IDIOTicles

Cop who saved shoppers from shooter: I am not a hero

2007-02-14T05:06:00.000-05:00

OGDEN, Utah (CNN) -- A police officer hailed for helping stop a rampaging shooter who killed five people in a Salt Lake City mall said he simply did what his fellow officers would have done.
"I felt that, whether I'm in my own city or not, if I have the ability to protect more people or prevent loss of lives, I have an obligation," Officer Ken Hammond told reporters. [...]

How nice it must be to "report" foolishness uncritically and get paid for it. But how much sweeter a gig to get paid to disarm peaceful, freeborn men, using violent force and the threat of it, then primp and prance to "reporters" eager to spread the message of your heavenly, brave, opportunistic nature?

The ruling class in Utah assigns itself "permission" to carry concealed guns as part of employment. It takes money from the ruled by force, threatens them with kidnapping and destitution if they're armed without a "permit", then warbles loud humility at press conferences without recognizing the sinister monopoly of force — their systematic tying of man's hands behind him. Saint Hammond may as well have first run around the mall kicking every able-bodied man and woman in the groin before moving on to be the hero of record. "Oh thanks ya massah. Thanks evah."

As with all government threats, if you disagree and defend yourself honorably by doing no more than meet the force brought against you, you will probably be killed. It's government's promise to you, society's perpetual child. Around this country supposedly proud men are bending over with smiles, to be spiritually raped by this stratification of natural rights.

I have never met a cop who's my equal. By these inferiors I and millions of others are harassed, held against our will, spoken to as children, and batted around artificially as cats handle mice. And we are to forget that before the bully class — assigning to itself unnatural, cruel powers of psychological farce — "saved" us, they first disarmed us.

"But it's only a permit!" wails the besotted dogma spewer (common man).

No, it's an unbalancing impediment and gate at which many flavors of unpublished, regular tyranny are administered. Traveling often in the middle of the night, I know cops far better than the average person. The diurnal citizen generally doesn't stand out by merely existing. Exhibit the same behavior in the pre-dawn hours, however, and it's the cop's world exclusively — a world in which you're guilty on sight, and will be detained to attend one offensive, irrelevant question after another until he snags you for having an attitude (called whatever infraction he can throw, since cops are avowedly selective in their "enforcement" of "the law"), or exhausts the limited interrogation skills of his Barney fiefdom and, with the appropriate mix of resigned, hesitating allowance, sends you along your modest Habitrail route, having saved the Republic while adding one more jizz stain to his drawers. If you licked enough paw during the encounter it will be an amicable parting from his point of view. But refuse to be treated as a child near a cookie jar, and you may be lucky to continue living.

"Absurd exaggeration!" stamps the habitual and loud obeyer.

Hardly. I'll give you a personal example (one of too many). A couple of months ago I was parked outside a business in a small shopping center long after all the stores were closed, using that business's wi-fi signal with my laptop. Bear in mind that this was done with the explicit, prior permission of the business owner. Months before I'd asked, "So even if it's 3 in the morning, it's okay with you if I park here and use the signal?" He confirmed this with no condition other than that I take it easy downloading.

Often I would be there as he closed up and walked to his car. I'd wave and he'd return the gesture. Soon, he was waving to me as I glanced up from my laptop. One evening I got out of the car as he was leaving, and told him that I appreciated him allowing me to use the signal. Considering that his business didn't offer anything I'd use (a situation I'd lamented in my first meeting with him), I asked him to keep me in mind if there were anything he needed help with, such as moving furniture, responding to a stranded auto, or anything like that. Since I'm retired, a call at any time wouldn't be an imposition. He asked me to call the store and leave a message with my phone number, which I did as he was driving away.

And it was to this cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship that Deputy Dickweed arrived and shined his car lights in my face. I had been caught!

As I turned on my interior light and put my hands in a neutral position, Double-D walked to my window, my huge laptop screen clearly visible in the passenger seat, and asked what I was doing.

"Using my buddy's wi-fi signal."

He stood there.

"Wireless internet," I offered.

"I know what wi-fi is."

Yes, of course you do, ossifer.

"Well see the thing is, it's after hours; these businesses are closed."

"Yes. I have his permission to park here and use the wi-fi signal anytime, day or night."

"Let me see some ID."

I stared at his right hip, with its holstered sci-fi weapon. Taser. My eyes moved to his left hip. Pistol.

"Is that a request or a demand?"

He straightened. "It's a demand."

Note the moment, because that was where he crossed into overt illegality, a brute operating under color of law. Until then, apart from the inherent hooliganism of the modern police state and his presence as another thug in uniform, this cop hadn't done anything a free-market cop in a mildly poor mood wouldn't have done. A lone car parked outside a closed business — human lit up and active — deserves attention, albeit friendly attention. In a free market, businesses would assign agents to look out for their property after hours, and these agents have as much right to inspect the property and visitors as the business owner. Given the monopoly of modern cops, I have a practical duty to recognize the cop as the ignorant general agent of those businesses, including my benefactor's business — for the monopoly is forced upon them as well as me.

However, once this deputy threatens violent force upon me unless I comply with his illegal, immoral demand, he is the only identified criminal in the parking lot, and it is my right to defend myself from his aggression. Naturally, if I decide to stand up to this asshole and meet his threats with visible defense, he will try to kill me — he and, if "necessary", the horde of similarly lawless jerks empowered by their regular, brute usurpation of another's rights. This dynamic is based on denying even the existence of individual right — in truth the only human right — and holding in its place the imposter of group rights, the false premise that groups may rightfully do things an individual mayn't.

For all Deputy Dickhead had before him was a visibly benign man sitting in a parked car in a lot, engine off. Even in 2007 there is no law requiring people sitting in parked, dormant vehicles to have permission slips (AKA drivers' licenses). And to this benign man sitting in a parked car he posits the violent threat that I must produce "ID". Why then should I not treat him as lower than the common thug, considering he's preening with a badge and all that goes with it in this society? This cretin should be stomped on the spot. Yet I, being at least as smart as the average bear, realize that reacting morally would also radically inconvenience me, likely to the point of death.

I didn't think it was a good day to die, so I caved to the bully and his horde on call in monopolistic control over the "cruiser" video, the story, the outcome, and the press.

Monopolistic control over the press. Do you object to the assertion? How else may one explain these bootlicking articles identifying the entity that disarmed the general, peaceful public as the savior of that same public? Get real. Of course the press are as intimidated by these hooligans as everyone else — perhaps more so, considering that receptive contact with the monopoly is the "news" through which kibble comes to the reporter/lapdog's bowl.

The cited article was written about a state in which, according to the NRA (.pdf), it's illegal to carry a concealed gun in your home, absent a "permit".

A free press would not so vigorously embrace tyrants in embarrassing drivel. Rather, a free press would note when dead victims of shootings were disarmed by laws which left their murderers armed. The effects of laws are not the avowed intentions of those laws, but rather the real outcome — in the case of almost every mass shooting, the lengthening of the victim list amid the failure to prevent the shooter from holding the dangerous object the law says he's not supposed to have. This puerile insanity has ever been.

A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave'; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.
The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

Insert pithy waste of breath in unnecessary echoing of these words by Cesare Beccaria, then wrap up article with predictable line such as, "No, Officer Hammond, you certainly are not a hero", then have a coffee — preferably one I don't have to drive to 7-11 for at this hour. I have been suitably chastised and disincentive-ized to stay at home where, if I'm good and obedient, I may still carry a concealed gun without...

Never mind; I asked permission from the state to own every fucking handgun in my collection. I am still, practically and in my heart, a coward. No hero nor peace of mind.

This Dead America

2006-12-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

Preamble

Had a girlfriend once. For years we associated voluntarily, one with the other. I kept my stuff at her home, and built a nifty walk-in closet for myself outside the master bedroom. Normal relationship bumps were weathered well enough, but there came a time when she wished to be away from me. She asked me to move out, offering to pay for the physical improvements I'd made to her house. I refused to leave. Perhaps I was more belligerent than some, but you must understand that I wanted foremost to keep the relationship intact.

Eventually, after my steadfast denial of her requests that I leave her home, she pulled a gun on me. I grabbed it, knocked her to the floor, pointed the barrel at her head, and fucked her. I then moved into her house permanently. It was my duty to preserve the union, and this I did wholeheartedly and without quarter, for her treason was not to be endured by an honorable man.

Diet Coke, NASCAR, and IRS

Scratch a modern Southerner sporting a Confederate flag, and likely you'll find a simpering faggot enthralled by US federal attachments. The odds are not absolute, but dreadful still. I see no way the beast Lincoln could have triumphed more completely in his vile aim than to have Southerners worshiping the consuming federal state while claiming Confederate heritage.

Does it matter so many years later, discussing the Lincolnian horde? Sadly, yes. Since Lincoln's lie remains the foundation for the modern enemies of American liberty, it must be exposed. The US federal war against independence is as strong and insidious as ever — stronger than in 1861. Slavery has increased and spread to all races, but under a glove velvety enough for fools and cowards. Obedient lethargy will spare you a dreaded fate. This is the modern definition of liberty.

What is slavery? If one has some freedom, is he therefore not a slave? Black slaves in 1800s America were free to sing in the cotton fields. I suppose a man in prison is free to masturbate, to select what cinderblock he'll stare at, and to think. Is he then free? Conversely, if, to avoid kidnapping and imprisonment, you must ask and receive permission from rulers for thousands of normal tasks or occupations, are you not partially enslaved? When does partial slavery warrant an unequivocal label? Because of their regularity, it's too easily ignored that the encroaching constraints of the state come in myriad forms. You can't do X. You must do Y. Party A can't associate with you unless he does Z. And pay, pay, pay. The wealth moves. To whose benefit? The average American feeds over half of his income to the state via taxes and "fees". Lost opportunity, above this 50%+, is incalculable. It is brought by force and the demonstrated threat of it.

You are not a slave? Let a single person shove the same arrangement on you, and you'll cry slavery immediately. The result is no different. If scraps of freedom prevent a "Slave" label, then perhaps the only complete slavery is murder, and one may insist, as fits his argument, that freedom lives if the subject has a pulse and mild-to-active EEG. However, it is any slavery that must be opposed, not any freedom that should be displayed loudly to divert from the obvious. In proud failure, America's befuddled majority calls dwindling opportunity liberty, and slavery the price of this bastardized state. Partial slavery, that kind master kicking the common man for the common good, is extolled for not invading 100% of one's life — the ludicrous, pained excuse of shamed animals bred to captivity and the evasion of reality.

Who owns you?

As many have noted in the welcome trend for historical revision via the internet, describing Lincoln's rampage as "Civil War" is demonstrably wrong, and indicates irredeemable bias. Yet even books supposedly sympathetic to the cause of the South are riddled with this childish error of delusion.

A civil war is one where factions within a country fight for control of that country. Those in the Southern several states, despite their many shortcomings, did not seek control of those who remained in the United States; they withdrew and asked the representatives of the US to leave their newly removed states which were, immediately upon secession, another country. This country was called the Confederate States of America (CSA), and it claimed no US territory outside its borders. It fought only to defend itself from an invading force which would have the land and wealth of others.

The unprecedented mass destruction of the war was initiated by the US in the supposedly noble cause of denying self determination to groups of freeborn men and women in departed, not newly formed and contested, states. The avowed goal of the US was to chain these humans against their will into an association they no longer desired. Given this abominable history (disguised ably for the less adroit by the lie of slavery being at the heart of the war), are you not shocked by the brainwashing executed to associate liberty historically with the US federal government? Did it get you as well? Got me; I didn't know Lincoln was a murderer until my 30s.

Lincoln and the Goons of the North committed the spiritual equivalent of erecting the Berlin Wall, and they are extolled for it even today — a PR coup for the ages, in an alleged enlightened, cynical time. Reading documents from yankee thugs in 1861, you will find regular indignant use of the word "treason", yet it was Lincoln and the goons, not the secessionists, who had broken US law and ruined the United States. The Union was not preserved, for it had been voluntary prior to 1861. Only all parties could have preserved it, and some declined, as was their legal and natural right.

Parallels with the 2003+ invasion and occupation of Iraq run deep. Federal rulers still kill and rampage with sanctimonious impunity, because it's approved by the average American. Regardless of the disaster, it is begun in the name of goodness, and therefore absolved. Popes dream of infallibility approaching that of the federal state and its soldiers. The prevailing premise of US military worship by the cowed populace remains, "If a US soldier pulled the trigger, it was a good kill." (Assuming that rare case where a death is called death, instead of the blanket term that wipes out all sanctioned murder: "service".)

The state is elevated to a dangerous, undeserved position of a religion. However, the state remains only other, usually inferior, men.

Wars of independence

Promulgating or accepting the term "Civil War" presumes multiple parties fighting for the same prize, a handy way to nullify at the outset any consideration of Northern aggression and culpability. However, US forces were fighting for control of the Confederates States of America, while the CSA — separate states from before 1800, and a country outside the US upon secession — were defending from this attack.

These defenders were woefully imperfect, benefiting from and (some of them) aggressing against blacks. The victor-penned "history" of Lincoln's war highlights Southern wrongs against blacks while filtering out a tall pile of similar aggression by Northerners. Slavery, of blacks and whites, was a sin practiced internally by both sides, but invasion of the other's country was exclusive to the North. Southerners, blacks excluded, sought to live on their land and terms, without such crimes as the tariff. This "Leave us alone" declaration was secession, and the US responded to the shunning by executing serial mass murder. Nothing can wash it away.

Strange that so many are confused about this issue of secession and the US constitution, for it's not difficult to assess. As with many objects in US history, the legislative truth is found in the ignored tenth amendment, which asserts that the powers not delegated to the US by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or the people.

Damned simple, if you care to be honest: Secession was not prohibited to the states by the constitution; neither were the US delegated the power to "preserve the Union", by force or even peaceful persuasion. Lincoln and his horde were lawbreakers of the lowest sort — killers in the cause of anti-liberty. Again, Iraq 2003 is a notable repeat. Orwell could not have done better than this vacant "preserve the Union" (now "liberation" and "democracy") slogan under which 600,000+ were slaughtered with a grim smile. Freedom is slavery. Death is preservation.

Real

Death. Murder. Killing. Slaughter. These terms are often ignored as hype when discussing Lincoln's actions. Take a moment, however, to reflect on their rigid accuracy. They are not hype. What a strange thing, perspective. When presented with an isolated atrocity — the stabbing of a tourist, for example — we recoil. When a falsely revered narcissist in a big hat calls for the violent destruction of hundreds of thousands who want only to leave his aggression, he is elevated to a deity. Our reaction to death lessens. What beasts are we to not only fall to this phenomenal lie, but to support it?

Whatever the method of the emboggling, it mustn't be allowed. Lincoln and his idolaters killed and are killing, and any Southerner claiming a rebel heritage while bowing in any way to the federal flag exposes himself as a traitor. Are you a "proud Southerner", no matter your birthplace? Then fuck your "Pledge of Allegiance", your "Support the Troops" magnets, and your Lee Greenwood, Toby Keith masturbatory haze. The spirit of secession and honor is incompatible with these disguised homosexual paraphernalia.

That's twice I've mentioned homosexuality with regard to federal worship. Male supporters of the federal machine are clamoring, under their posing disguises, to be ruled by men. They get off on it, yet consider themselves to be rabidly heterosexual all the while. These farcical swallowers rate themselves and other obedient quacks in proportion to the rapidity with which they kowtow to the demands of other men. They cajole and ostracize those who don't participate in the sick ritual. Coincidence that this type quite reliably bashes homosexuality at every opportunity? Hardly. I am convinced, through observation, intellect, and intuition, that most male federal machinists are — excuse the overused term, for it's wholly applicable here — latent homosexuals, frothing in a sea of psychological projection embarrassing to behold. No wonder the US military is adamantly opposed to homosexuality, for you will find no more intense, collectivist fags. Their homosexuality extends to blood, covering the frankness of erections and grab-assing with jumping on grenades, in the ultimate act of submissiveness to another of the same sex.

Examining the charade with open eyes leaves one preferring the association of flaming drag queens, if only for the honesty. Concerning males, accuracy is not offended by in most cases replacing the word (begin waving flag) "patriot" with "closet homo". Try it. The Closet Homo Act.

[To clarify to those who may have stumbled on this article and are unable to allow rational discussion of homosexuality, I have no problem with overt, or at least benign, homosexuals. I am denouncing those who denounce homosexuality while practicing it. Overt homosexuals, as with many historically oppressed minorities, are rich candidates for a full understanding of the ethics of liberty, and I'm saddened and perplexed how few understand that the primary truncheon on their heads is the state — that entity to which most clamor in vain for relief.]

Losses

Examine "rebellion", a word with negative cultural weight in a society that claims to revere liberty. At the heart of rebellion, assuming one isn't within the term of a voluntary contract, lives the desire to not be ruled by another. Same with the South. The South rebelled against being ruled, and did not extend this into an attempt to rule the North. As noted, the converse didn't hold. Even so, use of "rebellion" in political discussion is often as a pejorative, despite the joist-cracking elephant in the room: By what moral or other authority comes the entity against which party X is rebelling?

The immediate assumption by most in America is that there's something wrong with the rebel. Given America's founding, this is a perverse inversion, of many related to liberty and slavery. As in 2003, US propaganda was successful in the 1860s claiming that an invasion was liberation. Public school drones repeat the lie. I was taught it as well, and my parents allowed it, despite the large portrait over our fireplace of our Confederate States Army ancestor.

Where are the rebels? They have been wiped out, first in the mind, then in life. The noble, defensive being — one who seeks not to rule others, and insists he not be ruled — is pilloried in every way across this land that, sadly, continues to call itself America. This dead America has transplanted the noble, even into the South. Under the skin, most Southerners are worse than yankees. They crow about Confederate blah blah, painting rebel flags on vehicles and T-shirts while crying out for — nay, demanding — subjection by the federal borg. Their ancestors, however imperfect, deserved better than to have begotten such wayward, traitorous filth.

Payment

Why does any of this matter, almost 150 years later? Because the South, while rife with imperfection, was right, and that will never change. More important to us, the position of the former South has never again been so applicable and required as it is today. The events of the 1860s are not removed and anesthetized by time. History has not "come full circle"; the tyranny of Lincoln never left. It was the Southerner's righteous, essential spirit of resistance and independence that was bloodied into absence, buried under a lying grave marked "Rebel Dog".

If you are not a rebel, whose slave are you? In imperfect human society, you must be one or the other if you aren't a ruler. Lincoln's victory was the obscuration of this unpleasant truth.

Shut Up!

2005-05-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

However subtle and "humorous" the façade, we may recently have been slanked with the pinnacle of "Women are a Preferred Class, Dontcha Know" articles. Did you see it?

"Analysis shows" that stay at home moms should be making $131,471 a year...

..."if they received a paycheck".

Used to know a guy who said, "'If' is such a small word, with such a big meaning." Here the word 'if' has been used to imply meaning where there is none. But let me see if I can profit from this widely accepted illogic.

The people regularly visiting my blog are few, and nobody is paying me directly for my writing. Let's assume I spend 20 hours a week blogging. I hereby announce that I would be getting at least $30,000 a year "if i received a paycheck". And throw in a "if pigs had wings" too. But wait! Has anybody stopped to consider that in order to blog I must wash underwear, clip my nails now and then, and go to the store for groceries? I have not yet mentioned buying coffee beans, grinding them, pouring the distilled water into the coffee machine, and so forth. Blogging is a real chore.

Make it $45,000!

Let me calm myself a moment. Those are side points I mentioned, and perhaps overly snide and analogy-ish. Here's the question that helps fully expose the fallacy of the "if they received a paycheck" line: Who are the services performed for? In the case of my blog, all of the effort is for me. I like it. I choose to have a blog. One can't logically take those facts and then suppose fantastically that all this writing I do then carries the same weight it would were I writing for somebody else. I don't want to write for anybody else, and most mothers don't want to regularly perform for others the tasks they do for their kids and, if he exists, husband/partner. So what happens to the market "value" of those services? It plummets. Who you'll work for can be as crucial to value as the type of work performed.

This reality is no more evil or undesirable than gravity. Government and other abnormal influences aside, after negotiation, what people are getting paid in exchange for services is what they are supposed to be paid. It's a wondrous thing when viewed with perspective. Who is going to generate these "paychecks" the article speaks of? Nobody. Therefore, any dollar figures proposed fail to carry even theoretical weight.

Now I realize, given the entire article, that it's largely a piece of fluff for "Mothers' Day", but it's fluff with an attempted message — a message of victims (female, go figure) who've been given the shaft. The message dissolves when stripped of its rhetorical diverts:

If people got paid a bunch of money for doing something they do already for little money, they'd be making a whole bunch of money.

That's news? That's an "analysis"?

"But mothers do real labor — labor for which they'd get paid in different circumstances!" cries the flaggelator. Well it's no different from my blog, is it? The market will not bear such an exchange under current circumstances, and current circumstances matter if the situation can't be changed. The theme they're attempting rather oafishly to inflict is that mothers are "underpaid" — a distant cousin of the continual myth of there being a "glass ceiling" below which women remain in downtrodden captivity. There are big problems with the minds of those who write or believe such ill-considered statements. Often, such calls lead to "legislation", the generally acceptable word for "threatening to beat the shit out of you if you disagree". Beyond the violence of the thing is the untenable financial doctrine supporting it. As the US continue to the point where no decision for an individual may be made except by committee, exponential faith is placed in the childish supposition that money comes from nowhere — literally that there is no exchange, but only lofty opinions by which to dole out "funding" (that ephemeral fiction of perpetually self-generating, ever-flowing wealth).

Sad that it must even be mentioned, but despite attempts by the uneducated to paint society otherwise, everything must be paid for by somebody. The precept creep of merely deciding what people should be paid and then announcing it loudly enough to build up a head of steam leads to chaotic failure and resentment. Support for such a tactic exists only through moving the disasters far enough away from their cause, allowing the dream to flourish in the usual cycle that government begins anew by announcing it's needed even more sorely because of the fuckups it just caused. Nobody in government will put it so plainly, but you have eyes, don't you?

What people should be paid is what anyone agrees voluntarily to pay them. The reason no disinterested person or collective will ever pay the average woman anywhere close to $100K/yr to raise her own kids is that very few disinterested parties, when confronted directly on the matter (specifically at the wallet), care to pay people for situations which are already generally highly desired at no pay. In short, they don't give a genuine fuck. One may as well pick any hobby and bemoan its supposed lack of pay, trying to glom more respect for it by publicizing numbers that don't and can't exist in reality.

There is no general demand for people who want to have kids; it's what people do naturally. That's economics, and no high-minded simpleton can do anything more sensible than leave it alone. Any pretense that a job without a common market magically gets pay from nowhere is a brazen attempt to manipulate through lies. It's just as accurate to state that a mother would get $1 million annually "if she received a paycheck." My mother was worth that and more to me. But who was going to pay her?

The article ends correctly:

"I'm giving 150 percent of myself to them many hours a day,” said Debra Miley, who stays home with two-year old daughter Olivia and four-month old son Gregory. "You cannot attach a dollar value to the time that you spend nurturing your child if you're lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mom."

How many people read that far though? News as indoctrination will exist as long as the audience is passive, accepting the presumption that you can publish anything if you pretend to do it with balance. The only balance for some propositions is the trash can.

This Will Be Such a Popular Article

2005-02-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

I think the title above should be assumed, at least in brackets, when reading almost anything online now. There are disturbing losses in the whoredom that Internet traffic trolling has become. Take honesty, for a start. Gone. Truth gives way to a high-schoolish nudge permeating much of the Internet and infecting most blogs. Everybody's in the know. "Can't say too much, you understand; don't want to spell out something concrete."

There's usually nothing to spell out. If you have the correct tone, it will be forwarded by somebody. Tone sells. When i run into some popular blog posts these days, they read like a bad Hollywood gossip column. I've never read most of the popular blogs that so many flock to. Instapundit? Who gives a fuck? Andrew Sullivan? Don't even know who he is; I just see his name thrown around as an ultima-blogger. Is he the guy at Instapundit? I don't know. Is my life missing something that reading a megablog can give me? Do I need to use the word "blogosphere"?

Increasingly, there's a self awareness to blogging that's splitting off its rare non-practitioners into the only feeds in my bloglines basket. If i see a self-referential, hanging-by-the-high-school-locker tone at a blog, consider me bailed. So tired of it.

Perhaps worse than the insider taint is the concept whore. If you want to see the ultimate cluster fuck example of this, just read today's The Money Is In the Long Tail, by Tim Worstall. The guy is getting on his knees and blowing the reader into forwarding his cute way of repackaging (and distorting) economics truths that have been known for centuries, long encapsulated and understood in ways that expose his new attempt as pure smoke — except for its brief flurry this week on the Internet. The disappearance of traditional publication opportunity costs (e.g., physical printing, distribution) has opened up the spigot for this trash that somebody in the old days would have refused to front the paper stock for. For this example, he's merely the second person (that he notes, right off the bat) trying to grab on to somebody else's concept whore piece — a not as bad, yet still worthless, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson.

What is "The Long Tail" about, using plain language that doesn't try to pretend it's the emperor's new clothes? It is about the natural yet astounding efficiency brought to the market by databases and the new ability of a global group of consumers to query those databases with ease. That's it. This is self-evident material that anybody with eyeballs and a spare moment saw as eBay emerged; tremendous value was added to what was previously junk. By cataloging it (via databases) and allowing supply to connect with demand in ways that before were woefully inefficient or impossible, the Island of Misfit Toys was disbanded. The margin was permanently altered. Whether for obscure antiques or "forgotten" songs, new life was breathed into marketing and distribution by databases and their newly acquired direct user interaction (mostly the Internet). In some cases, as in his jukebox example, the database actually stores and serves the product. Wonderful. The benefits of these new facilities are immeasurable. But couldn't we honor that wonder by not farting out some unnecessary buzzword that really is simply intended to glorify the first person ballsy enough to try it? Must we have no restraint?

In the marketing of these bold "new" vacuu-cepts, you'll often find linguistic sleight of hand trying to make something out of nothing (the ultimate goal of the style) for that audience stupid enough to miss the obvious:

...[M]eet Robbie Vann-Adibé, the CEO of Ecast, a digital jukebox company whose barroom players offer more than 150,000 tracks - and some surprising usage statistics. He hints at them with a question that visitors invariably get wrong: "What percentage of the top 10,000 titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?"

Most people guess 20 percent, and for good reason: We've been trained to think that way. The 80-20 rule, also known as Pareto's principle (after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who devised the concept in 1906), is all around us. Only 20 percent of major studio films will be hits. Same for TV shows, games, and mass-market books - 20 percent all. The odds are even worse for major-label CDs, where fewer than 10 percent are profitable, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

But the right answer, says Vann-Adibé, is 99 percent. There is demand for nearly every one of those top 10,000 tracks. He sees it in his own jukebox statistics; each month, thousands of people put in their dollars for songs that no traditional jukebox anywhere has ever carried.

He has just asked what percentage of the top 10,000 titles will rent or sell at least once a month, and then tries to pretend that such a question is missed by Pareto's dubious principle (because we're so fresh these days). Does this really require explanation to debunk, or are you with me already?

Pareto's principle, by the way, is a widget that will mean whatever you want it to (as long as you use an 80 somewhere, and a 20), but in this case is intended to suppose that out of all items in an inventory, 20% will account for 80% of sales. What the hell does this have to do with items which have already been defined in the question as top sellers? LMAO. As Jay Leno used to ask back when he was funny, "Are we morons?" This is rubbish that's trying to sell the reader into thinking the writer's led him to Texas Tea. It should be shunned, but it obviously has not been. He follows it with this further insult:

People get Vann-Adibé's question wrong because the answer is counterintuitive in two ways. ...

The answer isn't counterintuitive. Ask anybody who's found a strange item on eBay. C'mon, folks, this obvious benefit of, in whatever form, getting more sellers with more buyers is not even worth an article if you have your brain turned on, and will never be worthy of a new buzzword whose sole purpose is to glorify its proselytizer if he can make it stick.

So out of the woods come the desperate mega-pretender zombies — sycophants who want to up their stats by plowing further into a ridiculous concept to see if they can get their names attached to it. In his shameful attempt today, Tim Worstall writes:

It might surprise you to know that two of the cherished objectives of leftist types are actually in conflict with each other. They are, at extremes, mutually exclusive. And the long tail is the reason. In this brief interregnum before this meme is used to explain why the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east, let me explain it for you.

"Brief interregnum"? Ha! Sorry, fella, but that ship sailed the day the first moron forwarded Chris Anderson's original stab. And "meme"? Somebody slap that asshole for even using the word. I believe the first time I saw this "be careful, because people just like me are going to be out there" doggerel was in the Book of Mormon. Didn't buy it then either. Worstall's big "new" thesis is that taxes discourage the creation of wealth. Wow! And we have to endure the mystical bombardment of all sorts of "new" concepts until we figure out that the insider tone, the all-knowing nudges, and the implied claims of originality are simply the Internet's red-light district where rude people didn't have the decency to turn on the light before you walked in.

I have a new concept. It's called "ignore". Don't touch his article. Don't print this one here. Don't forward them. Don't pretend they're saying something important. If they were, and you were able to recognize it, you'd have already thought of it yourself (or would soon).

The Internet needs an enema. These statist fools trying to come up with the "correct" amount of taxation by appealing to "The Long Tail" and other ephemera should be shunned with cold intent. Do it. Stop buying into these foolish conceits. Stop pretending that if we wink at one another fast enough we can create something worthy out of nothing. Better yet, ask of everything you see, "What is the point? What is this guy really saying?"

The answers to those questions are hard to find in the torrent of smarm coming across our screens every day. The only way it will change is if bullshit is bypassed without regard for its wrapping paper.

Improve the world. Vow today that you will not forward or repeat anything for which the answer to the question "What is he saying?" is not worth sharing. This article is a good example. I've written hundreds of words for a conclusion that is essentially, "Non-commercial communication on the Internet is becoming all form and no substance." Big fucking deal.

Hope and Life

2005-02-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

The worst thing one man can do to another is remove his hope. People will put up with all manner of slights and privation for light at the end of the tunnel, but removing hope removes one's humanity. It's the fatal mistake of any drift toward totalitarianism to move so quickly as to afford a view of the ultimate goal.

People will get away with whatever you allow. If you offer no resistance, you will likely remain at your job, making the same amount of money, and putting one foot in front of the other toward the path carefully plotted in nature's way: death. If we all must die, and if we have no evidence that we are to come through again, nor guarantees of bliss (or even existence "on the other side"), our lives may mean very much to us. Turmoil flows from those who don't consider your life to mean anything to them.

I am sitting at a bar right now, typing this. The bartender's name is Jennifer, and she is one of the world's best. She just plugged in my Pocket PC for me after the battery died. Talking to Jennifer, as most males at this bar clamor to do, I noticed a slight stinging from a cut on my arm, the kind of thing that can divert your attention for a day or two. I'm usually pretty good at tuning out pain, but just now I had a breakthrough. Rather than pain, I felt assurance. I know my body, and it's shown me over the years that there's not much like this that can harm it. It always repairs.

Something that's repeated without fail gives confidence that it will occur again if conditions are similar. Applying that to my recent cut makes me happy. A cut makes me happy? Yes. I am focusing on the power of my body to repair itself, and the assurance (founded hope) of the outcome brings peace and internal harmony as I look to the future. Am I making up this drivel? I don't think so. I really feel positive about the cut.

How does a guy who can feel positive about a cut lose hope in regard to life in America? As with the cut, I have seen the reliable repetition of conditions, but this time in the opposite direction, and with the sorry reality of a constant decline. In the same process that allows me to trust my body to fix itself, history has shown me that I have little reason to hope things will get better than this current state which is unacceptable to me.

Honesty. When an honest thief steals your wealth, he doesn't engage in the ultimate insult of pretending you need him. Government, however, regularly portrays itself as my savior, and I admit that I'm starting to lose hope. The first to be harmed are those who least need aggressive intervention. Some of us despise aggression so much that it robs our spirit to accomplish anything.

That shouldn't be mistaken as immobility brought about by fear. It could be stated fairly that I'm a fighter. But what do I fight against when the enemy is the amorphous state? Who do I attack? Who will stand forth as a single aggressor to do battle with me? Nobody. The twin thrust of totalitarian collectives is, first, the collective; there is no "one". The second and killing thrust is sanctimony; the ruling class has accepted the "burden" of ruling so that the collective may thrive. Such presumption paints opponents of the collectivist flood as enemies of their fellow men. Those with the real answer (i.e., refusal to initiate force) for societal harmony and good fortune fight so that it may be allowed to truly bless us with its proven benefits. And how do we come across while bearing this message of hope against killers? As spoilsports!

To hell with that. It's a lie — damned effective, but a lie. We cannot have our knees cut out from under us and ignore it. I cannot continue to see my wealth stolen from me through ever-widening openings and simply presume that it's the way things must be. An enemy must be sighted in the blur. This is my life, and no one, or group of ones, has the right to it. No man may steal from me with the expectation of impunity unless he would claim my very being. Totalitarian collectives resist taking beings completely when those beings can be raped for wealth. But what some will tolerate, others cannot.

Which brings me back to hope. As Bastiat noted long ago, men naturally seek to live as efficiently as possible, and some won't think twice about gaining their "efficiency" at your expense. But between covert thieves and overt despots lies that most elusive yet plentiful animal, the Self-Righteous Chickenshit (SRC). SRCs can be thought of in two blurred classes — rule maker and rule follower — neither of which has enough balls to rape you to your face; they must use procedures and agents (a collective). You don't pay "your taxes", a procedure kicks in. If you strenuously resist this procedure (as rightfully you may) you will eventually be killed. And those who participated in your killing (conspiracy to commit murder) will be lauded as having done their jobs.

"Callin' it your job don't make it right, boss." That line says it all. It was stated with calm assurance by Cool Hand Luke in response to a thug who claimed that he was just doing his job as he herded Luke into "the box" to spend the night. Luke's crime? His mother died. That's the logic of the state.

Yes, you're right; it was a movie. And Luke's one movie sentence was true. If you want to leave the movies and examine life in America, examine the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire, and its collective persecution of Carl Drega, a freeborn man whose primary goal was to be able, eventually, to live free. The state killed Carl's hope, and Carl did what he could until snapping under their targeted abuse. He was one man.

I'll bet Carl Drega was a nasty curmudgeon — the sort of man nobody would want to spend much time with. But it seems Carl didn't ask anybody to spend time with him. He spent much of his scarce resources (chiefly time) crying out, "Leave me alone!" Still the state came intruding on that man, his land, and his life. Much has been written about Drega and his role as a canary in the American coal mine. Canaries are dying, and they are being ignored. Those who thrive on liberty are being pushed out of "the land of the free." Who cares?

Last week I asked some close friends of mine (statists by habit, but free men by constitution) where I could go to satisfy only one criterion: To be left alone. Where could I go and not be assaulted by thugs who presumed that they owned my property, or who lived as though my non-aggressive behavior was subject to their birdbrain constraints? That was my question, and it presumed that I would be self-sufficient, and therefore immune from income tax and the like. What a tragedy that not one of their answers included a location in the United States, that fabled land of the free, home of the brave.

The United States are becoming a lethal place for freemen. How many Americans proudly quote "give me liberty or give me death" to their kids while also believing quietly in the core of their souls that anybody who really believes such a thing is a nutcase? Put enough disgraceful quiet beliefs together, and you have real problems. Just ask Carl Drega, the one man in New Hampshire who actually subscribed to the state motto.

Social Engineering University

2004-08-16T01:00:00.000-04:00

[Originally published elsewhere under a female pseudonym.]

Given that most Americans presume one must go to school to be an expert on a subject, I'm wondering from which social engineering university boobus americanus was graduated; he certainly is an expert on what to do to people so that the world will be a better place. From the lowliest CNN anchor, to the highest man on the street, America is brimming with people who have The Solution, and desperately want it shoved in your face.

Might it be possible that the solution to America's problems is liberty? Never! Liberty is merely a word one uses on a campaign trail. It must have no meaning. Instead, the solution to America's problems is always a nightmare of networked coercive steps that will somehow ramrod a wayward populace into the correctness bottle. As H. L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." The common people haven't yet put together that their penchant for bulldozing their neighbors necessarily encourages the same response in others. Boobus americanus fuels the bulldozer that grinds his own nose into the pavement, yet he is too busy participating in his destruction to notice that it hurts, or why.

Listening to Bill O'Reilly recently, I almost pulled the car over to applaud when he let loose a surprising tirade (uncharacteristically correct and concise) on the futility of government — how politicians are merely buying votes with their destructive programs, and how it will never solve anything. My enthusiasm lasted only until I recalled his tirade from the day before, when he outlined how he would be able to end America's drug problems if only he were given total control. The cheering for his iron-fisted miracle went on for quite a while. Drug dealers would be doing hard time, just you wait and see!

Are you familiar with observational humor? It's a low form of stand-up comedy frowned on by comedians, though many still employ it out of desperation. Imagine you're plucked out of a line-up for some reality TV show and told that you have 2 minutes to prepare for a stand-up comedy gig. This is no problem. Just pick a common experience and whine it up using what might best be called, continuing the Mencken theme, vox sardonicus. Take almost any topic, and you can sneer your way through 50 minutes that will have the modern comedy audience howling for one another with sidelong glances, and walking out of the comedy club emitting bubbly variants of, "That's so true!" Fast food drive-thru windows? A gold mine. Bad movies? An easy 10 minutes. Andy Rooney built a career out of the technique, once dedicating a segment to paper clips.

Just as comedy audiences have been conditioned to accept inane observations as humor, and even use similar rants to get their friends rolling, so have most Americans become conditioned to accept "problem solving" as high politics. They also recognize correctly that they are just as qualified to try their hand as well. Gone are the days when it was presumed that the job of a politician was to keep you free to do your thing, and the job of a neighbor to mind his affairs. The politician's job is now to represent you in your effort to impose your view of the world onto everyone else. Got a problem? It's not too small to warrant the application of force.

Such an occupation is sad, but how much worse is it for people to not realize the futility of the battle when ample evidence surrounds us? The process of socially engineered strife can never meet success, no matter who's representing you. Success would require universal agreement on how things should be. This is obvious, yet the problem persists because careers can be had from encouraging the game — careers that enjoy the unique benefit of being able to manipulate failure into job security. Just listen to Bush and Kerry on the campaign trail spouting the same lies and promises we've been hearing all our lives. Isn't it about time to pull the plug?

There's a pop-up Internet ad flourishing recently that uses this disease of perpetual polemic to encourage clicks. It appears with a picture and a simple poll question such as, "Was George W. Bush right to go to war in Iraq?" Pure genius. Without thinking that they're getting into something they don't want to, many people are distracted long enough by their vociferousness to forget their skepticism of pop-ups. It is a mousetrap for humans, worthy of study because it demonstrates in 5 seconds what politicians have been cultivating for centuries: You can get people to plod into self-destructive territory if you solicit their opinions. The more you make it appear that their opinions have value, the more you will win. In the warped view of today's social engineers, whether paid or unpaid, the highest value an opinion can attain is to be deemed worthy of inflicting on people. Then you have arrived. Our dilemma is that liberty cannot be inflicted.

The destructive loop of opinion politics is clear. The more people notice that the opinions of others are being used to trample how they want to run their lives, the more likely they are to want to fight back in the same way. That compulsion distracts completely from fighting for liberty — the very thing that is being lost, and the aspect that really bothers them the most. Yes, even sheeple love liberty in their way. They just aren't able to recognize how important it is.

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged contains a tight parable in which she illuminates the ascension, decline, and destruction of a small community that embraced terminal opinion politics (socialism). I would quote from it here, but it should probably be enjoyed in context if you haven't read the book. Harold Leiendecker comments on Atlas Shrugged's Twentieth Century Motor Company:

Its founder had built the best automobile company around. But his heirs decide to run it on the basis of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Rand’s hatred for what she saw in her native Russia boils over here.

The rewarding of need motivates many employees to become victims and beggars. Those who used to celebrate births in the community, come to hate them. They become hostile toward those who become sick, and many feign incompetence in order to avoid the extra assignments that accrue to good workers. The new generation of family owners receives many public humanitarian awards, and admiration for their new, selfless administration. But one sister in the family becomes the czar of judging needs, and enjoys that power, to a fault. One brother makes himself more equal than others, and becomes dissolute. The company rots away.

These tendencies of a consuming state and its appeal to the biases of the trampled have flourished for ages. Frédéric Bastiat addressed the phenomenon plainly in a comparatively recent denunciation (1850):

As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose – that it may violate property instead of protecting it – then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious.

Social engineering is the direct enemy of liberty, and a task for which no man or group of men can be qualified. Bastiat again, on the evil pastime's inherent contradiction:

What is the attitude of the democrat when political rights are under discussion? How does he regard the people when a legislator is to be chosen? Ah, then it is claimed that the people have an instinctive wisdom; they are gifted with the finest perception; their will is always right; the general will cannot err; voting cannot be too universal. [. . .]

But when the legislator is finally elected – ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation.

This game is played out every day in the US by politicians and armchair socializers who praise democracy as the ultimate solution for peace and harmony. "The will of the people!" they shout. The rest of the sentence ("...so long as it's my will.") is not shouted.

It hardly seems worth the bother of arguing that if the will of the people is sacrosanct, one need only leave them alone to go where such will might lead them. However, there are no bosses when everybody's a boss, so the United States is quickly surpassing the despots of the French Revolution in handing to slaves the keys to rule their brothers and sisters in the name of freedom for all.

I have heard from surprising sources lately the sort of socialist opinions that would have provoked embarrassing censure only 50 years ago. Marked changes are not necessarily bad, but if we have undergone a change, it seems right to ask, "In what direction are we headed?" Is it toward liberty or away from it? And if it's away, may we please dispose of the relentless talk of liberty? Should liberty be no more, let it at least live in its death, so that perhaps a worthy population may rediscover it after the social engineers are gone. And gone they will be, whether by their hands or others.

Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they too have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think, and to judge for themselves!

~ Frédéric Bastiat
The Law

Mandatory Tooth Brushing

2004-06-16T01:00:00.001-04:00

[Originally published elsewhere under a female pseudonym.]

The terrorists have landed. They are here. Every day they are kidnapping American citizens ("detainees"), disrespecting property, and establishing turmoil where peaceful living once flourished. They wear badges and call your house soliciting contributions, because they are out there risking their lives — for you.

What do timber cutters, fishers, pilots/navigators, structural metal workers, drivers-sales workers, roofers, electrical power installers, farm workers, construction laborers, and truck drivers have in common? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (.pdf), they were the people with the highest workplace fatality rates in 2002. (Incidentally, BLS reports that 92% of workplace deaths in that year were of men.) In other words, all of those jobs involve people who, statistically, put their lives more at risk than policemen, yet do not enjoy nor seek to attain an air of godliness. After the 2003 stats are published, it will be interesting to find where the vaunted military fits in the halls of sacrifice. What these 2002 stats tell you, using the logic of the morose, is that the men who sacrifice the most for their country are timber cutters. But who really knows? I do know that I have never been forcibly and directly held against my will by a timber cutter.

The latest trend in the marketing of citizen harassment is billboards with one or more cops striking a tough pose underneath haughty verbiage about "deadbeat dads" and "click it or ticket" scams. The people of America have fallen to an ambient subordination where "zero tolerance" tyranny and busybody piety are embraced as a religion. Whether concerning cigarettes, guns, or seatbelts, the best way to an American's heart is now through a billy club or the threat of it. Fear is the engine of America's entrenched and growing tradition for servile conformity, while all 'round come shouts, "Let Freedom Ring!"

Let's consider just the seatbelt shakedown. This is sold to the collective by appealing to socialist economics, buttressed by slave media who repeat the tyrants' spew verbatim. It seems that people who don't wear seatbelts are a hindrance to the herd. Because we're all together, Soviet Union style, one man's independent (such a quaint word) path costs everybody. And once that collective foot is in the door, anything goes with increasing rapidity. You may be stopped, handcuffed, detained, kidnapped, pilloried, and waylaid under color of law for committing the sin of treating your property as your own. We are pelted with public service radio and TV ads where a threatening voiceover ends, ". . . so click it, or ticket," with an ominous sound effect that may as well be a jail cell door being slammed.

We can now wonder seriously when the campaign for mandatory tooth brushing will commence. Maybe 10 years ago we would have laughed at the suggestion, but no longer. And when the rulers get to the tooth brushing stage, just imagine the invasive enforcement that will be suggested over and over, subtly at first, until the public is inured to the horror, stepping back meekly to allow the most hideous of state actions to occur with regularity. Naturally, they will no longer be hideous anymore, just as searches and seizures are deemed unreasonable only when the equilibrium between the state's behavior and the slaves' intolerance is crossed — a margin moving steadily toward totalitarianism.

Such are the footholds of tyrants. Society will benefit if we all brush our teeth regularly. Once they sell the twist that it's really important, anything goes. It only takes gentle but steady pressure over time, like water over rocks. We all wear down, though some crack before they smudge. If the United States exist 20 years from now, it's likely that we will have heard serious proposals that the newly enacted tooth brushing laws "just don't have any teeth," a phrase that will inspire appreciative groans and chuckles from the slut media at the press conference, and will be printed intact. Pictures of children with nasty tooth maladies will be published as needed. Parents will be blamed, naturally, and the long arm of the law will be invoked because there are some parents out there who just don't care, and therefore we all must suffer. We are in the thralls of Romper Room politics for the global classroom of citizen children, and our place is merely to recognize our true positions as wards of the state.

The average American will play right along with the tooth-brushing invasion, for the common good. He will ante up for the cameras and networks that will be installed near every bathroom sink at which children are to brush. Naturally, the first laws, as with bicycle helmets, will begin with children. You can hear the arguments now, each serving as a grip for the next intrusion:

"We cannot allow children to be victims of parents who are not sufficiently concerned for the health of their little ones. What parent would object to these progressive measures if he were not already mistreating his child? It is time that we all join together for society, and submit to a very small measure of inconvenience in order to have the greater benefit of healthy children. To continue as we have would be child abuse."

That spiel is repellent enough, but there is nothing in the logic of collectivists that isolates kids from adults, cars from houses, seatbelts from tooth brushing, and elbow room from chains — nothing except the time it will take to move from one layer to the next. It will start with pledges to brush, then move to little clickers that must be pressed twice a day, followed by the cameras, removal of children from the home, and the intended coup de grâce: Total slavery for health and freedom.

At which stage will you refuse? The question hasn't changed for thousands of years. When will it be too much? You can be sure that government types never stop at too much. They only wait. They wait for acclimation to the threshold tyranny, manufacture disaster tales, and decry the unfortunate need to take drastic new steps for your own good. Curiously, each wave accords more power to the rulers.

When they come for our teeth, perhaps they will find teeth in abundance. It would be long — so very long — overdue.

Candy Canes of Bamboozlement

2004-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

[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."

In Defense of Rape

2003-11-21T04:35:00.000-05:00

Some of us are connoisseurs, which one dictionary defines as "one who enjoys with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties." I've acquired certain passions through life, but the one which slayed me from birth, and which remains, is that for feminine beauty. Walk me through a shopping mall in your average city and there will be found gems. Hunting for lunch in a local food court with a female friend from work, she will halt our conversation respectfully as another blossom floats by; she knows it's a moment of reverence for a sick man. There are women out there who have no idea what wonders they carry with them in their very presence. And there are those who do. Both have earth-shaking power.

I like to think that I'm subtle and inoffensive as I take in the wandering treats. To offend a beautiful woman would be a crime. To force oneself upon any woman is something I've never understood. Speaking utterly selfishly, to be desired by one you desire is the payoff. Anything less would seem to be unworthy of hopeless, intrusive pursuit.

Yet I write this article to propose that sexual rape be legalized. Further, I not only propose it, I predict that it is inevitable. Curiously, proponents of forcing others upon you have held back from this final frontier. I don't understand it. We are told that it is wrong to discriminate for all manner of peculiarities or regularities. Characteristics and opinions, we are told, are the currency of a retired age, "open-mindedness" (blindness) being our new religion.

Ethnicity among females is something I'm weird about; I don't have a preference that I'm aware of. Show me a group photo of the Miss World contestants, and I'm as likely to favor a Turkish lass as an American, or a beauty from Cameroon over another man's knockout from Lansing. That may come from growing up in a house where we had people from other countries flowing through like a river. I can get along with almost anybody, despite geographical origin. So how do I feel if I see a personal ad where a black female indicates a preference for a black man? What's wrong with white men? Why the discrimination?

The final frontier. It's going to be a doozy. When I, a white man who has no problem being sexually attracted to a cute black woman, can force myself on one, then I'll know all is wrong with the world — completely and consistently wrong. I await with expectation the moment when I may call up some federal agency and register an official complaint that my sexual signals and entreaties were scorned — my pickup lines frozen in flight, tinkling to the floor as shattered ice. If the woman against whom I advanced was so stupid as to mutter something about me being an awkward, bald guy, I'd say that's pretty much the very definition of prima facie something or other, warranting extra penalties when she's served with an injunction to cease her protestation and resistance.

Marriage is what I'm ultimately gunning for. How many beautiful women at the local food court do you suppose would seriously entertain my proposal? Yet if they apply for a job with my private company, I'd be screwed, blued, and ballyhooed should I have any objection to a characteristic other than the presence or lack of a pulse. Come to think of it, maybe I was too hasty on what constitutes the final frontier of forced association. Why are dead people treated as though they have nothing to contribute? Who really knows what goes on inside the head of a dead person. Could there be feelings and rights we don't see? May I ask that a body which becomes dead inside my establishment be removed? Do I need to wait until closing time, when it's still understood (2003) that I have the right to ask everybody to leave? Why are these questions sounding less and less preposterous each day, in the same way the parody newspaper The Onion is running out of things to mock? It's all gonna explode one day.

I have no opinion on Chinese people. I haven't met all or enough of them to think there's something Chinese-ish that I don't like (other than those weird noises they make with their mouths). But let's say I can't stand 'em. I don't want them on my land — "my land" being something that doesn't exist in America, but still has some power as a relic phrase. If it's my home, I may still say I don't want them there, but I have to be damn careful I don't say, "freaking chink" when drawing down on one and firing as he tries to break in.

However, if "my land" is a business, we've achieved in this country an artificial divide which makes my opinion and wishes regarding Chinese people not only powerless, but offensive to the point where government may literally destroy me with impunity and popular support. You can talk to anyone about this conundrum, and you'll never get anything more logical than, "That's the way I like it. It's right. I'm a humanitarian. You will be forced."

Okay then. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the ride. It's only a matter of time before I can walk up to a choice beauty, tell her she's mine, and ask if she prefers . . . no, to hell with what she prefers!

The only problem is that once this "policy" becomes law, there will be no choice beauties. The law will have destroyed that which it sought to guarantee in abundance to the rapists (thereafter named "deserving human suitors") without regard for the preferences of any except those who claim, lying through their teeth, that they have none.

I have a preference: I want to continue to be rejected by most women I would have for my own. That is the way it must be. And when one stops to think about it with a distorted enough view, I am the true victim in all of this — I and the millions of men who cannot have freely everything they desire, be it flesh, minds, land, wealth, or lives.

The Truth of Sport

2003-07-31T04:34:00.000-04:00

To skinny guys with slow-twitch muscles, Lance Armstrong was a cool dude long before his battle with cancer. Imagine growing up, chronically unable to pick up a wayward ball and return it to its owners without worrying that your "return throw" would be about 54 degrees off course, jeers likely to follow. (Not too hard for some of us to "imagine", eh?) Armstrong probably wasn't that bad, but he wasn't great at conventional sports. The guy was built to do what he's doing — dominate the cycling world with a rare ability to process oxygen and endure pure pain. Others also find themselves singularly built for cycling, even if not to that extent. It can be surprising to find out late in life that you're good at some sport. The payoff can be shocking.

Anaerobic sporting events (those in which you place your body into oxygen debt through exertion) can be thought of as mini lives — as with cats but better. It's possible to take lessons learned in those many chances and carry them over into the one big event you don't want to lose, assuming you don't want to lose in life. It seems that some people haven't resolved that issue either way. Should they fight or float? For those who know they want to fight, many don't tap their full potential often. There's nothing better to quickly demonstrate these larger concepts in miniature than a bicycle race where you either win or lose.

It may be fun to ride and not win, but you're still a loser. Trust me on that. If you find yourself offering excuses more than not, losing cycling races can quickly hold your inferiority up to a mirror which inspires you either to drop the sport or make goals and then reach them. There is good news in that almost everybody can get much better, but that's not much consolation as you slink away from the finish line trying to get those loser, acid-sweaty tears out of your worthless eyeballs, you slithering waste of DNA.

Let's gather 'round and hold hands, people: "We're all winners here!"

Yeah. Uh huh. When that magic moment finally hits, and you're the one who whipped everybody — when you're the top dog — look your ma in the eye and tell her it feels the same as losing. Tell her that everybody's a winner. Once you hit that top step on the podium, you'll see the cruise director blah-blah for exactly what it is, and you'll curse its deluded devotees for trying to steal your thunder. You will be on your way to being human in real, positive terms.

You will also be further from antisocial than you'd have thought possible. There's a complex interaction in conventional cycling races where alliances among riders are made and broken many times. Unless you're riding below your class, you must work with others to win. Riding alone isn't something done successfully in most races. Most know that wind is a tactical issue in cycling, but if you haven't tried cycling in a group, the power of it may surprise you. Speed can easily be regulated when going downhill by sliding in and out of the slipstream of the rider in front — that guy who's pedaling intently just to go the same speed you're coasting.

On level ground, try using a speedometer at first to maintain pace when the leader peels off and drifts to the back of the line, leaving you "pulling" the pack for a bit. It can be painful to stay up there for more than 30 seconds or so before you also defer to the next rider in line, but ego does wonders for many. It's even common for new cyclists to unconsciously pick up the pace when their turn at the front arrives, they feel so on the spot. But they're quickly taken under wing and shown how it ruins the "pace line", turning it into a yo-yo and throwing away much of the efficiency. Experienced riders will often pull out to the side and ride solo rather than yo-yo with newbies.

Cycling in a tight pace line is usually a matter of trust or stupidity. Never ride closely on a new wheel until he's proven his smoothness. When good racer friends train, a distance of 2" or less is common between tires, at speeds sometimes exceeding 40 MPH. Want a thrill? Ride a tight 30 MPH sometime behind a moron who ticks his brakes without warning. You'll avoid him ever after.

Few things can teach the beauty of competitive relationships like the last five minutes of a friendly training ride. Typically, there will be a sprint point (a certain street sign, fire hydrant, etc.) that everyone knows is the official finish line. As it approaches, your "friends" from 10 minutes before will sneak glances at your gears to see if you're about to jump. You're doing the same to them as they try to shift into big gears so smoothly that it's not heard. Sometimes two conspirators will drop back and whisper-whisper-whisper the glorious game plan to end all game plans. Everybody's glancing with eyeballs only, anticipating some loony tune from behind who will stand on his pedals and draw sword, rocketing toward the front and, he hopes, beyond. There's no hiding it when it happens, and it's a declaration of war. If you don't get on a wheel for the first torrent of possibly many torrents in the unpredictable sprint, your prospects dwindle exponentially. The suffering is temporary. Say that to yourself repeatedly, perhaps alternating with "Must. Stay. On. Wheel," or "I am not a wimpy puke. I am not a wimpy puke." Then try it in life sometime. You may be surprised.

That last sprint (anywhere from 20 seconds to several minutes) is why you hung for the previous 40 miles of misery. You want to devour your buddy and leave him crying in your wake, unable to sleep that night because he can't believe that's all he had to give. Sort of like in Highlander, "There can be only one." Yes, there's the one behind him, and the one behind that guy, and, losing aside, there's some honor in putting in a good finish, but history remembers winners.

I still retrace in my mind races I've lost (most of them), and it can be a disaster if it happens late at night. The adrenaline starts running and poisons any chance of quick sleep. There's the curse of knowing I could have done better. Turning that into a positive for a future race — imagining new finish tactics — draws even more adrenaline. It's a complicated mess when the goal is to not be at the front for most of the race. It can take years to appreciate the available tactics. Of course, having them used on you with regularity speeds your education.

The crossover to life is not saccharine metaphor; it's real and identifiable. On the bike, you may think you've done a man's job on a solo breakaway, but notice what happens when you see another bike coming up alongside. Watch yourself do "impossible" things just because some guy you barely know from talking in the parking lot after rides has his front wheel 1 foot ahead of yours approaching the finish. You cannot walk away from that unmoved and uninfluenced in tangible, permanent ways.

What's amazing about these situations is that there's almost no resentment from any party. Those beaten don't curse the winner and whine about how they got a raw deal. They hurry to congratulate him sincerely, often with laughing awe. The life beauty is in the hidden message lurking behind this warrior bond: "We will meet again, my friend." It encourages fraternity. It forces modesty upon those who mistake victory for permanence.

To find the pinnacle of these precepts, look to those who ride in the time trial, often called the "race of truth" because there are no pack tactics. They ride alone, but in strong competition, started at minute or so intervals from the others. If one happens to pass another, he must not draft (ride in slipstream) during the pass. When you time trial you meet quite coldly the supreme mind game within yourself. It's hard to be sure if you're giving it your all for the entire distance when there's nothing but road in front of you. It gets lonely. Heart rate monitors can help you keep a constant, high pace without blowing up your legs, heart, or lungs midway through, but you still have to beat somebody else's time, often without knowing what it is unless you're one of the last to ride. Hard core TT junkies are known to vomit during competition because they're taking their bodies into Never Never Land. You don't think that takes heart, you haven't tried it.

Hard competition is painful, wonderful, and the only way to live. One way or another, we polish each other and everybody profits. Fat bottomed girls, the truth of sport plays rings around you. Get on your bikes and ride!

Veni Vidi Accusavi

2003-05-11T04:33:00.000-04:00

[A shorter version of this article first appeared here at LewRockwell.com]

Just got done reading about a man who claims he was raped years ago, when a teenager, by a Catholic priest. He recently shot the priest. My use of the word "claims" is not as sarcastic as it may sound. However, I still have my doubts about this whole deal.

Except as it may possibly keep me from being accused of launching a twisted apologia for a dear institution, try to ignore that I'm not a religious guy. My puzzlement at some of these claims is derived from putting myself in the position of the victims at their age during the alleged incidents. And for the record, I am not talking about 5-year-olds here.

One of my grade school teachers was a pervert. We all knew it. He would touch himself habitually through his trousers, curse, and say things that often made it an adventure to be in school. Amidst some natural disrespect for his obvious weaknesses, most of us dug this guy as what adults would be like if they weren't so busy being phony. He let us be ourselves in that class, and it was, frankly, a blast — as school goes. We were always amazed that everybody, even the mousier kids, kept his secret. Could never happen in these latter days of achievement through snitchery.

Some of the boys in the class got invited to his apartment for a Saturday afternoon of helping him shop for, and install, a large fish aquarium. He made us all a good spaghetti dinner. While cooking he asked me to pour him a scotch, an incident which, when later relayed casually to my momentarily horrified parents (teetotaling evangelical preacher / church organist duo), threatened to seriously harsh my mellow.

But their reaction after quickly recovering was not to consider running to the school principal to perform a tantrum. Rather, they told me that they didn't want me pouring alcoholic drinks for people, and that I should refuse were the situation to arise again. Note that they did not prohibit me from going over to "Mr. Blue's" again. They did not freak out. They gave me their opinion, understood by all involved to be an order, and realized that I was the party best equipped to solve that problem in the future. If it distressed them beyond that, I'm not aware of it.

During that same visit to Mr. Blue's apartment, a couple of the kids snooped their way into his naughty magazine stash. That part of the visit was not mentioned later to my parents. Wow! Talk about an advanced education. Those were some serious magazines. Well, our teacher eventually saw what had been done (not difficult since there was now a crowd of 6 or 7 of us gathered round gawking), snatched up the mags, and left us with only fleeting images to discuss for the rest of the year.

It was occasionally mulled during bull sessions that perhaps our teacher, obvious lover of females though he was, made forays across the . . . well, you know, toward the shaky side of the fence — a condition we were free in those days to consider to be truly, quite queer. I'll even guess that, given the right conditions, our teacher might have had designs on young boys, though he was not aggressive about it. We knew some of his friends and family, and all of us were free to drop by his place whenever. Several of us did so, up until early high school. He would drive us by a fast food joint and give us a couple bucks for helping maintain his aquarium. It was always good to see our crazy ex-teacher, though a couple of times when we stopped by during those years he tried to ask personal, sexual questions.

While they were not propositional questions, we exhibited clear discomfort and resistance when he went in that direction. We steered away and he dropped it. Our instincts knew where he was apparently headed, but we also knew something which I believe is known to most people accosted by less-than-homicidal perpetual children. This man, unconventional as he may have been, would not have inflicted himself on any of us. We were comfortable hanging around him despite the odd testing of the waters. Say what you want about adults of that ilk, accuse them of preying on defenseless kids, curse them to heaven — whatever makes your world tidy. I know such talk, in many cases, to be hogwash when the complete equation is parsed, and I know it because I was a kid and witnessed what was probably the primordial environment for the sad sack whiner tales which I allege some of the incidents in the press to be, strong negative influences of the parents notwithstanding.

Many years later I heard that our beloved, wacky teacher had been fired for sexual advances toward one of his young students. My reaction then, as now, was that our teacher had finally said something to a guy who didn't get it — maybe to one who was too interested in the possibility to know how to handle it. We viewed such a kid, non-existent in our class, as a weak sister. The guys from that class I still knew were a little ticked off at whoever had reported Mr. Blue and effectively ended the career of a man we regarded, overall, as a wonderful teacher, and certainly a festive blip in the stilted career of the average grade schooler. Without knowing more details, it was our opinion that his was a career ended for no good purpose or result, at the hands of the overly sensitive. We were also surprised it had been so long in coming; Mr. Blue was not a discrete or prudent man.

On a summer afternoon after my first year of college, I was walking away from a broken '69 Ford Galaxy 500 during rush hour on the DC beltway when a man, probably early 30's, pulled over and offered me a ride. He said he felt safe doing so because I was carrying what looked like school notebooks, and I wasn't hitching. I couldn't care less, because two minutes after my car had died I'd been saved, and was going to make it to work on time. Amazing luck.

Wasn't too long into the ride that I started to get serious hinky vibes. Here I was your basic 18-year-old dork, and the driver had awkwardly brought up how he was an agent who got photo modeling jobs for young men. Would that be something I was interested in? He said he could imagine me doing quite well as a model.

Ha! I'm laughing out loud right now just thinking about some disgusting creep trying that silly approach on anybody who wasn't obvious, conventional model material. Told him that it wasn't something that floated my boat, but I really appreciated the ride, and — what do you know — there's my exit right there, and you can just let me off on the side of the beltway. Thanks. Goodbye.

Walking the mile or so to work, I was floored that this was apparently the shtick which lulled mythical boys into who knows what. Was that really how it happens? Are humans molded in such disparate form as to allow something so pathetic to work?

When in Mr. Blue's class we hadn't even hit our teens, but we knew well how to behave, and with sufficient stamina. We remained clear of uncomfortable directions. We laughed about it among ourselves, deriding him behind his back for his apparent leanings, while also respecting him for good qualities which were not present in the average teacher — things like how he recognized and encouraged with each of us, male and female, our individual strengths; the formal work he'd let us slide on if we knew the material; the times he would let students tackle a new subject in advance and then teach the class under his supervision; and how he didn't sweat us cursing now and then, getting stupid, and being kids.

Oh, he had limits, but he also had spirit. I used to tell my parents some of the different ways he taught subjects, and my father, ever the scientific observer of the art of teaching, would explain why what he'd done in a situation showed commendable technique. Parents were big fans of Mr. Blue. Those living near the school used to laugh about hearing him yell at his students from across the grounds, berating another round of misfits. In warm weather when the windows were open, his voice traveled for blocks. He was a shouter. He also slammed yardsticks on desks, ruining one every now and then, wood flying up and hitting the ceiling. No splinter lawsuits.

During our exposure to this man, over several years, we were never worried in the least for our health, our sexuality, or our well being. We were resistant. Were we inexperienced? Absolutely. Stupid? No. Gullible? Not so bad. Homosexual? Not that I know of. The key difference between this man and a priest was that our parents didn't send us into that classroom with the imprimatur of our teacher's innate superiority ringing in our heads like bells. They did not routinely give the impression that they savored his heavenly qualities, or that they desired us to look to him as an example in all things. They didn't hold him up as a mysterious, magical being, only a slightly lower intermediary in the ragged-human — saintly-priest — God-the-Son — God-the-Father comm link. We were not instructed to give ourselves to this man, but instead to respect his authority within reason.

I'll cut to the chase here and just state it flat out. The blame for most of these priestly abuses rests squarely on the priests, abdicating parents, and the resultant "do what thou will to me" children who were encouraged into a distressing victim state by hobgoblins of blessed, superior righteousness and other mumbo jumbo, without scriptural basis, sometimes directed toward some of the weakest examples of human drivel ever to traverse the pike.

Are there good men in the church? Yes. However, the conditions of the church, just as with the state, foster an environment where, to paraphrase Boston T. Party, anybody gravitating toward such a "vocation" would be better considered a suspect. In many cases the last people we should want to be cops, priests, and politicians are the very people elbowing for the positions. Find a man reluctant to take the role — a man somewhat goaded into it — and you have a possible candidate for success. But remove or lose your ability to discriminate in all situations, and you are welcome to the incidents base human nature tosses your way.

I've seen power of authority over the submissive in its pure form. One Sunday many years ago my father got up in front of his congregation of 700 to announce that he was going to resign, attend school, get a doctorate in ministry, and trust the Lord to support his family — all with no job of record. We were to live, as he put it, "by faith". My description of it, uncharitably, is that we lived via the gullibility of suckers, but damn if it didn't work just the same! For over 5 years my father did not have a regular gig. During the entire time scores of families made and honored long-term commitments to send him a check every month. Some of those people could barely afford diapers for their kids, but the money came in nonetheless, and regularly. There was usually a willing person or two, often skilled in the profession, to handle accounting — gratis, of course. Such people served for years with great devotion to the task.

All the while people would dote, inviting our family over for dinner, putting great weight upon every word the preacher uttered. They bought us gifts. They couldn't get enough, those sheep. And amazingly enough, far from it being considered disparagement, you could get away with calling them sheep right to their faces. They loved it! Knocks me out just thinking about it. Sheep, clamoring to be led. When I think of the things you could pull on people in that state, I'd say they got a pretty fair shake from the preacher man — a bit like the United States in the hands of Thomas Jefferson; remarkable under the circumstances. By abandoning themselves to the shepherd, they invited their own corruption and also that of the shepherd. And it did visit both shores.

For argument I'll admit that society may require sheep, though I'm not convinced of it. But anybody claiming the role of a sheep should have the sense to know exactly what his station in life is. He is . . . well HELL, he's a fucking sheep for crying out loud! Can one think of anything worse for a human to be? I cannot.

Yet daily, relentlessly, we are pummeled with the claimed virtue of such a disgusting state — of the helpless, and the service they perform in their helplessness. We are assaulted by "the homeless" in the street (urban outdoorsmen) who throw "the homeless" at you like it's an estimable position wrapped in a baseball — as if their condition is something to shoot for. It is their claim on your life.

"Can you spare some change for the [cue organ music] hohhhhmlessss, sistah?"

Still can't believe that line works on anybody.

And the tourist parents trundle over and let their kids see them throwing a few coppers at the virtuous do-nothings. There's leadership by example for you. Do these saints-for-30-seconds ever stop to think, in the market of cause and effect, whether their actions are helping the urban outdoorsmen to leave the street, or instead keeping them there, sometimes until death? It's cruel to make such a miserable existence even remotely profitable. They are closing the final gap in the great circle of contemporary helplessness, teaching their kids a degraded standard of what humans are capable of.

To the collectivist, humans are most capable of need, blame, and an insistence that our value be measured by the weight of our human flesh. Everything else is luck — sometimes better the worse it is.

In the case of the aforementioned, belatedly defiant young man with the gun, is it possible that he aimed at the wrong party? Probability points toward his parents, or lack of them, as the crucial link to his wretchedness. For had it not been the priest sinking this lost soul, it would eventually have been a car salesman, a boss, or an addiction to cigarettes. Well, no matter; and his one decisive action was simply temporary insanity — a blackout no less — for which the suitably chastened old boy is serving out a solid eight months of home detention. We need more stalwart men such as this, more prisons, more taxes, more self-help books, and a perpetual fusillade of olly olly in-come-free's.

"In youth he whispered to his Lord, 'I am no more.' By his will was he no longer."

Private Space

2003-03-13T03:33:00.000-05:00

Freedom. Think of Brian "Rocket Guy" Walker next time you hear the word. He has wanted to go into space since he was a child. Being a kindhearted soul, and coincidentally not disposed toward wrapping his life around the standard path which tends to lead to space travel, he has committed to going into space alone, funded by him, in a rocket designed and built by him, with hydrogen peroxide fuel personally distilled by him to 90% purity.

It's slow going in the space business when you're not associated with a protection racket which funds whatever "vision" pops out of your rear end. Were NASA not on the receiving end of billions of stolen, private dollars, they'd either have to justify their visions to investors, or autofund to their heart's content. Not likely that either method would have hatched the eminent disaster which was, is, and shall be the space shuttle.

For help with his capitalist approach to space travel, Brian naturally turned to the former Soviet Union instead of NASA. Seems that along with NASA's thieving heart comes a penchant for arrogance, and a general can't do philosophy. NASA is a government agency.

Brian's dream is to go up 30 miles and then come back down safely — no orbiting. I've never been there, but I'm told that 30 miles high is not technically 'space'. It's almost where the stratosphere fades into the mesosphere, whatever those are. However, considering that most airliners fly at a max altitude of about 8 miles, 30 miles is impressive; it's better than NASA would do were it a private club of one.

He hasn't done it yet though. His original launch schedule was left in the dust as he was surprised by the media attention and the amount of research/design required, while also mired in a disappointing diversion with a Russian beauty and her young son. Answering personally most of the thousands of emails he's received hasn't helped either, but it's something he feels is important.

A marvelous attribute of this private venture is the honest approach of its creator, whose wealth has largely come from sales of his toy inventions. It's easy to spend hours wading through Rocket Guy's web site (www.rocketguy.com), and you quickly get the sense that he's willing to talk about almost anything. However, his recent marriage to the Russian Natasha is apparently too painful to deal with, except via removing any mention of it or her from his site. He doesn't hide his painful start in the invention business, his apparently debilitating work habits, or the taxing nature of this huge project he's bitten off.

Anybody chiding Rocket Guy for missing deadlines should check out his Updates page to see some of the numbing details involved in going it alone on his dream. His straightforward approach to skeptics and conformists is evident in this Slashdot interview.

Keep in mind that Rocket Guy doesn't threaten his neighbors, take their wealth, and then call up Lockheed Martin (newly freed from their traffic extortion business) to handle his infrastructure. He's the one painstakingly attaching sound absorbing material to each panel of his rocket assembly dome. He's the one building, operating, and training in a centrifuge. He's the one financing the project and walking on eggshells with the FAA. He will risk his hide for the cause of exploration and selfish joy.

Brian Walker, wonderfully naive and independent, on essential liberty:

"There's no law against building and launching a rocket. If somebody says you can't leave, they're basically saying you can't leave the planet."