The Border; Big Deal - What's Animal House on the Potomac REALLY Up To?

April 7, 2006:

Well, now, let's see . . . When I was a kid back in Iowa, and the union at the local Oliver Farm Equipment factory wanted to stage a illegal work stoppage, it was arranged for somebody to see a black panther kill a cow (or something). That precipitated the Great Panther Hunt. In Iowa. Everybody had a day off, beer distributors were ecstatic, and the birth rate for the area jumped a few notches. Great fun.

It had its downside, though. Maybe I'm the only one who noticed, but it seemed after that that tacticians of several colors, from loafers and opportunists to politicians and high government officials - but I repeat myself - soon availed themselves of what I came to call the "Bugaboo Diversion." Abominable Snowman, Chupacabra, and One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater, all have served. Of course, as one might expect, the federal government version of Bugaboo Diversion is colossal, often having downright Brobdingnagian proportions. More, the old tactic of diversion acquired so many versions that one could fill a library with them. You could reach about Bachelors Degree level, though, just by watching U.S. media like FoxNews when the White House has done - or is about to do - one kind of pratfall or the other. Take the case of the What-His-Name basketball player who let himself get suckered by the babe in the hotel, or the Natalee Holloway matter. Consider the lurid way the disappearance of one or other women pops onto the boob-tube screen, just in time to cover something like disclosure that the White House is reading your mail, torturing prisoners, or planning something like an attack on Iran. Et cetera.

One could cite historical examples like that for hours, but a recent and object example will perhaps do. Let's take illegal Mexican immigration and the "border" (it may be a border for Mexico, but anyone who calls our obvious view of the place a border must be hallucinatory). My tertulia at the Half-Price Bookstore Calypso Cafe considers me to be something of a tactician - my appraisal and prediction having to do with invasion of Iraq, for instance, hasn't missed a whisker - and the other day, the question was "What do we do about the border and illegal immigration?" Piece of cake.

But first, what we really need to find out is what's REALLY up? I can hear the hoots. Come on, people - when the wind starts to blow rain in, you close the damned window. If you want to prevent anybody sneaking into the chicken house, you let the dog out. If it scratches, you itch it. Ye Gods! This isn't rocket science. The question is what the hell is Animal House on the Potomac up to NOW.

There's New Orleans and what Hurricanes Katrina and Rita did to it, of course. SEVEN AND A HALF MONTHS AGO. Sure as hell, the Bush League's feckless plenipotentiaries want that to get as little press as possible. There are homeless and helpless people still everywhere - AND THAT INCLUDES TENS OF THOUSANDS OF KIDS - things are still in one hell of a mess, and we're still throwing away money and lives in Iraq like it was a parlor board game. No, for that to be it, there were have to be billions stolen . . . well, now that I think of it, maybe that IS it.

There's . . . Oh, for crissakes, all right! How do we stop the avalanche of Mexicans? That's about the rich exploiting the poor - capitalism. When has it ever been different? The capitalist always sings the same litany: "It's the only thing that works." By "works," he means that three-quarters of the planet's population damned near starves, but lives on the hope of getting lucky - in order to keep the other quarter of his species living like maharajahs. It's about money, so you deal with the damned problem by fining anyone, individual and/or corporation who hires an illegal alien twenty percent of his gross income and a sentence of five years in prison - no chance of parole. That's each offense. Anyone who commits misprision of the felony - that's knows about it an doesn't report it - is fined ten percent of his income and does two years in the slammer. No exceptions. Anyone who knows of an illegal alien being here and fails to report is fined five percent of his income and does a year. The media must - under pain of possible tax audit - promulgate the new law daily for two months. That will do it. End of problem.

Now, where was I - oh, yeah; what are they really up to?

Well, the government may be fearful that the e-mail reading, wiretapping thing will lead to the public finding out about everything else they're doing. The Smoke and Mirrors Tactic may also involve things like IRS selling taxpayer information to the smut peddlers and anyone else who can profit by knowing everything about your finances (of course, that's damned near anybody in the hyper-capitalist system we've got), or the staggering number of females who have to "come across" for IRS officials rather than be deported to wherever they came from (I'm still wondering how "Antonio" could run a business with a number of employees without IRS knowing it), and so on. Not that illegal alien females are the only ones who have to put out for the taxmen. I should think that would be obvious that a bureaucrat with that kind of power would be scratching his horny itch whenever he has one, even to a public a brain-dead as this one.

Then there's the energy crisis - where's the price of gasoline now . . . Two-sixty for regular unleaded? What, seventy dollars a barrel for crude? There's always been one of these big diversions right before a big jump in gas prices . . . N-a-a-a-h, they'd just go ahead and DO it - the public is to fat-headed and addicted to driving the old SUV ninety miles an hour, for there to be any problem there. Gotta be something else.

Still, Fox is STILL hammering away nightly on the Natalee Holloway thing, discovering new "evidence" every day. It reminds you of the tabloids and the JonBenet Ramsey Affair years ago. Damn - maybe we're going to invade Venezuela? Or Cuba? Hmmmmm!

Oh shit! -you don't suppose they're covering a big jump in casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan? Another Abu Ghraib prison "scandal" (when you call torture by the U.S. Army "scandal," you've pretty much shown your colors, haven't you - huh?)?

Maybe global warming is worse than we thought - there'll be seventy-five more hurricanes like Katrina . . .the New Ice Age is close?

Uh-uh. Got to be about money and power. Nothing else matters in Washington - or anywhere else, for that matter - anymore. Hey, maybe it has to do the staggering implications of the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. With corporation after corporation announcing their intention to bail out of employee retirement plans - that while corporation CEOS typically have five or six million dollars a year retirement "packages" - there's going to have to be some really colossal blizzards of bullshit blown by the media, education, and the rest in order to distract the lumpen proletariat. Maybe that's it. If so, watch for more Bread and Circuses. Remember Commodus the Roman Emperor? Well, hell - that's what this is all about anyway, isn't it?

Tell you what - let me think about it awhile. It's damned certain Animal House on the Potomac is covering some kind of skullduggery, but they've gotten so good at it, it takes some effort to figure out what.

I'll get back to you. 'Kay?