1-11-05

Mindboggling Stupidity

Just today, I mailed a package of baby clothes to my friend Cheryl, who happens, through an accident of birth and US-INS regulations, to live in Canada.  Those of you with foreign friends and relatives, remember when you could just grab a bunch of Customs cards and fillthem out at home for whatever gifts and things you needed to send?  No more.  Now, you have to go to the postal desk and fill out the card in front of the postmaster and answer whatever questions he decides are pertinent.  In my case, at least, the postmaster had the good grace to look embarrassed by the rigamoroule.  But wait, it gets better.
          My daughter visited from college for Christmas.  She flew down.  I went to the airport to pick her up and to drop her off.  Without going into the new "simplified" check-in procedure (are these your bags?  are you sure? do you have a bomb?  do you mind if we rummage through your undies for something cool?), I was amazed at the amount of jackbooted militarism.  Uniformed security (of three different brands: Police, TSA and Airport) everywhere, and where you couldn't see one of them, there was an undercover officer of some kind (note to TSA:  a tight-ass in casual clothes is still a tight-ass). 
          More and more these days, I find myself wondering the same thing about my fellow Americans:  What the hell is wrong with you people?  Do you honestly believe that government thugs are going to protect your rights?  Do you believe that foreign terrorists are a bigger threat than beaureaucrats who have a vested interest in the continuation and expansion of their powers?  Do you think that a bigass national government like ours can even come close to stopping any kind of terrorism?  I repeat:  What the hell is wrong with you people?

The Nature of Terrorism
You have to understand that terrorism is not a nationalist issue.  Terrorists are, either by choice or circumstance, on their own.  They may receive funding from a national government, or even succor, but they are not agents of any nation.  They have no loyalty to any but their own cause.  The difference between Pearl Harbor and September-Eleventh is that Pearl Harbor was a military strike against a military target.  The September-Eleventh event was and act of terrorism.  No nation planned that.  No war was declared.  It was an act of unreasonable violence intended to get attention.  That's what terrorists do.
          That's what they've always done.  Terrorists are sad, pitiable individuals and groups oif individuals who can't find a way to live a good life without fucking up the lives of others.  The popular media notwithstanding, prior to September 11, 2001, our nation's biggest terrorist problem was domestic terrorism.  Timothy McVeigh (sp?), David Koresh and his followers (yeah yeah ATF invaded their compound, but considering the amount of firepower they were caching they were going to do something), and the Unabomber all come immediately to mind.  Individuals and small groups.  Locals who knew the lay of the land and had a good eye out for what they wanted to do.
          Because, in the sort of small-scale operation that makes terrorism effective, that's what you need.  There are no large conspiracies, because every ear in the room is attached to a mouth.  For that reason alone, terrorists are always small operations. 
          And national governments, at least national democracies, are not equipped for tracking and defeating small groups and individuals.  Using the US Federal Government to stop terrorism is tantamount to trying to catch goldfish with a tuna net.  I mentioned in a previous column that the government didn't stop the one failed plane on 9-11, the people did.  The people.

The Other Enemy
Your enemy, my enemy, and the enemy of every American who values his or her freedom is, and has always been, the federal government.  The federal government is like a large and vicious dog that you keep to protect your home.  You have to smack it down and keep it chained.  If you let it off its chain, even for a little while, it will eat your chickens and leave you and your children cowering in the bedroom hoping to sneak a snack when it's not looking.
          Before you ask, no.  I'm not a big proponent of wackadoo conspiracy theories.  The Freemasons and the Trilateral commission, if they exist in the paranoid form, are toothless hounds.  There are no big conspiracies for the same reason that elephants can't live in your walls and eat your cheese.
          To return to the dog metaphor, on 9-11, somebody snuck in, past the dog.  That's bound to happen when the animal is as securely chained as our government has traditionally been.  That does not mean it's time to loosen the chain.  The presence of other enemies does not make the dog any less vicious.  You must keep eternal vigilance over the dog; that breed will turn on you in an instant.
          Our founding fathers knew that.  It was for that very reason that they created the Bill of Rights. Give it a read.  It describes all the ways that they knew of that a national government could go wrong.  Then it admits in the last two, that there were probably things they hadn't thought of (such as the right to privacy--it probably never occurred to the Founding Fathers that such a basic right would ever be in question), so it limits the Federal Governments power only to those specifically defined in the Constitution.  Every other right you have, every privelege, every liberty you hold dear, depends on the maintenance of those ten clauses.  Without them, defense of the lesser, but more personal rights, is impossible.

The Point
What you, and I, and every American with three working brain cells needs to do right now, is to put a stop to it all.  Write your congressman, both your senators, and your President and tell them that it stops now.  Tell them that foreign citizenship is no excuse for the 6th Amendment violations against the prisoners in Guantanamo.  Tell them that laws that violate the Fourth Amendment for "criminals" and "insurgents" violate the rights of everyone.  Tell them that this is not the way that Americans handle adversity.  Tell them you are free, and you wish to remain so.
          And, if that doesn't work, well, the Second Amendment was put there for a reason, also.