There is a saying that
"good fences make good neighbors," and I think there is some truth
to that. In our case, the "fence" between us and our neighbors
while our children were growing up was a patch of woods serving as a no man's
land between our properties.
Unfortunately, the
problems with the neighbors, whom to protect their identities I will call the
Lolos, didn't have to do with fences or even patches of woods, but about the
road running down the side of their property – the only way in to our small
development. You see, even though they had sold the road easement to the
developer, it seemed apparent that they never expected the road to be built.
Regardless, they still considered the land it ran over as theirs (and, I
guess, technically it is).
Now, I have always tried
hard to be a good neighbor, and so soon after moving in I invited the clan up
to our house and plied them with finger foods topped off with their favorite
hooch. While I'm sure that at least a couple of the Lolos warmed to us, it
was always obvious that the rather domineering matriarch held her blessings
in reserve.
The result might be
called an uneasy truce. A truce which came undone after the farmer's
unmarried daughter adopted and brought home a rescued dog from a shelter.
Despite the fact that the large dog was clearly insane and a serial biter, in
the eyes of the daughter it could do no wrong.
And by serial biter, I
mean that I can personally attest to four people, two of them residents on
the hill, being bitten by the mad dog. Showing itself to be an
equal-opportunity biter, the mad mutt also bit the long-suffering husband of
the Lolo matriarch and viciously mauled our own dog, the friendliest beagle
mix you'd ever hope to meet.
The long and short of it
was that the residents on the hill were essentially limited to cars only in
order to travel down the short road running down the side of the farmer's
property. Any other alternative, say walking, jogging or riding a bike,
required running a gauntlet with a very good chance you'd be attacked by the
never-chained dog. The Lolos were, of course, well aware of the situation,
yet, for what I can only imagine were purely vengeful reasons, refused to do
anything about it.
Of course, the attacks
were reported to the local police, who duly sent over the animal control
officer, but the Lolo matriarch always made quick work of them – denying any
attacks, pointing out that if there was an attack it took place on their
property and threatening to pull strings with the local governing council to
have them fired.
The final confrontation,
regrettably, involved me and my children, still quite young at the time. The
kids wanted to visit friends about a quarter of a mile away, and as it was a
nice day I thought we should walk. While I can't recall my exact mental state
at the moment, I suspect I was fed up with the fact that the equivalent of a
troll had for years effectively blocked walking access on the road leading to
and from our property.
Being indignant but not
stupid, I armed myself with an African war club I had traded a chief in
Botswana for (he got a cigar and a baseball cap), handed one of the kids a
bull whip, and off we set.
Despite walking as quietly
as we could, right on cue the berserk troll dog, growling a mad and dangerous
growl, came charging out of the driveway of the farmhouse. Shifting into full
defense-of-family mode, I wound up and swung my African war club with all the
strength I could muster, fully desirous of sending the hound to the burning
hell it deserved. Unfortunately, instead of being rewarded with a satisfying
thud, or even better, the sight of the dog's head
bouncing down the road, I whiffed it completely.
Even so, the club passed
close enough to its snarling snout to cause it to pause in order to better
reflect on its options. At which point the long-suffering husband of the
matriarch rushed out and managed to get hold of the dog's collar without
getting bitten himself (yet again).
Extremely unhappy at the
attack, on principle and specifically because it had put the kids at serious
risk, I did something I am loathe to do and have only done once before in my
life (when my car was stolen) and called the police.
Well, it turned out that
my complaint, coming on top of all preceding it, fulfilled the allowable
per-dog maximum for attacks on humans. Based on local regulations, the order
went out for the dog to be put down.
Fighting the order, the
matriarch forced the issue to court, where I was to appear as the star
witness against the hellish hound. While I don't want to drown you in the
details, I will report that I opened my statement by flawlessly delivering a
paraphrased line lifted from Paladin of Have Gun – Will Travel fame.
"While I greatly
regret having to appear in court against my neighbors," I said with a
dramatic nod in direction of the Lolos, "I have no moral or ethical
compunction about having to do so."
During my testimony, the
daughter who spared no affection in her unremitting love for her maniacal
mutt, grunted, sighed and laughed loudly. And while doing so, literally waved
her hands in the air as if appealing to god her own
self to smote me where I sat. In fact, she raised such a racket that the
judge finally signaled me to pause in mid-sentence, leaned forward and asked,
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I am laughing so I
won't cry," she replied, raising her hands once again to the gods.
When it was her turn to
testify, she stated that I made the whole story up. When pressed for a
motive, she stated that I done so as part of a nefarious plot ginned up by
myself and the neighbors up the hill to take revenge on the Lolos because we
were mad they owned the road up to the development and so decided to take it
out on her misunderstood mutt. (If the logic expressed in that last sentence
seems convoluted, it's only because it was.)
It was my turn to laugh,
but I did so in a quieter and more dignified fashion (I like to think).
Unfortunately, due to a
tight court schedule, the judge had to postpone the rest of the hearing to
another day. And that gave the single-minded matriarch the time she needed to
cajole members of the local council into giving her daughter's dog a free
pass. Leaving the dog free to bite another day. In fact, a few days after the
hearing, an acquaintance of mine was bitten while biking by the farm.
According to him, the daughter rushed out and asked him
please not to report it. Unaware of the situation, he kept mum.
And so, pretty much for
the entire childhood years of our kids, they and all of the residents on the
hill remained unable to freely walk down the road.
By now, if you're not
asking what the point of these meanderings is, there's something seriously
wrong with you.
Well, here it is.
First and foremost, it is
always worth remembering that humans can adopt very warped attitudes, even to
the point of falling in love with mad dogs… and mad rulers.
But more to the actual
point of mad dogs and all that, the mindset of all the various branches of
what is currently lumped under the moniker "Homeland Security" –
from the top right down to the domestic police force – has devolved to the
point where a growing swath of the general population is now actively afraid
of them.
In essence, we the people
have stood passively by while our government has done the equivalent of
falling in love with a REALLY BIG mad dog and set it by the side of every
road leading from every house in America.
Previously, it was only
black people who had been trained by bitter experience to fear "the
man." Now the rest of us are beginning to understand what they have been
complaining about all these years.
(It strikes me that I
am uncertain as to whether there is another more politically correct mot du jour than
"blacks." Having moved my primary residence to a country where
political correctness has yet to take hold and never really having paid
attention to the linguistics of racial typing any way, I fear I'm out of the
loop.
But wait, I'll look
it up! Clicking over to Google and typing, "What is the acceptable term
for black people?"...
The crowd-sourced
Yahoo Answers sheds light by asking readers to answer the following question
from a user:
What is the
acceptable term for black people?
I'm just a little
confused, because the NAACP is National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, yet it's not politically correct to say colored. Now black is
"bad"... but I don't know why, "white" is still used for
Caucasian people. Why does this term change so much?
Surprisingly (because
it actually involves some logic), the "Best Answer" according to
those who cast a vote on Yahoo Answers was the following from a user named
"Evolving Squid"…
How about
"people", and "man" or "woman" when referring
to individuals?
Calling people with dark skin "African" or "African
American" is really stupid for a number of demonstrable reasons:
1. Not all people with dark skin come from Africa. Many people from south
Asia and the Caribbean have dark skin.
2. Not all people who come from Africa have dark skin. Across north
Africa and minorities in the southern bits of Africa tend to be white.
3. Almost no dark skinned Americans come from Africa, nor have had any relatives that have been within 500 miles of
the African coast, let alone being from Africa, within the last 100 years.
Calling someone with dark skin "African American" makes as much
sense as calling a blonde-haired person "Viking American" because
he had a Norwegian relative hundreds of years ago.
4. A good many Americans who came from Africa (hence real "African
Americans") are light skinned, having been chased out of South Africa,
Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, Tanzania, etc. by the dark-skinned
majority.
I continued to poke
around the font of all knowledge, the web, but it seems that no one is
actually sure what the correct term is anymore. Paula Deen, however, could
tell you one term that is very much not correct. Oh well. Having dawdled long
enough, I will now yank hard on the wheel and return to the thread…)
The stats show that an
increasing trend of police abuse (here's a
link to one interesting infographic that, using the comments from the police
themselves, should give you a sense of the scale of what's going on). And
it's not just the beat cops people worry about: a number of polls show that a majority of Americans
now see the federal government as a direct threat to their personal rights
and freedoms. All that has come to pass since the passage of the Patriot Act
through Snowden's recent revelations reveal that threat as real.
Speaking personally,
unlike the idyllic country town in Argentina we now live for most of the year
(a town where the police tend to follow more of the Barney Fife archetype),
when I see a policeman here in the US I reflectively ratchet my threat
assessment level to "code orange" – be on guard against a possible
assault.
It may just be that I am
becoming a paranoid, but if so it is because not a day passes without
receiving emails from correspondents with stories about out-of-control
members of the Homeland Security apparatchik.
Proving the point, a
quick dip into my email box for just the past few days:
- Police kill dog.
The story, which has gone viral as I have received it from a number of
correspondents, has to do with a black man who was being rousted for no
good reason when his dog, which he had put into his car but jumped out,
was gunned down by the harassing officers. In fairness, I can accept
that the police felt threatened by the large Rottweiler, but the fact
remains they were in the process of roughing up its owner over filming
them roughing someone else up. In other words, rather than having a
quiet chat with the dog's owner, who was so cooperative that even before
the police reached him he had docilely assumed the recommended position
– hands behind his back in order to facilitate being handcuffed – they
felt compelled to start pushing him around, thereby creating the
situation in the first place. If you want to watch the video, it's
available all over the Internet. It's disturbing.
- Police terrorize Belgium diplomat and his wife over breastfeeding. It happened at a New York golf club when the wife began
discreetly breastfeeding their baby and replied in the negative to a
manager who asked her to do it in the bathroom. After which, according
to the NY Post…
Minutes later, the Greenburgh Police Department arrived.
Detective Scott Harding allegedly yelled, "Close the
doors!" and two other diners were told to leave the terrace.
"He was walking as if he was acting in a Western movie,"
Neijens said. "He had one hand on his gun, one hand on his
Taser."
Here's
the story.
- US Army blocks access to Guardian website to preserve "network hygiene." After all, can't have our fighters for freedom learning the
truth about the kind of freedom they are actually fighting for. Story here.
- US post offices taking pictures of all our mail for database. According to an article just published in Reason… "The Mail
Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service
computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is
processed in the United States – about 160 billion pieces last year. It
is not known how long the government saves the images...." Full story here.
- US mother loses baby over poppy seed bagel. Giving birth in a US hospital apparently now requires submitting
to a blood test for illegal drugs. In the case of Elizabeth Mort, the
test came up with a false positive – the result of having eaten a poppy
seed bagel prior to heading to the hospital. And so, with zero due
process, the authorities snatched her three-day-old daughter and held
her captive for five days. Story
here.
- College student arrested after buying a carton of bottled water. And I quote, "Undercover Virginia police pulled a gun and
tried to break through the car windows of a 20-year-old college student,
suspecting that the underage girl's sparkling water was a 12-pack of
beer. She was later jailed.
"When agents from Virginia's Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC)
division saw college student Elizabeth Daly leaving a supermarket with
cookie dough, ice cream, and a 12-pack, they assumed that she had
purchased beer as an underage student and took extreme actions to stop her.
"The seven plainclothed agents approached the vehicle in which the
girl and her roommates were sitting, and one officer allegedly jumped on
the hood of the car. Daly claims another officer pulled out his gun,
which scared the students and prompted them to drive away."
Just in this small
sampling, we have police harassing a peaceful individual – then shooting his
dog – for recording them on his phone camera… a police squad led by a
detective is sent out to roust someone for breastfeeding… the US government
applying cyberwarfare techniques against a media outlet… a baby taken from
its mother for a false positive drug test… and seven undercover officers,
with guns, aggressively "investigating" underage drinking.
In the case of the
latter, I would have loved to hear the radio chatter, though I suspect it
went something like this…
"Alpha team, we
have a probable coming out of the door of the Jiffy Mart. It looks like she's
got a package!"
"Roger that,
Bravo team, we have eyes on target."
"Roger that,
Alpha team. Can you see the package? Say again, can you see the
package?"
"Bravo team,
hold one. Officer Lipshitz is moving into position to identify the
package."
"Lipshitz, Bravo
team leader here, Alpha team is asking if you can see the package."
"Bravo team leader,
Lipshitz here, hold one. Wait, it's blue. Some beer cans are blue. It must be
beer!"
"Alpha team, we
have a confirm from Lipshitz – it's beer!"
"All units, all
units, we have beer! Move in, I say again: we have beer, move in!"
Is it just me, or does anyone
else surveying the purported inability of the US government to reduce its
massive budget by any real amount concur that paying seven officers to man a
stakeout designed to arrest college students for drinking beer is money
poorly spent? That they then mistakenly identified water as beer only adds
inanity to the insults and injury.
But seriously, somebody
could have been killed during this incident, and someone – a 20-year-old
college student who had done nothing wrong – did end up in jail for the night.
You how you can tell you
live in a police state? How about when people have to start worrying that
they might end up dead or in jail as a result of breastfeeding in public, or
buying water at a convenience store?
As one regular
correspondent put it in an email to Doug Casey with a copy to me…
Doug:
You have often made the
paradoxical observation that it will be worse than you think it will be.
While the context was economics and the financial hardships that would
manifest, I think it is safe to say that culturally your quip has already
played out. It is certainly happening way faster than I thought.
And, like any police state, the authorities
will find any number of willing accomplices within the populace. In the case
of the brazen Belgian breastfeeder, shown here, apparently the manager was
concerned that the black backpack containing the baby's necessities might
also contain a bomb.
Reading even the local
paper in this very small town, it is notable how many of the reports in the
police blotter these days are the result of the police being called out by
"concerned" citizens as a result of paranoia or a bad case of
busy-bodyness. A sampling…
June 18, at 3:31
p.m., complaint about people partying on a vacant lot on Jones Hill Road. No
one was found.
June 19, at 10:16
p.m., a suspicious vehicle was seen at Maggie's Bridge. It had mysteriously
disappeared by the time police arrived.
June 21, at 7:42
p.m., report of two employees at a local bar having a verbal argument; no
arrests were made.
June 23, at 9:33
a.m., a caller reported a Quebec RV parked next to the construction site for
Stowe's new ice arena. The caller was worried the campers were about to
"dump their tanks" on the site. Police spoke to the owners of the
RV, who said they were headed home and hadn't planned on dumping their tanks.
June 24, at 12:18
a.m., report of an underage drinking party at Maggie's Bridge. Police found
two people, who were not underage and were not drinking.
June 26, at 2:36
p.m., a man was "making people uncomfortable" at the Union Bank on
Smith Street.
June 28, at 8:08
p.m., a woman on Homes Lane complained about a neighbor's child "being
loud." Police spoke with the child's parents.
June 29, at 12:38
p.m., police were told a stop sign went missing at the intersection of South
Hollow and Lane Hollow roads. It was there when police arrived.
Going back to the
mad-dog-waiting-on-the-side-of-the-road analogy, it seems to me that the risk
of misadventure at the hands of the overzealous state is escalating to a perilous
point.
I'm not talking about
just being beaten up or gunned down, but also about being made a social
outcast or financially ruined for tripping over some law that shouldn't have
been enacted in the first place. Even wishing to peacefully trade goods and
services using private currencies – such as the Liberty dollar, whose founder
Bernard von NotHaus was labeled a "financial terrorist" – can get
your door kicked in.
In terms of a specific
roadside threat, the classic example is provided by the alcohol blood level
which, if exceeded even a little, tips you into the category of hardened
criminal. In most states, the allowable alcohol blood level is .08, well
below what the original scientific studies on how much is too much to drive
recommended. Nevertheless, if you are in an accident and you have had even a
single drink, it will invariably weigh against you – and in a big way.
Even the founder of
Mothers Against Drunk Driving has turned against the organization, accusing
it of adopting a "neo-prohibitionist" attitude when the original
mandate was to address the specific problem of drunk driving. And so it is
that even a single drink at your favorite restaurant means passing the
equivalent of a mad dog on your way home. You can only hope it doesn't bite
you.
(A PUBLIC SERVICE
ANNOUNCEMENT: During the period around the Fourth of July holiday,
celebrating American freedom and all that, the police are particularly active
with road blocks.
As the breathalyzers used
at these unconstitutional road blocks are notoriously inaccurate, if you are
stopped and asked to blow, it is within your rights to ask that the analysis
be performed with a blood test. The police don't like the inconvenience of
having to transport you to the local hospital for the blood to be drawn, but
don't be afraid to ask. Just do it politely or they could shoot your dog.)
This same mad dog lurks
by the side of every road, watching in every airport, data center and pretty
much everywhere else you turn in the US these days. That it is supposedly owned
by we the people makes the situation the height of
irony. Even walking quietly is no guarantee you won't be attacked.
While I wish it were otherwise, the authoritarian trend that has escalated
so surprisingly since 9/11 will, I am sure, run its full course. Which is to say that the trend is likely to slow and maybe
turn down again only after something akin to Kent State happens that finally
awakens a level of righteous indignation sufficient to send the public en
masse into the streets.
When might the tipping
point be reached? Looking at the litany of abuses of power – to which you can
add widespread domestic spying and the prosecution of whistleblowers – and
the lack of public reaction, I think we are a long way off.
Speaking of
whistleblowers, I have a whistle to blow. A business associate of mine who
has a sister in the New York police force showed me a card that is issued by
the police union to the immediate families and even just friends of police
officers in that state. If pulled over by the police for pretty much any
reason, simply show the card and the police officer will send you on your
way. In other words, it's a "get out of jail free" card.
Oh wait, I just did a
quick search and the whistle was already blown on these cards earlier this
year. Yet it
appears to have had no consequence, as the cards are still being issued. You
want to know how else you can tell you are living in a police state? How about when regular folks get harassed and the
relatives and friends of the police get a free pass?
A Quick Golf Chat
As I believe I have
groused about at least once since arriving back in New England for the
summer, the weather has been, in a word, terrible. Every day it has been
gray, rainy, cold or hot and humid, topped off with regular thunderstorms.
This morning, however,
there was a brief break in the clouds; and so I gathered up my sticks and
hot-footed it down to a local course with a reputation for quickly drying out
(because it was built on an abandoned quarry site and so has great drainage).
As is often the case when
playing alone, I was matched up with a sociable fellow – a tourist staying in
the area for a week.
During the course of our
round, my fellow duffer told me that he had recently retired as an executive
specializing in air traffic control technology for a major aerospace and
defense contractor (it's a household name, but as I'd hate to get the guy cut
off from his pension, I will not mention it).
Pausing in our efforts to
get the little white ball in the damn hole, he mentioned that over the course
of his career, he had seen terrible government waste.
Illustrating the point,
he described mind-boggling redundancies in the national air traffic control
system. According to him, the US has 20 large air traffic control operations
scattered around the country, with another couple soon to come on line. Yet,
he stated in no uncertain terms, the country only needs two such
operations. And one of those operations is necessary only as a backup in case
the first was to go down for some reason.
Why so many operations
when so few are required? With a derisive snort, he answered that it was all
political. That the politicians in those areas where these operations are
located will fight to the end to make sure the redundant centers aren't
closed and the constituent jobs lost.
As these politicians see
it, it is far better to continue wasting untold billions running inefficient
and redundant operations than taking advantage of modern technology to
streamline the system – it's what the voters want.
Waiting for the
government to balance its budget… don't hold your breath; it's just not going
to happen.
(As an aside, as I was
writing this article I began typing into Google, "Where are all the
major air traffic control operations in the United States located?," but
as the words began to roll off my keyboard into the search window, I actually
chickened out and stopped, knowing that if that search phrase didn't get red
flagged at the NSA, nothing would. How can you tell you live in a police
state? How about when you are afraid to do an Internet search because you are
sure the government will note your search and flag you as a potential
terrorist?)
David Galland
Managing Director
Casey Research
