The Beautiful Ramblings of 1 Mathmatican from Greece

I go on chat roulette sometimes.

I don’t go on to chat with people, I go on to paint. Back to the camera, I create on my canvas for whoever wants to watch.

This is a real conversation (and I use the term loosely) from a chat roulette with a very interesting young man in Greece.

 

Connected to somebody.
Partner (Muted): hi
Partner (Muted): HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY
Partner (Muted): I CAN FUCKING SAY ANYTHING
Partner (Muted): you are just going to be drawing your shit
Partner (Muted): and i am gonna talk
Partner (Muted): woooooohooooooo
Partner (Muted): I can even do a strip show for you
Partner (Muted): and you will not get to see anything
Partner (Muted): hahaha
Partner (Muted): ok lets see what the fuck you are making there
Partner (Muted): all i see is a white paper
Partner (Muted): wtf
Partner (Muted): still
AmArA: I am working on satin…it is too reflective!!!
Partner (Muted): oh i think i see a girl
Partner (Muted): but not sure
Partner (Muted): yes you are lauging at me now
Partner (Muted): ok i am too bored
Partner (Muted): go on
Partner (Muted): okwhere the fuck was she
Partner (Muted): you are not a painter you are a magician
AmArA: Lol!
AmArA: Ta-da!
Partner (Muted): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-8eYMjEVM
Partner (Muted): and you dont want to hear it but i will tell it to you
Partner (Muted): its the story of a poor little boy from greece
Partner (Muted): who is sitting watching you painting that girl all this time
Partner (Muted): because he is soooooo bored and he cant sleep
Partner (Muted): its 2.42 am and in the morning i have lessons in the university
Partner (Muted): i study math
Partner (Muted): its good
Partner (Muted): but i was made to be a musician
Partner (Muted): but you know the shit came to me
Partner (Muted): since the day i was born
AmArA: I know what you mean…I was made to be a painter
Partner (Muted): i am in greece and there are no chances here
AmArA: We live in the digital age..
Partner (Muted): yes but you are a pretty succesfull one i guess
AmArA: Chances for everyone
AmArA: Money for noone
Partner (Muted): its full of shit
Partner (Muted): i just play for my people and they cry
Partner (Muted): its fine but not enough you know
AmArA: I do
AmArA: Everyone exclaims over my work…but that doesn’t keep me eating
AmArA: I would rather be a poor artist then a rich cubicle worker though!
Partner (Muted): hmmm thats what i am becoming
Partner (Muted): a mathematician who will not even be rich
Partner (Muted): just have the money to live
Partner (Muted): paint dont pay attention to me
AmArA: History will remember you
AmArA: ok
AmArA: keep writing…I will read it later
Partner (Muted): ok
Partner (Muted): so I am stuck in this life
Partner (Muted): with my parents paying the air I breathe until I finish my university and then what??
Partner (Muted): but you know it feels good to do math
Partner (Muted): it makes you get how meaningless everything is
Partner (Muted): if my life is meaningless now it would be the same meaningless if I was a famous singer that sniffs cocaine before he’s show in wembley
Partner (Muted): we are all gonna dia after all
Partner (Muted): die*
Partner (Muted): so i try to keep it that way
Partner (Muted): everything is shit but its meaningless
Partner (Muted): my motive is “it was fun after all”
Partner (Muted): it was fun after anything
Partner (Muted): and it will be fun after anything
Partner (Muted): and I will die
Partner (Muted): oh andIi heard a good one yesterday
Partner (Muted): The opposite of death is Desire
Partner (Muted): so that would be a good way of thinking too
Partner (Muted): try to find things to desire
Partner (Muted): (well you cant try that they juast come, but you can try avoiding things you know you dont desire. ITS SIMPLY LOGIC. ITS MATH)
Partner (Muted): i know i sound really pessimistic
Partner (Muted): but no
Partner (Muted): I try to be as much realistic I can
Partner (Muted): I have a romantic side too
Partner (Muted): you know the shit that comes out of realistic romance are craaaaaaaazy
Partner (Muted): WHY ARE YOU LICKING YOUR PAINTBRUSHES??? LOL
Partner (Muted): anyway what was i saying
Partner (Muted): yes thats what kind of artist i am
Partner (Muted): realistic romantic
Partner (Muted): and anything i have wroten in english
Partner (Muted): because I dont  speak good english
Partner (Muted): is pretty cynical
Partner (Muted): its fun i think
Partner (Muted): talking cynical about death with really sad/romantic music
Partner (Muted): …
Partner (Muted): what else
Partner (Muted): hmmm
Partner (Muted): oh I think I have allready found the girl that I would like to make family with
Partner (Muted): but I dont know
Partner (Muted): oh and I am 19 for fucks sake
Partner (Muted): who finds his girl so early
Partner (Muted): I am 19 and I wanna fuck eeeeeeeeeeeevery female thing comes and goes around me
Partner (Muted): but no
Partner (Muted): I would rather get married
Partner (Muted): I think I do everything opposite
Partner (Muted): its like I never was a child so I was a fucking immature little guy as a teen
Partner (Muted): and I still am sometimes
Partner (Muted): now I am going to pee
Partner (Muted): then drink some water
Partner (Muted): then smoke a cigarette and then i will be back
Partner (Muted): if you are gone by then bye                                                                               AmArA: Bye!

Draft: Statement of Purpose – for grad school and life

It is so easy to get caught up in the details and semantics:

I want to learn more about business.

I want to learn more techniques.

I want to learn more about history, and what other painters explored – visually and mentally.

I want to learn what I don’t know that I don’t know.

 

But none of that explains what I hope to achieve with the life I have been given.  I strive to show the Truth of this moment in time.  A camera is an objective thing, showing a moment without context or emotion.  A painting is a subjective viewpoint, with the capability in the color, method, technique, and style to show the deeper truths within a moment in time.

 

Exploring the life of a painting mentally through more then my life, past the lifetime of the patron, beyond a century, and through all of its own life.  Knowing that this isn’t possible, to mentally achieve expectation or understanding, but to make conscious decisions to guide that life.  An oil painting designed to crack in layers, a winter scene below and a spring scene above, as the painting ripens, it turns to fall with the layers of dust and smoke and life over it, tinting it and leaves the scene of bareness below as it literally falls away.  Creating work that is not intended to be preserved, but to be lived with.

 

Sometimes, I have noticed, a project demands to be created.  My series Extra Artist on the Set of Fat Kid Rules the World was one of those projects.  I was a conduit for an idea larger then myself and a vision that reached through time and space.  The images demanded themselves and the project evolved from on set sketches to paintings to full installations. I am like a piece of wood floating on the rapids in the midst of such projects: With only the slightest ability to guide it, I am along for the ride and to provide a human context, a face, and a voice.

 

Other projects require a more involved mindset.  They involve funding and applications, discovering and wooing collaborators, organizing and documenting.  It requires a vision of the goal.  It needs to be broken into achievable pieces and requires a visionary to keep solving the problems as they rise, to keep the larger goal in mind, to inspire others, and to coordinate the pieces until the vision is complete and shared with the world.

 

When the self-propelled project sweeps me away, I gratefully enjoy the ride, but it is a rare pleasure that can not be depended on.  To this point in my career, I have enjoyed the strange trips that my art has forced me to take, and treadded water in between, waiting for the next wave.  I would like to stop waiting, and learn to fill my life with many projects, the pieces flying around me inpiring each other and taking on a life beyond my limited reach.

 

My work revolves around the interaction between the arts.  The work that comes from my brush is inspired by the visions I have seen, but it is subconsciously inspired by the music I am listening to, the movie I saw last night, the season and the studio I am working in.   My work is often inspired by musicians, dancers, theatrical productions, religious ceremonies, and movie shoots…by other people seeking truth. I would like to close the circle and introduce my visual art to the world with installations that include auditory cues and staged experiences: Creating an individual and  multifaceted subconscious association with the visual image.  I think that people have habitual modes of thinking.  Seeing a painting on a white wall with unobtrusive music leads to associations that are within the scope of the individuals normal, everyday habitual thinking.  By creating controlled environments, with musical and sound effects for each painting and shills among the guests bring up specified reactions and interactions, it shock the individual into an association that is outside their habitual modes, creating a new thought pattern that will remain a mental path walked for the rest of their lives.  A moment of truth beyond their normal selves.

 

 

Please leave a comment, critique, or conceptual discussion point.  This is a draft and I need your help to refine it.

American Censorship Day of Protest!!!

Friends, fans, followers, and folks that just stumbled by;

The American Congress is currently considering a bill that would give the United States Government unprecidented power to control the internet.  Wearing the mantle of trademark infringement, it would mean the end of fat kids singing the numa-numa song on youtube, posting you and your friends acting out your favorite Bond scene on Facebook, and commenting on celebrity pictures posted to your blog.

Your representatives in congress have stated that without a major public uproar, the bill will very likely pass.

WE NEED TO CREATE AN UPROAR!!!

 

The American Censorship Day site has a banner that will allow you to quickly and easily send a letter to your congressman. http://americancensorship.org/

 

The Official page for the american states house of congress has a drop down that will direct you to your representative’s site. http://www.house.gov/

Or you can just call the switchboard and ask to speak to your congressman.  Just tell them your zip code. (202) 224-3121

 

Today is Wednesday, November 16.

Today is the day we create an UPROAR to Free the Internet!!

 

#freeinternet #usacensored

A protest guide for my friends on Wall Street

So you are going to New York to Occupy Wall Street.  Or to your nearest big city, or small town.   There is a protest, and, by all that this country was founded on, you are going to be there, making your voice heard.

Bravo!

I am with you in heart and spirit where ever you are across this country.

I wrote a book, apparently from the writing I saw on the wall.  It is called Viva La Revolution and it includes everything from a blow by blow of what the Constitution actually says to helpful hint for people who want to change this country into something better, something fairer, something closer to a perfect system where everyone has a choice and a chance.

Straight from Viva La Revolution (which you can pick up for decently cheap following this link)

I give you, my protesting brothers and sisters:

Some Helpful Hints on Civil Disobedience

Have a specific and STATED goal

It is kinda like negotiating except instead of negotiating
you have speeches and sing songs and chant and hang out in
a generally disruptive manner until they DO what you have
STATED or break you or arrest you.

*

Wear comfy clothes and bring food & water

Plan for the long haul. Don’t let them break you
because you forgot to bring a sandwich. That’s just sad.

*

Consider the Consequences

Jail. Injury. Death.

Understand and acknowledge, if only to yourself, that things can happen.  Make provisions for eventualities if you see fit,  then let the fear wash over you and through you until only you remain.

*

Carry a wet Rag

They like to use tear-gas to break up demonstrations.
Be ready. Don’t give in.

*

Pick your moment and really Seize it

Wait for it.
Wait for it.
GO ! !
(and when I say: “go” I mean with enthusiasm!)

*

NON-Violent

I will say it again.

*

NON-Freaking-Violent

When you use violence, it isn’t civil disobedience anymore.

*

Don’t Damage Private Property

If you destroy things it isn’t civil disobedience either.
Worse – It makes you and your cause the asshole.

*

If arrested, drop to the ground and don’t fight

Make them carry you away.  Protect your head if they get overly enthusiastic.

Don’t Fight.

Don’t make it easy either.

From the protests at Berkley Sit-in, 1964:

Cop at Berkley : do we have to drag you or do you want to walk out of here
like a lady?
Protester: I wanna be dragged out like a lady

https://www.createspace.com/3449511

Lyrics to Dear Charlie

Download MP3 of Dear Charlie on Amazon

Hear my speak as I have
hunted yours to haunt my
thoughts and ways and words
And step through the Looking Lake
into a Reality you know.

Peel back and blood flows
and mind screams
and suburbia or city or reformatory hell or countryside
makes no echo disappear
And the Train Howls
sittin’ warm on the commuter
Charlie and Me ride ’til the sadie mae junction
and the Line I just can’t cross
with branded acolytes bowing on the other side
Poor my Christ
with no romans and no cross
and savior and martyr rots in Elba
where he can first: do no Good
And Scream:
a guillotine take me
I am your Devil if you burn Me
and no Hell can Hold Me

Your Savior is failed, O hippies
O Revolution stalled
So come to me, you children
greeters of the dawn:
Fall and Acknowledge
the cogs and steam and clouded moonlight
and embrace the Malcontent
The Freedom of the prick of a pin
and drag the knife shimmering blade
and ink sting
and gauge
and gage Your Freedom without a yard

And cop or crown or cage
cannot contain subjective reality
my regality is non-refundable
un-transfurable
as Whedon sings and Burton weeps
And Charlie
With that crazy grin
And the Jetsam of my life
Grins back
and the looking lake sees
Me is just me is Me Just.

cause Charlie can’t come out to play today

Charlie can’t come out to play….

 

A treatise on Freedom

for the independence day of America 2011

 

Have you read the American Declaration of Independence lately?

What it boils down to is:

We think that we should be free, and here’s why.

Here’s what the king is doing that oppresses us.

They were being taxed for the benefit of the people back in England.

They were being taxed to fund wars that had nothing to do with them halfway around the world.

Not unlike today.

The standard of living for a representative of the USA federal government is well above the national average. More to the point, it is well above the average of my house and that of nearly everyone I know.

(Now, I am not a national standard, but I am a college educated individual from an ordinary middle class family. I am the modern (and female) Beaver Cleaver.)

We have developed a national middle-class mentality.

The government dictates it’s own salaries for the sake of international appearence. To keep up with the Joneses (or Chinese, as the case may be.)

 

 

Wait, let me go back to a point.

The government dictates it’s own salary.

And again:

The government dictates it’s own salary.

Literally.

It is one of the things that the senate and congress vote on, is the salaries for their seats.

Now, be honest.

If you could set your own salary, wouldn’t you take advantage, just a little?

Wouldn’t you push it just a little?

Make it just a bit higher then you really NEED?

It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human.

The government is made up of humans. They take a little bit of advantage when they can. It isn’t a scandal or a flaw. It is just how we are made. We use what we can to make our lives just a little bit better, a little bit easier, a little bit more what we want it to be. But we always want it to be more. There is always something we want, something we don’t have yet.

Because we’re human.

The problem isn’t that the government is made up of human’s – I am not suggesting a techocracy here. The problem is that hundreds of years of each person taking just that little advantage has built up. Each senator takes his little advantage, but when he leaves, his advantage stays with the seat.

It coats it like a laquer.

Think of a chair that started raw when Jefferson sat on it. Each person that has sat in that seat since, every year, putting a coat of laquer on it. Every year for 200 years.

Another example, one of my favorites: a car that hasn’t had an oil change in 200 years.

Maybe not quite 200 years.

Because sometimes, due to national mentality, due to disaster, due to the things that strip away the individual veneer and show us our collective interest, we pull together. We do what is best for everyone.

That is human too.

We can’t force it, though history knows we have tried. (recently called communism)

It is something that is a question of occurance.

We did it during World War II, when war meant individual sacrifices, when the whole world was putting everything they had onto the battle field. When the cost of losing was immenent occupation, brainwashing of children, extermination of Jews and Gays and Gypsies.

We did it to fight polio, as it scourged the country, crippling children.

We did it to provide a place and base for the Statue of Liberty. People sent donations from a few cents instead of going to the movies that month to thousands of dollars from family fortunes so that Lady Liberty could greet the  Atlantic.

. We did it when we first declared independence and fought for it.Washington spent the horrible winter at Valley Forge, too.

We are not living in a time like that.

We need to be able to look at our government, and know that they are living the same life we are.That their experience reflects our experience, and that they are making their decisions based on that. That is why representatives come from where we live; because growing up and living a life in New York state can not truely understand growing up and living life in Utah.

But they aren’t living the same lives we are.

They have too much money, too much publicity, too much that is within their pervue that needs to be done.

They are making a career on their servicing the public, rather then taking time from their career to serve the public.

And they have been since the beginning. It is a fundamental flaw of the system.

So now we are at our AA moment:

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

We, the citizens of the United States of America, have a problem.

Our system is crushing itself and, worse, it is crushing us.

We are being taxed for the lavish comforts of the people in the federal government, the kings of our system.

We are being taxed for a war that has nothing to do with us, half way across the world.

We are being taxed without representation, because our national senators and congressmen do not live a lifestyle where they have the experience to represent the average man.

Today

to celebrate the Fourth of July

the day when the creators of this revolutionary system declared their freedom from tyranny, at risk great personal risk;

do something of equal value:

Stand up!

State it to the World!

State loudly:

I am independent.

I am not represented by anyone.

Our system needs to change.

I am a part of that change.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

 

by AmArA

Author of the book: Viva la Revolutionl

Gay Marriage

from the time that we first begin to learn about our history and laws as children,
 we are taught of the separation of church and state.
allow me to repeat.
the seperation of church and state.

this, to me, always meant that the secular government cannot make laws regarding worship
 and that religious orgininzations cannot interfere with the law.

ever.

it's written into the constitution.

always has been.

a senator can't tell you what to believe and a priest can't tell you how to vote.

this being the case, i can't help but wonder why the church always seems so concerned by
 legal things like gay marrige.

they scream about morality and 'agendas' and 'family values'...

 (which i find amusing as priests can't have families,
 but that's another story for another time.)

they want the 'evil homosexuals' to stay hidden from the rest of
 the world like good little soulless abominations.

but they're not.
 they're not hiding from the world.
 they're not soulless.
 they're not abominations.
 they're people who love other people who happen to be the same 'gender' as themselves.

 how dangerous and terrifying! my very life is in danger!
  of being made more fabulous because i hang around 'the gays!'
 seriously.
  the most dangerous thing a homosexual has ever done to me, despite my
 many drunken nights helpless in their homes, was show me compassion and caring where
 many of the straight people i know would have drawn on me with sharpie. 

 everyone gets so hung up on gender and on the 'horror stories' they've been told by
 people they trusted that they ignore the truth. gay people are people. they just love
 more freely among their own gender. i've known gay people all my life. i've been in drag shows.
 i spent two years as a cast member of 'rocky horror live'.

 i was also raised methodist. i am in a long term, committed relationship with a member of the opposite gender.
i have never seen any evidence that 'gay is contagious' or that gay has anything to do with 'the fall af family values'.
 quity to the contrary, i have found that the most common side effect of 'hanging around the gays' seems to be
 a greater appreciation for broadway shows, fashion design and culinary arts.

 we are in grave danger!
 we are being pulled out of the abusive, misogynist, patriarchal theocracy and forced to actually care about the
 culture that we are a part of.

 are you gay? no? are you sure? yeah? really sure? yeah?

 then what the fuck are you afraid of?

 that your children are going to disagree with your views?

 get over it. get over yourself.

 you were not appointed by a big invisible old dude in the sky to police our morals.

 no. you weren't. i don't care what the 'voice' that guides you says.

 that voice is in your head.

 gay people are just as diverse as any other grouping of persons.
 there are gay pedophiles. there are gay republicans. there are even gay catholics.

 guess what?

 there are at least as many straight pedophiles as there are gay ones. likely more.

 as long as there have been people, there have been gay people.
 as long as there are people, there will still be gay people.

 no amount of religious bullshit is going to change that.
 it's no more conjecture than any other 'ancient' history.
 it's not some random statement that i made up.
 it's not an invisible man feeding me lines, either.

 it's empirical data that has existed for millenia.
 they are as normal as anyone else and have been since the dawn of time.
 face it. think of our great historical male figures.
 sun-tzu. washington. confucious. franklin. socrates. lincoln. machiavelli. buddha. christ. homer. napoleon.
 philosophers. religious leaders. scientists. warriors. emperors.

 face it.
 some of them sucked dick.
 some of them even took it in the ass.

 get over it.

 bravo, new york.

By guest writer JK

Dear Charlie Lyrics

Hear my speak as I have

hunted yours to haunt my

thoughts and ways and words

And step through the Looking Lake

into a Reality you know.

Peel back and blood flows

and mind screams

and suburbia or city or reformatory hell or countryside

makes no echo disappear

 

 

And the Train Howls

sittin’ warm on the commuter

Charlie and Me ride ’til the sadie mae junction

and the Line I just can’t cross

with branded acolytes bowing on the other side

Poor my Christ

with no romans and no cross

and savior and martyr rots in Elba

where he can first: do no Good

And Scream:

a guillotine take me

I am your Devil if you burn Me

and no Hell can Hold Me

Your Savior is failed, O hippies

O Revolution stalled

So come to me, you children

greeters of the dawn:

Fall and Acknowledge

the cogs and steam and clouded moonlight

and embrace the Malcontent

The Freedom of the prick of a pin

and drag the knife shimmering blade

and ink sting

and gauge

and gage Your Freedom without a yard

And cop or crown or cage

cannot contain subjective reality

my regality is non-refundable

un-transfurable

as Whedon sings and Burton weeps

And Charlie

With that crazy grin

And the Jetsam of my life

Grins back

and the looking lake sees

Me is just me is Me Just.

cause Charlie can’t come out to play today

Charlie can’t come out to play

——————————————————————————————————–

Check out more performances and paintings at

AmArA Art

Wardrobe Confusion

our ‘civilization’ is killing us.

we have been told not to fight, because we are being protected.

that we are safe from the things that can hurt us.

but it’s a lie.

we are not safe. we are not protected. we are in constant mortal danger.

constant.

mortal.

danger.

we live in a world that has been pushed into ‘nonviolence’ and ‘security’.

which is to say, a world of complacent weakness.

we, as a culture, have become complete sheep.

we go where we’re told, eat what we’re fed, wear whatever ugly crap

we’re told is ‘in style’, follow whatever stupid shit is crammed up the ass of

the sheep in front of us.

but the sheep aren’t alone.

if it was just sheep, it would be safe. each sheep would just keep wandering toward the sheep in front of it.

but there are wolves.

and they love sheep.

slow and tasty.

these wolves aren’t even ‘big’ wolves.

i’m not talking about some government conspiracy, or even a more localized conspiracy, really.

i’m talking about the murder of our society by way of the best of intentions.

we want to feel safe, so we make all these rules so we can feel safe and protected. but feeling safe doesn’t make us safe.

hypothermia victims often mention how warm they feel right before they die.

the sheep follow the rules, certain that someone is protecting them.

but who?

the other sheep?

but how?

they’re sheep.

they have no idea how to fight wolves, and even if they did, they’re not equipped for it!

seriously. check the news.

there are tons of stories about ‘security guards’ that stood by during violence.

they have no chance.

they’re usually not armed.

they’re usually not trained.

their orders are almost universally

‘observe and report’

i hear security guards referred to as ‘paul blart’ in a demeaning way, and i find that to be ill advised and frankly stupid.

most security guards in violent situations stand there trying to contact the police.

when the cards hit the table, paul blart beat that ass.

he did what we all wish security guards would do.

flawed though he was, he became the hero.

(why can there only be heroes in fiction?

why do normal everyday people stand for the horse shit they’re constantly being fed?)

has ‘observe and report’ ever really done any good?

does it stop the beatings?

does it stop the murder?

and before you automatically say ‘of course it has!’ i want you to do two things.

1: remember that i’m not talking about a couple of troublemakers from the suburbs who get into a few fights, i’m talking about the people in the cities who will beat you to death if not stopped, to hell with what happens after.

and

2: do some research. i mean seriously, you’re on the internet for fucks sake. check news archives.

we’ll talk after that.

but there are wolves, and some of the wolves don’t want to eat the sheep. they want sheep to stop being sheep. they want the sheep to remember that they were born wolves. they want humanity to remember that our world is dangerous and every step to make it safer makes it more dangerous.

we trade freedom for security, but without the freedom to protect ourselves…

we

are

not

secure

.

the wolves that hunt the sheep do not obey the rules.

so until the sheep remember that they are wolves in a wool suit,

the sheep are doomed.

JK

Social Darwinism

He hadn’t been out and about for a while, he mostly stays close to home. $3.94 a gallon was a bit of a shock to him.  His eyes had a slight sheen of…panic? Desperation, maybe.  Hard to tell in the fast passing streetlights.

“Why do we stand for this?” He asked, quietly.

I looked into his searching eyes, and answered the only Truth I have:

“We don’t.”

We don’t stand for this.

Definition:  This (n.) – antiquated minutely representative government system, self-perpetuating international guilt policies, interminable inner-systematic debt, censorous and deal based taxation and spending, insistent de-reliance on the individual

“We stand for…something else.”

Definition: Something Else (n.) the intelligence and decision-making ability of the individual, the technological revolution that has made the governmental system antiquated and allows for every single person to be briefed and cast a vote instantaneously, the speed of information that allows people to group and regroup and make their perceivable world where they want to be, the wisdom of a system that allows rules and laws to flow as people move and flow geographically

I may not have the power to control the land.
I am not a general, and you are not a soldier.
I own nothing that I can not carry with me.

I stand for who I am and what I believe.  I do it the best way I know how: I make it known, I reconsider it with new information, I don’t back away from it in fear.

That is what it is to be an American.  It is not to stand by your government or your people, it is not to stand against others and look lovingly at the Statue of Liberty and salute the stars and stripes or stand when the anthem is sung.

It is being who you are and standing for…whatever.

Definition: Whatever (n.) see comments.