You don’t spy on millions of people, militarize your police, encourage neighbor to rat out neighbor, define thousands of innocuous activities as “domestic terrorism["], conduct checkpoints and VIPR raids, lock people up without trials, kick down doors in the middle of the night, or arbitrarily deny people the freedom to travel if you’re looking for mere criminals.
Claire speaks the unadorned truth all the time--one of the reasons we love her--but sometimes it hits harder than others. Here, she's exploring some frighteningly dark territory.
The U.S. federal government has (covertly of course, and gradually) declared war on its citizens. That’s the reality. We’re not mere criminal suspects. We’re enemies — and by their choice, not ours.
Sure, some of us may have philosophically fancied ourselves enemies of the state. Some of us prefer to be ignorers of the state. Most of us have learned to live, one way or another, peaceably in the shadow of the state. But I don’t know one of us who has ever violently attacked the state — or wanted to.
But no matter what we think, or how we live, or with what civility and decency we conduct ourselves, in the eye of Mordor-on-the-Potomac, we are all enemies. All despised. And above all — all subject to destruction at the whim of power.
How can one argue with this? We see it every day, and it's accelerating. Further, most "regular people" not only do not want to contemplate it at all, but they actively avoid even the possibility of accepting an awareness of it. Yesterday marks another episode of being "unfriended" on Facebook, in apparent response to a challenge to just one of the hypocrisies the blood-dancers are indulging in to lie and deceive their way past inconvenient obstacles to the crusade (e.g., statutory restraints, lack of popular support in the absence of heavy marketing, and the moral vacancy of the very concept). On one hand, of course, this is hardly something new in the world of internet discussion, but it nonetheless becomes viscerally depressing when it starts to show up in people you know in person, that you did not expect it from. I know it shouldn't get to me, but it does.
Times are already interesting enough, but some people are hell-bent on making them interestinger.
3 comments:
Indeed... and the time is coming fast when we will need to know as clearly as possible just who our friends really are... and who are not.
A very thought provoking essay. Just SAYING they are oathkeepers and
will not enforce the fed "laws" won't be enough. They need to start that
NOW, with every other bogus mala prohibita "law" on the books.
Otherwise, their claims are pure hogwash. They are already, and have
always enforced "unconstitutional" laws.
A Suggestion to OathKeepers
https://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/a-suggestion-to-oathkeepers/
January 31, 2013
There’s been a lot of news lately about County Sheriffs’ publicly
stating that they will not enforce unconstitutional gun restrictions.
Someone reported hearing a cop in an elevator at SHOT show tell another
cop that he’d shoot his lieutenant in the head if he ordered him to
“confiscate” guns.
Here’s a suggestion to LEOs who consider themselves Oathkeepers. You
fellas need to figure out a way, NOW, to identify yourselves as “good
guys.” Telling your buddies in the squad room that you’ll “do the right
thing,” or posting a fucking letter on the internet, or surreptitiously
posting it, under a screen name online is great. It’s going to be far
more important that you figure out a way, NOW, to let the rest of us
know, when you pull us over, on the side of the two-lane blacktop, at
0-dark-30, that you’re on our side.
ML, I don't know if you're a Grigg fan (I sure am) but he's lately been pretty heavy on the topic of calling out the "refuseniks" for just that sort of hypocrisy.
I was moved enough by this recent article to share it on Facebook with this comment:
_________________
How deep has the rot become? The indispensable William N. Grigg considers the case of the 'refusenik' sheriff, who promises white horse and hat on gun rights...but who practices daily violations of precisely the same principle when the same Feds dangle the purse strings in the name of the War on (Some) Drugs.
You really think they'll refuse it all, rather than find an excuse to sell you out when the screws tighten? Dependency--addiction, if you will--is a powerful motivator, and this dependency has been carefully cultivated for more than a generation now; many in the business know nothing else. Do you doubt that those who truly might refuse, will be quickly replaced by those who will not? Tyranny does not lack for faithful soldiers.
Take a look at that drug war, if you want to see how expanded gun control will work in practice.
Amen, Kevin. I've been sad to see how many people are willing to swallow this "constitutional sheriff" swill basically unexamined, calling it "baby steps," and a "step in the right direction"... as if mere rhetoric indicated any change in their character.
And yes, I read Grigg every time.
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