My fellow Americans, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of something we hold very dear. No, it's not another amazingly old dead president. It's something important. Something that once defined us as a nation which we deeply revered. It was something we believed in and held in our hearts.
That which lies in the coffin today is a set of American principles and values that were once so alive and vibrant that they were physically tangible. Just being in their presence filled ones chest with pride.
Men were once shot over the transgression of defiling those principles, and any who failed to employ them were shunned, disliked, or tarred and feathered. The end result of dissing our highest truths used to be serious prison time, and our Justice System which unfortunately lies in a coffin one plot over, used to guarantee that result.
It was once understood that power is irresistibly drawn to corruption and that people demanded, deserved and expected the law to protect them from the abuses of power gone mad. We often heard the resounding whack of justice's back handed slap echoing off the dazed foreheads of those who went astray with the public's trust. It used to shock us when this happened. Back then we knew that evil men had no place in government or business, and when they were discovered, it made us want to puke, not give them standing ovations.
Those were better times, were they not brothers and sisters? Say Amen. Amen.
Those were times when the oceans and lakes were alive with fish, and filled with such pure clean water that it was health giving and blessed our bodies and our lives. It was not radioactive or regularly measured for the levels of 260 toxic contaminants which we're drinking today, it was pure perfection; fit to support both man and beast, fish and fowl, and yea, even the green things with roots.
Those were times when our own hands worked the soil and produced natural, healthy food in all manner of crops. It tasted so good, it's aromas were intense, and it was juicy.
There were no such things as tomatoes with the DNA of scorpions, or goats that squeezed out spider silk.
Chickens were not born without feathers, and very few had more than one head. Why friends, back then a two headed chicken would have raised quite a stir and brought in folks from all across the country just to get a look at it.
Before the days of hermaphroditic trout and seven legged deer, the thought of taking a meal was a truly welcome one. Animals weren't cloned, and our dairy fresh milk was not infused with millions of pus cells from Bossy's infected udder. Baby chicks were not shot through mazes of cold machinery, untouched by human hands, then left to live out empty lives on two inches of dirt encrusted cold cement flooring. Fresh eggs back then were really something, free of hormones, soilent green feeds, antibiotics and hundreds of other chemicals and "medical" injections. They were just big and brown and great with toast.
The cows back then were bred from long lines of good stud stock, handled with care and hands on gentleness; producing meat marbled with natural fat that tasted so good. Those cows were fed on prairie grass, natural grains and hay, and were never injected with hormones and growth serums, milk increasing injections, antibiotics, or antifungals unless the vet came out and said they needed something, like a salve. But they didn't get sick much because they roamed free and were happy. They never had to eat kibble made out of their own kin, and no one ever heard of mad cow disease.
Before The Corporations took it upon themselves to bind and gag Lady Liberty, place her feet in a bucket of cement, and throw her into the deep blue sea; before the almighty dollar mattered more than life itself; before the unholy union of corporations-government-intelligence-secrets and secret armies, life was good.
It was a time when equal meant everyone and all men and women had dignity no matter how much money they had or didn't have. People respected each other and knew who and what a REAL enemy was. Folks knew a big fat liar when he stood on the White House lawn and spun a crock of doody, and the press was doing the job nature intended: it dug for the real news under the dirty fingernails of the rich and powerful. It crossed it's T's and dotted it's I's, and it even used to be able to spell. Back in those days the press didn't operate for sheer profit, but for the love of bringing the people the news. The unofficial 4th branch of government kept the other 3 in line, and human, and always looking over their shoulders.
Now I'm not suggesting there were no scoundrels back then, because there were. Black hearted evil men have always stalked the weak, the helpless, the desperate and the foolish. But our beloved friend, lying here in the coffin before us, was alive and ready to piss in their faces whenever they deserved it.
But now our friend is dead, and has been for a long while, and today we must face it.
Please bow your heads.
Oh Ethics, we shall miss you, our hearts ache and will forever more. Oh Justice and Tolerance we'll miss you more than we can say. Morality, Decency, Honor, Fairness, you take a piece of us with you today and when we lower you into the ground, we'll be crying so hard that our noses might never stop running. You are all the offspring of the Mother of our beloved principles, and her name is Common Sense.
Common Sense, freely available to all, no respecter of persons, but only of truth; our patron saint of simple, obvious reality. Common Sense kept watch over the English language and ensured that dictionary definitions applied, and nothing else. Common Sense within the human heart does not allow corruption or greed to flourish and steal food from children's mouths, or inalienable rights from God's giving hands; it does not allow rich bankers to take away a family home, or the state to claim Eminent Domain so that Walmarts may flourish on our citizens private land, those precious acres which manifested our dreams.
Common Sense prevented imbecile offspring from taking high office, and scoundrels from plundering the national wealth. It kept War Profiteers from perpetrating their sin of making money from the blood of innocent people, and from stiffing the people's coffers of trillions that simply vanished along with the shame of the crime.
Common Sense and her virtuous offspring kept many wrongs from staining the flag with their foul poison. It recognized lies and punished plunder. But Common Sense is dead, along with Honesty, and Charity, and Respect for Our Fellow Man. It died along with The Desire for Peace At All Costs, along with Privacy, and along with Caution, Wisdom, and The Burden of Proof Going To The Rightful Party. It died along with the Sheriff's devoted oath to serve the people, and along with Medicine and Science being subservient to the public good. It died with Accountability and Responsibility, with Openness and Common Decency.
And when it did a flood of evils rushed through the streets of city after city, no ground was high enough to keep from getting sloshed.
Yes, we have chest high waders and inner tubes, but they're useless in the face of Exxon, Wall Street, Corporate Welfare and Tax Breaks for the Wealthy in a Time of Needless War. They don't help much when the vote is controlled by cheaters and the liars who protect them in the name of Freedom and Democracy (both of which we laid to rest last year). They're not much good when bio-science sprays our genetically modified foods with viruses and thousands of chemical carcinogens. They aren't much good for anything but fishing and floating on a lake. But the fish are full of mercury now, and the lakes are tombs for canisters of nuclear waste, industrial run off, and garbage.
Can I get an Amen? Amen.
America is mourning, it is wailing and beating it's chest, and although it's cries are drowned out by the 3 o'clock bell on the trading floor, the tears are coming.
They will keep on coming as our prisons overflow with innocent people, convicted of normal human behavior criminalized by government hypocrisy.
They will keep on coming as children are taken from their parents, because mommy smoked a joint.
They will keep on coming while Katrina's abused and discarded people go on inhaling deadly molds, and finding corpses, and sit weeping for a place called home.
The tears will come as our health deteriorates from the toxic waste the corporations push on us disguised as food; and they'll keep on coming as government intrudes ever deeper into the private lives of our once free people.
We'll be snorkeling and sniffling while peaceful protesters heads are bashed in by black booted police, and while Quakers and bakers and candlestick makers lives are filling up hard drives for the government and their brothers, the marketeers, with data about every purchase we make, and every minute detail of our personal lives; the contents of our mail, our e-mail, our phone calls and faxes and medical records, and even with our naked pictures taken at airports along with samples of our DNA.
We'll be blowing our noses while the airwaves increase the ceaseless carpet bombing of our people with advertising that soaks into our brains and poops in them; and while our public schools keep turning out people who graduate but still can't read.
We may well weep until we are totally dehydrated, because the list of reasons to weep is so long that no single one of us will live long enough to even discover them all. A single 24 hour day is so inundated with the criminal acts of corporations and government, most of which are buried, that none of us could spend that much time reading the papers. And even if we did, it's all so much bullshit now that we would still walk away uninformed.
We will never again hear the sweet voice of Common Sense spring forth from the lips of reporter at a press conference saying, "What a crock Sir. Why don't you try again with the truth this time?", or "Could you be more specific?", and everyone's favorite, "What the hell are you talking about?"
Brothers and Sisters, our loss is great. It is profound. These things that we now lower into the earth are irreplaceable, and life is hardly worthwhile without them. We need them to lead us, and guide us, and keep us from devolving into spineless, bootlicking frightened sheep who live to obey any corrupt authority who demands it of us. We must watch them be replaced by the shameless worship of, and love for, the almighty dollar. We are much worsened for the loss of these beloved friends, the depth of our sorrow is too vast to express.
Perhaps one day we will cease our tears, and discard our 2 ply tissues in the face of a New Emotion. I sometimes think I hear it coming in the distance... it's the rumbling sound of rolling anger. Of boiling rage gushing forth from a stalwart decision which rings out from our windows and doorways all across the country, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" "We're going to kick their worthless asses to the moon and take back our property, and the Constitution! We will reinstate Justice, resuscitate Common Sense and all of her offspring and we will burn our cowardly piss soaked diapers. No more trembling, helplessness or fear of the threats from boogie men or from legitimate danger. We can handle it and we are finally PISSED OFF!"
On that day, closets everywhere will rustle with the sounds of hands digging furiously looking for our swords, our drums and our steel toe boots, and really old hats with big honkin' feathers in them. We will take to the streets like one great ocean of fury, and head toward Washington, turning left just in time to make DC by sunrise. Behind us will be a convoy of big rigs, buses, fire trucks, ambulances and taxi cabs, and not a sport utility vehicle will be seen. Tens of millions of pissed off people will walk right up to the White House, and tens of millions more will assemble outside the Congress, and We Shall Ring Their Doorbells!
We will not go away empty handed! Those who reside within those hallowed walls have appointments with fate; they are scheduled to eat industrial prison food for many long years.
We will scrape the walls of every government building until all of the scum is gone, then disinfect them to their very baseboards. All of the secrets will come out and all of the lies will be revealed to the people to prove once and for all that just because it's not in the Goddamned papers doesn't mean it didn't happen! For crissakes.
But until that day arrives we must bear this sorrow together, and promise not to forget that there can be another way. It is only at our fingertips, no further, and it always has been.
Can I get an Amen? Amen.
