When Public Floggings Fail To Humiliate
strychnine
Today's screed is in reference to the bizarre goings on in Montana in
recent months. I know I know, this is Usenet, and the subject has
already been done to death here, but some things just jigger me off
and you poor saps have to sit through my marginally coherent ravings
as a result. You have a 'u' key. Use it.
-----
Awhile back, I shot my mouth off about the California Dairy Council
and their gargantuan advertising budget for promoting the consumption
(by *consumers* no less) of cheese. We left-coasters are practically
buried under billboards that read curious things like "Porque las
migras se inflan mas en California... ES EL QUESO!" I proposed that
all the weirdness coming out of California lately could be ascribed to
the cheeze. I figure it was my San Francisco Liberal guilt driving me
to apologize on behalf of all thirty million or so of the wingnuts I
have for neighbors.
A month ago, the world began to see the tenuous thread of Western
Civilization unravel from the unholy yarnball of the United States of
America, but this time the savagery played out in Montana. Oh sure,
we've all talked about Ted Kaczinski's chemistry set, and we all
noticed the FBI hauled in him from what in Montana is practically
spitting distance away from the ranch outside Jordan where a fat lot
of God's Favorite Taxfighters are holed up in a staring contest with
the enforcement arm of the Federal Reserve. It's this latter foo to
which I wish to draw your attention.
I realize that most people would rather blame environmental effects
for the cheese madness so common in Northwestern America, I mean there
CLEARLY has to be something in the water besides fluoride, right? But
the problem is more widespread than that, and as I read through the
reports coming from the traditional media, both mainstream and
alternative, I am growing more convinced that the real significance of
the silliness in Montana is going completely unnoticed. By all of the
interested parties.
Some of you Americans might remember the day in your high school
history class you learned about The Whiskey Rebellion. If you do,
chances are your immediate response upon hearing the average pseudo-
anarchochristian bigot-slash-wingnut with an assault weapon and a
history of tax evasion spout off about the noble virtuous founding
fathers of the United States certainly rolling over in their wretched
crypts at the sight of the horrible excesses the Federales currently
commit to suppress insurrection, is to laugh yourself into a
hysterical hissyfit.
The Whiskey Rebellion. See it was like this: a gang of screwball
farmers in western Pennsylvania (which to this day is largely
populated by screwball farmers with only slightly less contempt for
the due process of law) reacted to the imposition of prohibitively
high tariffs on, of all things whiskey (who'da thunk?), by declaring
themselves a sovereign independent state and daring the newly
constituted Federal government to exercise what power the people had
given it to force them to pay their taxes.
Bad news for the screwball farmers, though, because President George
Washington saddled up with Alexander Hamilton as his hatchetman, and
well about 13000 soldiers in the pay of the United States of America,
promptly marched into western Pennsylvania and hanged every last one
of the rebel scum as an example to other would-be separatists. Like
our homeboys in Montana today for example, not that any of them are
acting like there's something to be learned from history.
Oh yeah, let's return to the good old days envisioned by the Founding
Fathers, those upstanding heroes of liberty, justice and the pursuit
of private property. I can't wait for the day. These boneheads would
be crushed like bugs when the 9,276,405th Airborne oblitered their
puny little 'Just Us' Township with daisy cutters and planetmovers,
hostages be damned.
What do we have today, though? The FBI, the State of Montana, and the
Justice Department are practically inviting every sunbaked,
toadlicking, weed smoking, born-again mutant gone off the
chlorpromazine to decide that it's time to soak the nation in the
blood of its public servants, in order to take a stand for freedom and
the American way. I mean, what's the worst that could happen, right?
A few hundred days living off MRE's while the feds and ABC News play
pinochle just outside shooting range, then a few months in prison
serving time for martyrdom.
Here's what Dr. Strychnine would have the President do. Go to
Congress and ask for permission to mobilize a military response to the
separatist insurrection near Jordan Montana. Tell them, like GeoBu
did in the Gulf War, that he doesn't need Congress to approve the
action, but that he'd like to see the outcome of a vote. Mass the
troops (shouldn't need more than a few hundred, including the flight
crews for the bombers), and give the bulletheads one last chance to
surrender before they get a visceral demonstration of exactly what the
U.S. Dollar is backed with. Watch how fast they become sudden
converts to Keynesian economics.
We'll have those jellybrains praying for the days of the Alien and
Sedition Acts, waiting for their War Bonuses to come in the mail, and
generally thanking their lucky stars they live in a free, God-fearing
country where every property-owning man has a stake in the government.
No time flat.
Unfortunately, this would be, it should be noted, an exceedinly
unpopular policy, and it would likely cost the current President his
reelection prospects. And here we arrive at the point of this long
screed. It is my heartfelt opinion that sometime in the last several
months, the point has been reached that Americans have no shame.
There is none left. It is impossible to humiliate them further. They
won't feel it. And the clusterfuck in Montana is the strongest
evidence yet that we're not looking at a temporary downtick.
Humiliation is no punishment anymore. And that means there's only one
thing left that *is* punishment. Cruelty. This is a momentous
development, and its significance should not be played down. When
historians, or more likely, extra-terrestrial archaeologists, examine
the evidence for clues to the cause of the rapid dissembly of American
civilization, they will no doubt focus on the events that lead up to
the complete destruction of individual and collective shame, because
it's obvious what will come when public floggings fail to humiliate.
We will become the Sally Jessy Rafael Nation. Our technology will be
applied to ever increasingly innovative ways to wallow in the savagery
of humanity in their natural state. Shameless. Violent. Stupid.
Powerful. Blashpemous. You can almost smell the blood in the air in
Montana right now.
--
j h woodyatt <j...@wetware.com>
http://www.wetware.com/jhw
{sgi|mips|daver|indetech}!wetware!jhw
"National security is the cause of national insecurity." --Hagbard Celine