Getting Our Minds Right

I was driving with my wife and daughter yesterday on Interstate 465 around the southwest corner of Indianapolis, and we were going past the airport. Since I was driving, my wife was sightseeing out her window, and she asked, "Is that a prison?"


I glanced over to the right. In the far distance, the terminal buildings could be seen, but the airport's eastern border was dominated by the endless fence ... with what seemed like several miles of razor wire coiled on top of it. I could see how, if you didn't happen to know that was the airport, you could easily mistake it for a prison.

"No," I said, "that's the airport." Then, after a moment, it occurred to me: "Not that there's much difference."

In the Land of the Free™ today, the similarities are real and numerous. You sure don't want to give the bosses any backsass. Everything goes so much smoother if you just get your mind right.

And Do What?

I just looked in on the Lew Rockwell site, and I saw a piece there by John Whitehead. For the most part, it's kind of the same-old-same-old: the PATRIOT Act is going to get itself renewed, and augmented, yet again; it's the end of the Constitution, and so on. All true, just not new. Mr. Whitehead, after opening with a Thomas Paine quote ("It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government"), closes his essay in the way that most such essays close, with a nonspecific call to action:

Patriots, wake up! It’s time to protect our country and our rights against a government of wolves that grows more power-hungry with every passing day.

Well, OK, I thought, but what does an "awake" patriot look like in these days? What does a patriot do, after having awakened?

Does he try to build a revolution, and overthrow our criminal supervisors? A one-person revolution is simply suicide on very unfavorable terms, even assuming that the lone revolutionary manages to get noticed by his rulers. Join a militia? Trouble is, one could be reasonably assured that half of those involved would be paid agents provocateur or some other form of police spy, and the other half would be people who are convinced that we're not killing Mooslims, or Metsicans, or both, fast enough or in great enough numbers; or who have unreasonable problems with black folks or Jewish folks or Catholic folks or whomever. In other words, people whose company I don't care to keep.

Does he get out and vote? Been there, done that ... no change.

Does he ... write a blog? Yeah, sure. Am there, doing that. A certain amount of fun, but no change.

Really, Mr. Whitehead, I am awake ... I think. Just clueless about what to do about it.

The Obligatory bin Laden Post

Better late than never, I hope. The assassins have done their work, wet though it was; as wet as OBL's putative oceanic grave. My countrymen have rejoiced with barbaric ardor over the murder, as if the Five Minutes' Hate had ended climactically with the slaughter of Goldstein. You Ess Ay! You Ess Ay! Exactly.

Do you suppose it's too late for me to be a real, patriotic American by getting myself some commemoratives?

Thousands of items of memorabilia celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden are being sold on the internet.

Examples include a key ring bearing the face of the al-Qaeda leader, framed in the cross-hairs of a gun, with the words "Osama Bin Killed".

There are mugs plastered with Bin Laden's face and the word "Dead" across it.

There is even an item of baby's clothing sporting the sentence: "I killed Osama."

California-based Zazzle says it has sold "tens of thousands" of these types of products online, for between $15 (£10) and $40, since Sunday.

Zazzle Nation: that's us. Outstanding.

Well, there's plenty of time for me to consider the acquisition of some cheap OBL merchandise. After all, here it is, almost ten years after The Holy Nine-Eleven, and I have yet to get so much as a radio-antenna flag, or a yellow magnetic Support the Troops ribbon. There's no need to rush into these things. Prices are bound to fall with time. As the old folks used to say, everything comes to the man who can wait.

Besides, there's something else on my mind. It seems that one Rashard Mendenhall, a gladiator for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football Lockout League, became a surrogate for the unlamented Goldstein by performing some Non-Steelers-Approved Tweeting. Here are some of his more-outrageous and unAmerican tweets:

"What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side...

"@dkeller23 We'll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style

"I believe in God. I believe we're ALL his children. And I believe HE is the ONE and ONLY judge.

"Those who judge others, will also be judged themselves.

"For those of you who said you want to see Bin Laden burn in hell and piss on his ashes, I ask how would God feel about your heart?

"There is not an ignorant bone in my body. I just encourage you to #think"

You know, I am such a lowlife, low-rent, commie terrorist scum ... I scanned Mr. Mendenhall's CriminalTweets again and again, and couldn't find a single thing to get outraged about. I mean, I can quibble about the details: I'm not especially skeptical about the plausibility of a skyscraper's fall being precipitated by the impact of a large aircraft, and the subsequent fire; and I'm in no position to pretend to know whether Mr. Mendenhall's body contains an ignorant bone, or not. But on the whole, the man was writing things that are so obviously true that I could criticize them only on the basis that they're platitudinous. I guess if I were a better American-style Christian, I too could wax ecstatic over the murder of a stranger, and could ardently hope to see that stranger burn in Hell, and lust to micturate upon his ashes. But as it is ... I am but scum.

Rashard, from one scum to another: well said, brother!

In Which I Shake My Head ...

... and wonder how many more miseries and disasters can be visited upon the people of Japan:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Japan to show American solidarity with the Japanese people as they recover from a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

...

She's making the trip to give the country a morale boost as it rebuilds from the March 11 quake and tsunami while enduring strong daily aftershocks.

...

Clinton will return home later Sunday.

So, earthquake, tsunami, and their consequences aren't enough? The Japanese must also be visited by America's Number One War Harpy? Lord, have mercy.

The smell of blood must have proven irresistible to Herself, I suppose.

Burnout

There hasn't been much here lately, and I can't say with any confidence that there's likely to be much here in the near future either. It's not a matter of my having been busy; I'm neither more nor less busy than usual. It's more a matter of not having anything to say that I haven't already said over and over again for the past, what, six or seven years. I think I'm pretty much burned out.

The country in which I live has launched yet another war against Muslims, motivated by more or less equal parts oil lust, fealty to the Israel lobby, fealty to the "defense" contracting lobby (lots of overlap with these last two), and the bloodlust of our current Nobel peace laureate president. Clinton is the last president of whom I said "it can't get any worse." What a stupid thing for me to have said. Dubya emphatically demonstrated that yes, it can get worse, and O'Bomber has certainly shown that it can get a lot worse yet ... and who knows what's next? Chucklebee? The Mittster? Barack 2.0? The one thing I'm fairly confident about is that it will indeed get worse.

Yeah, well, anyway ... I've toyed with the notion of dumping the blog, but that's silly, too ... in a week or two I'd just experience a resurgence of "piss and vinegar," as my old father used to say, and I'd have to start another one. And if there's anything the world doesn't need, it's a new blog. So I'll stand by and wait for the return of inspiration. Or whatever it is that makes me write posts; "inspiration" sounds a little grand. "Motivation" is probably more like it.

Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!

Heads are rolling at "National Public Radio" (more aptly, Nationalist Corporatist Radio) because some of the Best & Brightest got caught on sting-camera, suggesting that the Tea Party does not lack representation from the racist and know-nothing communities:

The resignation comes at a dicey time for NPR. On Tuesday, a video featuring former NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation) came to light. In the video, the work of conservative activist James O'Keefe, Schiller is heard demeaning tea party supporters as racists and "gun-toting" Christian fundamentalists who had "hijacked" the Republican Party. Schiller also said that NPR would be "better off in the long run" without federal support.

Vivian Schiller had already taken significant heat for NPR's dismissal of commentator Juan Williams last fall, after Williams confessed to apprehension when seeing Muslims on airplanes. Williams' ouster became a cause célèbre for conservatives — and helped spark the O'Keefe project. NPR's top news executive, Ellen Weiss, resigned in January as a result.

Well, this seems to call for fair, one-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand sort of commentary, so here goes. On the one hand, whoever says the Tea Party includes among its supporters a fair number of racists, toters of guns, and fundamentalists (suitably defined, I suppose) is speaking the truth. Such a statement has all the usual shortcomings of any generalization, and certainly does not apply to every individual Partier, but there it is.

On the other hand, it is delicious to see a few high-ranking smugistas at NPR fall afoul of the unanimously-accepted American Law of the Gaffe: some things simply cannot be said, and truth is no defense. Live by the sword of prissiness, die by the same. Gotcha!