Thoughts of Freedom, Ireland and Friday Stuckism

5 Sheares Street, Cork. €376 + 20% Tip 2023. Acrylic on loose canvas, 21 x 22"

(Yes I spent that much on food and drink. In return I will be able to re-digest the experience at any moment until my last day. Just like a painting on the wall. Well worth the memory and sensory return.)

We are winning the war on propaganda. The power centers cannot compete with a billion eyes watching, just fingers typing, and a super majority of lumpenproletariat, proles, and peasantry having plenty of time on their hands (and food secure) to read about U.S. horror reach, but not enough credit to consume the millionaire lies of its fake marketplace.

Rose and I just got back from a brief holiday in Dublin and Cork Ireland. I don’t like plane travel. It doesn’t make any sense. The absurdity of trust in systems completely unknown, the image of sardines in a winged tube, seven miles high, traveling at near supersonic sardine speed... It is unnerving because it is unnatural. I would prefer to sail across the ocean. Happily, that may be an affordable option some day soon, once the peasants regain the time that has been stolen from their blind faith in slave wage labor.

The United States government is outlaw. It is rogue. It is Jesse James and worse to its own citizens. We have no choice as wage earners to not pay the outlaw its duress tax because in 1943, tax withholding was made law by very bad men. Prior to this fateful year, Americans paid income taxes on trust. That meant if before 1943, you didn’t approve of U.S. soldiers sending home Japanese skulls to their sweethearts, then you could opt out of tax paying, and just see if the IRS could catch you! This one was sent from the Philippines in ’44 to a girlfriend in Phoenix and featured in Life Magazine, so too bad for the conscience to protest effectively that year.

I do not make enough money to pay the U.S. monster its extortion demand. But I would be destitute as an artist if Rose ceased to be my tax-paying partner. So, for a clean conscience I have no choice but to divorce my wife, work part time at minimum wage, and hope for a leak-free garret in the backyard of a sympathetic friend.

Ain’t gonna happen. If I’m a slave by proxy, then I’ll be one with a bedtime friend no matter what shame I must endure. Though I don’t think it will be necessary for long because happily, the United States government (as it exists at present) is in the beginning stages of its death throe. I might live to see it wasted. Like England, it will become an insignificant nation once again. Even with a percent of its subject’s wages funding an ever-expanding war universe, it cannot maintain for long the billions of dollars for weapons to Ukraine and Israel. Likewise it’s doing too much vicarious (and not so vicarious) killing on the world stage, which is always bad business. So its fake dollar is taking real blows to the gut. The empire is weak. No one is scared of Jesse James in a wheel chair.

My hope is that the United States is forced to reduce its military budget (presently 3% of GDP) to mirror that of Ireland’s (.3% of GDP). A defense that can defend, but never offend. Like it is doing now, aiding a regime with enormous military might (and nuclear weapons) to destroy a people it brutally occupies. Not a nation on earth is sympathetic to the United States military. I hope peoples outside the U.S. can understand that Americans are bereft of actionable morality because we are poor/rich slaves to masters of the false economy. Maybe Rose and I will be spared some of the figurative (maybe literal) bombs headed our way. We do have a conscience, even if its trapped in a hell of affluence.

Our Ireland vacation was dreamy. The people there own the government. Marches for Palestine took place all over the island. We ran into one in Cork while full of beef pie and beer. Justice in the blood. TDs who feel the agony of Gaza, and express their rage and anger publicly. Ireland can see Apartheid as plain as day. It is their history too. You can’t miss it, even on a visit to the bathroom in a train station named after just another martyr of the revolution.

Anyway, as United States wage slave by proxy I’d like to dream I could live among the Irish, or any humble GDP nation without a Military Industrial Guilt Complex. Dear Ireland, thank you for hosting a slightly worthy couple on a once in a lifetime trip.

We stayed in a tree house overlooking Cork. Ah, the replenishing joys of man’s desiring!

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Some housekeeping…

I would like to get through the winter sane and ready for another round of green on a bush. I need a routine to keep awake and alive. The writing, painting, cooking for two—all very good. The latter gets the necessary feedback every dinner at 5:00 p.m. The other two, (the writing and painting) can use more public interaction. For the writing, please tell a friend to subscribe to this page. I hope to keep thinking and sharing thoughts until the big sleep. It often hurts—especially the internal pain after publishing viewpoints that many disagree with. But please always know that I am not a fanatic. I want the village to teach me how to fit in without compromising the shape I am. Help me to find the trapezoid hole for my trapezoid head.

For the painting fix I turn to the virtues of Stuckism to keep me energized. In 2024, the movement turns 25. In celebratory spirit my door will open every Friday from 3 - 6 p.m. for a Ron Throop Stuckist mini-exhibition. I will hang the week’s work up on two walls of our dining room and set out some bread and beverages. Stop by to look. No purchase necessary, but there will be a table centerpiece tip box. When you’re ready to leave, I’ll ring a bell for a reminder to toss in a few bucks. Musicians welcome. A few guitars, harmonicas, and an upright piano will be available. But you can’t own the show. We must pay respects to my work first. After the first bourbon, you are free to express your present moment, until someone else arrives to see the paintings.

But you must leave by 6:00 p.m. My gig is only a pre-game.

Finally, a beautiful picture of Dublin from on high: