The Panicked Sheep Have All Obtained Weapons

The sky is grey these days. The rain will not stop. The goddamned weather channels all say that the rain is going to continue for at least another six days. It might as well go on for another sixty. Things have gone crazy. Even Bill Cosby is on CNN cursing the world and giving network news employees shivers.
The President of the United States has run amok with power and the impotent congress is loath to stop him. The Band once told us they took respite on Cripple Creek and I can only hope that they have room for the rest of us. Today, I was reading a book I have read at more times than I am comfortable admitting just yet and in it the author, Hunter Thompson, referred to "panicked sheep" as one of the alternatives to the vicious years of the Nixon presidency. I am beginning to wonder if maybe that panicked sheep syndrome hasn't developed into something far more ominous.
Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001 I think the American people have lost what was left of their minds. It has become perfectly acceptable for perverts to hold positions in high offices and to watch over us like the good neighbors they want us to think they are. The American people are perfectly content to let the government trample our civil rights all in the name of keeping phantoms terrorists from attacking by the dark of night. I cannot help but wonder if most people even know what terrorism is. They think, I think, that terrorism is bearded men with turbins trying to kill Americans. When one actually looks at the definition of terrorism they realize that there are far more ominous implications to it than we even imagine.
Many Americans apparently have no concept of the right to privacy granted by the Bill of Rights. Most Americans apparently are perfectly content to let the federal government track their phone calls and library checkouts without cause or reason. I am so tired of hearing people say that if I have nothing to hide than I should not be worried about it. If this were happening at work than most people would look at it much more differently. I would like for you to imagine what it would look like if you worked for a company for 26 years (my age and length of citizenship) and then one day one of your coworkers steals money from the company and destroys his computer on the way out, destroying senstive company documents with it. Well, take it to the next step. The next day your bosses tell you that they will be listening to all phone calls from all employees. Reading all email, memos and what not in an attempt to catch the next person who may try to do it again because they know that the guy had help in the office. They inform you that they will not be monitoring just your business, but also all of your personal time at work, all of your personal emails, all of your calls from home...everything. I think that most people would have issues with that. See, there are people that want to have that privacy who don't have anything to hide. Have things really slipped that far into the abyss that we really believe that people who don't want this monitoring to take place have something to hide? I would be willing to bet that there are more people who don't agree with it than we would all like to think and believe it or not they aren't all holed in shacks in the mountains with piles of ammunition and explosives. They are not all Michael Moore liberals and they are not all unpatriotic and or hoping that the terrorists win.
The people of the United States have been whipped up into some absurd frenzy of fear and paranoia that it almost stunts my growth to think about it. There entirely willing to surrender their personal freedoms in the form of a bank issued cashier's check to protect us all from terrorism that we have created a new brand of terrorism. We have created our own prison that will come back to bite us in the ass. Are we really so busy in our everyday lives that we cannot take the time to really consider the fact that we are okay with people being detained indefinately without charges or lawyers just because someone in the government told us that they were terrorists or knew the terrorists? Or are we just that selfish? I say selfish because there are very few Americans who would just stand idly by if this happened to them. We would go apeshit if it were us. What do you think the reaction would be if a troop of soldiers just dropped down into some suburbian heaven and started snatching people up all in the name of security. Are things really far enough gone that we would just say that they must have done something wrong or else they wouldn't have to worry gotten snatched up? Or is just the American people sitting off to the side and seeing the headlines and saying "oh, that government, but what can you do? Thet are all crooks and liars,"? Fuck that. Write a goddamned letter. Turn off American Idol long enough to read a fucking newspaper and then respond. You have a government representative who works for you. Tell whoever it is that they need to get off of their ass and fix it. Believe it or not, if enough people told them what they really thought the congress would listen. How in the hell do you think that all of these activist groups can get anywhere? It's not all money. I know that most people think that you can win any election if you have enough money, but that is simply not the case. A goddamned lobbyist cannot control what a politician knows will cost him his job.
Look, I have clearly lost my original point here, I think. See, in the last few years we have all gone crazy with fear and rage. We are willing to let our government run amok blowing up whatever suits it in the rest of the world. We actually let them put that goddamned color coded terror system in place for those challenged by words and ideas. We let them pass off the fucking duct tape on the windows all while we let Musty Sea TV and Brangelina take over the world. We have dropped the ball and we should be castrated and sterlized for it. We have trusted individuals who I will not name to drop us into a bottomless pit with the promise of a jet propelled rope at some point all in the name of some fear that we should have had years before it slammed us and then we decided to make up for lost time, right now and the future all in one fell swoop. We have chosen, through our own negligence, to run around like panicked savages trying to pull our own heads off at the first site of fire in our house, spinning dumbly, with pistold, at anything that moves in the dark of our yard, in the post office, in the streets, in the airports and wherever else we may be that doesn't include name tags. To make a long story short we have just jumped our good senses and left them on the airplane so that we can feel safer. To me it is no different from getting arrested so that we can stay in a cell that no one from the street can get into to keep from being mugged. It's okay though. They are looking out for us so that the other they can't attack us again. Right?

Shanfroman

"It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."
Bob Dylan