I keep writing posts and then abandoning them because I didn’t have the energy to tackle the subjects that are eating up all my mind-space.

I’ve been working really hard on packaging and writing up product descriptions and photographing products for Sugar & Pith. I’ve done no fiction writing in a month now. No blog writing in probably just as long. I’ve been focused solely on getting Sugar & Pith up and running. Just as I got all my newly photographed products listed in the Etsy shop I started doing my reading on FDA and USDA regulations on selling herbal products. I will now have to more carefully name and word all my products and product descriptions. Etsy (must look into this more to be sure) apparently doesn’t allow shops to describe any medicinal properties of herbs. Several shops I saw were sending customers to links where they could read about what the products they’re selling are actually FOR claiming that Etsy won’t let them include such descriptions in their listings any more.

I actually agree with all industries having regulations because when things like Energy companies are de-regulated all kinds of abuses happen at the cost to the consumers. When food is unregulated all kinds of important information is withheld from consumers. Reasonable regulation is vital to keeping companies responsible and accountable to consumers.

But the FDA has made it almost impossible for small companies to sell herbal products effectively. They can’t keep us from selling them, by some miracle or other that right has been safeguarded, but they cripple a person’s ability to explain to potential customers what a product is meant to DO.

I’m also fostering an adorable kitten named Petra who’s scampering around at my feet getting into all kinds of mischief as I write.

I’ve got so much dark shit in my head these days what with the the recent mass shooting of black people and the burning of black churches and most of my countrymen still thinking we’re the best nation in the world while people like Donald Trump mouth off heinous racist shit against Mexicans and we still have an off-shore torture prison where we flex our muscles and practice torture on people we claim “might” be our enemies, but no one really actually cares that much. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

I don’t believe that humans are basically good and unlike some friends and family I don’t think that the bigoted, hateful, ugly voices out there are a minority.

There’s nothing Americans like better than to masturbate to recitals of the Bill of Rights and the Amendments . Those rights Americans are constantly citing as the thing that makes our country so great and so different from everyone else. The rights that ALL Americans enjoy equally. Unless you have been a person of color in this country for the last few hundred years and even though the Civil Rights movement rectified this to some degree (a mere 50 some odd years ago), they are still having their rights violated constantly in insidious ways that white people are very comfortable believing are mere isolated incidences. We only just forced the bigots of this nation to allow same-sex marriage but it’s still legal in many states to fire someone for being gay. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

These precious rights we supposedly all have and have been so proud of having since our founding fathers gave them to us really haven’t applied to many people who aren’t white men for most of our history. These “inalienable rights” have been reluctantly parsed out to non-whites and non-males only at gunpoint and under major duress.

Our dedication to individual rights over human safety (witness: the second amendment) is breathtaking. I don’t think any person’s individual rights are more important than the public having a reasonable expectation of safety from mass shootings, shootings, and also all that pesky rape we spend so much time debating, denying, and under-prosecuting because women are basically all just whores and are asking for it. Americans love to say that only responsible people have guns. Oh, except for the mentally ill criminals (because all criminals are mentally ill, don’t you know?) who would have them anyway regardless of our laws*. We have become so mired in our obsession with individual rights and the money that lobbyists throw around to make sure we stay obsessed with that that we’d rather not make gun ownership illegal or highly restricted even if it kills many thousands of people every year to protect the rights of Americans to carry whatever guns they like. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

Our right to speech is a famous subject for wanking off to. That’s all well and good unless you say something that the government can classify as “a national threat” in which case they can send you to prison with very few rights because we were happy to let rights erode when we think it’ll catch us some more brown Muslim people. So people who uncover and use their freedom of speech to reveal Government war crimes (Chelsea Manning) go to jail. And people who speak up to tell us what illegal infringements the Government is enacting on the general populace have to leave the country to escape being tried as a traitor (Edward Snowdon). These are people who were looking out for us  and dared to speak out against the government’s wrong doing. So much for free speech. The only entity people have ever needed their freedom of speech protected from is the government (or monarchy) under which they live their lives. We are free to say anything we want here in the US unless the government DOESN’T FUCKING LIKE IT IN WHICH CASE THEY CAN TRY YOU FOR TREASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. So yeah, go ahead and say how much you hate the president all you want. People in other countries can be jailed for that. Yay! Wank off Americans, wank freely! Just don’t say anything that really matters against our government because then your freedoms don’t mean shit. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

So while you can get a gun with almost no limitations and you can carry it openly in many states, and you can freely say all the nasty bigoted things you want to say against other citizens and even the President of the United States, I can’t tell potential customers of my herbal products how my herbal products might benefit them. No, seriously, my freedom to communicate the actions of medicinal herbs as they’ve been observed for thousands of years is prohibited unless I make it explicitly clear that it probably isn’t true since the FDA hasn’t yet confirmed any of it. Because I’m selling products that the government doesn’t approve of, my freedom of speech is being seriously impaired. So I can go around saying I think Obama is a shithead (I DON’T BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE HIM) but in most ways that freedom of speech truly affects my life I’m not actually that free to say what I want. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

A friend of mine was arguing that you can’t make people be unracist with laws. The example was the Confederate flag. As far as he was concerned, making the Confederate flag illegal would just make more fans of it OR racists would just find another symbol. While I agree that they might find another symbol for it. His idea is that you educate people and you fix the situation that creates the racism in the first place (often poverty causes or exacerbates racism and violence around racism). While I agree that those are things that need to be addressed. We are at a standstill because the people in this nation that control pretty much everything (laws and all) are all white rich people. My belief in the inherent badness of human beings is substantiated by the fact that nearly all laws protecting the rights of minorities have had to become law because people couldn’t be counted on to “do the right thing” or “treat people with respect” or “share equal rights” or “not set crosses on fire on black Americans’ lawns” or to “not execute black people with legally acquired guns”. Men never gave women equal rights willingly. WE FUCKING FORCED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS COUNTRY TO LET US VOTE AND WE STILL DON’T GET EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. Maybe laws don’t fix everything but without them we’d still have slavery, women wouldn’t vote, bi-racial couples could literally be sent to jail for sleeping with each other, parents could still use their kids for punching bags legally, and employers could legally refuse to hire people based on their race. FUCK THAT FUCKING SHIT TO FUCKING HELL.

Do white people find other ways and legal reasons to not hire black people? HELL YES. Do men still find many legal ways of putting women in their place and subjugating them and paying them less? HELL YES. Having laws to protect rights or the freedoms of minority groups doesn’t mean they won’t be discriminated against but the laws are important because they give us legal recourse to set things right, they send the message that at least officially our country is required to honor all its citizens from certain dangers and discriminations. Will evil still exist if you make it against the law? Sure. Yes. Always.

Most humans will only do the right thing if it suits them or profits them to do so.

Making laws that make evil have to work harder are important because they give recourse to those upon whom it has unleashed its damage to punish and prosecute that evil. This is vitally important to keeping law and order in a nation and to creating and maintaining a fair and healthy society.

These are my thoughts this week. And last week. I’m sick of people saying that the U.S. is great “compared to other countries”. That we did genocide “less heinously than other colonialists” or that “yeah, this country was founded on genocide and slavery, but so is pretty much every country in the world.” And that makes us great….HOW?!

Do you all not see what’s wrong with that attitude? It means “Sure, we might have done terrible awful nasty inhumane evil things to become the country we are, but it’s okay because that’s how all countries do it”

Okay. So I’m a great human being because when compared to way worse human beings I’m not as bad? And it’s okay that I’ve hurt the people I’ve hurt along the way to achieving the things I have and becoming who I am because that’s just what humans do?

I don’t give myself such excuses and neither should you and none of us should be extending such stupid excuses for our country either. When I’ve hurt people I examine my behavior and I honestly ask myself what the fuck is wrong with me and I apologize to the people I’ve hurt and I work at becoming and behaving better and more thoughtfully. At no point do I ever think that it’s “okay” that I hurt someone because all people hurt other people at some point. That may be true, but it doesn’t make it okay. Those aren’t words that need saying. We can move on with our lives after we’ve learned lessons and improved ourselves but at no point do any of need to congratulate ourselves for not being worse than we are or that the terrible things we’ve done are “okay” because everyone else does them too. Fuck that fucking shit to goddamn fucking hell.

I’m not perfect, and I’m going to make mistakes. That’s a fact of life. I’m going to keep learning and hopefully keep growing and keep becoming a better human being. But when I fuck up and I hurt someone or I do something mean or stupid you will never hear me say “That’s just the collateral damage of being human” or “at least when I hurt people I hurt them in a less hurtful way than other people hurt them”.

I will say “I’m sorry” and “I can do better than that” and then I will examine the ways I can do better AND THEN I DO BETTER because I’m not caught up in personal pride. Pride has no place in learning and improving and being a better human being today than you were yesterday. Humility is what allows us to see our faults and correct them. Humility is what allows us to stop and feel for other humans, to see from their perspective, to understand how our actions affect them.

I said this in an earlier post. I’m saying it again. More and more I find pride in people distressing and disgusting.

So this is why I keep not writing. I’m angry at everyone. I’m tired of having people’s legal rights trump people’s safety and well being. I’m angry that pretty much everyone I know is in love with saying how “complicated” all these issues are which is code for “we don’t agree with each other and since people can’t agree about stuff, stuff can’t be fixed and no one can be expected to change anything because someone is going to be uncomfortable with it.

YEAH, FUCKERS, I KNOW! A LOT OF MEN ARE STILL UPSET THAT WOMEN GOT THE VOTE AND “INFILTRATED”
POLITICS AND DON’T HAVE TO HAVE SEX WITH THEM IF WE DON’T WANT TO AND WOMEN ARE STILL BEING RAPED AND BEAT BECAUSE SO MANY MEN ARE GRIEVOUSLY UNHAPPY HAVING TO LET US HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS. SO MAYBE, FUCKERS, MAYBE WE SHOULD GIVE OUR HARD-WON EQUAL RIGHTS BACK BECAUSE IT MADE MEN UPSET? BECAUSE IT WAS UNCOMFORTABLE CHANGE?

FUCK THAT STUPID-ASS GODDAMN FUCKING SHIT TO GODDMAN FUCKING HELL, FUCKERS!

I’m too tired to edit this post. The first asshole to come along and correct my typos, grammar, or my disconnected ideas gets a gold-plated scrotum for a medal. I just let my thoughts come out. This was not an organized essay or dissertation. It was an exact (and therefore imperfect) first draft stream of consciousness post of my thoughts as they are today.

I admit that I feel a lot better for having let these thoughts OUT.

*This has been proved to be untrue in many other countries who have instigated (or have always had) very strict gun laws and have a correlating low number of gun-related deaths in their countries compared to ours.