As in the David Sipress cartoon, we walk the razor's edge barefoot every day, a very delicate and daring sequence of dance steps, as described in pen and ink here: A man and a woman clad in business wear are walking down a town street, with the woman saying to the goggle-eyed and startled-attention man beside her, "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane."
Perhaps you can relate. This same thought keeps popping up here, in growing thought-balloons hovering overhead. I bump into these constantly, getting up to go get more coffee. It's like brushing up against a bank of ice-fog: chilling ice-crystals suspended in mid-air.
Those encounters are merely more icy reminders of the society and situation we have all wrought, creators of all these busses in a jam-packed city -- if you missed one, be patient for 15 seconds, another outrage will be right along.
Today's menu of outrages starts with our Supreme Court -- as so many outrages do -- this time, making a decree that strip-searches are fine-and-doable for any level of offense, all the way down to bogus warrants on unpaid parking fines. Yes, it is all right if you have just shaken you head, and need to go back and read that one again.
The case was brought by a man arrested, handcuffed in front of his wife and child, for commission of the crime of being black in America while driving a BMW. The whole shameful story and SCOTUS opinion is linked below.
The man's case, and the resulting opinion issued, are shocking, scandalous confirmations -- in a routinely unshockable population no longer able to be scandalized or tamed by shame -- that indicate how much we have collapsed inward and downward on simple human rights here at home, rocketing right past bobbleheaded considerations, blasting right into shrunken-head thinking. Here we all stand, collectively trying to conjure a thought, feeling like our brains have been sucked out for dry-cleaning, a little brainwashing, taken out for a quick spin.
And so, we all go, slip-sliding away, on the thin ice of a new day, sizzling along on the one-way street of our sanity, one slippery goose-step away from our all-new, fascistic, corporatist horror show -- your ticket and papers, please -- a new show starting right away!
You can just bet police forces, already jack-booted as if readying for trench warfare with shell-piercing, battle-androids, will be out trolling for Occupy protesters, ready to strip-search these men and women into submission, keep these ugly, inconvenient, free-speech rights and rallies chilled out, over, and down. Hell, the chemical weapons in the face aren't keeping them away -- maybe we can weaponize intimidation, help keep the streets safe for law-abiding speech that way!
Police all over the country, meanwhile, are stockpiling advanced military weapons and gear into their local arsenals, like there's no tomorrow. Department of Homeland Security forces have ordered 450 million hollow-point bullets, another 175 million rifle rounds -- for alien invasions, maybe, from space, or south of the border? Of course, gun sales and hate group numbers exploded the instant the first black man took office as President, and death threats spiraled up full blast, up 400 percent over threats made to Dubya. But, DHS has no mandate to fight border wars nor act as Secret Service agents; not that long ago, mainstream journalists would have asked, "Just what in hell are you all expecting and gearing-up for?"
Terrorism, of course, is relative. The 'fridge door magnet offers perspective: The only difference between war and terrorism is the size of the budget. Our budget always contains plenty for war, more than all other nations combined. We have plenty enough, in the land of plenty, for planning nuclear-powered drones capable of flying overhead anywhere on Earth, months at a time, no refueling worries. No word about that nuclear fuel itself -- how it makes any drone a "dirty bomb" when one falls from the skies, no word about worrying about keeping these nuclear-fed beasts' power plants away from rogue nations and groups when one goes astray -- as one recently did, granting Iran a freebie, a souvenir, on the house.
Then again, there is the wider possible horror, more formless, but equally harrowing: In our hunger for real, actual news -- not the pre-digested pablum fed us in U.S. mainstream media -- we are increasingly running to other countries to tell us what is going on here, in the freest, greatest country in the world. Could be time to change our corporate logo: Never enough to care for the people, always plenty enough to go around for war.
Paranoia, as it is said, may be the sanest possible response in a world gone utterly mad.
Assorted outrages, for your wincing and grimacing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/02/us-plans-nuclear-drones
http://americaswarwithin.org/articles/2011/12/21/local-police-stockpile-high-tech-combat-ready-gear