She woke up early to prep her Owner’s meals for the day and prepare her hair and face the way her Mistress liked. Then it was off to her serving job. She was working double today to make up for a day of low tips last week. She’d do whatever it takes to bring home enough money for her Ma’am to be happy today…
Learning to cook was the hardest of her slave training. She’d always given good backrubs, so massage was easy. She’d once considered burlesque so stripping for Her was exciting. She was happy to turn over her paycheck and not worry about money, and she’d been keeping her own place spotless for years so taking care of Mistress’ home was not a big deal. Cooking was hard though. Mistress had sent her to several classes and tested her many times. She said this one was final. If she didn’t ace it–well, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t sound good.
Literally always reminds me of the time I made my first girlfriend apply at Hooters and smacked her tits repeatedly while making her repeat “my hooters aren’t good enough” while she sobbed.
“Today you only get to look. Even later when I am not here you may not use the furniture, not even the bed. If you follow directions well I’ll give you more rules to follow (and maybe a privilege or two).”
Go on, girl, nurture your addiction. Take a good look. Then back on your hands and knees to scrub my floors. It is your day off from your wage slave job, so that means it’s “deep clean my fucking house while I go spend your last paycheck down.” Got it? Good.
It’s 2015. ALMOST 2016. I can’t take ANY “activist” seriously if they aren’t vegan. I can’t take ANY “movement” seriously, if it’s not SIMULTANEOUSLY campaigning for veganism and animal rights. The lowest form of civility on this planet is that which we extend to animals; I mean, human rights are important and they DEFINITELY need improvement–but AT LEAST we don’t have to worry about being LITERALLY raised for slaughter and eaten by a species that’s sharing this planet with us. AT LEAST we don’t scoop up homeless humans and euthanize them if their owners don’t claim them after a few weeks. AT LEAST we don’t have our skins LITERALLY peeled from our screaming, bleeding bodies, where we’re then thrown into a pile of other, skinless, blood and shit-soaked humans, writhing and crying and begging for death. AT LEAST we aren’t killed JUST so someone can make an ash tray out of our hands, or cut off our noses to make piano keys or get an erection. AT LEAST we don’t have our arms sliced off and our bodies discarded, just so someone else can eat shitty soup.
I mean, this list goes on and on and, again: I UNDERSTAND THAT WE FACE AN EGREGIOUS AMOUNT OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS FROM CORPORATE GOVERNMENTS THAT KEEP US AS WAGE SLAVES AND KILL US IN THE STREETS WITHOUT RECOURSE…
But you can’t say that you’d rather trade places with a chicken. You can’t HONESTLY or INTELLIGENTLY say that you’d rather be a buffalo.
Because, when you can be LEGALLY slaughtered and eaten–served up at the table for celebrations ALL AROUND THE WORLD–there’s no greater SYSTEMIC threat to your existence and there’s NO HOPE for your survival.
So smack on whatever bumper stickers you want and scribble anything you’d like on your protest sign; but, if you aren’t ACTUALLY LIVING what you preach, about compassion and equality and fairness and justice, by living a VEGAN lifestyle and DEMANDING animal liberation alongside whatever your cause is, then YOU are JUST AS BAD as the oppressors you are trying to overthrow, because YOU–like your oppressors–haven’t dedicated yourself to being a voice and a champion for the MOST oppressed individuals on this planet, so YOU–like your oppressors–will continue to inflict the damage and terror and torture that you so desperately want to avoid, upon others who–despite their appearances–are not so different from you.
-The Imperial-Corporatist government of the United States will continue its unchecked reign of terror and tumult throughout the Middle East
-Unarmed black people will continue to be slaughtered by state terrorists without any legal recourse
-American women will continue to be arrested for simply attempting to exercise the same rights as American men
-The rich will continue to amass their billions in blood money, and the poor will continue to adjust their sense of “normality” to new lows and blame themselves for their disparity
-People will experience a galvanizing moment of tragedy–one that could unite all peoples against their worldwide oppressors–but cowardice and wage slave mentality will cause them to abandon the call for direct action and call for “hopes and prayers” instead
-Things will continue to get worse
-People will continue to look forward to 2017 (a NEW year), when things will somehow magically get better on their own
It doesn’t stop there though, you need to know how to vote and how each primary election type is different.
BLUE STATES: Anyone of any party affiliation can vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary.
RED STATES: Red states are closed primaries, meaning you MUST BE A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT. You need to be a Democrat if you want to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
PURPLE STATES: Are Caucuses and the party affiliation required differs by state.
GREEN STATES: Most Green states are mixed primaries, meaning INDEPENDENTS or NON-AFFILIATED voters and DEMOCRATS can vote for Bernie Sanders. You can not vote for Bernie Sanders as a registered REPUBLICAN, in one of the red states.
ONE MORE THING IN THE STATE HIGHLIGHTED BELOW YOU CAN VOTE FOR BERNIE SANDERS IN THE PRIMARY ELECTION IF YOU ARE 17 AND WILL BE 18.
EVERYONE REGISTER TO VOTE. WE CAN WIN THIS THING. WE WILL WIN THIS THING. BERNIE SANDERS 2016!
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Translation?
You can’t expect the system that ENSLAVES you, to also be the system that SAVES you.
A thing that the present day cult of united states military worship actively obscures, but which at one time was common knowledge both inside the military and in civilian life is that if you join the military then the government literally owns you. If Uncle Sam tells you to stand down wind of a nuclear test because it wants to know how effectively an infrantry unit can fight in the middle of a tactical nuclear exchange, your choices are “yes sir” or the stockade. This is not a hypothetical scenario but an actual thing that happened in the 50s, repeatedly.
Due to incidents like that and a number of other examples of the military leadership treating service members as disposable assets who’s only intrinsic value was in how much money the government had invested in training them, the military-legislative complex finally decided that if it was going to make this whole all-volunteer force work (an existential necessity for the military following the disasterious war in Vietnam) then it had to at least give some pretense to the idea of treating soldiers like actual humans.
So over the next couple decades, the military and the army in particular, begin to really try to put a humane face on the service. A lot of the casual abuse that was part and parcel of army life gets prohibited. Drill instructors can’t physically beat recruits anymore. The mantra of “no one left behind” gets popularized, which was a direct effort to counter the lingering belief that there were still American POWs held in Vietnam. Then 9/11 happens and full blown military worship goes mainstream, to the point questioning the military as an institution becomes a social taboo to an extent it never was before.
But all the chain store military discounts and thank yous for your services can’t obscure the fact that the purpose of the military is to carry out missions for the national interest and no matter what it claims, the mission is always first and the health safety of any individual GI is a nearly insignificant second. A solider is an asset, and although they may be an extremely expensive and valuable asset, they are ultimately expendable.
And of course part of being in the military means being trained to accept this. No military could function without soldiers willing to be treated in this way. It’s why so many professional armies have abandoned conscription. It turns out it’s a lot easier to brainwash willing volunteers into having so little regard for their own life than it is to get a bunch of draftees. This is of course also why militaries around the world, all volunteer or no, favor recruits who are just barely adults. It’s much easier to condition people who haven’t yet developed the sense of self preservation that characterizes mature adulthood to be disregard their own well being on command.
Most discourse about military training emphasizes training to take life, and the dehumanization this entails, but this ignores that a) outside of combat specialty training (e.g. infrantry, armor, etc) this is not as focused upon as much as disregard for personal safety, because this is the most vital attribute of a solider, whether in a combat or non combat role. Once you have someone willing to stand stoically down wind from a nuclear blast on que, training them to kill other people is easy. The dehumanization of self is the pretext for the dehumanization of others. A moral Injury by design.
Tl;Dr stay away from the military (every military) and especially the army (every army)
