. It is a long one and very worth the time to read it. It gives you stuff to think about about the possible almost certain future that is over the horizon. How close it is I am not sure, but the Bundy farm standoff shows that a clash of ideology and firepower isn't here...yet but it is brewing and I hope that we as Americans can head off the possible conflagration but there are soo many people wedded to the status quo and want things to remain the same because it is beneficial to them or their group. I don't know if we will be able to vote our way out of this. I have alluded to in prior postings that we may have to be in the wilderness for 40 years or something along that line until all the people that have grown dependent upon others and have become modern slaves to the system and have lost their lust for freedom but enjoy the chains of servitude that they are no longer in abundance and our descendents will have learned from the most recent example and treasure their freedom and independence and not squander it like we as a people have done.
America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution (1996)
I had a very memorable and thought-provoking passenger a while back
that I never wrote about because while I found him fascinating, he
seemed a little too political for what was always intended to be a fun
blog to read and some cheap therapy for your humble driver and writer.
But in light of all the scandals that have erupted lately and the
EpicClusterSharknadoFuck
that is ObamaCare, I have been thinking about a few things he said to
me, so I’m going to commit them to paper (or pixels), if only for my own
reading. So if you just want to read about moron drunks and belligerent
whores, skip this post…
But if you are interested in catching up on current events that just might personally affect you soon, please read on…
It was June of 2012, when I got a call to pick up a gentleman at a
resort hotel at around 4 AM going to the airport. I was a little
surprised to see “Mr. Wheeler” waiting for me in front of the lobby,
five minutes early, standing by his suitcase. Generally, people keep me
waiting on these calls, still half asleep, late coming down, trying to
get checked out, dicking around with their luggage and what not. He was
in his late 50′s or early 60′s, fit, wearing a navy blazer and was
obviously a business traveller, but he also had a certain posture and
demeanor that made me think he was ex-military. We load up his luggage
and hit the road, and I am chatting with him as we are heading to the
airport. I ask what kind of work he does, and he says he is in
“executive security”. I said, “Oooh, that sounds interesting… you mean
like bodyguard work?”
He says, “Something like that… executive protection, security
systems, personnel screening, entry/egress control, things like that. It
sounds much more interesting than it really is… I spend a lot of time
shuffling paper around and reading emails.”
I said, “You have the bearing of a military man… am I correct?”
“Yes, Sir… 22 years in the Marine Corps.” I thanked him for his
service, something I always do when I encounter a member of our armed
services. My standard line is, “Thank you for your service. I think you
should hear that every damned day for the rest of your life, and your
first beer should be free anywhere you go.”
So we are chatting on the drive, and the story on the radio is Eric
Holder being held in contempt of Congress over the Fast and Furious
fiasco. I said, “Can you believe that shit? This asshole intentionally
sends guns to Mexican drug gangs that will no doubt end up killing
thousands of people, and then he lies and stonewalls the Congress? How
is this deceitful douchebag not in shackles and an orange jumpsuit? And
more to the point, how does someone like this ever ascend to the office
of Attorney General?”
“He’s part of the Clinton machine… he knows low people in high
places. He came up under Janet Reno… you know who that is, right?”
“Oh, yes, I know… the crazy dyke that gave the order to burn down the
Branch Davidians in Waco. But what I don’t get is how they ever thought
they could pull this shit off… people aren’t THAT stupid. If you say
you are tracking guns, although you have no actual means of tracking the
guns, that makes you look both dishonest AND moronic, and your cover
story doesn’t make any sense. This didn’t have anything to do with
illegal gun sales… any idiot can see that. So what was the REAL plan
here?”
Mr. Wheeler says, “Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor?”
I said, “Yeah, I know it… the most obvious answer is almost always
correct… but I don’t think we need an instrument that sharp. I think
Occam’s Rubber Spatula would seem to indicate that this is a push to
vilify guns and gun owners here in America, as a pretense to drive
stricter gun control. Obama was just on TV not too long ago with the
President of Mexico, saying that American guns were responsible for the
violence in Mexico, and now American weapons are showing up at crime
scenes. It seems to me that an organization with the money and resources
of an international drug cartel certainly knows where to pick up
weapons, even if all American sources dried up completely. I assume they
could go south of the border to Central America and get all the M4′s
and AK’s they want… most likely full-auto… am I correct?”
Mr Wheeler replied, “There is certainly no shortage of guns and
corruption in Central America. If you have the means to smuggle a ton of
cocaine, you can probably smuggle a ton of guns, too. But this was
easier… the Justice Department and the ATF made the contacts and set up
the networks, told the gun shops to cooperate, so all the Mexicans had
to do was send in a straw buyer, make the purchase, and move the weapons
south of the border.”
I said, “These people aren’t very smart… there are something like 300
million guns in America, and they have a robust shelf life. Even if all
gun manufacturing stopped tomorrow, there would still be an abundance
of guns in America for decades. The only way to disarm Americans is mass
confiscation, and I feel pretty certain that would spark a civil war. I
know several gun owners that would rather fight than give up their
guns.”
Mr. Wheeler said, “Oh, I know dozens… perhaps hundreds that feel the
same way. I really don’t think confiscation is something you need to
worry about, because it will never work. There are simply too many of
them, and too many people have guns that there is no record of. A
confiscation program would only piss off the most dangerous people in
America… the people who would shoot back. You are correct, a mass
confiscation would provoke a civil war.”
I said, “Well, you are a military man… what would that look like?”
Wheeler said, “Well, it wouldn’t look like the first Civil War… no
lines of men standing in ranks and shooting across a field at each
other, no “North and South” or sharply defined state lines for friendly
and enemy territories, at least, not in the beginning. No, it would look
more like Iraq or Afghanistan, with house to house fighting, IED’s,
snipers, small factions and independent militias operating on their own,
refugees streaming away from battle zones in all directions…”
“But the first question to ask is who would the combatants be? I
mean, the Army isn’t going to just roll out onto the street in tanks on
day one, so my guess is that it would start out as a police action, with
Federal agencies like ATF and FBI taking the lead, supported by local
law enforcement. But once people start shooting back, they would have to
ratchet things up, do things like institute curfews and roadblocks, and
they would eventually try to press the various state Guard units into
service. That’s where it all goes squirrelly, because both local law
enforcement and the Guard will be riddled with people who support gun
rights, regardless of what laws the politicians pass, and they won’t be
crazy about having to police, and maybe even fight against, their own
people. The Governors may well object to the state Guard units being
activated and may not wish to cooperate…”
“And it is not clear to me how many LEO and Guardsmen would remain
loyal to the government and how many would join the “rebellion”. My
guess is that both sides would be riddled with defections, informants,
and spies. But what if, say, the Gulf states like Texas, Alabama,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida secede, and they take
control of all military bases and equipment, and you suddenly have gone
from an insurgency with rifles to a breakaway nation, or maybe several
breakaway nations, armed with fighter jets, drones, tanks, and a navy?
Whoo, buddy… now all bets are off… kiss
posse comitatus goodbye. This would be the ugliest thing this county has ever seen…”
I asked him several “what if” questions and let him riff on them… I
just let him talk and wargame out the Second Civil War, there in the
back seat of my car as we drove to the airport, and he painted a picture
of horrific death and destruction. Once this conflict started, even the
best-case scenarios he described sounded truly grim. He seemed to
believe that civilian casualties would be extremely high, given how much
fighting would centered in and around large cities, and that food would
be used as a weapon, causing famine and starvation on a terrifying
scale. Booby traps, IED’s, rampant bombings, drone strikes, snipers,
local-level assassinations, mortars and shelling, death squads (both
government and rebel), reprisal killings, torture… it sounded more like
the Middle East than middle America.
Wheeler got quiet for a few moments, and then he said something that I will never, ever forget.
“These people are playing with matches… I don’t think they
understand the scope and scale of the wildfire they are flirting with.
They are fucking around with a civil war that could last a decade and
cause millions of deaths… and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems
we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, by noon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.”
And lemme tell ya, he had the list… he rattled off 25 or 30 names of
well-known, prominent politicians, mostly Democrats, but a few
Republicans, several members of the current Cabinet, a couple of Obama’s
“czars”, a couple of figures from the Bush administration and the
Republican establishment, several media company executives and on-camera
newscasters, reporters, and pundits, a couple of people who are active
in leftist politics but not in elected office… he had obviously thought
about this to some degree already.
I was struck by his cold, detached, matter-of-fact tone. I said,
“Dude… that’s more French Revolution than American Revolution. Do you
really think that is the way to go?”
Wheeler said, “I believe in efficiency and economy of action. You
wouldn’t trade one hundred of those criminal bastards for ten million of
your fellow Americans?”
I don’t remember if I actually answered out loud, but in my my head, the answer was,
“Yeah, I probably would…”
The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have put up with
any of this shit. The Founders started blowing people’s heads off
because the government put a tax on their breakfast beverage… and it wasn’t even coffee. Can you imagine how batshit those guys would have been on a double espresso?
Dennis Miller
This conversation with Mr. Wheeler took place long before we learned
of the IRS scandal, the NSA scandal, the litany of lies associated with
the rollout of ObamaCare, the AP/Fox snooping, the executive overreach
of the Obama administration, and all the other sundry and everyday lies
and corruption of what passes today for a “representative republic”.
So as I think about all the horrible shit the government is doing
today, I can’t help but think about the Founders, and what they would
think about current events and the state of the republic they left to
their heirs. I make no claim to be a historian or a scholar, but I have
only personally met a handful people that have read more history than
me. History, particularly American history, was always my favorite class
in school, along with American and English Literature. I’ve read the
Declaration of Independence many, many times, and I can’t help but
notice that the indictments of the Declaration seem eerily familiar
today. Many people reading this probably haven’t read the Declaration
since high school, if they ever really read it at all, so indulge me… go
ahead and read this next section out loud, and listen to the reasons
the Founders felt it necessary to defy their government, load their
guns, and take on the most powerful military on the planet.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;
and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their
former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should
be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend
to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records,
for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause
others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of
Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;
the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of
invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for
that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent
to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring
Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging
its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument
for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized
nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas
to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their
friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured
to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian
Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction
of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have
Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions
have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is
thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the
ruler of a free people.
So in the context of the early 1770′s, what would the Founders think
about the government secretly and illegally trafficking thousands of
military-grade arms to criminals, brigands, and pirates, knowing full
well that those criminals will kill thousands of innocent people with
said arms, as a ploy to disarm their own citizenry… and when caught
red-handed in this criminal and despicable act, the governmental
appointee responsible for executing this disgraceful policy lies,
dissembles, and stonewalls, and suffers no sanction or penalty?
What would they think of the government reading, and oftentimes
copying and warehousing, every single letter of their correspondence,
their diaries, their conversations, their most private and intimate of
communications?
What would they think of government agents standing on rooftops and
street corners, monitoring and documenting the comings and goings of
every citizen every day of his life, whom they speak with and associate
with, and what they purchase and from whom?
What would they think about their government spying on journalists,
town criers, and pamphleteers, and swearing out false oaths to judges to
have them surveilled?
What would they think about government tax agents given specific
orders to harass, intimidate, penalize, and obstruct any person who
speaks for peaceful, legislative reform of the government or is critical
of the government, even demanding that they document the content of
their prayers?
What would they think about a government that routinely ignores laws
already on the books solely for material and political gain, a
government that creates punitive laws through specious methods, and then
exempts themselves from being subject to those laws, and when their
agents, officials, and appointees are caught in serious crimes and
malfeasance, they are simply reassigned and protected by the government,
never to face trial or pay any penalty for their acts or the harm they
inflict on ordinary citizens?
I’ll tell you what I believe… I believe the shooting would have
already started. It’s not that I want something terrible to happen, it’s
that I am positively astonished that something terrible hasn’t already
happened.
The Founders set out to create a limited government. They did not
create a Constitution that spelled out what the government may not do,
they created a Constitution that detailed exactly and precisely what the
federal government
MAY do, and nothing more. This far,
and no further. All other powers were specifically and deliberately left
to the individual states, and to the people themselves. The Bill of
Rights was added at the insistence of several of the Founders to protect
the individual citizen from future tyranny and avaricious government.
Yet today, our government has no compunctions about monitoring all my
communications, tracking my movements, deterring my business success
with punitive taxes and onerous regulations, accessing my banking
records, compelling my participation in an ill-conceived healthcare
system that will most assuredly give me substandard care and higher
prices and may violate my personal wants and perhaps even my religious
beliefs, and regulating almost every aspect of my day-to-day life, right
down to the type of the car that I may drive, the lightbulbs I am
allowed to buy, and the kind of toilet I am permitted to shit in. And
thanks to the NDAA, if my government deems me to be a terrorist, I can
be black-bagged and zip-tied, arrested without warrant or charge, held
incommunicado without legal representation indefinitely, and perhaps
even tried by a military tribunal in secret and summarily executed.
So tell me again… just what are the limits of my so-called limited government?
I feel like I have been ripped off. I recognized at a very young age
that I had won the lottery; of all the millions upon millions of people
born on this planet the same year as I was, only a small segment of them
were lucky enough to be born Americans, and now, a small group of lying
and avaricious politicians and leftist activists have stolen my
birthright.
All I want is the government that I was promised by my ninth grade
civics teacher… a government of laws, not of men, a government with
checks and balances, lawfully enforced to restrain and contain the
government from infringing on the rights of populace. But all of this
has been swept aside in my lifetime; now criminals like Eric Holder and
Charlie Rangel and Al Sharpton and Lois Lerner and Jon Corzine suffer no
sanction or consequence for openly and nakedly breaking the law. They
are now part of a protected class, when 250 years ago, they would have
been lucky to only have suffered being tarred and feathered.
I would be content with an ordinary and ultimately forgettable life.
I’ve strived for excellence from a young age, but never been consumed
with the pursuit of wealth, fame, or power. I would be satisfied with
enough money to take care of my family, to send my progeny to college,
to live in modest comfort and to enjoy a few vacations and indulgences
here and there, and to leave my children with a better life than I had.
I am a simple man with simple needs. I would like to die in my bed at
the age of 106, surrounded by my children, grandchildren, and my 22 year
old second wife, with a couple of old guns in the closet, now rusty and
dusty from disuse.
But I don’t think that is going to happen. I truly believe, deep in
my heart, that I am going to need those guns before I die, and not for a
burglar.
I see only two paths for America today. First, some miracle will
happen in which a couple hundred constitutionalists like Ted Cruz and
Mike Lee and Trey Gowdy will be elected to the House and Senate over the
next few election cycles, and something resembling the Founder’s
republic will be restored, but given the current climate of relentless
progressivism, massive bureaucracy, government dependence, and voter
ignorance, that seems like a very remote possibility.
The second path is that complacency, ignorance, and indifference will
allow more progressives and communists to be elected, the federal
government will continue to grow and amass power unchecked, and one day
very soon, we will we will witness the birth of a police state that will
make the Gestapo, the KGB, and the Stasi look like pikers and
dilettantes.
Hell, the argument could be made that the police state is already
here. I read an article not long ago about the Stasi Museum in Berlin
that described the files that the East German secret police accumulated
over the course of forty-five years, and it is nothing less than
staggering. Imagine a shelf, 65 miles long, crammed with file folders
full of photos and detailed handwritten and typed notes about almost
every citizen of East Germany. I’m not really up to speed about the
state-of-the-art data storage devices of today and what they are able to
store, but I would bet that entire 65 mile shelf of paper and
photographs would today fit in a metal and plastic box about the size of
a standard four-drawer file cabinet. But if I am wrong about that, no
need to worry; your government is building a 1.5 MILLION square foot
storage facility in Utah to hold all your vital information.
In my previous occupation, I worked as the marketing director for a
company in the livestock industry, and I once took a business trip to
Texas to interview a gentleman and take some photos for the company’s
website and print advertising. I could tell you his real name, but it
wouldn’t mean anything to you unless you happen to be involved in the
world of show animals like cattle, lambs, and goats. But in the circles
he moves in, “Kevin” is an absolute rock star… getting his endorsement
for my company’s products was on par with Michael Jordan for Nike shoes
or Eric Clapton for Fender guitars.
I flew into Austin, rented a car, and drove for a few hours to
Kevin’s ranch, not far from Waco. Kevin was a massive bear of a man, 6-3
or 6-4, with big hands, big boots, a big gut, a big smile, and a big
heart. He seized my hand in his giant, calloused paw and pumped it
vigorously… it was meaty and leathery, and felt like a catcher’s mitt.
You just couldn’t help liking this guy… Kevin had a way of making you
feel like you were already lifelong friends, he was just waiting for you
to catch up.
We did the interview over tall glasses of iced tea and delicious BBQ
pork sandwiches, and then went outside to shoot photos of him around his
pens and barns and out buildings. We wrapped up around four in the
afternoon, and Kevin and his wife insisted that I stay for dinner at
6:00. We had a couple hours to kill, so Kevin suggested I go with him
while he did a little work around the ranch.
We went out to a barn and got into a dilapidated, beat-to-shit Ford
pickup. It was an early seventies model, rusted, dented, missing the
passenger-side window, driver’s side mirror, and rear bumper, so it was
also missing a license plate, and it had a screwdriver hammered into the
ignition switch. The bed was removed and there was a rough-hewn flatbed
made of pressure-treated lumber in its’ place, with a mechanical
apparatus of some sort on the wood. Kevin was very successful in his
business and had plenty of money, so this Mad Max piece of shit stood in
stark contrast to the newer Ford diesel he took to the livestock shows.
I would have bet this old beater hadn’t run in decades, but it started
right up. Kevin threw a little Playmate cooler and several plastic
buckets in the back of the truck, handed me a beer, and we took off,
following deep wheel ruts that meandered around his property. Kevin’s
ranch was huge… if he told me how many acres, I don’t recall, but I
thought square miles was a much more useful unit of measurement for a
tract of land so huge.
I asked Kevin what we were doing, and he said we were going out to
feed the deer. His property had all sorts of wildlife on it, including
deer and wild pigs, and he supplements their usual forage with grain and
veggies and other goodies. He explained that he harvests several deer
and pigs every year, and all the animals on his ranch, domestic or wild,
were very well fed. In fact, those mouth-watering pulled pork
sandwiches we ate earlier were from a wild pig he had killed, butchered,
and barbecued himself, right here on his ranch. The strange apparatus
on the back of the truck was a feed dispenser; we pulled up to a little
clearing and he dumped the contents of several of the buckets in the top
of the machine. He got back in the truck and he threw a toggle switch,
crudely screwed into the metal dash, and put the truck in gear. The
machine in the back made a grinding, rattling sound, and a mixture of
chopped carrots, apples, and dry corn slid down a chute and spilled onto
the grass as he slowly idled along the tree line.
He shut off the feed dispenser and he pulled away about fifty or
seventy yards, then stopped and killed the engine, and said, “Watch
this…”
We spun around and looked out the back window, and within two or
three minutes, no less than ten or twelve deer emerged from the woods
and started eating the corn and veggies. A few of them eyed the truck
warily for a moment, but they all placidly started devouring the bounty
Kevin had spilled out of the side of his pickup.
Kevin said, “It’s like the ice cream truck… they hear the music, and they come running out to get the goodies…”
I said, “You have conditioned them to come to you… I guess that takes the difficulty out of shooting one of them…”
Kevin replied, “This isn’t about sport, it’s about feeding my family.
I don’t have time to haul my fat ass up into a tree stand at 5 in the
morning. I get my deer in a half hour, and I can be choosy.”
We tooled around his property, drinking beer and dumping corn and
veggies here and there at strategic points, and then we came to another
clearing with a strange metal object. Kevin put the truck in park and
told me to hop out with him. There were three eight-foot pieces of crude
steel tubular fencing that looked sort of like the metal barricades
that get put up at parades for crowd control, but about five or six feet
high, and forming half a hexagon They were obviously hand-made; they
just didn’t have the finish of a commercial product. Kevin grabbed the
last two buckets out of the back of the truck and told me to bring him
two more beers.
In front of the steel tubing was a shallow concrete “bowl” that I
believe was the top of a large birdbath, sunk into the dirt. Kevin
filled it with loose corn and small ears of corn, then dumped in the
contents of the second bucket. This bucket contained table scraps,
potato peels, onion butts, bacon grease, and other household garbage,
and it smelled pretty ripe. I asked Kevin what was up with the fencing,
and he told me this was a pig trap. He then opened the two beers and
dumped them in the bowl, saying that pigs love beer.
Kevin explained that pigs are highly intelligent animals, and can be
quite dangerous. They are powerful beasts, very fast, and armed with
fearsome tusks that can gore a man to death in short order. He said that
commercial traps are available, but pigs are smart, and will often be
wary of a new metal object suddenly appearing in their environment, and
his home-made trap was much more effective. He told me that these three
sections are left up year round, and over time, the pigs learn that this
metal object poses no threat, and there is frequently delicious corn,
slop, and beer to be had here. The scent of the slop and beer travels a
long way across the property, and over time, the pigs are conditioned to
not fear the strange metal object. Kevin showed me how they had formed a
soft trail around one end of the fencing as they came in and out to the
bowl.
When the time comes to harvest a pig, Kevin adds a section of the
fencing, refills the bowl a few times, and the pigs ignore the new
section of fencing. A week or two later, he adds another section, and
keeps the bowl full. Finally, he puts the last section up right on the
trail they created, and this section has the trap door in it. A screw
eye is twisted into the end of a corn cob, and a cable is attached to
it, and is connected to a pin that drops the door. As soon as a pig
picks up the corn, the pin is pulled, the door is dropped, and the pig,
and perhaps one or two or three others of his group, are trapped. In the
morning, Kevin can simply walk up to the cage and dispatch the beasts
with a handgun, without risk of personal injury or spending a lot of
time stalking the animals in the woods with a high-power rifle.
I can’t get Kevin and the pig trap out of my head, because it is a
perfect metaphor for the surveillance state our government has built. It
has been erected slowly over time, one piece at a time, so as to not
panic the populace. And the government seems to have been wildly
successful, because the American population at large seems completely
unphased and unalarmed at what has been built over the last twenty or
thirty years.
The government is reading and storing all of my emails? No big deal; I’m not a terrorist, so I am OK.
The government is listening to and storing all my phone calls? Whatever, I don’t talk to terrorists.
The government is tracking and storing my location? So what? I don’t go anywhere that is suspect.
The government is targeting political enemies and surveilling
journalists? Who cares? I’m not an activist or a partisan, so this does
not affect me.
This isn’t a Republican vs. Democrat issue, it isn’t even a
conservative vs. liberal issue… this is an American vs. un-American
issue. Do you wish to be a free American, or will you accept becoming a
slave to a massive and all-powerful police state? You are either an
advocate for freedom and limited government, or you are an advocate for
tyranny. There is no gray area, no middle ground to be found here. This
government has slowly amassed powers over the last hundred years that
would horrify the Founders of this nation. As I stated earlier, I can’t
believe the shooting hasn’t already started.
For you liberal readers out there, let me offer this: pick your
favorite right-wing boogieman, the craziest fascist evil criminal
wingnut that there is, and make that person the President…. President
Dick Cheney, President Rick Santorum, President Charles Koch, President
Alan West, President Michelle Bachmann, President Rush Limbaugh,
President Glen Beck, President Joe Arpaio, President John Bolton,
President Ted Nugent… whoever really freaks you out.
Now ask yourself this question: Do you want that person to have the
power and the surveillance apparatus and the unchecked force of the IRS
that Barack Obama and this massive government now wields?
This should scare the shit out of you… ask yourself how you would
feel about the Palin administration having the power to track your every
move, listen to your every call, read every email and text message,
cross reference all your email contacts and Facebook friends, scrutinize
every Visa card purchase, reexamine the last decade of your tax returns
for any rounding error you might have made, and the ability to call up
your complete medical records with a couple of keystrokes, for you, your
family, and everyone you know, right down to every antidepressant
prescription, bunion surgery, psychiatric visit, Low-T diagnosis,
encrusted carbuncle, PAP smear, and vaginal wart.
Is this getting creepy yet?
Suppose your kid needs a kidney transplant, but it turns out that
Uncle Jack is union guy and a fundraiser for your state Democrat party…
well, we all know that crazy President Palin was lying about those “
death panels”
doncha’ know, but jeez-o-pete, there sure are a lot of irregularities
in your HHS paperwork and your tax returns and your insurance
documentation and your website information and your credit report and
stuff, and it might take months to sort this whole kit and kaboodle out.
But be patient, you know how slow things are, now that the ACORN Health
Care Navigators unionized and expanded out to every hospital and clinic
in America… but your child’s IRS Form 6488-B says your deductible
should be $16,000, not $9,000 as you claimed here on line 173 of your
HHS 871 form… and there is some sort of red-flag hold thingy here due to
your Uncle Jack’s union exemption status, because of that whacky
Detroit thing… It sure looks like Uncle Jack’s paperwork is even more
screwed up than your file… yessirree, this could take a long, long, long
time to weed through, and good golly, we seem to have a whole lotta
Mexican patients in this hospital, and they are all in line ahead of
little Scooter there… Just you and that little tadpole of yours hold
your horses, and we’ll get this paperwork straightened out over the next
few months, okey dokey?
But whatever you do, when your kid dies, don’t do news conferences,
don’t start blogging, don’t start calling out the government publicly,
don’t become an activist, don’t go on FOX News, and definitely don’t
become an embarrassment or a pain in the ass to this government, lest
you find yourself being gang-audited by the IRS, if not declared a
terrorist and having your door kicked in by armored agents at 4 in the
morning, who are here to shoot your dog, terrorize the rest of your
kids, and to take you to an undisclosed location in zip ties, where
there are no lawyers, no phones, no sunlight, the food really sucks, and
no one can confirm or deny that they have ever heard of you.
I like Sarah Palin, but I don’t want President Palin to have that
power. I really liked Ronald Reagan, but again, I wouldn’t want him to
have that power. I really, REALLY like Ted Cruz. I think he is a man of
principle, of integrity, of honor, and perhaps the most
Constitutionally-grounded politician I have seen in my lifetime. But in
spite of all of that, I don’t want President Cruz to have that power.
So take a guess at what I think of President Hillary Clinton or
President Nancy Pelosi or President Chuck Schumer or President Cass
Sunstein or President Michael Bloomberg or President Diane Feinstein or
President Al Sharpton or President Howard Dean or President Harry Reid
or President Van Jones having that kind of power…