Ten Years Later
— From an e-mail dated February 28, 2003 —
In just fifty-one days, I’ll be writing you again.
I’ll be writing you again knowing that nothing between now and
then will change, much in the same way that nothing has changed for the
past decade. If you’re reading this, I can safely assume that this stagnation
of change is not your fault, because, if you’re reading this today, February
28, 2003, it means you were on my short list of people who actually “get
it” – or at least have tried to.
Ten years ago today, several friends and I were attending a Sunday
afternoon barbecue at my friend Molly’s house when the subject of what everyone
had seen on CNN that day came up. I made a verbal observation and witnessed
the reaction of my friends – of my close friends – following my comments.
My life would take a different path from that day forward. It was my first
experience at being considered an outlaw; an outlaw because I knew something
my friends didn’t – a curious responsibility with which I had no previous
experience. The weight of this responsibility has burdened me for the past
decade. This responsibility has since transformed me into a societal pariah
to most Americans, and that undeserved moniker will haunt me in earnest
over the next fifty-one-days.
And all because I knew something other people didn’t.
I knew it before it ever happened.
My comments to my friends were neither based on clairvoyance nor
Divine Guidance, but rather by my being a student of history; both the history
of this country and the history of other, “less savory” nation-states.
And my quasi-precognition?
I merely commented that if we were being allowed to see ATF agents
being shot while they were assaulting a church in Texas, the photo-op was
not the product of coincidence. We were meant to see the ATF’s raid fail.
It was supposed to fail. It was a production worthy of Cecil B. DeMille
showcasing the biggest showboat agency in the Federal Government affixing
bureaucratic policy in Americans’ minds – just as this rogue agency had
always affixed blame to an enemy my friends never knew existed… Me.
You see…
…I was (and am) a responsible gun owner.
…I was (and always will be) singled out as an enemy of the state
for that reason.
…I was (and am) your next-door neighbor.
…I had just been singled out as YOUR enemy, too.
And…
…The majority of Americans never recognized the sales pitch when it was
being delivered.
Four federal agents paid for this cartoonish publicity stunt with
their lives that day. Two weeks later, their still-breathing employers would
be sitting in front of a House Appropriations Committee with hats in hands,
begging for ever more money to smite a dragon that never existed in the
name of a fascist ideal that had been implemented in the Warsaw Ghetto only
fifty years prior… And all this as a teary-eyed presidential puppeteer was
laying the groundwork for an all-out assault on the unalienable rights guaranteed
the People by the Constitution of the United States of America.
Fifty-one days later, the puppeteer’s sales pitch would reach a
fever pitch as an off-the-cuff comment to my friends came to fruition.
I remember I was sitting in a white plastic patio chair when I
said it that Sunday afternoon in February of 1993. I can still hear the
chorus of disbelief and scorn from several of my friends – my close friends…
And all I said was: “Those people are dead. The Feds can’t allow
them to live now that this cluster-fuck has made national TV because too
many people will begin to ask the same questions we’ve been asking for years.
The BATF – the Feds – can’t risk the truth surviving.”
Regardless of the uproar I caused that day among my friends – my
close friends – I was wrong on several counts:
— The bureaucrats could survive the truth.
— The truth couldn't survive the bureaucracy.
The Lie worked. The people bought it. The people are still
buying it.
And even when they were/are presented with video evidence exposing
the Lie for what it is, they’ll defend the Lie to their last
breath.
Ignorance must go far beyond mere bliss. I have “lost” family members
over this issue. I have lost friends. I have lost business opportunities.
Hell, I’ve even lost two Congressional races because of my politically incorrect
awareness of such issues.
I became a different person that day – an ugly, unhappy person
– but my life wouldn’t take its different path for another fifty-one days.
Since that day in February of 1993, I’ve joked literally thousands of times
that “ignorance truly is bliss.” And while I don’t actually envy the talking
monkeys of this electorate who revel in their self-imposed ignorance, I do
sometimes long for those lazy days when I could relax and enjoy the serenity
and peace of my own apathy.
The bad guys won – and damn few Americans seem to care.
It wasn’t they who were being attacked – it
was only their rights.
It wasn’t their neighbors who were murdered
– it was only the ever nebulous “them” created by the puppeteer’s lapdog
media.
It can’t happen here – so it must not have.
Over the next fifty-one days, I will be asked who “they” were and
what “they” were doing. I will also be the subject of public scorn and abject
dismissal as being “one of them” … The “them” being someone who has dared
to ask the questions; who has dared to reveal the answers; who has chosen
fact over fallacy; and who will yet again be marginalized, accordingly.
I will always be “one of them” because I know that facts cannot
stand on their own; that laws do not mean what they say; that supposedly unalienable
rights are only privileges to be handed down by an arrogant and almighty
bureaucracy to those who willingly choose the bliss of ignorance over their
own freedom…
But I also should have known that none of my political awareness
or what they choose to call me really matters.
In fact, I doubt it ever mattered.
Or does it? Think about it…
If the bureaucrats and their comrades in the press have put this
much money, time and energy into trying to make you believe that you've
never mattered – that I’ve never mattered; that facts don’t matter; that
the Law doesn’t mean what it says; that your rights are a negotiable commodity
– then there’s something to be said for who we are and what we do. “We” are
not “They” and that’s a grievous threat to these bigots’ and liars’ self-granted
authority.
It is also our greatest strength.
Even though the talking monkeys have been (and always will be)
appeased with bread and circuses, thee and me should take heart knowing
we matter in this equation, because as long as we keep on “fighting the good
fight” (even when we’re losing), our children and their children’s children
may yet breath free in a land where the Law means what it says, where the
facts stand on their own and where our Rights are never again confused with
ad hock privileges handed down at whim by an unelected bureaucrat seated
on a throne that was paid for with the blood of those who died in the service
of Liberty and Justice for All.
And ten years later, nothing – absolutely NOTHING – has
changed in this sacred mission.
And yes, ten years later, I’m still proud to be known as “one of
them.”
But I’m especially proud to be known as one
of you.
***
“If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him
first.”
— The Talmud