The Law of the Gunfighter

Somebody may be pulling my leg here, but I don’t think so. I’ve just contracted with a subscriber to a site where writers and clients meet, to write a seventy-five page “chapbook” on the subject of “applied thinking.” That last was the client’s choice of terms, by the way. I liked it. The contact results, according further to the client, from my articles having to do with SWAT and bodyguard tactics, judo, shooting and the like. Rob says - agreeing with me, by the way – that anyone who expects to have to fight for his life “had damned well better” – his choice of terminology, again – be able to think clearly.

Six additional clients have signed on, and I’ve got a project. I think that’s a pretty good sign that I’m not being put on.

And it’s become colossally clear that many – most, I would contend – people can’t do that. Think productively, I mean. Were I asked, I’d say that the principle reason beyond the obvious, that of today’s poor education, is emotionally derived bias. How that happens is another matter, one for the sociologists.

A case in point where the emotional bias is concerned is the latest spate of reaction on website like Truthout.com to the continuing Hezbollah attack on Israel. The Israelis are killing innocent civilians. That’s it. Subject discussed entirely.

End of cogent thought, too. All further comment (and there’ll be a bunch of that), in other words, will be a repetition of what went before. The only thing of interest in any of it is the astonishing bias displayed by the writers. There is, to hear them tell it, no redeeming factor in anything the Israelis have done or are doing. None!

A while back, one writer – “Greta” – finally (I had to insist repeatedly) answered my question concerning what she thought would happen were the Israelis to disarm by saying there would be peace. Then, when Israel had returned the Gaza Strip to Palestine, only to have a raid from Gaza seize and hold hostage one of its soldiers and begin taking rocket fire from there, she somehow failed to mention it in her latest diatribe reporting Palestinian casualties.

One might ask people like this - assuming that two wrongs still don’t make a right, and that the desire for self-preservation is not only natural but a natural right – what any other group of persons – including the towering intellects of the far left – might do, were they fired on from the next house, block, town or country.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re walking down the street one day, and somebody starts shooting at you from a crowd of people. You’re in the middle of the street or some open space, and you’ve got no place to hide. You’re armed. What do you do?

D-u-u-u-u-h!

But emotion does not check with reason before it energizes the mouth. And therein lies mankind’s biggest problem. Yesterday, at our customary week end get-together a friend – who is very anti-Israel – answered something I observed concerning the present situation in Lebanon with a comment concerning “Israeli violence.” ISRAEL shouldn’t be violent. More, and for that reason, the United States shouldn’t help them.

My friend and I often agree to disagree, and change the subject. But his view is both an interesting one, and parallels that of the folks on TO and elsewhere internet-wise. You should pardon the expression.

For many years, one ploy I would use in an argument like this one was the one I just used. Ask the arguer to put himself in the shoes of the opposing viewpoint. What would he do, were he an Israeli?

It tells anyone like me what he wants to know, which is whether the discussion is worth continuing. On my website, I pose it as a condition of debate: what does it take to prove you wrong? If you can’t be proven wrong, then there’s no point in my debating you, is there? If you what you believe can’t BE wrong, then it’s a religion, not a science (and, interestingly enough, atheism is a religion on those grounds). Science can prove things, and settle arguments; religion can’t

So, you ask, what are the rules? Well, they are simple – and the mankind has known and agreed upon them for centuries. There’s even a name for the science – forensics. Get a bit more precise – or general, for that matter – and you have epistemological forensics.

The science IS that, of course, so there isn’t room to discuss the whole of it here, but certain basic of the basic principles destroy everything being raved by the Palestine-Arab extremist apologists. First, like I said, two wrongs don’t make a right. You don’t prove yourself correct - or further your argument, even – by proving the other side wrong. And, a corollary, he’s not wrong because he’s a son of a bitch; or even because he’s been wrong before.

That, logically, is it for about eighty percent of the Palestine side of the latest argument. Even a son of a bitch has a right to shoot back at the guy who shot at him.

Next, we have the matter of restraint. The Israeli reaction was too severe. All the non-combatants very far from the action agree. Surprise. The question came up the other day, right here in Kingsville, Texas. A group of kids having decided to have some fun by tormenting and terrorizing other people got shot at by a guy they hit with a shower of eggs. Unfortunately, one of the kids got hit.

Ooooh, the outrage! Especially from the kid’s parents. Asked about the matter, I drew some of outrage’s fire, too. From my own wife. I said the person who incited the incident by throwing eggs was responsible for whatever – including the shot – happened. When I said, “There but for the grace of God go I,” it didn’t help.

Yeah, yeah, YEAH! Bullshit. There’s an old, old rule of civil law – “Volenti non fit injuria” - that says a person trespassing accepts whatever he finds there. You take all mankind that way, too. If you give the finger to everybody who displeases you, you’d better be able to accept whatever that finger triggers.

I was an orphan, and while recovery from polio kept my incredibly puny, the victim of every bully in the neighborhood. When I learned the judo where I now hold sixth degree black belt rank, the experience resulted in my perfecting and practicing one particular move until it was near perfection. Grab my shirt or start you hand toward me suddenly, you find yourself on your back and in a wristlock. It’s a conditioned reflex – no thought, no deciding, involved at all. None. YOU pulled the trigger.

Put you hand in a hole to see what’s in there . . . well, it’s up to you; but what you find in there is YOUR problem, too – not the fault of whatever it was.

Then, too, there’s the rule of the wild. If you don’t want to be taken for a wolf, don’t run with them. There’s a corollary there, too. If you don’t want me to treat you like I treat my enemies, don’t announce that you’re my enemy. You go around with wearing a tee-shirt that says, “Death to Hal,” I’m going to figure you’re my enemy. When I see your hand coming toward me suddenly, I may not offer much restraint. When you’re on your back on the ground in my wristlock, don’t expect me to let you up and dust you off. Expect to lose the arm.

And, finally, if you don’t want me to mistake you for my enemy, don’t run around with people who wear that “Death to Hal” tee-shirt. If your friend makes my gunfighters reflexes think he’s going for his gun, my bullet may hit you after it goes through him. Use your head.

That’s it, the logic of the fighter. I wouldn’t expect anyone of the wimp metrosexual male persuasion to understand that, of course. They reason with talk, illogical statements like – well, go have a look. You’ll see my point.

And who’s right? Well, that’s easy. Just put yourself in the position of first one side, then the other. What would you do?

That’s a complete experiment, and the result will be correct.

Unless you’re biased.

Waiting for Godot

Our Orwellian Virtual Reality grows, its pace accelerating.

A couple of nights ago on the T & V, we have John Kerry, talking as if Iran having a nuclear weapon would be some kind of earth-shaking cataclysm. That’s a man who surely must know – lived during part of – the forty-odd years of Cold War and confrontation the U.S. had with a Soviet Empire armed with thousands of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistics missiles. Now we have the brouhaha raised by the White House and its sycophant propagandist media concerning the New York Times, and what a FoxNews “analyst” called “the newest wing of al Qaeda.”

This is surreal, virtual reality created in a television studio by people who specialize in “special effects.” It’s nonsense, but only to someone who has lived in the real world. There are several generations of “Americans,” you know, who haven’t. Otherwise, they might remember Herman Goering. Adolph Hitler’s Deputy Fuehrer, the Reichsmarschall said at his Nuremburg Trial,


"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."


But the shear temerity of if all tells us something probably more important. It bears out my concern, expressed a few days ago, about the colossal stupidity of John Q. Citizen. But then maybe that’s what Herman was talking about. Who would fall for a “bait and switch” routine as obvious as this? The “bait” is security, and the “switch” is surrender of all your Constitutional rights. Any bunco detective would recognize this. It’s one of the oldest scams known to man.

And any businessman tactician would recognize the smoke and mirrors tactic. While the suckers are kept worrying about some hideous chimera, some bugaboo like the Soviet Union of old turned North Korea or Iran - even if it were both, would they equal our Cold War nemesis? - the swindler steals you blind. Five hundred billions and counting, in Iraq alone. That’s around $3,846 for every working man and woman in the U.S., you know – and just for Iraq.

It’s also while the people in New Orleans and the Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana area blasted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita STILL – too close to a year later - suck off the dry federal FEMA tit, our national borders still remain unprotected, our retired old people live on cat food, the Veterans’ Administration gives maimed and disabled soldiers third and fourth rate care, the nation’s infrastructure crumbles, and more. On and on, in fact.

It’s a shambles, but thanks to the media’s virtual reality, you think everything is fine. Even as you look for still another or better job and pay $3.00 a gallon for fuel.

And all of it while the nation’s military-industrial corporations and their princely CEOs make billions, and billions, and billions, besides.
WHAT IN THE HELL WILL MAKE THE COMATOSE PUBLIC WAKE UP?!

Folks, get something straight. This is NOT about your defense, or security. When it comes to that, you’ll get what New Orleans got. This about tranferring five hundred billion dollars of your money - your children and grandchildren's money, actually - to the corporations that rule us. If everyone should sacrifice for this "war on terror," why the hell should some of us PROFIT?

And FoxNews and the rest are NOT interested in keeping you informed; certainly not about “fair and balanced.” They’re interested in keeping you CONTROLLED. At best, it’s about tabloid journalism – its principal purpose to sell lurid, tabloid garbage like who’s screwing whom and who’s pregnant in Hollywood, whose kid got kidnapped in Scum-suck, California, and all about the latest rape in Horny Hollow, Pennsylvania. Or Harem-Scarum, Idaho.

At worst, it’s just that smoke and mirrors I mentioned. You’re supposed to look in the direction of the New York Times exposée of government e-mail eavesdropping, and arrogation of banking records, while the government steals you blind everywhere else. Like for instance, the tripling or quadrupling of the Armed IRS. You worry about the pimple on your fat butt, while a cancer eats your brain.
You didn’t know they have an armed division? Ah-HAH! See what I mean about “bait and switch?”

While the Potomac’s panjandrums and plenipotentiaries spend billions to build sanctuary redoubts and security systems for themselves, they leave you out in the cold, to face the “terrorists” – that’s all the people in the world they’ve pissed off. You give up your Constitution and the personal rights it guarantees, in order that they can help themselves to the money they’d have to spend on protecting you they way they have themselves protected. And you fulminate among yourselves about trivial nonsense like that pimped to you by the media and its “pushers.” Like flag-burning. Gay “marriage.”

I wouldn’t bother, parenthetically, about that last, but the analogies available make a point. Why fuss about what people born or otherwise afflicted with a mental defect call “it?” Yell at the top of your lungs as many of you as you please, demonstrate, parade, and riot till you’re satisfied, worn out, or pitched into the slammer. Change all the laws having anything to do with it, you can’t change what ANYTHING is simply by calling it another name. I can call screwing a sheep sex “marriage;” I can do it every day, for the rest of my life - it still won’t be marriage. A nation - the whole damned world can do the same - and it won’t change the fact.

A lie told often enough may become ACCEPTED as the truth, but it won’t BE the truth. Not ever.

Want to know something else? Not many people who really matter where the survival of the nation is concerned – something REALLY important - will give a damn one way or the other.

But those who choose to believe nonsense will pay a price for it. No escape. That’s just a natural law. Yell at her all the insults and invective you like, Mother Nature will do her thing, anyway. While the deluded live in their never-never land, reality always has its way. And its effect. The Internal Revenue Service, for instance, is what it is – no matter what they call it. No matter what WE say, and no matter what WE call it, too.

And that’s important. The IRS, you see, is in fact the beating heart of the military industrial complex corporations’ life support system. They’re more, actually. They both provide and keep flowing corporate “America’s” life blood, money. That’s money.

No, check that; actually, it’s just power. Taxation, United States of America style is about keeping the power where the powerful want it. And had al Qaeda the tactical “smarts” to have used those 757s to attack the IRS nerve center at Martinsburg, West Virginia on 9-11, the powerful would have been in deep shit. Had they hit the treasury, too, corporate “America and its military would have been”belly up.”

And the fat cats know it, too. That’s why the Armed IRS, its headquarters and offices, are being beefed up as never before. Three or four times, I’m told. It’s part of the reason we had no money and no protection for New Orleans and the other victims of Katrina and Rita. It’s part of the reason we have no troops for the Mexico border. You didn’t wonder?

But that’s what all this orgy of pornographic propaganda by the media is REALLY about. Keep playing the government’s enemies – that’s the public – and it’s tools – that’s al Qaeda - against one another, and the corporations will one day have all the power they need to do what they intend. As long as al Qaeda can be distracted by hocus-pocus horse-crap like this – and if you think they are, you need to eat more hay; you’re a jackass – the White House Mutt and its media Jeff can keep using Osama and company as the bugbear they need. With all the “stunned and stolid, a brother to the ox” people hiding under the bed, corporate power devours nations and provides for a new world order. One, big, happy prison.

And the success of it all is demonstrated by what I spoke of here the other day. That’s an apparently stunned and stupefied electorate on a decades-long walkabout. Only children – aboriginal ones, at that - or those utterly isolated from the lessons of history - would be duped by anything as obvious as this. Every year for decades, the rich get richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class harder to find. With industry’s great corporations leaving the country by the herd, an avalanche of illegal aliens willing to scramble for what’s left pour into the vacuum created.
Does anybody remember Ross Perot’s “great, sucking sound?”

I defy anyone to read the history of the United States since World War Two and tell me that what I say concerning a coup d’etat by the industrial military complex a retired General of the Armies and retiring president warned about is not plausible. It’s Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation for all the evidence, events and circumstances so thunderous they simply drown out other explanations.

But here we sit like a jackass in a hailstorm, waiting to see how bad it gets.

Not I. If I were the only man in the country willing, I would do what I’m doing. Next week, as I was telling Ian MacLeod here a minute ago, I’ll finish drawing up my lawsuit. The legal research necessary is all but finished. That done, I'll file the suit. The full text, in proper legal form will be on my opinion page or another "special" page (just for the suit and the whole process). Everything that happens will be there. Each court filing, each legal paper, will be forwarded to the media.

I also propose to file small claims court actions against staff members of all the senators, congressman, and the like who ignored all my pleas over the years. The senators and congressmen themselves are immune for this sort of thing, but not their staffs. These people have a duty to do right and obey the law. The failure to report a crime to both their bosses and the police is actionable in a court of law. I will use my time and expense in doing what a citizen is supposed to do under the system as damages. Of course, it will be obvious to all the world, media included, what I'm doing.

I intend also to follow the same practice with all the cops and police departments who harassed me as the result of IRS and federal "poisoning" of the public record, and the police radio. A false report to a cop can be very dangerous, and it's actionable. Tampering with one's public record is likewise actionable, for obvious - I trust - reasons.

Everything will be filed in forma pauperis, of course. That's a two-edged sword, intended to demonstrate also the public’s dereliction of its duty and responsibility (yeah, I know it’s hard – freedom always is) in doing the same, and to a certain extent why. There'll be the costs of stamps, envelopes, etc., but otherwise no too much expense.

And I’ll be doing something; not sitting here, waiting for Godot.