[Originally published elsewhere under a female pseudonym.]
It's official. The manipulation of the color-palooza terror system has been kicked into direct election mode. Of course, that's not being admitted yet, and probably won't be for at least a few years after the election, assuming we're still here. What is now being admitted officially is that the terror warning protocol of the US is a cheap ploy. In defending the recent internally disputed terror warning, Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo chortles, "It's part of our strategy to defeat the bad guys. It puts them on edge."
Thanks, Mark. Never mind what it does to those people in the United States you "serve." Don't worry if my kid sees in the newspaper that we're likely to be zapped by terrorists soon, or if his mom then sees a . . .
[hang on a sec while I put my finger down my throat]
. . . a Homeland Security spokesman saying, "We do not have any new intelligence or specific information about al-Qaida planning an attack."
Leave it to Asa Hutchinson ("Homeland Security undersecretary for border and transportation security"), batting cleanup: "We're well-coordinated and we're articulating the same message."
Okay, maybe it was the way he said it. You can't adequately convey such a thing in print.
A couple of weeks ago I was wondering what politician will ever have the nerve to move the oft derided color-code-of-the-day to anything below yellow. It's a tragedy of efficiency when you think about it, because they spent all that time arguing about 5 codes, deciding on colors, talking to the marketing folks, and dressing it up — all for something which will likely never even have two fifths of its capabilities blipped. In fact, "getting rid of terrorism" is exposed as hubris and banality when one fully considers the bottom 2 codes of the color terror warning system (officially the "Homeland Security Advisory System"). Let me see if I can impart this adequately:
The mid-point of the code is yellow, which the DHS cretins call "elevated," but can't expect to get around the global meaning of yellow, which is "caution." I'd like to see the bureaucrat who will advocate moving below yellow to blue ("guarded") or, heaven forbid, green ("low"). We've been at yellow so long without anything major happening (post hoc ergo propter hoc alert) that even the slowest politician could see the inevitable outcry should the system be moved below yellow, followed by an attack.
Therein lies the key to understanding the futility of pretending to end terrorism. Terrorism is the ultimate guerilla war. One person can wage it, and the victims are usually helpless — a status government ensures through great effort. Give any creative soul 2 hours and he can think of many techniques a competent solo suicide act might invoke to terrorize civilians, all without likely tipping off anybody before it's too late. That's the politicians' pickle. They have to pretend to know more than their stupid public, but the real operation of the warning system proves them fakers. They are wandering chickens, their curtain torn further every day that ridiculous system stays at yellow or worse. But after an unpredicted attack it's essential that a warning can be pointed to. "See? We were on the mutha!"
No way will that ace be discarded. Worse, the fabled "chatter" which supposedly indicates pending terrorist attacks has now been recognized and subverted by terrorists into a pure manipulation tool. And that happened long before the DHS servants tipped their hand in public. A sub-yellow color code now would almost be an invitation to attack, a region of reversed command that is typical of government action. But wait! Maybe DHS can engage terrorists using the old marble trick discussed by Edgar Allan Poe in The Purloined Letter.
"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd'; – he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins."
Considering the arrogance of the average government type, in combination with government's failure on September 11, 2001 (or success, depending on your view), you may not want to continue reading Poe's story, where the schoolboy discloses his guessing method.
". . . and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucauld, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."
Apart from a gripping talent for creating havoc where none existed, it's obvious that the United States government isn't equipped with the cunning of that child, nor his essential empathy. There is nothing government can do to prevent terrorism it already created.
But it will not matter. The purpose of government is not to protect. It is only to pretend to protect — fooling enough people that it remains alive for the fat years before the collapse. Time is running out though, and some muscle must be exercised as things grow desperate. Therefore, look to the upper codes of the color system. They will be fully massaged in time, and in such a way to aid the state. If you believe that government brutes, rather than simply manipulating terrorism, are not above executing it, consider the power an orchestrated color accompaniment could add to the performance.
In any case, what will George W. Bush say when he's presented with double-secret evidence that supports raising the terror threat level to red?
"Yes. It's time."