frame Constitution no man hold power bring this oppression on us
Adapted from a passage in a letter from Abraham Lincoln to William Herndon, dated Feb. 15, 1848, where Mr. Lincoln writes:
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.
This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1 [1824-Aug. 28, 1848]. In the digital collection Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/lincoln1. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 1, 2026.
tired of stupid testing should be required stupid, can’t fix it
I am reminded of the Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”
The story line is that Kanamits, aliens from another planet come to earth and with their advanced technology, according to wikipedia, that can easily and inexpensively solve all energy and food shortages and prevent international warfare.
The Kanamits prove their goodwill, turn the world into a paradise and further promise that their home planet is even nicer.
The Kanamits urge everyone on earth to enjoy the new abundance of food and when ready, sign up for a trip to the home planet.
The people here on earth embrace the plan and they eat and eat and then line up for the trip to the new world.
The twist is that the whole time, code breakers have been working on a book left by the Kanamits to see if they can understand the Kanamits language.
They finally crack code, realize the book, To Serve Man, is a cookbook and that the Kanamits are using earth as farm and to fatten up and harvest the people to eat back on the home planet.
My point is, the people lining up for the trip to home planet, DON’T KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR LUNCH.
They line up, freely, expecting a trip to a better world.
It seems to me that a lot of people today are lining up, expecting a trip to a better world, KNOWING FULL WELL that THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR A FREE LUNCH.
We can see into the kitchen.
We can pursue the menu.
And a lot of people STILL GET IN THAT LINE.
I think of an exchange in the Ron Reiner movie, The American President.
The Press Secretary tells the President, “They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”
The President responds, “We’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand, ’cause they’re thirsty … they drink it ’cause they don’t know the difference.”
I guess the President is in on the joke and the joke is on us.
We know what’s at the end of the trip.
And we are getting on the spacecraft.
We know what sand is.
And we are drinking it anyway.
Is there a solution?
An answer to the question that we in America, have a good thing.
Something to embrace.
To protect.
Something that does not have to be made great …. again.
To think otherwise is stupid.
What can be done?
I came across the short story, Chef’s Night Out, by Anthony Bourdain, published in the book Rovers Return in 1998.
Mr. Bourdain, with his unique grasp of the English language, tells the story of a chef in a restaurant trying to deal with the fact that a chef in a restaurant has to serve folks who do not deserve to be in his restaurant.
The chef in the story loses it in a rant labelled Truth and be prepared for bad words.
I think people should be licensed to eat in a good restaurant.
Yeah.
That’s right …
A long, and unnecessarily irritating process of testing and certification should be required of every would-be diner.
To thin out the herd. All the well-done eating, low-sodium, egg-white omelette nibbling, crystal worshipping, holistic vegan cocksuckers, the sauce-on-siders, the low-cholesterol, no butter, no cream, can you take that off the bone split for two geeks, the slack-jawed, bedwetting, mouth-breathing, fanny-pack wearing scumpigs and rubes, with their Hard Rock T-shirts and their wall-eyed, no-necked, overfed monster offspring in tow . . . they can get the fuck out of my dining room.
Now.
The Space X rocket ship for the Kanamits’ home planet is boarding now.
Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee whiz, but you can’t fix stupid.
wilderness of waves dip dive rise roll hide hidden on the sea, day, night
The Sea is a wilderness of waves, A desert of water. We dip and dive, Rise and roll, Hide and are hidden On the sea. Day, night, Night, day, The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.
Long Trip by Langston Hughes as published in Sail Away: Sea Poems by Langston Hughes, illustrated by Ashley Bryan (Atheneum: New York, 2015)
stately libraries justice halls became useless no longer revered
… the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study, or business.
The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital;
they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more convenient, than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service:
the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs;
and the degenerate Romans, who convened the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands the labors of their ancestors.
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 7 (Leipsick: Printed for Fleischer).
Edward Gibbon
For anyone happening to be keeping score or totaling up the reasons … thought this excerpt interesting.
No Haiku For You 