The Jersey Barrier...

...Re-purposed and updated

Here they have been morphed into planters, placed strategically to herd sheepeople towards the door with the heat.

Arranged along the downtown streets, the jersey planters stand resolute against terror

Or my personal favorite - the random scattering of jersey planters at one of the now defunct entrances to the FBI - challenging the pinball talents of any would-be terrorist

Tourism in a Police State

Pulled aside with ID confiscated and put in a holding pen by gun-toting men wearing dark glasses and with little curly wires snaking into their ears. If you think Green Zone check point or a prelim shake down prior to the next flight to Gitmo – think again. It’s what can happen to you on a tour of the East Wing of the White House – and it’s what happened to this blogger today.

I was told it was because my DOB didn’t match my SS# on the list of people scheduled to tour*, but when the Secret Service told me that at the final check point, I hadn’t yet given them my Social – only my driver’s license. I could see it on the guard’s face as soon as she looked up my name on the list: I was flagged even before I ever showed up – spit out by some database for some reason. And no, I am not paranoid. While I waited 20 minutes before they moved me into the pen, they asked none of the other tour hopefuls (all of whom had nice, safe Anglo-sounding, from-the-heartland names) for their socials. I also noted out of all of the 100s in line during the three-hour ordeal this turned into, none were obviously Arabic, or Muslim, and certainly there were no women wearing hijab.

Welcome to DC.

For several days now, I have roamed the Mall, the Tidal Basin, and the Memorials. You can’t really see any of these monuments without having to peer beyond the jersey barriers. They snake everywhere, and if it isn’t a jersey barrier, it’s heavy duty metal fences policed by flack-jacketed men. My particular favorite are the pop-up barricades that can be raised and lowered at will in the streets around the Capitol. There are men with police dogs everywhere.

The new DC monument: the jersey barrier

What all of this puts me in mind of is Budapest, circa 1970s. As a small child, I was terrified by the men who boarded the train toting guns to check our papers at the border. I was scared to death throughout our whole trip that at some point my father would be taken away by the police (as a former political refugee from this country, it was only a few years prior to our trip to see my grandparents that my father judged it safe enough for him to return). Like DC, every public place had men with dogs patrolling it – in this case Soviet soldiers. We had to show our papers when demanded to do so, we had to register with the government and we had to report where and when we were going within the country. We were not allowed to stay with any member of our family, and our movements were watched.

This was life behind the Iron Curtain. Although it would take another twenty years before the Soviet Union crumbled and the Soviet Bloc fell apart, already its satellites were challenging its viability. As the Soviet government felt more threatened, the more it tried to control its people: more dogs, more barriers and checkpoints, more random ID checks, more roughing up of people by the police and the military.

And now, here we are, subjected to the very same things in our nation’s Capitol – which for so long has been the symbol of the free world. As a child of a person who fled political oppression, it is extremely disturbing and depressing to see how rapidly our government has stripped away our freedoms and has become what previous US administrations and indeed our founding fathers vigorously denounced: a government governed by and governing through fear.

What it is most disturbing about the jersey barriers and the dogs, though, is not their presence, but that so very few question why they are there. Of all the American tourists that I poll as I wander around, no one thinks at all that this “security” is a sign of something very rotten and troubling about our government, its policies and its current global actions and positions. The standard response is of course that “they” want to harm us, and this is the price of freedom.

WTF??? How do jersey barriers maintain freedom? I don’t feel free at all. You don’t dare take your shoes off and cool your feet in the Reflecting Pool, you don’t find kids running around enjoying the grounds of the Capitol, you don’t dare take a picture of much in case they decide to hassle you. It bothers me at a very deep level that most people do not have the ability or the inclination to discern the profound disconnect, or to see that in fact, it is us, the supposed free citizens of this country, that are contained by the dogs, barriers and police.

It bothers and saddens me, but it does not surprise me. No one in this crowd of tourists of which I am a current member should ever dare disparage (but most almost certainly do) the German nation of 75 years ago or question how its government then terminated six million people, without the general population rising up in protest. Behold, here in our country right now is that very same seedbed that grows mindless acceptance by the masses of the oppression of the different, the singled-out, the faceless “other”. It is sown with the seeds of apathy, ignorance and blind faith watered heavily and well by a cocktail of fear, suspicion and intolerance brewed by a sophisticated and technologically advanced propaganda machine.

Although the Bush-Cheney regime created the police state in eight years – it's been in the works for far longer. I wish I had the belief that Obama can turn it around, but I think it is a juggernaut that is going to run him over as well as all the rest of us.

*To get on a tour of the White House, one must submit a request to a member of their Congressional delegation, or if a foreign tourist, through their embassy.

Half-Cox

Charles Pierce (Idiot America) proffers the thesis that in this country the advent of reality TV, the web*, rant TV & radio has produced a situation where everyone has the potential to be an expert, thus no one is. In other words, because public visibility and the acquisition of an admiring audience requires virtually no effort, credentials or particular smarts, anyone with a drum to beat can be launched into instant expert status.

In fact, expertise has been conflated with celebrity: if one shouts loud enough, acts outrageously enough, and pisses off enough people (whether right or left) well, then not only do they deserve their own TV or radio show, but they should also run for public office to set this country straight. Forget about education, putting in long hours in the trenches to gain experience and wisdom, or working in a job that might prepare one for local, regional or national governance. All of that is just elitist crap promulgated by those East Coast limp-wrist nancys.

This idiot expert trend is gaining momentum in Alaska; perhaps not as much as in states like Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Texas - the latter still the standard bearer for inflicting idiots on America. These are the states which spawn the Minute Men and other militia and attract skin heads, Fundys and neo-nuts like flies to honey. However, on a per capita basis, I suspect Alaska is beginning to catch up.

In addition to Palin and Tammie Wilson (the ugly stepsister who didn't get invited to the ball and had to settle for the state house and no gift bags) we have Shaeffer Cox. Two years ago, at the age of 24, he gained some local exposure by unsuccessfully running for House District 7. Now he is in the news for being arrested twice in as many weeks. First for felony assault (later pled down to reckless endangerment) for hitting and choking his wife, then for the relatively minor offense of failing to disclose to a police officer that he was carrying a firearm.

The first offense is disturbing under any circumstance, in any situation. Mr. Cox apparently has trouble controlling his anger - so much so that he hit his wife in front of their two-year old son while driving the family to Anchorage. Then when called out on his inappropriate behavior, he reached over and grabbed her neck, pinning her against the passenger door. He appears to have an overweening need to be in control, especially of his wife, and gets really gnarly really quickly if he feels he is being thwarted.

Couple this with the circumstances that surrounded his second arrest, and watch the red flags pop.

Wearing a bullet-proof vest (because, Mr. Cox states, he has received "fewer than 12 death threats"), and carrying a knife and concealed gun, Mr. Cox arrived at the scene of a police search to monitor whether or not the subject's rights were being violated by the police. The arresting charge arose from Mr. Cox' s failure to disclose to the police that he was carrying a concealed weapon, as prudence, responsible gun-ownership, and the law require.

Setting aside for the moment the scary implications of having an armed, angry, self-aggrandizing control-freak interfering in legitimate police business, here is a text-book example of Idiot America in action. With virtually no formal education or experience in any of the applicable fields (law, peace-keeping, military, to name a few), Mr. Cox has appointed himself an"expert" in constitutional, civil and criminal law. He clearly believes he has as much right to be involved in a police action, as well, the police, attorneys and courts.

And what are Mr. Cox's credentials for being a Individual Rights Monitor ? Why, membership in the Liberty Bell Network , which according to their website is

a group of Patriots that have joined together to mutually support each other against an out of control Government, it's lust for power, and the ever increasing occurance [sic]of violating our inaliable [sic]rights.

In the tradition of the original "Liberty Bell", this is a public notification network. In the event that you, or one of your neighbors rights are being violated, a call to a member of your local network would spread the word throughout your local network, for people to drop what they were doing and come immediatly [sic], because a fellow patriot needed their support.**

Patriot??? That is not the "P" word that comes to my mind when I look at Mr. Cox's behavior in the past month. Paranoiac, psychopathic,putz and peckerhead, are, however, some that do.

In response to a court order that he not carry a gun for the next two months until his hearing, Mr. Cox had this to say: "Everybody's going to think, 'He's not armed, so let's go get him'." (Fairbanks Daily News Miner, March 20, 2010). Does this punk really think there is anyone who gives enough of a shit to take him out??? If this is not paranoid wing-nuttery I really don't know what is.

In the final analysis, its not these faceless hordes ready to trammel our rights into the ground that we need to fear. Rather it is Mr. Cox and all the other "experts" like him who present a clear and present danger to our free and open society - the one for which the true patriots fought so hard.

*I am well aware of the irony inherent in blogging about this.
**Pay no attention to the misspellings, mangled sentences and poor grammar. Proper writing is for socialists and them other goddurn furreigners, not Patriots.

Behold - the Germstar

On a recent (forced) trip to the lower 48, I had my first encounter with the Germstar, pictured at right.

It appeared one day in the lobby of my hotel. Apparently, the Purell hand sanitizers that were on every counter and table in the lobby were simply not enough. After all, we are in the middle of a pan(ic)demic.

There it was: jellyfish-esque, menacing. Also incontinent. A steady drip of sanitizer emitted from its bottom. Hotel staff addressed this problem by placing a soft towel, frequently changed, beneath the 'star.

As I waited for the elevator, I mused on its name. Clearly a Star Wars reference... to entice the mind ful less consumer to view hand sanitizer as the Force in this battle against evil germs. But wait.

The Death Star dispensed death. So, uh, wouldn't a Germstar dispense germs??

Oops. Someone in marketing was asleep behind the wheel on that one.

I did not then, nor do I ever during the duration of my stay, use the Germstar. This nets me disapproving frowns (Typhoid Mary!) from my fellow elevator users, who do most liberally use the Germstar, especially after I have punched the button with my germ-encrusted finger.

Really, can there be anything else that will ever demonstrate more thoroughly just what a nation of sheeple this country has become than the H1N1 pan(ic)demic?

On the same trip, I caught a news clip of a CDC spokesperson breathlessly holding a news conference about the 86 children who have so far died of H1N1.

Not to diminish the individual loss of these children, but 86? Out of - what- 250 million people? Don't tell me that the spokesperson doctor didn't know that she was spouting hyper BS. Any high school student with a smattering of math and a basic understanding of percentages can stand up and say that 86 out of 250 million isn't just meaningless, it ain't even in the universe of statistically significant.

We sure don't hear about the 1000s of kids that die annually (flu season or not) of suicide, abuse and neglect. It's easier to fear a microbe than it is to face our collective, civic responsibility for the good of the vunerable in our society.

Just put up a Germstar.