THE APOSTATE MANIFESTO

THE APOSTATE MANIFESTO

A CALL FOR THE EXPATRIATION OF ALL CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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Apostasy: noun. The formal religious disaffiliation or abandonment or renunciation of one's religion, especially if the motive is deemed unworthy.


Expatriate: verb. To withdraw (oneself) from residence in or allegiance to one's native country. To leave one's native country to live elsewhere also to renounce allegiance to one's native country.

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CITIZENS OF AMERICA

I write you to today from a distant dimension – not distant in terms of miles or years but from a dislocated dimension where I am consciously and intellectually ostracized. This dimension exists far from the mainstream monotony of the unimaginative, imprisoned, collective consciousness your country has devolved into. This is a dimension of burden, as with knowledge and awareness comes the weight of the world and of what our minds are diseased from.

Disease? Yes, acute consciousness is a disease. Those of us few fortunate enough to have been infected have suffered more from the segregation of your simple-minded society than from the symptoms and adversity of the disease itself. You are what makes consciousness a disease. While you exist in an unenlightened state of denial, ignoring those atrocities and injustices of the world most of which your government perpetuates, you create the pathogen which infects consciousness with abnormality. The stagnation which suffocates our empathetic talents drowns us in a sea of solidarity where our hearts struggle to beat against the riptide that is your apathetic abyss. But most of all it is the burden of knowing the truth about the world and being so suppressed by the forces of injustice to do anything about it that makes it difficult to exist in the wastelands that is your collective indifference.

Cruelties, genocide and injustice do not burden the mind of you Americans unless those crimes are committed against you or your country. The innovative sense of individualism said to be the foundation for America’s greatness suppresses any sense of empathy; the greatest potential rooted in the nature of humanity. It has been this lack of empathy that allows America to rise to its pinnacle, with no consciousness of its actions, the consequences that follow or the impact of its power on the devastated masses it takes advantage of. It is this lack of empathy that will ultimately be your tomb.

In turn, many of you Americans, ignorantly unaware of your country’s history and your government’s actions, exist in a strict state of denial when presented with the truth of your nation’s history. Fortunately, the process of systematically blindfolding citizens into absolutism has worked very effectively through the years. This method used the idea of patriotism to establish an unquestioning majority. Americans are required to “pledge their allegiance” to an iconic piece of cloth, usually every morning in public educational institutions. Therefore, dissent is viewed as unpatriotic and treasonous. With such an unquestionable faith and reverence towards your country, if acts of injustice are disclosed, the average American would usually concoct some justification based off of America’s greatness. I highly doubt that after reading the subsequent pages you will be able to resort to any such justification ever again. A brief insight to the reality behind pivotal points in your nation’s history should help bring you out of the cave of denial and into the light of awareness, shining on you the revelation that everything your country was founded upon and flourished from is by nothing more than the deepest levels of evil unfathomable by even your own God.


EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG
IN 1492 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS SAILED THE OCEAN BLUE

The discovery of the Western hemisphere was credited to the genocidal conquistador Christopher Columbus who was made famous by his attempt to reach the West Indies by sailing west instead of east. Western history has documented the “discovery” of the new world as Columbus’ greatest accomplishment and had even gone so far as to dedicate a holiday in memory of this “accomplishment”.

Yet Columbus was not the first person to discover this part of the world. The Viking leader Leif Ericsson had made this discovery 492 years prior to Columbus’ voyage[i]. In addition, the land “discovered” already inhabited over 40 million humans whose civilizations had existed for thousands of years before western conquest.

Upon Columbus’ arrival on the island dubbed “Hispaniola” he was kindly greeted by the native peoples of the island. Thus began the beginning of one of the atrocious crusades in the history of the Western hemisphere. Seen as a madman by his crew, he was obsessed by the vision of gold, being under the impression that this land held endless amounts of it. Yet when the accumulation of gold did not amount to his expectations he saw another opportunity to generate wealth back in his homeland of Spain: slaves. His crew traveled each island in the Caribbean taking as many natives captive as possible. Women and children slaves were used for sex and labor.

One man from Columbus’ crew who later in his life became a strong advocate against the Spanish conquest of the new world kept the best known record of the atrocities committed by Spaniards. He compiled a multivolume book known as “History of the Indies” and documented native as well as the Spanish exploitation of their civilization.

According to Las Casas, “they rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or “carried on hammocks”[ii]. Spaniards would knife Indians by tens and twenties and would cut slices off of them to test the sharpness of their blades. Indians had their hands cut off for not bringing back a certain quota of gold. They would burn prisoners to death and behead children for entertainment. Eventually, natives began committing mass suicides to avoid Spanish affliction. Women would drown their own babies to save them from Spaniards.

To make the atrocities and cruelties of our ancestors known to those who live under false assumptions of America’s greatness is fundamentally an attempt to de-normalize dysfunction. I shiver with the idea of my young family members, still innocent in their childhood, being taught history from this point of view: where we educate children on genocidal murders through picture books. Yet upon educating myself on these atrocities, I find myself distant from the actual moral severity of what I am reading. I ask myself in a hint of desperation, have I become desensitized to the horrors of human injustice? For if I were to let too much of these horrors fill me, if I were to let down my guard in the sea of depressive realities that is my area of study, I will drown in a sea of indignation. I suspect that any truly empathetic being can let themselves be entirely vulnerable when engaging in such quest for knowledge. I think there is a limit what the human heart is able to witness before it breaks. I know my heart can only endure so much.

WHAT DOES THE 4TH OF JULY MEAN TO A SLAVE?
Next we need to address the American Revolution or the defining moment in history that gave birth to an empire of hypocrisy and contradiction. Every year on the fourth day of the month of July, crowds of you Americans gather to celebrate the day this day. The Declaration of Independence was signed and America won its freedom from England as an independent country. You Americans have commercialized the idea of independence by selling disposable red, white and blue decorations and embellishments in department stores and supermarkets. At night, you would gather in large crowds to observe artificial explosions in the night sky called fireworks.

“The entire plaza was packed full of people by the time we arrived. Figuring the library was a fine place to watch the fireworks as it overlooked the entire south side of town as well as the river. We had come here numerous times during the night to sit on the wall and just look at the stars in the serenity and silence of our town around us. But tonight our nostalgic place of meditation was chocked full of every kind of idiot you could find: elderly who were barely able to walk, they and largely obese men and women camped out in lawn chairs, some with a cooler of beer next to them, others having thrown their plastic cups on the ground. Hoards of small children running around, waving flags and speaking as if they had any idea what their country was really about, teenagers flicking their cigarette butts, old women wearing flashing red, white and blue hats holding streamers and noisemakers, soon to be thrown in the trash before the night was over. Making our way through the crowd, any sweet childhood memory I had of the 4th of July withered and vanished in this sea of pompous patriotism. When the fireworks began, cheers erupted from the crowds around me. One group of small children began chanting “Happy Birthday America”. While everyone was fixated on the sky, gawking at the explosions above them I could not help and think to myself how the children in Iraq and Afghanistan saw this probably every night and would scream and run at the sight of this, having remembered the night when those explosions meant destruction of their homes and dead family members. In that moment I had never felt more distain and repugnance for my country, fighting the urge to induce vomiting as it made me so sick to my stomach to hear those little voices chanting in such ignorance.”

This memory serves an accurate depiction of American patriotism and how the majority you remained unaware of their country’s past.

The details of the American Revolution had been romanticized and unrealistically praised by later generations of Americans through the use of theatrical renditions, books and a general overall national mentality impregnated with unquestionable veneration for the “founding fathers” of the country. Many historical accounts taught in your classrooms include heroic versions of the American colonies fighting the British Monarchy for their independence based off the unfair and overly honored phrase, “No Taxation without Representation”. Through gaining independence from England, Americans gained a new identity of being the innovators of freedom and democracy.

Yet while war was waged in the name of freedom to gain independence from the monarchy that “oppressed” them, slavery of African Americans or “negroes” continued to exist for another century after Americans gained their independence. English author Samuel Johnson ironically asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"

American history rarely documented a value judgment to correspond with the action, as it also failed to speak of the struggles of those oppressed populations. Though there were those events of actual retaliation from the oppressed documented, these perspectives from history were purposely discarded in educational system.

Slave revolts had become quite noticeable starting in the early 1700’s. During a slave rebellion in 1712, twenty-five slaves and two Indians set a building on fire and then proceeded to murder nine white men that arrived on the scene. The governor’s report to England accounting the punishment and execution of the slaves: “Some were burnt, others were hanged, and one broke on the wheel and one hung alive in chains in town . . . one had been burned over a slow fire for eight to ten hours.”[iii]

In order to prevent partnership between the poor class, Indians and enslaved Africa Americans when recruiting for a revolution against England, the upper class, appealed to the lower and middle classes with grandeur language of freedom and liberty and in turn began a foundation upon which a country would be founded upon. That foundation being a system of national control to effectively harvest loyalty through the establishment of a nationalistic entity and symbol, “of combining paternalism with command”[iv]

In the widely known and referenced document, the 2nd paragraph of Declaration of Independence follows as:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…”

In attempt to romanticize and evoke a sense of aggrandized self-pity, in the unanimous call for independence by the colonies they retorted, “… we therefore renounce with disdain our connection with a kingdom of slaves; we bid a final adieu to Britain.” iv
Yet not all humans were included in this declaration. Those excluded where Indians, women, black slaves and impoverished men. Yet slogans such as those reaped from the “Declaration of Independence” were used to mobilize groups of Americans for a common cause. Words of inspiration blinded many from realizing their great manifesto excluded large parts of the human race.

These grand ideals of freedom and liberty were disguised as an attempt to establish a country based on equality and freedom, yet as the government consisted of white, wealthy slave-owners, those freedoms declared from tyranny were the freedoms to develop mercantile capitalism and benefited only those of wealth. The slogan of “no taxation without representation” only served as a threat to their economic security. While 69 percent of the signers of the declaration had held colonial office under England, this document was nothing more than to guarantee the preservation of wealthy land owners, a liberal democracy to keep government regulation out of means of production and wealth accumulation and by far the greatest act of deception the world had ever seen. This hoax, that the United States of America was founded off of abstract ideals of freedom, liberty, equality and democracy, would disseminate through the centuries, maintaining an ideological force of propaganda for those captains of industry like the “founding fathers” would maintain a steady flow of wealth and economic prosperity by systematically oppressing those beneath them with mind control and poverty.

APARTIED ON THE PRAIRIE
“Since Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity…”[v] America was only the land of opportunity for those within positions of power to pursue their “freedom” to expand. As discussed earlier, Columbus was the originator of American opportunity, despite his genocidal tendencies towards the Native American populations. Frederick Jackson Turner credited this same achievement to America’s Western Frontier Movement.

As an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner was the author of the nobly argued Frontier Thesis written in 1893 in which he claims those unique American characteristics of individualism and inquisitiveness were shaped by the nation’s western expansion. Those traits are:

“…coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom – these are the traits of the frontier” (Turner 27).

These white settlers of the United States had come to possess these grandiose, self-satisfying characteristics all in the name of expansion and self preservation through the extermination of Native Americans.
Again we find ourselves examining yet another instance where American history is romanticized with a reverent ambiance. The brutality and apartheid made against Native Americans by settlers were not perceived by future American readers as red lights of moral severity. The unique expansionist trends of America led to a desire to be a major solitary power from Europe and expand coast to coast and thus the timeless motto of Manifest Destiny was written. Believing it was a “divine-related” destiny to own all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, American expansion continued to acquire the Spanish colony of Florida, the Louisiana Purchase from France and the entire west coast whether it had been land conquered from Mexico or Native American territory claimed.

Under this expansionist mentality, Social Darwinism, an idea of Charles Darwin that competition drives social evolution in human societies, served as a mask to dehumanize the inhabitants of other lands and justify the imperial conquest of them. Similarly to Christopher Columbus, the settlers of the west completely eradicated most of the Native American population.

When the population of cities and towns of the colonies began increasing the expansion to the west intrigued many as America was perceived as the land of opportunity. While labor standards in cities and urban areas were yet to be regulated, many Americans saw the appeal to the geographic mobility to move out west, which allowed them to pursue their own economic individualism in the wide open frontier.

Yet unaware to most Americans’ perceptions, this land was not entirely unoccupied. Native American civilizations had existed on this land for centuries. Settlers and pioneers assumed this land to be empty and even when they discovered it had been inhabited they still assumed it was theirs for the taking yet.

Between Columbus’ “discoveries” of the Americas coupled with the perpetuation of white settlement and conquest, white European settlers effectively and systematically wiped out 90% of the original population of Native Americans. As the slaughtering of Buffalo for sport aided in the eradication of Natives, as the Buffalo was a main resource, between 1872 and 1874, two years, over 3,000,000 buffalo were slaughtered. In 1492 the estimated population of Natives was around some 5,000,000. By the 1800’s those numbers were drastically reduced to 600,000 and by the 1900’s, 250,000 were left.

The traits of the frontier were not entirely a superior aspect of America’s development. The list of utilitarian, self-interested and unimaginative traits were no more than exaggerated labels to disguise the pursuit of profit and any immoral or unethical means used to obtain profit. One must be skeptical of Turner holding these American qualities genuine. Examining Turner’s frontier thesis, it is easy to contradict his claim that these characteristics were in fact positive to the development of the American character.

To reestablish the reality of these traits would be to set a precedent for the capitalist expansionist mentality Turner otherwise disguised as “freedom”. This idea of “freedom” is not the abstract characteristic of nobility in which Americans had prided themselves on to the point of unquestionable authority. Instead, it is fundamental to the ramparts of capitalism and the freedom to individually pursue wealth with no sense of morality to dictate the means of achieving the end profit. The unique American character was never an American character at all; rather, it is the character inherent in the capitalist mentality of the pursuit of profit. The American intellect Turner mentions is nothing more than the utilitarian mentality to pursue profit. This expansionist mentality would serve as a justification for many acts of brutality and imperialistic conquest for the next hundred and fifty years.


I GIVE YOU THE FIRST AMERICAN EMPIRE
“While envisaging the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is no other than the United States of America”
- Ernesto Che Guevara

There is an inherent belief that economic systems or modes of production are the basis of every social order and that in order to survive, people must construct these systems – this is Karl Marx’s Materialist Conception of History. Fundamentally one of the most timeless theorists, as it has withstood the test of time, while every evolving capitalist society has eventually resulted in class conflict. That is why; to examine America and its progress and evolution as a capitalist power, through the Marxist lens allows us to receive an aerial view of how the United States has turned into the American Empire.

According to Marx, society is organized via these modes of production – these modes also shape other important aspects of society including political, religious and social aspects. The way that society is organized to produce the goods it needs to survive makes up or creates a “class structure”. The ownership of tools and materials generally shapes the system of the social class – those who own the means of production. Marx divides the means of production into two classes:

· Bourgeoisie – those who own the means of production: own or manage the capital equipment of society and everything else used to produce commodities. They never stopped trying to make production less costly.
· Proletariat – those workers who are responsible for production and labor of material items.

Marx believed the changes in society occur from the struggle between the two classes. Capitalism, the production modes of the American Empire, is a system of social classes that exist in constant conflict. As there is endless competition among the classes, there is an inherent resentment between the classes. The growing economic gap between U.S. workers or the proletariat and the owners of the means of production will be the final stage of class conflict for the American Empire.

In its capitalist system, the essence of money dominates America’s value judgment. Everything is inherently for sale, or commodified, and ultimately devalued. Labor power is the most important part of the production process as without workers there would be no production. Labor power and human beings are just another commodity to capitalists. It is bought as cheaply as possible and workers are dehumanized in order to maximize output i.e. the commodification of labor.

Now in 2008 this country has reached its economic pinnacle and there is no where left for it to go except downhill. With billion dollar corporations being “bailed-out” by the government, this is America’s last attempt to maintain any grip on a thriving capitalist system. By now, the consequences of unfettered capitalism, neo-liberalism at its finest, should be more than apparent to the eyes of all American workers. Senate floor speaker, Bernie Sanders declaration on the bailout proves to be the most insightful:

“In the midst of all of this, we have a bailout package which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the "Masters of the Universe," those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse. Now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces that they broke. That is wrong, and that is something that we will not support.”

According to National Public Radio, "Last month alone 533,000 workers lost their jobs, the highest figure in 34 years." Since George W. Bush’s reign of terror, 6 million Americans have declined from the middle class to poverty levels. The average income for working class families has declined by $2,000 and seven million Americans have lost their health coverage. vi

This is happening all over America and will continue to happen as this economy gets worse. As a member of the working class, I understand the severity of this situation - when will people wake up and realize that capitalism left unfettered for 100 years has led to the mass economic inequality, creating a class system that keeps us divided not by race, skin color or ethnicity anymore, but by our yearly incomes. I truly believe change will be brought about by those of the working class who will stand up and fight for their rights - this will be where the revolution takes place. One day the have-nots will rise up against the top 1% of richest people in the country who own 90% of the resources. We will take the responsibility of economic equality into our own calloused and battered hands and we will bring down the behemoth economic powers with our strength and unity combined.

Of all the political parties we may affiliate ourselves with in this lifetime as citizens of the old America, there is one party that will exceed red and blue but will include with birthright, the up most allegiance to its cause. The working class of America, if restructured and highly motivated, will form a Worker’s party so influential the government will have no choice but to legislate reform in their favor. These are the men, women and children who are born into working class families, whose ambitions have been simple enough just to survive. This is the party from which our revolutionaries will breed. These are the spirits who will serve in the ideological and financial war of this still very early century. This is our source of victory. These are war which awaits us and this is the army I hope to one day lead.


PHILOSOPHY
As a being of philosophical nature when attempting to understand the logic and reason behind the world I wake up to everyday, for twenty-one years I have unable to arrive at any conclusion that would come close to resembling a justifiable explanation of why this country is the way it is, why it functions the way it does and why this corruption and injustice has so successfully has been perpetuated.

But wait, I contradict myself. Because I have associated my pursuit of philosophy with the moral good and just, it is in my amateurism that I failed to associate the extreme opposite with being in anyway philosophical. Yet the only way in which to make rationale out of this extreme injustice is through imposing a philosophical label – granted, a retarded, deformed label of philosophy, worthy of only being considered philosophy gone-wrong, but unfortunately philosophy, nonetheless.

That philosophy which I attribute to the extreme injustice seeming like it is just, is the title “Eugenic Philosophy”. This philosophy upholds murderous and unjust priorities and ideals yet packages it as beautiful, appealing and righteous: genocide under the guise of the ideal.
Our lives are conditioned to believe the complete opposite of what is really true. This revelation might be hard for you to accept, as there is probably a strong sense of denial you have constructed in the face of any outside attempt at liberating you from your cave.

It is important to understand just how deep the roots of these loyalties run, how from the moment you are born, you enter a factor that molds, sculpts and hardens you in the fiery kiln of patriotism. You are a processed, manufactured clone, taught to remain loyal and prideful of the red, white and blue. Therefore, in your very making, of course you would reject any form of dissent, alternative information and enlightening revelations that would attempt to break you from your ceramic mold and free you from the mental bonds of slavery.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO BREAK AWAY FROM THE AMERICAN IDENTITY:
You Americans will never know the motivating factors behind the reasons of why you are hated by others. As Osama Bin Laden said, when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises up and has not yet sat down”, yet when 1.5 million children of Iraq died from the sanctions placed upon the country during the war, no American tear was shed. To you, one white American death is equivalent to 1000 Arabic deaths.vii

Only those expenditures of profit who feel the heat of injustice all their life from such imperial monsters of the Western world can know and understand why martyrdom seems a glorified solution of retaliation against those forces of injustice. You will never know therefore you have no right to make any claim against their cause.

For if you stand so blindly behind this flag and support this government enough to give your consent to their policies, as you are not discontent enough to overthrow your government to bring a halt to those atrocities, if you can look in the past at those crimes of our forefathers and feel no guilt nor hindsight that the citizens should have at the time, risen up at that point then you are just as responsible for the death of those Iraqi children as the pilot who dropped the bomb, the politician that gave the order, the manufacturer of the weapon. You don’t walk around unaware of the blood of children on your hands – you know you do and you celebrate it everyday.

Every time you hang up the flag outside your home, every time you glorify your land of the free compared to the destroyed states of U.S. foreign policy handiwork, when you mutter ignorant stereotypes about citizens of those countries, especially those of the Middle East, you bathe, thrive and thirstingly drink the blood of innocent civilians.

Americans are not innocent. Your apathy, your ignorance, your prejudice are the crimes you are guilty of. This is why it is time for a new America – those anomalies born not into patriotism like 99% of the population but born into consciousness who are aware of the moral filth and decay of their surroundings and can no longer stand to be confused with the unthinking majority.

If you watched your child, the child you carried in your womb and gave birth to and nursed, the child you raised, taught to read, speak, love, if you watched that child lay in pieces scattered across the road after a bomb feel one your home where your family slept, you tell me whether or not you would harbor an extreme hatred and anger towards the country responsible? Those family members lost in the 9/11 attacks – that same hatred and anger you felt that day has been felt for hundreds of years by families in the Middle East and South America. The people of the Middle East suffer 9/11 everyday. Everyday, family members, limbs, lives, futures, communities, childhood innocence is lost everyday and you still feel sorry for yourselves every year on that one day 3000 of your people perished.

Therefore I cannot make any ethical claim on whether or not it is justified for the oppressed forces of the Middle East to kill American civilians. I do not condone it, yet I do not pass judgment on it. For I, nor my family, nor my ancestors have suffered the same oppression those people have, year after year, generation after generation.

When for so long you are subject to the greatest evil in the world that runs so deep and so fast, unless you have been burned by the heat of this injustice, you have no place to say what is a justified retaliation and what is not.

The old saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is one we’ve been taught to rise above, turning the other cheek and not participating hypocritically by retaliating with the same kind of violence. Yet there are levels of oppression that run too deep to be conquered by pacifism, as reluctantly as I am to say such a thing. When the powers of evil and injustice are so great, so encompassing, so invisible, there is no other way to combat such filth but with strength. Strength in unity, strength in fraternity, strength in numbers and with the up most conviction in your mission – because we are not waging violence and death for the same reasons the captains of industrialized evil are, we are not seeking economic gain or control, allocation of resources and wealth, we are fighting for justice – we are fighting for our right to live, to exist unoppressed, in a state, a city and a world that enables human flourishing. We are fighting to defend ourselves, our children and their children and the generations to come, so that our children’s children can be born into a world where they will not be stripped of their innocence by witnessing death and destruction at an early age, they will not grow up in war torn, poverty stricken lands but that they will have the opportunity to flourish and to learn and to love life. And they will never know the death and the fear of their predecessors’ sufferings. They will never be plagued by the anger, resentment and desires for revenge that come when inflicted with injustice, the same defects that inhibit human ingenuity and evolution.

The time has come to throw diplomatic correspondence out the window. I will not aggrandize any sugarcoating to my concerns or pleas. For too long have concerned citizens peacefully expressed their discontents for this government and country. Too long have we stood patiently on street corners with our signs or written our trepidations respectfully to our elected representatives only to be disregarded. Your government has used the deceit and fraud of propaganda to hold Americans under this city of delusion for nothing more than capitalistic and corporate global dominance. Because you and your government represent pure evil there are no boundaries to which I can diplomatically hold myself to when I speak or act against your corruption for the indifference of good is a reflection of evil. The opposite of good is not evil but apathy. And there is no where you can run to that will hide you from your comeuppance. So know this that we will find you and stand you on trial for your sins of apathy and when your consciousness awakens to the severity of all the injustices you witnessed and did nothing about, we will be your liberators from such wasted existence.



TIME TO EXPATRIATE
“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”
-Ernesto Che Guevara

The label of “Apostate” used in titling my manifesto refers to someone who has renounced and abandoned their pre-established belief system, or religion, and the loyalty attributed to that religion. Politically, this person renouncing citizenship and withdrawing their allegiance and loyalty from their native country would be an expatriate. Figuring as in America, citizens up hold unquestionable faiths of their government, coining the more dogmatic term shows how America is more like a religion to its citizens.

It is time for me to reconsider my citizenship of America. It is a country that was supposed to be founded upon the abstract ideas of the up most virtuous concepts of freedom, justice and liberty, yet for the past 232 years it has failed to live up to these grand ideals. Therefore I cannot continue to identify with such this illusory bunch of hypocrites.

Instead of delving right into the ultimate reasons you all are despised by the rest of the world, I’d rather sink close to home.

Forced to socially interact with you each day, in the classroom, the workplace, on the street is like being forced into sedation where my freethinking abilities are provoked and prodded by mindless conversation of the up most insignificant topics.

For the many who continue to spill nothing but feces every time they open their mouth in an academic setting: take whatever two and a half functioning brain cells you have left in your unevolved skull and rub them together as hard as you can until you realize the worthlessness of your existence. If you can't figure that much out, just at least try to *THINK* about what insignificant anecdote you have to add to the discussion before you actually say it and ask yourself: "Am I a tool?" and the answer will be, yes. It will always be yes.

Because to exert yourself, your mind, your soul to the greater good of humanity, crying yourself to sleep at night over the thoughts of dead Iraqi children, writing to your elected representatives in Congress, reading the newspaper and informing yourself like a good citizen should, fighting against the injustices of the government is too much for you. It requires sacrifice, perseverance, and selflessness. Everything YOU are NOT. THAT is why I loathe you. THAT is why I cannot stand you.

THE OPPOSITE OF GOOD IS NOT EVIL BUT APATHY
To debate the real definition of what it means to be American, what the world perceives Americans to be, in accordance to what Americans believe themselves to be and what those of us revolutionaries know to be the real definition of American, the one that Americans pride themselves on being hypocritically fail to uphold such identity.

“FOR THE EXTREME OF INJUSTICE IS TO SEEM JUST WHEN ONE IS NOT”
Because we revolutionaries know the real virtues of the founding principles and what is means to be responsible, democratic citizens and will never successfully reclaim the title of what we know is true, it is crucial therefore, to establish a new identity: one that hasn’t been tarnished for centuries, where we don’t run the risk of being identified with the hypocritical, ethnocentric, ignorant citizens that are Americans. Because the entire world knows your true nature, at this point in time, you are no more than reaping what you’ve sewn, what your government had planted to cause the destruction and chaos of civilizations, generations and communities. You will suffer nothing more than what you deserve. And your retribution will not be in anyway modest.

As most freedoms laid down in the constitution the freedom to overthrow the government if it becomes inept is nothing more than a food pellet for the hoards of rodents who pride themselves on these freedoms but never have actually exercised those rights. It has proved a very ineffective means to even attempt to exercise this right, as the force of brainwashing has such a strong hold over Americans – they would never stand for it. For those of us who see to it that there is no alternative but to overthrow the current government, which has become severely maniacal in greed and power, and establish a new system based on the real concepts of the constitution, unlike those written by the white, slave owning, colonial officers 232 years ago. Our constitution will be written by the groups of people who have suffered the heat of injustice for as long as America has existed – it will be written by women, persons of every color: black, white, red, yellow, native American, African American, illegal immigrant, the impoverished and homeless, the working class, the homosexual community, students, dreamers, and anyone who believes in social justice as a means of effectively running a government that will not oppress its citizens in any form: racially, sexually, economically, or ethnically.

Because we revolutionaries can never accomplish this as citizens of the old America, we must relinquish our citizenship and form a new America. The time has come to call to action all those revolutionary spirits to unite as one voice, as one fist, as one storm of insurrection. We must bring an end to the American Empire before it inevitably destroys all of humanity. Each human citizen has the unalienable rights to exist free from hunger, from economic inequality, from terror, from class conflict and injustice. Each human citizen has the right to the basic essentials of living regardless of economic income: first class health care, healthy and quality food, clean drinking water, unlimited degrees of education and safe and reliable residence. These very necessities required for a human to flourish and evolve are withering more and more each day, not just in the United States of America but all over the world and the trend is not going to reverse itself without any intervention.

This is where our responsibility arises. My voice is one, yet with a choir of many others we can reach our message, our mission and our hopes to those brothers and sisters suffering on the other side of the world. With one deafening choir of voices united in a harmony of revolution, our struggle will not have been in vain. The doubt, the fear and hesitation to take up arms with such an idealistic cause is an overwhelming factor in whether or not you will chose to join us. This struggle will not be an easy one. It will not be instantly gratifying or even reassuring at times. It will be a journey of anguish, of sacrifice, of camaraderie and courage. It will seem like the sun will never rise on the new day of justice we will fight for. The best rewards are not given without toil. Nothing in our world worth having comes easily – our dreams, our strength and fortitude is our only promise to success. As long as each day we fight for peace and justice, our convictions will not betray us. But it takes confidence – confidence in yourself and in your fellow revolutionaries to send the flame of awakening to light the fires in others who have yet to realize the truth.

No longer as citizens of those borders, we become citizens of the world and in turn recognize the illegitimacy and corruption of the Old American government and declare war from the outside. We are citizens of humanity, banning together with those from other countries who recognize the moral severity of the United States of America existing, recognizing us as their brothers and sisters, a separate entity from the factory in which they were produced, to fight the extreme injustice that is the United States of America.

***
Let this be a warning that we the people will not remain silent for too much longer. Prepare yourself for a mass awakening to your lies and deceit. I assure you it won’t be long until you read my words again as I will stop at nothing until your lies and corruption have been uncovered and I will not rest until the veil has been lifted from the eyes of all Americans.
***
Let this be a warning that we are very, very angry and we will stand with confidence to conquer your evil empire as we the people will prevail, as compassion, peace and love will always prevail.
***
Let this be a warning: All hell won't stop us now.

MAGDALENA S. RIEGEL
XIV DECEMBER MMVIII

[i] James Reston Jr
[ii] Howard Zinn “Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress
[iii] Howard Zinn “Drawing the Color Line”
[iv] Howard Zinn “Tyranny is Tyranny”

[v] Frederick Jackson Turner “Frontier Thesis”
vi Bernie Sanders “Let the Rich Bail Them Out”
vii Osama Bin Laden “Messages to the World”

Ode To A Piece of Shit

You are a disgusting excuse for a human being. You are the kind of human who wallows in their mediocrity, dangling false ambitions of grandeur in front of your eyes just to paint the illusion you will or can someday excel beyond the stagnant pool of waste that is your existence. Your kind is not unfamiliar but an epidemic among youth who waste away their age and minds on frivolous, debilitating distractions that keep you all rooted in the sty that is the world around you in which you have created. You live, eat, breath and fuck in mounds of shit piled so high that all you’ve ever known is shit. You were born amongst shit and you will most likely die a meaningless existence in the same shit and that makes you nothing more but a piece of shit.

But it is not good enough that most of the world you live in is shit, you have to spend your life dragging others down into the shit with you. In your jealousy, in your subconscious envy you live an incomplete life and therefore will cling onto any small glittering object that shows the smallest signs of promise and deceive yourself enough to believe that one anomaly will save you from your insignificance. But in the obesity of your squalor you draw that beauty down into the mire and destroy something so pure, so rare that in your vanity you make excuses for your actions just to avoid the otherwise fiery guilt suffered by such fools.

Fuck you. As kind and gentle as I was for so long, you fed me nothing but shit. But now I think I'll vomit a year's worth of shit right back on top of you and see how you like it when the one you loved the most exercises their power to mutilate your existence.

I have forgiven you for abuses inflicted on me even though the reverberations will be felt years from now. You have left scars, brand marks of your handy work in many different ways, though I will not give you the satisfaction of leaving those scars visible. I forgave you for the infidelity, for the lies and for the foolish games. I forgave you for the eight months of my life you wasted. But if there is one thing I will not forgive you for, it is for the continuous effort to hurt not just me but the people in my life. In your insecurities and also your vanity, you conjured excuses to suit the fancy of your conclusions to destroy that which was beautiful. You do not know of what beauty is, you do not know the privilege of being alive. You do not know how to appreciate the excellence bestowed upon you. You do not know how to love. You will never know how to love. You think love is a commodity that can be bought and paid for. In your youthful ignorance, you will never understand true love – unconditional, forgiving, nonjudgmental, selfless, and pure. And so you will lead a miserable life, pretending you know what love is to lure others into a false sense of security. You take life for granted and everything in it, always being unsatisfied with your life even though so many in the world are worse off than you.

To me, you never existed. I fell in love with a lie. I thought that lie was the real person and that the miserable, selfish, destructive villain before me was just temporary. Now I know I was deceived. Now I can finally say I am thankful my life turned out this way and you are not in it. I am thankful he came into my life as one hour with him was worth more to me than this entire year of your emotional cruelty. I am thankful for the companions I found who helped me as long as they could before you burnt everything to the ground with your narcissism. The embarrassment, the loss of friendship and the destruction of beauty is my burden to bear now and I will never make the same mistake again of lowering my standards to accommodate a wreckage of a human being.

Congratulations you son of a bitch.

I hope you rot in the hell you so strongly believe in.

That way maybe your environment would reflect your misery as the shit you live in is only the shit you create and you are and never will be anything better than an apprehensive misogynist, fatefully mediocre and covered to the top with shit.

Displacement of the Self

An old woman sits beside the window in her small white room, overlooking the city below from the ninth floor of her assisted living residence. Her life is near its end and yet she is filled with emptiness as if it never began at all. A widow, mother of three children, retired church secretary: all these aspects of her life have faded away with the color of her hair, the softness of her skin and her mind’s agility and vigor . Having centered her identity around all these external factors in life, her sense of emptiness arises from their loss. Nonpermanent realities replace the constant of our identities. As those realities, our physical body, loved ones, careers, maternal roles, all come to end at some point before we die, those who define their existence through nonpermanent entities, will eventually lose themselves, their sanity, their identity, after those others are gone.

Never mistaken, it is easier to define yourself through those realities in which your soul exists yet it is easier to lose yourself once you’ve lost those realities. While paradox never fails to clarify life, just the opposite, it is difficult to not attach yourself and identity onto those people around you and the external factors that provide meaning to your existence. Most of the time this happens unknowingly and before you even realize, you adapt illusions of companionship to being essential to your existence. Your career, the monotonous daily routine of your everyday becomes too familiar to ever imagine parting from it. Your physical body, the stunning image of familiarity reflected in the mirror each day, loses its endurance, aesthetic appeal and usefulness. Those other beings around you who you spend your whole life caring for, providing for will eventually fail to need you. Those who you love will die or worse, betray your love and rip themselves from the identity you established together, leaving you with a emptiness in your heart so grand, there isn’t enough left of yourself to continue on as a living being. You become half alive. You are like a child again, only left out in the street to reconfigure how to survive, to communicate, learning how to walk, learn and breath. Loneliness becomes unbearable and conversation becomes a memory. The accumulation of suffering felt by this loss is only mounted by knowing the part of your life who you defined yourself through, who defined themselves through you, has failed to exhibit the same agony your soul is undergoing. While you wander alone at night, sleepless and mostly dead, they have already replaced you with another, as if you didn’t mean anything.

Yet to remain centered and secure in a sense of yourself, free from external beings, realities, definitions, sublevel words used to describe the world around us as language deduces everything we verbalize to subject of our limitations as humans is to immortalize your soul. Whatever may enter or exit your life, there is still one constant. While everything in the world has or will prove its impermanence, that sense of self has withstood the credence of time and persevered while the world crumbled around you.

It is time for a new declaration.

After losing what I believed to be the counterpart to my existence, I have realized that I never truly lost the part of myself I associated with him. It’s been here all along and after mistaking it for so long it didn’t reappear for some time. There are those in life who will affect your identity through different roles. Those who make you doubt yourself, those who penetrate and destroy you from the inside out, and those who will try to make you lose yourself.
Yet there are those who will see you and fall in love with everything you are, the way you are, perfect as a whole, steadfast independent being. They will encourage and celebrate your abilities and refrain from destroying who you are.

In the end, it is not only dangerous to displace the self on those impermanent figures in your life, but to allow those figures to dampen, injure and destroy your sense of identity. They will find enjoyment in your destruction and draw the breath of life from your chest until you can do nothing more but beg them for mercy.

Exponentially, life increases through positives. Therefore it can only grow through those positives. Remaining among those negative factors will ultimately lead to the end.

Freedom is only attainable after everything else is lost.

Life can only flourish in light.

The self should never be displaced in undeserving impermanence.

In the end, you will always have your self.

Nostalgia

Always a deep, melodic flowing voice to accompany those delicately warm days, I play those same messages over and over again in moments of nostalgia. Nostalgia, my drug, my guilty pleasure: subjecting myself intentionally to those painful reminders of those days in which I was well aware of good times with each breath drawn, aware of their delicate beauty, aware of the fragility and the ephemeral moments, an impeding sense of doom in the back of mind that these days would not last forever. My nostalgia for the present – those who can recognize the privilege of being alive will crawl from under the ground to bask in the sun when it does happen to shine.

Art Museums

Paintings stapled to walls
Sculptures suspended from ceilings
Fountains spraying sunshine

We were more inspired by each other.
Alone – together – a sea of strangers
The sun still shone on our love.

Yellow lighting made our colors one
Alone in the elevator, we embraced
The escalator, your kiss made us real.

A thousand faces to witness us
The judgment, scorn or misunderstanding
was saved for the paintings

Among the tallest buildings
we would have lost ourselves
but not for lack of trying

The harmony of our lips
The symmetry of our souls
The elegance of our portrait

My masterpiece I'll find you
one day, waiting in the museum
for our chance to be more

than a work of art.

I Wish I Never Even Heard the Song

The melody of his voice
Covers the wounds of our separation
Sad sonatas and eloquent piano keys
Crescendos of momentary relief
Preserves time in my memory
Hoping one day this symphony
Will lead you back to me.

Taxday

We began on the day we were born.

Relinquere

Te sine non valeo
Ignosce me
Meus animus te sine non valent
Ignosce me
Sum solum homo sed meis erratis disco
Amabo te ignosce me

Eram stultam velumque scio
et tuum silentium mea poena es
Irasces cum mea scio
et tuum spatium mea poena es.

Tuis manis mei animi relinquo
et quisque noctem per tenebras sola navigo
venire domum voctis exspecto
ubi denique tui omium iterum habeo.


XIV October MMVIII

Thank You

It was one of the last warm days of the year I could remember. I was standing there alone even though so many others surrounded me. We were all waiting.

I was dressed finely that day, unusually proper for those who uphold the low standards of my generation. Though my feet were tired, they were elevated in a distinctive elegance beneath such dark attire.

The cool yet deceiving wind ran it's fingers through my long hair. Caught in its grasp I remembered it's newly acquired length for which four years prior did not know of.

Upon it's arrival, the sudden and collective wave of movement rose among us. I adjusted my bag after a deep sigh for what impending monotony awaited. Before I could move an inch I heard a voice call my name.

Rotating slowly as not to seem anxious, he walked by.

The deception calmed though the wind still wrapped itself around us. Mutually pleased to find each other, I felt the first genuine smile emerge from many months of retirement. The wind whipped a long strand of hair across my face. Reaching up to comb it away I greeted your presence more elated than I should have.

Our conversation was brief but reverberated in my ears for many hours.
Your selective acknowledgment of me could not have been more pleasing. Your wardrobe could not have been anymore tasteful.

It is strange how years will seep away unnoticed, worthless and empty but mere threads of reality capture hearts and reserve memory.

I Should Have Stayed

Before I left you looked into my eyes
Held me close
Grazed my lips with yours
Couldn’t let go
Time was short
And you told me if I didn’t leave
You were going to keep me.

I wake up and am in an unfamiliar room alone, far from your arms, far from the mountain I once lived on. It is dark and I don’t want to ask the question of how I got here, because it would be to remember how it was I lost you. The clock reads too early to rise and too late to count on feeling rested. The sheets are now cold from the sweat of my nightmares, unlike the sweat from our bodies once before and how that dream soaked through layers of earth and left your scent on everything and anything you touched, including me.

In my misery I excel. I only know how to be mediocre in my contentment, if I am lucky enough to stumble upon it. For what is contentment rather than being ignorantly satisfied with the haphazard surroundings of meaninglessness that to one attributes their life? Again, my ability to revel in this sty of mediocrity, the way swine marvel at the satisfaction of their mud and filth, is nothing but that: mediocre.

Excelling in the intensity of each end of the conscious spectrum of vivacious existence is sometimes too frightening a self actualization to reflect upon. For sometimes I am just too tired to step outside on the doorstep and into insanity when I could easily crawl back into bed and avoid the folly and fervor that my existence has come to. Yet this resort back to mediocrity is just a temporary relief from the stabbing pains of consciousness and never really results in an absolute. The stink of the sty that commonplace humanity is can only be tolerated for so long before vomiting need be induced (Thank you Mr. Pessoa). In a moment of egocentricity or intellectual snobbery (as the fellow camaraderie of the sty would say), I look down and realize it is too filthy a place in which to let my boots get muddy. I turn my back and greet the door step. Instead of a genuine desire to embrace my nature as a bipedal being of acute consciousness and extreme veracity, I set forth not in this light but in repulsion so toxic, I hasten to get as far away from this place for as long as I can.

Ultimately these escape plans are drawn up on account of losing my ability to suffer. Those who live in a constant state of mediocrity never feel the blister of ice or the burn of the sun on their skin for they are too dumbfounded to recognize these intensities – they instead feel nothing at all. All my life, even since I was a small girl I have been drawn to suffering as some girls are drawn to the convent. Suffering, (which I shall expand upon later in definition) like Descartes’ ability to doubt, proves the existence of the self as through suffering we know we are alive as there must be something there to suffer. Feeling oneself alive therefore infringes a sort of masochistic meaning upon the act of suffering: I am drawn to it; I cling to it like a shiny coin, a glimmer of light to give my existence meaning.

Perhaps this is the answer to my questioning for why I constantly pursue that which makes me suffer and the satisfaction gained from such pursuit. I constantly refuse to live my life in a mediocre fashion, letting each day pass unnoticed in sedated apathy and instead would drive a knife into my own side just to feel life and this desire for instant sadistic self-gratification. After so many scars I know no other way of existing. At least suffering, though not as accommodating as bliss, is better than feeling nothing at all.

The Reward of Darkness

The Reward of Darkness

As consciousness is a disease
we, whose cancer is malignant with awareness,
suffer more from our eyes
being held open.
Brain seizures
The burden of knowledge
We curse our condition
Yet know no other way of existence.
but are able to understand
the privilege of being alive.

Catharsis

Never seen sunshine like I have this morning

The clouds that stretch before me:

Mountainous

Majestic

Ethereal.

Cathartically, I desire to be among them.

Hopeful Cynicism

Hopeful Cynicism

I have seen the faintest of lights escape from the darkest of nights
and hope kilter on the edge of abyss
surrendering it's breath to the vast ocean's depth
but who's fall was broken by coincidence.

I have seen the greatest of men struggle to breathe from defaming injury
and masterpieces being left out in the rain.
The centuries of composition to sculpt such perfection
only to suffer condemnation in the hands of the vain.

I've seen the vanity of the young make surplus value of unconditional love
while the hearts of saints remain abandoned.
Even when good intentions fail, bringing an end to each fairy tale
skepticism can't touch even the most genuine romantics.

I have fallen into infinite caves of despair and returned to again taste fresh air
after my heart was torn to the four corners of the Earth.
Though I may never recover, there is still beauty left to be discovered
as you are the reward for what this darkness is worth.

Without this darkness we are unable to see
the light of all beauty there is to be seen
only at this depth are we able to find
all the beautiful things and the places they hide.

My Body's Own Death Sentence

My Body's Own Death Sentence
(A Terminal Diagnosis)

Underneath the solidity of the choices I've made
This body will constantly remind the mind of it's heartache
As a separate entity from my soul, it's unfamiliar face
will ultimately decide the rest of my fate.

Traditional insomnia, and fading perfume,
A new found embrace in a bottle that soothes,
the involuntary disappearance of my appetite all proves
that in your absence my body's no fool
as it lost it's will to live when I lost you.

The Feminist Mistake

This morning upon waiting in the gynecologist office to undergo yet another wonderful exam that reinforces the satisfaction of the sexist biological accident that being a woman is, I unfortunately had forgotten to bring along reading material to occupy myself while waiting. My attention was forcefully distracted by the television screen and the loud, jubilant bubbles of excitement emanating from the dark haired, bright smiling, Daytime Emmy Award winner, Rachel Ray.
First let me say that my previous grievance about being a woman and all the biological inconveniences we must uniquely endure throughout our lifetime wasn’t an attempt to denigrate my existence as a woman. Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, I would not trade my existence for anything different. I simply recognize that “there is pleasure in toothache”. Therefore there is a certain satisfaction gained from the suffering only we as woman can understand and would not prefer to be anything else.
Yet less than six minutes of listening in and being witness to this show, the bulldog feminist in me began to pick up on a scent of the patriarchal reinforcement of self inflicted servitude oozing from this woman and her excitement over basic household and kitchen products.
Before getting into rationalizations for my sniffing suspicion of Rachel Ray being just a counterfeit pioneer in the advancements of women across the country, a slight illustration of what those six wasted minutes of my life looked like might be appropriate in assessing the absurdity of the situation.
I unwillingly tuned in while Rachel was interviewing another woman, by which if my context clues serve me correctly, had just invented or revolutionized a new form of the crock-pot. In Rachel’s model kitchen television set, the two ladies were merrily demonstrating to the audience the wonders of this new kitchen gadget, the way B-actors on late night info-commercials do with such artificial enthusiasm, you’re sure they’re overcompensating for the cheap plastic uselessness the product’s real performance.
Like every other female television host, Oprah, Rosie O’ Donnell, Ellen, a commercial demonstration would not be complete without a free gift for the audience – everyone’s own new-age crock pot. At Rachel’s riveting announcement, the audience applauded and cheered as jovially as you would if someone had just cured cancer (and no, that is not a sarcastic hyperbole).
After a brief commercial break, the show continued with Rachel giving awards to those people who have been innovators in their community to raise information on healthy eating habits. The screen flashed to a little montage anecdote about a father who cleverly devised a way to get his five year old to eat vegetables. Sitting at the family’s dining room table, the blonde haired, blue eyed boy would pick the broccoli off his plate and put it on the table while the father sat next to him just casually putting the broccoli back on his plate.
In honor of his son’s ability to, “turn into a little monster” when being told to eat his vegetables, the father wrote a story book about the “veggie monster” in which he read to his son and playmates. Drifting off from the exhilarating chronicle before me, I failed to hear the exact context of the “veggie monster” story itself. Feeling disappointed I didn’t get to hear just how effective this father’s story book was on getting his son to eat his vegetables, I reminisced back to my childhood and the persistence of my brother and me against eating our vegetables. My mother would simply force us to sit at the table all night if we gave her a hard time about eating anything that was put on our plates. If by bedtime there was still food on the plate, she would wrap it up and put it in the fridge for us to eat for breakfast.

Not to sound too abrasive, but this woman is nothing but an inflated celebrity housewife who plays a role model for unsuccessful housewives across the country, who have to find a way to make their existences more bearable by finding new ways to keep their monotonous routines of servitude exciting. As inspiring and creative as this woman may seem, she is only enforcing the standards of this patriarchal society that imprisons women into a subconscious form of slavery to their children and husbands.
This is absolutely not an attack on the maternal role of women in the household. I have contemplated the future possibility of having a child and creating a home in which to live with my chosen companion. The biological accident that allows me the potential to create a life remains astonishing. Whether it may be a maternal instinct or my human compassion to the people I love, I harbor a strong nature to care for those people.
But not at the cost of my dignity and sacrifice of my human potential. I have no desire to make a child my life’s work. Why should I forfeit my accomplishments and goals to serving a man and his children just because of my biological abilities? Why should anyone subjugate themselves to another group of human beings just because of their gender, race or ethnicity?
We live in a society where child-worship is more prominent than Christianity. Women surrender their lives to birthing, raising and caring for the children and household of a man (typically speaking). There is a riptide of patriarchal expectation after a certain point in young adulthood where women are desirable as a tool of reproduction.
Though throughout human history women have generically played the role of birth giver and housekeeper, we’ve reached a new stage in society where women now have the potential to excel beyond the kitchen. The predicament lies in womankind’s unwillingness to employ those opportunities because of the plethora of self-deprecating customs embedded into their minds from the moment they are born. Little girls are given baby dolls and plastic kitchen sets to play with. In junior high school, girls take home-ec classes where they learn how to cook and sew while boys take woodshop and learn how to build. Women are from day one prepared for the servitude of motherhood and housekeeping.

Shows like Rachel Ray’s only perpetuate the stagnation of women’s advancement in this country. The unfortunate aspect of being a wife and a mother is not inherent in the roles itself but the ultimate sacrifice the woman gives to serving others and the lack of motivation to accomplish anything more with her life. In The Feminine Mistake Leslie Bennett tells of how her mother held a career and took care of her family at the same time. She also paints examples of the dangers of willingly choosing a life of housewife servitude:

“On New Year’s Day 2006, The New York Times published an essay by Terry Martin Hekker, a mother of five who had once crusaded as a self-appointed spokesperson for the joys of being a full-time homemaker. ‘I spoke to rapt audiences about the importance of being there for your children as they grew up, of the satisfactions of ‘making a home,' preparing family meals and supporting your hard-working husband,’ she recalled. ‘So I was predictably stunned and devastated when, on our 40th anniversary, my husband presented me with a divorce.’ ”

Unfortunately these situations are not as rare as you think. Though it feels like there will be a noticeable generation gap between my generation and my mother’s generation, there are still an abundance of women out there whose only aspiration is to being a housewife when their potential exceeds such roles. In turn, women become completely financially dependant on their husbands and end up on food stamps forty years down the line after he leaves them for a younger model.
Motherhood, homemaking, cooking, sewing, cleaning – unfortunately are all inherent in being a fulltime housewife as it is easier to fulfill these duties without a career. Yet I think the necessary common ideology that is absent in the feminine collective conscious of our society is the confident ability to be independent and self-sustaining, the ambition to maximize one’s existence as far as the potential reaches and enough self respect to not accept a lifetime of submission, unappreciation and servitude where identity is compromised and dignity robbed.