NEW column location

Just FYI, one of the changes I'll be making starting next week will be moving the Brutally Honest column to a whole new location!

I was originally debating about moving just my archives over to another server, because the big problem I've been having to deal with has been available size. My columns are relatively small in size as opposed to, say, pictures (like my new pictures done by Cynthia Kaye for ShockNet Radio). But I've been writing columns for ELEVEN YEARS now, going into year TWELVE this April 1st, and over the long haul, that amounts to about 10MB in size! Unfortunately just about every ISP I work with, be it AOL, Mindspring, or BellSouth/AT&T, will only give me 10mb to work with without having to shell out some serious cash for additional server space. I can shuffle them to various servers, but I will eventually encounter the same problem over and over and over again, plus remember which account has what part of the archive and where it is located.

So instead of shuffling everything around, I'm going to keep them all on ONE server that I know can handle that many posts.

So here it is guys... the new location for the Brutally Honest weekly column:

http://brutallyhonestcolumn.blogspot.com/

I've got a simple post up there right now with a date of 4/1/96... which seems a bit odd, but I did that so I can make sure that I can put up the original posts from 1996 on up and keep them all in chronological order.

So stay tuned... next week that site WILL get a whole lot larger!

The BIG News

Happy New Year everyone!

Okay, so you’re probably a little tired of me talking about “THE BIG NEWS”, right? Hinting at it, telling you to listen to a certain online radio station to catch it, blah-blah-blah…

Well, here it is:

Brutally Honest is moving to ShockNet Radio!

That’s the announcement! Brutally Honest, the online audio commentary show, is RETURNING to online radio!

The new show starts on January 19^th over at ShockNetRadio.com and will air every Saturday night at 7pm Eastern time. Right now it will only be on for a half an hour, but, just like I did before, I will eventually get things going to where I’ll be up to a full hour.

I’ve got quite a lot of ideas bouncing through my head about what I’ll be doing for the show and trying to find ways to make them happen once I get started with everything. “Government Out of Control” will be back, only now with a trial format, and you the listeners will be the jury in our unique “Kangaroo Court of Public Opinion”. There will be more on that in the weeks to come. I’m also looking into having the occasional guests pop in to give their unique perspectives of things. Some of you who used to listen to the original Talk Liberty broadcasts can recall when I interviewed writers and government officials and entertainers, and hopefully I’ll be able to bring that into the new show.

Now, this is a GREAT time for me to bring the show back to online radio, and especially to ShockNet Radio, because this is a station that is on almost 24-7 (there are some times when the producers take it down for regular maintenance). So when there’s nothing scheduled for that time period there’s rock music from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, some 90’s, and even one or two from the Y2K’s. This isn’t just some modest operation; RJ Evans and his wife literally built a full-blown broadcasting studio in their home, and they have pictures of the whole thing up on the ShockNet website.

Plus, RJ has been trying to get the BIG players of digital satellite radio to pick up ShockNet for a while now. Once that happens, then we’re talking some SERIOUS credibility, because standard terrestrial radio as it is right now has become SO diluted by corporations and FuCCu Regulations that it is really nothing more than just empty filler between the commercial segments. Digital satellite radio isn’t really the future, but it is the precursor to REAL Internet-everywhere radio.

Oh, and speaking of FuCCu Regulations… in the previous incarnation of my show I held back from saying certain words. Back then it didn’t feel right. That was then and this is now. So YES, you WILL be hearing the occasional F-bomb and BS and MF’er from me. I won’t be firing them off like Eddie Murphy did back when he was really funny, but I won’t be restraining myself either when the situation calls for it, or in trying to be inventive about using such words (i.e. fuster-cluck).

And now a few nuggets of bad news.

First, this won’t be a LIVE show. You’ll notice that the show is called “Brutally Honest on ShockNet” and not “Brutally Honest – LIVE (version 2)”. As much as I would LOVE to do live streaming audio, it’s just not possible with the setup we have over at ShockNet Radio unless I were to actually FLY out to Oklahoma and broadcast from the ShockNet Studios. So the stuff that I’ll be doing will be pre-recorded during the week and then will air that Saturday.

Second, I’m sorry, but there won’t be any transcripts to this new show. I know some of the Brutally Honest supporters have really enjoyed the fact that they can read (or skim through) the transcripts at their leisure, but I can’t afford to do that anymore. You guys HAVE to hear ShockNet Radio to catch my show! I put a lot of work into doing these programs, from the opening message all the way to the “end of recording” clip, and it’s really not fair to me or to RJ to waste all that time and effort and then have people skip the shows and just read the transcripts.

Third, having said that, I’m somewhat hesitant to put the audio archive of the show up in a podcast, but I’m still going to do that. The details on that part of the deal will be posted later on. They won’t be in Real Audio format anymore, though. It’s a neat program, but MP3 format is the coin of trade in podcasting, so that’s the format I’ll be using from now on. Also, the archives will be a week behind, because I really DO want you guys to listen to ShockNet Radio first and foremost.

The Brutally Honest blog site will still play an important role for my show, because this is where you’ll get to send in your feedback on the things I talk about. Every week I’ll post the subjects I talk about on the show in the blog site for you to give your views on. When I do the “Government Out of Control” series, the blog site will be the jury room where you the listeners can decide whether or not those in government are guilty, and then the results will be announced and posted later on.

Oh, and I’ll STILL be doing the weekly column. That hasn’t changed, although I think I found a good home for the archives, so those will be moved over soon. And I’ll still be doing the News Pundit Report segment for the American Heathen show as well. There’s quite a bit of stuff on my plate for 2008, but then again that’s been about par for me anyway.

The Brutally Honest website will be up with all-new material on January 13^th. “Brutally Honest on ShockNet Radio” will debut on January 19^th. And if you haven’t been listening to ShockNet Radio of late, here’s a little something I whipped up that has been airing for a couple of weeks now.

[Brutally Honest Teaser Promo]
(MP3 format - click on link to listen)

Welcome to 2008!

One more quickie thought for 2007

I got one more quickie thought for 07...

Why the hell does the Mainstream Media (dreaded MSM) think that post-Christmas sales are so frigging HOT? Seriously! Why?

Did any of them even BOTHER to do any kind of post-Christmas shopping? Every time I do, the stores don't have anything that I want! All I find are the useless stuff that nobody wants to buy that the stores are desperate to get rid of.

Look, if you want me to shop after Christmas for anything other than food, then GIVE ME STUFF I'M WILLING TO BUY!

How hard is that, huh?

One more thing... for those of you who missed out on "THE BIG NEWS" these past two weeks, I'll be letting everyone know on 1/1 here on this blog site. So be patient, have another drink, and enjoy the end of 2007.

Just some really quick thoughts...

News reports are saying that Atlanta should breath a sigh of relief because all of the rain we're getting means we're not suffering the "worst drought EVER".

As if the water problem would be going away! Guess what jerkoffs: the water's STILL getting bled from Lake Lanier! We STILL have a SERIOUS water issue on our hands! That didn't go away just because we got a couple of inches of rain! We need to get this kind of rain for a month straight before we can consider ourselves out of the woods.

Just wondering here... if bloggers are TRULY in support of the writer's strike in Hollywood, why are they still blogging? Seriously. Why? If you really want to show your support for the striking writers all you have to do is stop blogging. If anyone asks just tell them you're showing your support. It's sort of like the fraudulent "gas-out" campaigns. You say you're pissed about the price of gasoline but you'll still keep driving. That's not support. That's hypocrisy.

Speaking of the writer's strike... have you noticed the TIMING of it all? The writer's strike is happening during the dreaded "long hiatus", when shows normally take a break from everything from November to February. It's like when the players unions for professional sports go on strike at the END of the season, AFTER the players make the bulk of their money.

Oh, one more thing on this... I will say that the Writer's Strike will probably be doing me a lot of good... because now I get to watch more movies on DVD and play City of Heroes! Plus it gives my video recorders a break for a while!

The Truth Behind the Humbug

The Truth Behind the Humbug
- a holiday special by David Matthews 2

I recently posted a little sign in front of my cubicle at my bill-paying job that simply said:

bah humbug...

That’s it. Amidst all of the decorations in my workspace, most of which were put up by other people, I had that simple sign on white paper and black ink.

bah humbug...

And depending on what kind of day people were having, they either agreed with me, or else they were upset that I DARED to post that sign amidst their half-assed and crudely-made snow people down the cubicle corridors and their crude cubicle decorations. Very few people really asked me if I was serious about the sentiment. (I wasn’t, as I had my own decorations and miniature tree in the cubicle.) They were either agreeing with the statement or else they were pissed off about it.

So I have to wonder… do folks REALLY know what is behind that infamous statement?

I don’t think they do.

Okay, first off, NOBODY ever says “Bah humbug” in the Charles Dickens classic story “A Christmas Carol”! It’s either dismissive “Bah!” or else it’s “Humbug!” or it’s the two standalone exclamations one after the next, but they’re never seen together in the same sentence.

Second, does anyone know what “humbug” means? Humbug is an old archaic word for “hoax” or “joke”. In East-India, it means “to deceive” or “to cheat”. In Australia, it means “to pester or to annoy”.

P.T. Barnum considered himself to be the master of “humbug”, providing elaborate displays of fakery which would leave the audience wanting more. No doubt the same can be said about the alphabet soup media today.

So which definition of “humbug” would apply to Ebenezer Scrooge’s view of Christmas? A hoax or joke? If so, it would be the biggest in the world.

More likely, though, it would be either as a deception or else an annoyance.

That brings us to Scrooge himself. Why would someone be so bitter about the season? Nobody really asks that question. It’s just considered a crime against society for someone like him to be bitter and uncharitable.

Some people would go so far as to say that it was GREED that made Scrooge the man that he was. Yes he was miserly in nature, but this was actually a common trait for those who spent some time with next to nothing. To say that a love of money made him bitter and cruel would be to speak from sheer ignorance not only of the man but also of the story.

So let’s look at Scrooge’s life again. And I mean REALLY look at his life!

This is a man who spent his early years bitter and alone! He was banished by his father to a boarding school for the simple crime of being born! He had no mother, as she died giving birth to him, and the only person who ever really cared about him was his older sister Fan. SHE was the one that kept hope alive - and no doubt gave a few nudges here and there - that their father would change his mind and let him come home. He gets to spend ONE Christmas time at home, and then it’s off to Fezziwig’s for the apprenticeship.

Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of apprenticeship, it’s not like the internships of today. And it certainly is NOT like the kind of apprenticeship that you see in Donald Trump’s reality TV series where that person gets to work on a super-special multi-billion dollar project and then go on tours talking about how GREAT Trump is and what his TV series is like. Apprentices didn’t just learn there, they actually LIVED there as well! And we’re not talking posh living quarters. Usually it was space in a storeroom or basement. If they were lucky, they could rent a room nearby.

In other words, there really WAS NO HOME for Scrooge to go to when he was growing up! He essentially had no kind of parenting. He had books as a child and business as a teenager. While everyone else would be able to go home for Christmas, he had to stay in the boarding school by himself. It was only during his apprenticeship that he ever really acquired some modicum of appreciation of the season.

According to the story, Ebenezer Scrooge only had ONE girlfriend in his life. Just ONE! A woman that he desperately wanted to marry, but only as long as he can make sure they would be financially secure, which was a social necessity in those days. And she forces him to choose between her and business, which was the ONLY THING that he ever knew in his entire life! And when does she force him to make this choice? ON CHRISTMAS!

Oh, it gets better… his lovely older sister dies on Christmas, and later on so does his only friend and business partner Jacob Marley.

Okay, so let’s sum it up here… this is a person that has had plenty of bad experiences connected to Christmas. He lost his one girlfriend, he lost the only family member who ever cared for him, and he lost his best friend in the whole world, and all on CHRISTMAS.

And you actually expect this man to be merry and charitable for the season? You should be lucky that he didn’t turn out to be another Jack the Ripper or Sweeny Todd.

This is a man who was the embodiment of the Industrial Revolution, and of the Industrial Society itself, which was what Dickens was truly condemning in the story. Scrooge was MADE for this society: cold, calculated, and mercenary to the core. Indeed, he was essentially GROOMED for it.

But what Scrooge considered to be “humbug”… or fake… was NOT Christmas. Rather, what he saw as a hoax or a fake were the acts of charity and humanity of the season! He saw Christmas as being nothing more than pretentiousness. THAT was what he was really condemning! The poor and the despondent had services to turn to in the forms of workhouses, debtor’s prisons, and orphanages. That was how society handled things at the time, and that’s what Scrooge praised. He just couldn’t understand how for most of the year this would be the rule and then at Christmas somehow there should be an exception to it.

He saw the gathering of his nephew’s friends as pretentious friends, because that was how he remembered holiday celebrations to be. He had a dispassionate view of his employee’s plight at this time of the year because HE was raised that way. In fact I would dare say that he was probably even jealous of Bob Cratchit, because the man HAD a family and people who loved him regardless of how little money they had.

And yet, he also discovers that there is even a modicum of love for HIM after all that he says and does at this time of the year. That’s why he asked the Ghost of Christmas Present to let them linger a while longer at his nephew’s party. It’s the realization that he still matters to people! He is shown acts of charity and kindness from even those who have nothing else left to give. It’s not all pretentiousness like he dismissed it all as.

And finally, what turns his life around? It’s not death, a fact that even he has to make obvious, but rather it is that for all that he has done for business, that he would die UNLOVED. What little care and concern for him by those he knew was gone by the time of his death. Those in business, whom he considered to be his friends, and the only real things that he grew up with that seemed to matter to him, would ignore his passing and only attend his funeral if it was catered. They would leave his estate open to whomever would pillage it, and he would be missed by nobody. THAT was what he truly feared. He is given an opportunity to change this fate for himself and for others if he simply embraces what little kindness he is given today and repays it in kind.

“Humbug”, my friends, is not for the season, but for the sentiment.

We face a season full of annoyances and fakery. The stress related to holiday travel is a humbug. So are the obsessive demands of the stores for us to shop at all costs and spend money like there is no tomorrow. That too is a humbug. And, most certainly, the people who ask us to be happy and merry and charitable when we cannot truly feel it at this time… people like Bill O’Reilly and the rest of the mercenary jackals at Fox News and all of the other people who INSIST, if not DEMAND, that you say MERRY CHRISTMAS at this time of the year and encourage others to literally SHOVE the holiday spirit down our collective gullets. THEY are humbugs in pretty much every definition of the word!

That’s not to say that there isn’t some genuine holiday spirit out there, but more often than not, it is drowned out by our personal demands to make the season memorable each and every year. Some people can decorate their entire property with enough holiday lights to be mistaken for Las Vegas. Some people can decorate every room and every workplace with the sights, sounds, and smells of the season. They can be IN the spirit. Others, though, cannot; and it is wrong for us to insist that they do, or to even pretend that they do. That, my friends, is the real humbug.

So the next time you see or hear the words “bah humbug”, understand the significance of the saying. It’s not the season that is being rejected with the saying, but rather the pretentiousness associated to it.

Nice parenting there!

Hey, just a quick thought about the social train wreck known as the Spears family.

First we have Britney, who seems to make one questionable or bad mistake after the next. She has quickie marriages, she has bad marriages, she pops out a couple of tax deductions, then she ditches her bad marriage, parties it up, gives us a half-assed comeback, and loses her kids in the process.

Now there's her baby sister, Jaime Lynn. You know... the GOOD Spears. The good, wholesome, sweet and innocent Spears. Some might even say that she was the anti-Britney.

Operative word here being "WAS". She's now pregnant at age 16.

Oops!

What do they have in common? They were both groomed for fame by their mother. You know, the one who was supposed to have a book coming out talking about good parenting.

Oops again!

Okay, first of all, I have an issue with ANY PARENT that intentionally grooms their child for stardom, much less try to create some kind of cult-like following based on their children. And that is what Mama Spears did with her daughters. And it was even more so with Britney! Remember the magazine and the doll collection?

It's one thing to be devoted to your child and encourage them to be the best they can be. Look at Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. But it's another thing when Mommy and/or Daddy decide to pick up the second hat of manager or agent. That's when the parent STOPS being a parent and instead becomes a pimp.

It's a harsh word to hear, I know, but that is essentially what many of these so-called parents have become! They have become PIMPS!

Look at the E! Channel series "Keeping Up With the Kardashians". You have "Mama K" managing her older daughters (including, of course, celebutant Kim) and having them get into trouble and then trying to keep the bad news away from step-dad Bruce Jenner, AKA "BRUCE". It seems like there is just one train wreck after another in that family, and most of it has to do with keeping things away from "BRUCE", who is supposed to be the parent of the family since "Mama K" is busy being the manager of Kim's celebutant career.

And they talk about learning LESSONS here? Hey, here's a really good lesson that somehow got lost in the mix: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be CELEBUTANTS! (Apologies to Willie Nelson.)

And it's not like it is a new thing anyway. I mean, come on guys, do you REALLY think that Michael Jackson was the product of GOOD PARENTING? Seriously!

The short of it is this: children NEED parents! And they need parents to actually BE PARENTS! They don't need parents to be managers or agents or spokespeople to their budding financial empire. And it doesn't matter if that stardom is one of TV and movies, modeling, beauty pageants, music, or sports. Being a business manager and being a parent are two separate activities that simply are not good when put together.

And by the way, the same thing applies to spouses, but at least with that you're screwing up an ADULT life, not the lives of CHILDREN!

Mama Spears needs to shelve that book deal, give back whatever advance she was given for it, and actually be a MOTHER to her daughters and let someone else be the manager and/or agent and/or merchandising genius. If she wants to know why Britney isn't supposedly speaking with her and why Jamie Lynn got knocked up, all she has to do is look back at how they were brought up, and figure out WHO was supposed to be responsible for that part! And she better have some tissues ready, because it's going to be a Made-For-Lifetime Moment when she figures it out!

Did you catch the big news?

I don't think too many of you did. Don't worry, there will be another opportunity for you to get it this coming Friday. I'll be working on something VERY special for my News Pundit Report segment over at ShockNetRadio.com, so tune in, or else you'll miss it!

(Sorry guys, but I'm NOT going to make it easy on you anytime soon! You HAVE to listen!)

For your holiday pleasure...

The BIG ANNOUNCEMENT will be made this Friday!

Just wanted to let you know that I'll be making my BIG ANNOUNCEMENT during the News Pundit Report on Friday, December 21st.

What you need to do is go to ShockNet Radio and tune in to the "American Heathen®" program on Friday Night. I'll be doing my weekly "News Pundit Report" segment at 9:15pm EST and I'll make the announcement then.

This is the big one guys, the one that I've been hinting at for a while now.

Brutally Honest Rant - 12/12/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Final Rant for 2007 and Final Unacceptable Truth
Audio Transcripts
12/12/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

And welcome to the LAST Brutally Honest Rant of 2007. It’s hard to believe that we’ve made it through another whole year. Most of the time it seems like it takes forever to get to this point, and then suddenly we’re here. That’s just how it all works out sometimes.

Anyway, this is it until January, and while I was prepared to make this HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT about next year… unfortunately I can’t right now. We had a few things pop up, not to mention a huge winter storm that really hosed things for a certain part of the country.

BUT here’s what I’m going to do. While the Brutally Honest Command Center will be down for the holiday season, I’ll still be doing my regular segments over at ShockNetRadio.com every Friday Night. So what you guys need to do is you tune in every Friday Night at 9:15pm Eastern Time for the News Pundit Report and once we get the details finalized, I’ll make the announcement then. And of course I’ll post it on the blog site, but I think you’d rather want to HEAR it instead of reading it.

NOW… I’m going to try to get a few last words in on a variety of subjects, so bear with me on this.

First, by the time the Brutally Honest Command Center is back up and running in January 2008, we will already be in the middle of the REAL Presidential Election season. Everything up until the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary has been nothing but theoretical HORSECRAP.

I mean it! Everything that has been going on in 2007 regarding each and EVERY single one of the wannabes has been pretty much no different that a political version of a FANTASY LEAGUE. All of these polls? That and a buck and some change will get you a cup of coffee. It’s only really good for bragging rights, and even that is still nothing more than mindless theoretical crap.

But once the caucuses and primaries start up, THAT is when the REAL game-playing begins!

I want to bring up a few names of people who were supposed to be these populist system-changing mavericks in their days: Howard Dean, Pat Buchannan, John McCain… in their time they were supposed to be these hell-raisers that were going to shake things up in the election! That’s what the hype was at first. And it was even more so for Howard Dean because that was really when the Internet took off as a campaign tool! What happened? They each fizzled after the first caucuses and primaries.

You know why? Because all of the people who claimed that they WANTED to vote for the mavericks COWERED OUT! They either didn’t vote, or they threw their vote away and voted for the “SAFE” candidate… the one that they believed that their party needed to win in the November election.

Listen, people, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE! This is pretty much one of the FEW CHANCES that you will EVER GET to actually vote for the kind of candidate that YOU WANT in that party! The kind of candidate that stands up for what YOU believe in.

You know, I once believed that you couldn’t really throw your vote away, but I was wrong! YOU CAN throw your vote away if you betray yourself and you betray what you believe in! And that is what a lot of voters do! THEY THROW THEIR VOTES AWAY by choosing the “SAFE” candidate. Or else they don’t vote, thinking that their vote would be wasted anyway.

And I’m going to tell you this right now, and this comes from YEARS of watching the political system at work, the two “SAFE” candidates right now are Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham-Clinton! THOSE are the people that the party bosses and their friends in the special interest groups want on the November ticket! Those are the people that are getting endless press time, but for much different reasons. FoxNews wants Hillary to be the Democratic candidate and CNN wants Rudy to be the GOP Candidate. And if you think about it, it all makes perfect sense why they’re doing it that way.

Now, if you don’t like it… if you don’t think that either of them reflect what you believe in, then these primaries and caucuses are really your ONLY CHANCE within the party to let them know it! If you don’t take part now and vote according to YOUR beliefs and according to YOUR ideas, then you really have no excuse when the November elections come.

Think about that… but think too long about it, because the primaries and caucuses have been bumped up so early on in the year that they’ll be on you before you know it!

Okay… next…

There have been several shootings not only this past year but also right now, almost back-to-back. And while the media – especially the cable news media, because they have nothing better to do – sift through every single bit of minutia and pretend to offer some kind of explanation as to whey these guy flipped out and went on their homicide-suicide sprees, there’s something that you need to keep in mind: these things DID NOT simply happen in a vacuum.

Neither the 19-year old who opened fire in a mall nor the 24-year old who murdered four people at a missionary dorm and a megachurch decided out of the blue to throw their lives away like that. They planned and orchestrated their attacks because something PRODDED them to! Something in their lives snapped, and just like the people who used to “go postal” in the 1980’s, they felt that the system screwed them over, so they struck back. This is going to sound crazy to most of you… but in their minds, they saw this as a form of revenge, or even – in some twisted manner – self-defense.

The 19-year old who opened fire in a crowded shopping mall had a messed-up life. He was living in a room in someone else’s home, brought in like a stray puppy. He lost his job AND he lost his girlfriend all in just the span of a week. Not exactly the kind of warm and fuzzy view of adult life that you see on MTV, is it? And the weapon he used? He didn’t BUY it like the anti-gun people would try to spin it to be. Nobody would GIVE him a weapon like that. HE HAD TO STEAL IT! He stole it from his stepfather; from the home that he was kicked out of.

And the 24-year old? Here’s someone who spent his life in a strict religious family, being brought up all of his life to believe that his religion is the only thing that matters in this screwed-up world. He tried to play by the rules. He tried to follow what he was told his life was supposed to be about and he gets SCREWED OVER. He sees hypocrisy and self-righteousness and outright FRAUD dressed up as FAITH, and THAT gets promoted. THAT gets advanced. THAT brings in the money and the fame. Ted Haggard gets forgiven for his hypocrisy. His own brother attends Oral Roberts University, which is right now weathering charges of corruption, abuse of university resources, and allegations of fooling around with underage boys.

And here was this shooter, supposedly following “the rules”, and what happens? He gets kicked out of the missionary – his supposed end-all-be-all in life – because he apparently didn’t fit the mold of the “perfect people”. The ones he saw that were hypocrites. He was bitter, and that was even before he turned his anger into something worse.

Now I’m not EXCUSING their actions, folks, nor am I condoning them. I’m just pointing it out so you can understand it all.

This is something that the air-fluffed ego-driven media will refuse to do. This is something that the political and religious leaders don’t want you to dwell about, because it takes the power of these tragedies away from them. Even now the bible-thumpers are using this latest tragedy as their literal smoking gun to claim that they are supposedly being “PERSECUTED”. Trust me, I could spend two whole hours talking about that subject alone... and, you know, I may just do that in 2008.

Anyway, the point is this. These things are happening because too many people and too many institutions are letting us down. In short, there’s something Rotten in Denmark, and it’s going to continue to stink up the place until something substantive is done to fix it.

Okay… now… the last point I want to make tonight…

All this year I was giving you a series of “Unacceptable Truths”. Things that are painfully true, but we the people, in general, simply REFUSE to recognize it as such. For instance, what I just talked about just a moment ago was one of those “Unacceptable Truths”. Saturation by the media is not the same as information. These tragedies simply don’t happen out of the blue, and that they are all a symptom of a much LARGER problem that we refuse to deal with. There are plenty of these “Unacceptable Truths” that I’ve been bringing out this year. Some deal with politics, others with taxes, and still more with religion and the media.

But through it all, there was one that I was DYING to get out. One that I was DYING to bring up and expose and really talk about… but I wanted it to count. And what better time than now… at the VERY LAST audio rant for 2007… to wrap up this whole series called “Unacceptable Truths” to bring you the final, and probably biggest, unacceptable truth.

So here it is folks:

FREEDOM is an INDIVIDUAL CONCEPT!

Let’s get brutally honest here folks… you CANNOT tell a whole group of people that they are free without being able to tell that to each and every individual in that group. You can’t give freedom to a whole group of people without giving that freedom to each individual in it!

Think about the whole thing with slavery. We fight a bloody Civil War over it… and for a few other issues of course… but it’s over and the slaves as a group were free. Or… at least they were on paper. As a GROUP, they were supposedly free, but not on an INDIVIDUAL basis. As individuals, they were still subject to blatant restrictions and discrimination. Segmented and pushed aside and zoned away into little out-of-the-way districts. Oh you can work, provided it’s the same kind of work that you would have been doing beforehand. Advancement? Well that’s only for so far. Education? You’ll take what we give you and you’ll like it. As a GROUP, African-Americans were free. But as individuals, they sure as hell weren’t. And it would take almost an entire CENTURY after the Civil War before people began to realize that difference and fight to make significant changes to that effect.

This is where the civil rights struggle fails. It starts off where it needs to be… on an INDIVIDUAL basis. A woman arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus. A man refused service because he showed up in “the wrong” diner. A child wanting to attend a school closer to where she lived. INDIVIDUAL rights. INDIVIDUAL freedoms. But once the argument goes into any kind of GROUP discussion, that’s when they start losing it.

Race, gender, sexual orientation, age… as long as the argument is on an INDIVIDUAL level, then you have strength. But as soon as you turn it into a GROUP thing, then all discussion of rights goes down the toilet. Now you’re not fighting for freedom. You’re fighting for POWER… and usually for yourself, not for others.

Freedom of religion. The SECOND freedom specifically mentioned in the First Amendment (the first being the prohibition of Congress from passing any kind of law RESPECITNG the establishment of religion). What people don’t realize is that freedom of religion is NOT about the freedom of churches or about the freedom of religious institutions, but rather it is about the freedom of INDIVIDUALS to believe how they wish. It’s the freedom of INDIVIDUALS to decide if they want to follow Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, or to follow their own beliefs, whether those are based on any of those religions, or none at all. It is an INDIVIDUAL concept!

Freedom of speech – to say what you want. The freedom of the press – to print what you want. The freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures. The prohibition against forced self-incrimination. The freedom of association – to hang around with whomever you wish. These are all INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS!

So now the $64,000 question is this: why is it an UNACCEPTABLE TRUTH? After all, this is what our country’s founding fathers WANTED for us, isn’t it? Freedom?

And the answer to that is simple: the reason why we REFUSE to accept the fact that freedom is an INDIVIDUAL concept is because we have been thoroughly surrounded in and indoctrinated into a groupthink mentality! We have been taught to believe – without question – that the GROUP is more important than the individual.

We have been conditioned like Pavlovian DOGS to accept that “family values” and “public decency” trump the freedom of speech. That is what they used to impose dictatorial censorship rules on radio and television and even the movies. The “Legion of Decency”, the Comstock Acts, the Meese Commission… and now of course the FCC, all of which telling us all that the freedom of speech is IRRELEVANT compared to the DEMANDS of the GROUP!

We have been BRAINWASHED to accept that the DOMINANT religion gets to decide what laws get enacted and enforced. That’s why they have been running around telling you that the Separation of Church and State NEVER EXISTED, even though the language is CLEARLY THERE if you bother to actually READ EVERY SINGLE WORD in the First Amendment and not read the neo-con Cliff Notes. And when their own hypocrisy in these matters are exposed, not only are there actually NO CHARGES filed for violating the very laws they champion, but they categorically REFUSE to get rid of the laws they weasel out of, claiming that society NEEDS those laws or else we will all degrade into anarchy.

We have been PROGRAMMED to accept that some communal sense of “property values” override our freedom of association. Zoning laws and so-called “Covenant neighborhoods” dictate to us what can go on in our homes. Eminent Domain is invoked anytime some developer lusts for property, telling you that YOUR property is subject to forfeiture at any time for some mythical “collective gain”. You can lose your property at any time even on the mere SUSPICION that it was involved in some political “war on” hoax such as the fraudulent “War on Drugs” or “War on DUI” or “War on Sex”. And once gone, you can’t get it back, because it gets auctioned off “for the good of society”.

We are DELUGED with groupthink from the moment we are born until the moment we die. We are taught to see ourselves NOT as individuals, but as part of the greater collective whole.

And where does that lead us? To people who can’t think for themselves. To people who have to EMERSE themselves into whatever collectivist program they are a part of just so they can feel like they actually MATTER. To people who will wait in line for a day-and-a-half just so they can be the first one in the store on the day after Thanksgiving so they can buy that so-called “IT” present. To people who actually cannot tell you the difference between DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM. To people who believe that their end-all-be-all purpose in this world is to be a breeding machine and bring into this world as many babies as possible. To people who will sacrifice honor, integrity, morals, even their very SOULS just to sustain the group when it has done wrong. To people who think that supporting a sports team is more important than getting an education. And it leads to people who end up being so marginalized, so shunned from the rest of the groupthink, that they convince themselves that the only way that they can actually matter in this world is to do something so shocking, so reprehensible, and so unforgivable that they will be damned in the history books, and that their actions would be used as the justification for even MORE groupthink!

I wasn’t kidding when I said that this was the BIGGEST unacceptable truth there is! This pretty much encompasses a whole bunch of social ills. And ALL of them can be resolved in a matter of time if we simply accept this truth and recognize that we CANNOT claim to support freedom if we first do not support the INDIVIDUAL.

John Stewart Mill said it best when he said that “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.” But perhaps it was a World War II correspondent and 1930’s writer named John Dos Passos that pretty much summed up this unacceptable truth quite well. He said that “Individuality is freedom lived”.

Now if we were to use that as an indication of the amount of freedom we enjoy in the United States, then it’s safe to say that we would ALL be in some serious trouble.

(Computer – some final fun stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Well my friends that does it for 2007. I would like to thank each and every person who has sounded off over on the Brutally Honest blog page, either in support or criticism of the things I’ve said this past year. Also thank you to everyone on the Brutally Honest transcript list. Unfortunately, because of the various things I have in store for 2008, I won’t be able to continue doing transcripts, so thank you for those of you who have been on the list for all this time. I know some of you have been there since I was doing online radio, and trust me when I say that you’ll really like what I have in store for next year.

For everyone else, thank you for an interesting year! Thank you for listening or for reading my rants, and I hope you will come back next year!

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, have a GREAT HOLIDAY SEASON and I’ll see everyone in 2008!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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