Cahokia’s trade routes
where he eventually settled into
this underground chamber to leave
his story behind…to us. And
than God he did.
The members don’t look impressed. Cameron notices this and gives an uneasy glance at her friends, then to Tina. Tina just closes her eyes smiling. Her look says “got ya.”
CAMERON
(continuing)
I think Dr. Jacobs would be happy
to know that his search and his
sacrifice in the name of
anthropology led to a great
discovery that will change what we
know of the fate of Cahokia.
Cameron expects an applause of some kind. What she gets is the cold shoulder, big time.
LARRY
(mechanical)
Thank you…miss…us…Loveless.
Nice job.
Cameron, Shane and Josie all have the same perplexed look.
CAMERON
“Nice job?”
MARY
Yes, very interesting theories.
Yet I’m not totally convinced.
I’m inclined to believe in my
husband’s earlier work. It’s a
little more proven. It still seems
more probable that a climate
change affected the farming.
Cameron’s mouth is hanging open. After all she went though, it comes to this. Shane is shaking his head in disgust. Josie jumps to her feet.
JOSIE
When Tina spoke, she had no visual aids and
a five-minute speech.
Are you trying to say that all the evidence Cameron has given
you has failed to make you question that original theory?
LARRY
Young lady. I don’t mean to sound
rude but…but this doesn’t
concern you.
Josie’s nostrils flair. Shane has to grab her before she takes off after the man. Cameron looks defeated, then perks up. She’s never been a quitter and she’s not about to start now.
CAMERON
With all due respect…sir…but
you’d have to understand what we
went through to bring you this
information. I don’t mean to
sound like a poor sport or
anything like that but…
TODD
But what? You expect us to
believe in these wild theories?
CAMERON
(shocked)
Wild theories?
(very animated)
You know, we not only uncovered a
completely unknown burial chamber
out in the middle of nowhere, and
found writing as reliable as the
Rosetta Stone telling us what
happened at Cahokia…which is
what this whole scholarship was
supposed to be about…but we also
found evidence of cannibalism
still practiced in the area as a
result of this Birdman, from tis
period, the Morrehead Phase…the
fall of Cahokia, between 1200 to
1250 a.d.
JOHNATHAN
So you expect us to believe that
cannibalism is still practiced.
Why?
CAMERON
As I’ve told you, as indicated by
the drawings and witnessed by me
and my friends, there are terrible deformities
among the people surrounding this burial chamber.
MARY
You’re saying that my husband was
a victim of this cannibalism?
CAMERON
These people have ceremonies every
fall and spring. Because of their
deformities they haven’t migrated
away from the area, and still
practice the same rituals as was
practiced in Cahokia.
LARRY
(laughing)
And they cut off people’s heads in
the fall and eat them in the
spring?
CAMERON
(determined)
Yes. Frazer in his book “The
Golden Bough” deals with this kind
of behavior by explaining “the
savage commonly believes that by
eating the flesh of an animal or
a man that he acquires not only
the physical, but even the moral
and intellectual qualities of that
life form.”
LARRY
So they killed Dr. Jacobs so they
could gain intelligence?
CAMERON
No! They wanted his body, to keep
the deformities from getting
worse. They cast away the head
hoping it would spring forth and
grow into new life.
The Foundation members all give each other impossible glances. Even Tina and Tippit participate. Tina feels her grip on the Foundation weakening.
TINA
Why this isolated little place in
the middle of nowhere?
CAMERON
(motioning to Josie
but addressing Tina)
This wasn’t. Cannibalism was
practiced in the area up to 1600 a.d.
The Foundation members are really rocked now. This is all new to them. Josie hands Cameron a picture. It’s a color photo of a circular object pale white in color. It’s a painted man, it looks like an archeological relic from mexico in design. In his right hand is a severed head. Cameron holds up the picture so everyone can see.
CAMERON
(continuing)
This is an engraved shell gorget.
this was uncovered from a mound at
Catlian Springs, in Sumner County,
Tennessee. It dates back to
around 1200 to 1600 a.d. The sand
Prairie Period.
LYNE
I didn’t know that.
CAMERON
That’s the point. There are a lot
of things we don’t know. we get
so wrapped up in trivial things.
(to Tina)
Like copying off a great man’s
work word for word because we are
not think for ourselves.
(to the Foundation)
We can get stuck by saying that
Cahokia, as a great city, failed
because of some crop damage. But
as the evidence suggests, that
would be the easy way out.
LARRY
So what’s this picture prove in
relation to your argument?
CAMERON
(amazed at Larry’s
ignorance)
Isn’t it obvious? In the next
period of the Mississippian
cultures, after Cahokia, we have
ceremonies similar to the city’s,
even off the main Mississippi
river way. This relic was
uncovered only fifty or so miles
west of this cave burial. This
goes along with Birdman’s cave
painting. He was a principal
advocate in leading other
Mississippi river cultures into
creating their own independent
societies, cutting out Cahokia,
weakening the ruler. It’s a
political upheaval.
There is confusion and tension among the Foundation members. Cameron reads it and addresses it like she does everything, directly.
CAMERON
(continuing)
You know…it doesn’t take a
genius to figure out what’s going
on here.
(pointing to Tina)
You’ve made buddies with her, and
you have made a conscious, or
subconscious decision to award her
the scholarship.
MARY
We haven’t made our decision final.
CAMERON
(holding up her hand)
It’s ok. I’ve worried about this
damn thing nearly all this school
year. I thought that by doing an
exceptional job, I’d surely get
it. But I’ve learned some real
lessons on this expedition…all
of these cities we’ve studied in
my four years of college have
something in common. They’re not
around any more. Most cities only
have a couple hundred years of
history…why?
She has everyone’s complete attention.
CAMERON
(continuing)
To me…this is why we study the
past…so that we can learn where
they failed and how we can
succeed. But there isn’t any
hope. Even in something as small
as us in this little room, in this
little hotel, we have political
upheavals and dysfunction.
LARRY
Miss!
CAMERON
(stern)
Let me finish! I bring you
overwhelming evidence of a great
number of key issues that not only
personally affect your supposed
goals, but also the issues that
greatly affect anthropology in
North America…and what do you
say? You attack me…hoping I’m
wrong so you can award your stupid
little scholarship to your new
friend.
Tina and Tippit look distressed.
CAMERON
(continuing)
I understand how the world works,
maybe all too well. I know deals
are made over important issues
that greatly affect our lives
every day over cups of coffee, and
a trip to an NBA basketball game.
And if you don’t participate in
those social activities, you’re
cast out. That’s how it works,
and I accept that.
The room is silent.
CAMERON
(continuing)
Just remember something. Remember
that if you give her this
scholarship based on how much you
like her, and not on the merit of
the work, you are participating in
an evil system that is tearing
apart the very world we live in.
If you want any evidence in that,
have a look at our political
system. Try to tell me we aren’t
falling right into our ancestor’s
foot steps.
(looking angry)
Go visit the White House, or
Capital Hill, and tell me they
aren’t different from this mound
at Cahokia…constructed to
impress, but serves nothing else
as a social function. Constructed
to manipulate a gullible public.
A tear rolls down Mary’s cheek. She is reminded of all the reasons she and her husband got involved in anthropology to begin with. How did she stray away from the path? How had they become so lost in a wilderness of lies and false smiles It takes a lecture from a young, idealistic woman…someone they’d all like to be, and were at one time…to remind them.
CAMERON
(continuing)
Just look where all the societies
that came before us ended up.
Then ask yourself if you want to
continue in their social
practices.
Cameron stands like a God above them on the podium and stares without fear. Then she turns around and RIPS down all her drawings and pictures. She KICKS over the podium. It falls with a HOLLOW THUD.
CAMERON
(continuing)
I’m outta here.
Shane puts his arm around her and leads her toward the back of the room. Josie gives the Foundation a death look as she passes them. Tippit looks distressed. He abruptly stands up.
TIPPIT
Cameron…wait!
Cameron stops at the back of the room by the door. It’s obvious that she’s been heartbroken and still clings to the hope that something positive will happen.
TIPPIT
(continuing; to Mary)
I think what’s happened here is
we’ve created a competition that
has brought out the worst result.
(to Tina)
It’s obvious that Cameron did
superior work on this project. I
think I have a solution where we
all benefit.
Cameron is interested, but totally confused.
————————————————————————–
I was not satisfied that Cahokia’s demise was the standard until my wife and I visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula. We had visited the Cahokia site before and I wanted to compare the ancient city with one of the closest neighbors to the south, the Chichen complex with its iconic stone pyramids all built with astrological recognition, just like at Cahokia.
See clips from that trip here:
At Chichen Itza human sacrifice was the norm and the site was magnificent as it had been abandoned by 1204 AD from a once thriving metropolis, rivaling any city anywhere in the world. Obviously, there was trading going on between Chichen Itza and the Mississippi Culture of North America that was quite sophisticated. Both societies rose and fell around the same time within 100 years of one another. In Cahokia the people there worshiped “Bird Man” and in Chichen Itza they worshiped Kukulkan the featherd serpent – otherwise, another “birdman.” Chichen Itza rose to power just as its large neighbor to the north Teotihaucan fell from grace. Teotihuacan (pronounced /ˈtɛɔˌtiwɑˈkɑn/),[1] also written Teotihuacán, was a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican city located in the Basin of Mexico, 30 miles (48 km) northeast of modern-day Mexico City, which is today known as the site of many of the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-ColumbianAmericas. Apart from the pyramids, Teotihuacan is also anthropologically significant for its complex, multi-family residential compounds, the Avenue of the Dead, and the small portion of its vibrant murals that have been exceptionally well-preserved. Additionally, Teotihuacan produced a thin orange pottery style that spread through Mesoamerica.[2]
The city is thought to have been established around 100 BC and continued to be built until about 250 AD.[3] The city may have lasted until sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries AD. At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population of perhaps 125,000 or more,[3][4] placing it among the largest cities of the world in this period.[5] Teotihuacan began as a new religious center in the Mexican Highland around the first century AD. This city came to be the largest and most populated center in the New World. Teotihuacan was even home to multi-floor apartment compounds built to accommodate this large population.[3] The civilization and cultural complex associated with the site is also referred to as Teotihuacan or Teotihuacano. Oh, and guess what, the consensus among scholars is that the primary deity of Teotihuacan was the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan.[30] Politics were based on the state religion; and the religious leaders were the political leaders.[31]
Teotihuacanos practiced human sacrifice: human bodies and animal sacrifices have been found during excavations of the pyramids at Teotihuacan. Scholars believe that the people offered human sacrifices as part of a dedication when buildings were expanded or constructed. The victims were probably enemy warriors captured in battle and brought to the city for ritual sacrifice to ensure the city could prosper.[32] Some men were decapitated, some had their hearts removed, others were killed by being hit several times over the head, and some were buried alive. Animals that were considered sacred and represented mythical powers and military were also buried alive, imprisoned in cages: cougars, a wolf, eagles, a falcon, an owl, and even venomous snakes.[33]
After our visit to Chichen Itza my wife and I had a very elegant dinner that night but I didn’t taste a morsel of food. From our seat the Caribbean Sea was brilliantly captured by nighttime broken clouds outlined by a full moon. My wife was wearing a very elegant dress that blew about carelessly in the constant breeze, yet I ate the food without tasting any of it as my mind was thousands of miles away on Cahokia. I told my wife after our visit to Chichen Itza that my theories about the demise of Cahokia were 100% correct and society did not have the courage to look itself in the eye and admit the truth—that sacrifice is the key to all social decline. The sense of giving things up is the sign that soon, mankind will resort back to spears and grass skirts as opposed to elegant food, silk dresses, perfumed bodies and the gusts of wind from the Caribbean Sea carrying the aroma a well-prepared food across open air elegant restaurants.
Without question when Cahokia, Chichen Itza and Teotihaucan were being built, the people had a sense of purpose. There was need for innovation, creativity, and much thought. But once the cities were built, the second-handlers came into play, the politicians, the religious leaders and the bureaucrats took over and attempted to claim the good work of the creators with mystic dedication and sacrifice to Gods only they could see, for devices only they could understand. Thus, the receipt for disaster is present whenever sacrifice is utilized in any society as the highest attribute. Social decline is a foregone conclusion.
Many times over the years out of need for money I considered making Cannibals of Cahokia into strictly a “horror” script. I thought about dumbing it down so the bar-hopping socialites in Santa Monica could get their minds around the story and accept it. I thought of doing all the things they suggested, but ultimately shelved it instead. By changing the story, I would be surrendering to the kind of evil that destroys society. I would be yielding to the kind of villains that Cameron was fighting at the end of The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia—and I couldn’t do it.
When I talk about the failure of education in modern society, or the villainy of communism, socialism, and all degrees of statism, it is not out of modern propaganda, but in a knowledge of history that has resulted from personal experience that took two decades to learn. I essentially made Cameron Loveless a female version of myself, and I couldn’t betray her for the same reasons I can’t betray myself.
I read in the January 2011 edition of National Geographic where writer Glenn Hodges provided a discouraged report of his trip to Cahokia by stating, “I’m standing at the center of what was once the greatest civilization between the deserts of Mexico and the North American Arctic — America’s first city and arguably American Indians’ finest achievement — and I just can’t get past the four lane gash that cuts through this historic site. Instead of imagining the thousands of people who once teemed on the grand plaza here, I keep returning to the fact that Cahokia Mounds in Illinois is one of only eight cultural World Heritage sites in the United States, and it’s got a billboard for Joe’s Carpet King smack in the middle of it.” Hodges is essentially dealing with a pain that I dealt with at the start of writing The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia.
I thought that by writing the screenplay and having it made into a movie, that I could bring awareness to Cahokia, and help Americans learn an important part of their heritage that had long been forgotten — and even ignored. But soon I realized that the ending of my screenplay reflected too accurately the reality of modern politics, which is persistent in virtually every human endeavor. And that reality wants to ignore Cahokia, not remember it. After all, there is nothing like a giant 100 foot pyramid sitting next to one of the busiest highway systems in world to tell everyone that it’s there. Yet people do not see it — they don’t want to see it — because they are inclined to make the same mistakes as the Cahokians did with a dedicated life to sacrifice instead of thinking creativity. Therefore, America as it stands now is in the declining epoch of its cycle, approaching 300 years of life, and failing because its philosophy of self-reliance and freedom has abated to the soothsaying mystics of Europe and their persistent desire to rule the world through regulations, paper, and legislation they control to the Gods only they wish to see. This is why when Europeans first came to America they saw the American Indian not in a state of peace with nature, but in a degraded state of primitive re-invention. This is also why Europe was cast into the Dark Ages after Rome fell to the barbarian hoards. The cycle repeats over and over and over again, because human beings never learn, and have no desire to even look at the evidence that is so obvious. The reason is that the information is inconvenient, and requires courage in thought, the kind of courage that made Cameron Loveless such a heroic character who lives in an age when she is hated for her goodness, and ability to see what is really there.
I continue to get a lot of email from people all over Ohio wanting to know how they can fight their local school levies and take controversial positions against fire/police levies. Without question the levy attempts will continue to be a problem in Ohio as collective bargaining agreements are wrecking the budgets of virtually every community. The idea of collective bargaining is a preposterous notion that only ignorant fools would support. They are a direct result of communist influence during the “red decade” reacting to extensive pressure from the Soviet Union, and should have never been brought to The United States in any form. The mistake of collective bargaining is that it pays employees value based on years of service, seniority and collective membership, not on individual merit which is essential to a capitalist system. Collective bargaining is the brain-child of Karl Marx and is anti-capitalism in its fiscal approach. The practice needs to be abolished before management of community resources can be performed properly. Collective bargaining is the single greatest cause of tax increases in any government endeavor. Employees are paid too much because of it, and too many people are paid with such over abundance—which recklessly drives up labor costs on a community forcing tax increases.
Although collective bargaining for private sector workers was adopted into federal Law in 1935, it was nearly 50 years later when public employees in Ohio obtained the right to negotiate workplace contracts. On July 6, 1983 Governor Richard Celeste signed the collective bargaining bill (SB133) into law, which went into effect on April 1, 1984 and is contained in Ohio Revised Code, Chapter 4117.
As a result of the collective bargaining law, six hundred thousand public employees including teachers, firefighters, police officers, state and local service workers, could not only form and join a union, but also enjoy legal rights in negotiating workplace contracts with the public employer (the taxpayer). The collective bargaining law also ushered in the State Employees Relations Board, principally charged with administering Chapter 4117 and resolving labor and management disputes through a three-member board appointed by the Governor, which almost every time favors the lobby power of the labor unions.
Until the mistake of Celeste in Ohio during 1983 and the 1935 federal law are abolished tax levies will continue. Many of the people writing me lack the network to fight the large well-oiled machines of community labor unions but I have been able to help some of them construct successful strategies to defeat their levies as they come up on the ballot. To date, the government institutions, particularly the schools simply ignore the election results when they fail and try again for another tax increase in the next business quarter. This scam is driven by collective bargaining agreements and unions flock to protect those agreements because it is the life-blood of their high wages. So, it is helpful to have a larger organization behind tax fighting efforts to match and surpass the scams proposed by labor unions in bed with statist government lovers.
I recently spoke with Hanna Faulkner from the Americans for Prosperity organization who is the Southwest Ohio filed coordinator. She offered the services of AFP to communities struggling to defeat their tax levies with the might of their dynamic group powered by incredible activists. They have organized and influential citizen leaders in every state who work at local, state, and national levels to embrace the principles of economic freedom. AFP understands that individual and entrepreneurial freedom creates a higher quality of life than government controls and excessive regulation. They also understand that efficient, effective and limited government protects hardworking taxpayer and allows the real economy to grow and thrive. AFP believes that genuine merit should determine success, not government cronyism or favoritism which is exactly what collective bargaining breeds everywhere it is applied. AFP knows that communities are healthier and more prosperous when personal responsibility is reward and dependency is discourage, so they are the perfect type of organization to help lend support when it comes to fighting tax increases.
According to Hanna, AFP is all about action. Throughout the year they crisscross the nation holding rallies, town halls, and grassroots events to inform, empower, and activate Americans to become influential voices in the battle for economic freedom. In addition to their aggressive stance on national issues, AFP frequently focuses on critical issues at the state and local levels. That’s why they mobilized massive resources to combat New Jersey’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), where they conducted nearly 50 special events and training seminars, resulting in Governor Christie removing New Jersey from the Cap-and-Trade scheme. AFP also played a major role in Wisconsin’s budget reform battle, where they defended those in the state who were fighting to balance Wisconsin’s budget. To that end, they took over the airwaves, rallied grassroots activists, and organized a statewide bus tour.
AFP’s North Carolina activists ensured passage of the first veto-proof budget without a tax increase in over a decade. The legislative success was the result of grassroots pressure involving AFP-North Carolina activists knocking on more than 56,000 doors and holding rallies as well as AFP’s large-scale paid media effort. AFP-Nevada activists logged a whopping 35,441 live, non-partisan, Get-Out-The-Vote calls leading up to the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District. In Wisconsin, AFP deployed their vertically integrated grassroots strategy, 110,000 activists who ensured that Governor Scott Walker’s crucial collective bargaining reforms and spending cuts carried the day by running a statewide paid media effort, hosting dozens of large-scale rallies, and logging tens of thousands of live issue advocacy calls to households across Wisconsin. In Michigan AFP helped thwart an unnecessary international bridge project between Michigan and Canada after mobilizing tens of thousands of calls to elected officials in Lansing. In Texas, AFP along with a coalition of state-based partners, helped wipe out a $27 billion budget deficit in Texas without raising taxes or draining the state’s rainy day fund. American’s for Prosperity is a group that offers fresh troops to the budget battles of the day—and they are quite effective.
This is why I was speaking to Hanna. When my school district of Lakota attempts to place another levy on the ballot, I intend to beat that levy so badly that it will change state dialogue in Ohio with a mandate setting defeat that is so high-profile that every district in Ohio, and the board of education at the state level will shudder. To do this I intended to defeat the next measure by 65% or more at the ballot box, and to do that it will require different tactics than I have used in the past. The activism record of AFP is just the kind of thing I’m looking for, so such an alliance looks to be forthcoming. However, in the meantime, AFP is there for other districts all across the state, and they should be contacted to assist with those battles.
Levies must be defeated if the collective bargaining debacle of Dick Celeste is to be reversed. Tax increases are slow intrusions on the value of private property that were typically imposed out of graciousness so long as the value of homes continued to artificially increase. Now that the housing bubble has burst, the taxes paid to schools are not paid out of falsified property increase values, but out of the real value of property that is not going to increase by means of miracle for the owner. For the entire duration of Celeste’s diabolical scheme of collective bargaining, property values have artificially inflated with the perception that it would go on forever. But now reality has set in, and the villain of collective bargaining must be dealt with first by defeating the proposed tax increases, then removing collective bargaining from all government jobs in Ohio so that proper management of tax payer resources can be conducted. Yet these reforms do not have to be terrifying enterprises where only a few must stand against the many. Americans for Prosperity is there to help provide support for just this sort of thing, and I’d recommend contacting them over ballot initiatives in Ohio whenever possible.
Hanna Faulkner at American’s for Prosperity can be contacted at:
