What has happened to the sacred American contract of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, supported by the 10 Amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights, now looks like something from an absurdist play from the 20th century, with dark overtones of Orwellian labels.
Harold Pinter and Pirandello never came close to the nonsense that is now our daily-doublespeak known as Homeland Security and its vile supporting legislation with the obscene title “Patriot Act.”
Only the philosopher Walt Kelly, speaking through his genius creation Pogo, has it right.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Examples are seen all around us, validity at last, of the fevered vision of Dali’s melted watches and the nightmare horror of Munch’s “The Scream.”
They are no longer fantasy. They are real. They are now. And worst of all, you want them. The only people working really hard at any change are the “people” known as US Corporations who (I use who, not what because they are no longer inanimate objects) outvote you with their dollars and probably, before too long, as a logical extension of their existence as “people,” they will overwhelm your ballot box with proxies.
What sparked this rant? Read today’s newspaper. Here’s the lede from a front page story in the New York Times, above the fold as we used to day when their were real newspapers that HAD to be folded.
Tourist Is Held After Climb on Brooklyn Bridge Cable
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.Officials said Yaroslav Kolchin, 24, a Russian tourist, snapped some photos from the top of the bridge on Sunday before his descent and quick arrest.
A month after two American flags flying atop the Brooklyn Bridge were stolen and replaced with white ones, security on the world-famous crossing was back in the spotlight — this time, according to the authorities, because of an overly adventurous Russian tourist.
The tourist, Yaroslav Kolchin, 24, was spotted by a police officer just after noon on Sunday as he ascended a suspension cable toward the top of one of the towers, officials said.
Sunday afternoon, totally out in the open. Someone in Al Queda is going to have his budget cut, starting with the training camps and courses on how to infiltrate The Great Satan. The course will be replaced with an iPhone app that allows a jihadist to call and Uber car to take him to the pedestrian entrance to any targeted landmark. Please do not forget to tip.
Meanwhile over at the airport, people are taking off their shoes, men are waving their willies at the full body scanner (“shinkage. the a/c is too high in hear”) and women are wearing aluminum foil panties and bras.
All in the name of security.
Now your phones are tapped, your emails are searched, your metadata (don’t know what that is? SHAME ON YOU!!) passed around to anyone who simply asks for it.
I’ll bet you thought “Brave New World” and “1984” were fiction that had been made into really lousy movies. While you have been watching Spiderman with your mouth hanging open, “Grapes of Wrath” is happening right in front of you, in every inner city in America.
It’s time to again publish the apocryphal statement usually attributed to Ben Franklin, “Those who would give up a little Liberty in exchange for a little security, soon will have neither.”
It is such a self-evident idea that I really don’t give a horse-patooty if he did say it or not. It is so true, everyone should be saying it.
Is this a disjointed rant, unfocused and even irrational. You bet it is. And sad thing is, you probably think it’s funny.