Mike Palecek, Editor, Announcing PENN Magazine (June 2018)

I wanna be like you-hoo-hoo, walk like you, talk like you.

Of course. That’s all anyone wants, right? Be like the others, match up, one of the gang.

Since kindergarten, Lincoln School, green table. To this very day. I want ten kids, lots of friends, a job that I’m great at, sunshine. Glory.

Anyway, just sayin’.
I’m not. I’ve failed, big-time.
But I’m enough of a prototype to deserve my fair share of guilt for being an American … and therefore stupid as hell.

I was something like 283 out of a class of 286, maybe 285.

Kenny Hoofenschlauser or whatever his name was, never came back after one Road To Damascus Weekend when he discovered the joys and rewards, albeit heartaches I’m sure, of a career in gopher trapping, but they kept him on the list to keep our numbers up there, and so I reaped the glory.
It takes one to know one.
I know, right..

But really, actually, seriously how dumb are we, collectively? I think that’s a fair relavent, pertinent question, because ….

Well, I’ve seen us in action and it looks like we’re pretty dumb.
We watch how we are bombing people to bits on TV as it is happening.

We go to work every day even though our government is bombing someone. We don’t say anything. We’re scared. That’s pretty obvious.
And stupid.
Yellow ribbons. Walmart. Taxes, the draft.  And 9/11 and all these after, see, that’s the thing right there.

Woah, just dumber than a bucket a hair.

You really can’t talk to anyone. Not unless you talk about snow or football, food, yeah, cars, that’s something people talk about.

But if you are going to talk about stuff like you think the world will end today because we are going to nuclear bomb somebody — today — because we think nineteen guys with box knives and hummus farts defeated the United States Air Force, Marines, Navy and the Paducah Sheriff’s Office … well, you can’t say that and still come back to work tomorrow because these people have T-shirts at home that say just that very thing.

So you don’t.

It’s that whole darn Matrix thing is what I think:

You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes.

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
The Matrix is a system.
That system is our enemy.

But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see?
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters.

 The very minds of the people we are trying to save.

 But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy.
You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.

And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

The American Dream.
It’s time to wake up.
You are not sleeping – it is daytime – you look out your window — robins, squirrels, wiener dog poop — fair to partly cloudy — it’s all a fairy tale.

You are inside a children’s book, with dragons and monsters and evil kings and queens.

You are a character inside someone else’s made-up book.
How did we come to this, my neighbor?
We have fake history, boys and girls.
Yes we do.
Our junior high and high school history books should be in italics — handed out by the teacher on the first day with a wink – Remember the Maine – Pearl Harbor – Gulf of Tonkin – Waco – Oklahoma City bombing – moon landings – stolen elections, Osama bin Laden buried at sea.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance — somebody said that.

We have not been vigilant, we have been watching TV.

We think the country runs on cruise control, the heavy lifting having been done earlier in the morning by those who gave us the eight-hour day, the minimum wage, ended war.

They suffered, they struggled, they died, that we might be free.

That is where our thanks should go and where our examples lie — not in the military.

The poor are ridiculed, persecuted, hunted down in America.

The chase sounded by barking pigs on the radio. Yes, it is.

Most Americans are ignorant of their own history.

Yes. We are.

Penn Magazine is named in honor of Penn Jones Jr., one of the first honest researchers into the John Kennedy murder by the U.S. deep state, which was the opening big event, leading to the murders of Martin King and Robert Kennedy, Oklahoma City, 9/11, Sandy Hook, Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, etc.