In Conservative Never-Never Land, Why IS the right to be left alone so un-important?

Since acquiring access to a television a little while ago after a ten year hiatus resulted from confiscation of all my worldly goods and dispossession by the United States, I watch people like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the like with near-apoplectic wonderment. Last night CNN's Glen Beck was stultifying, stupefying. Is this guy in the same country and world I am? "America," he said with innocent insolence, is in a class all by itself, so far superior to the rest of the world that we are judged by separate standards. He was proud of that. Excuse me?

It looks like a reality check is in order for these characters. I assume, of course that they are not just actors playing parts and reading lines handed them by federal masters. I suspect they are - NOBODY is this oblivious and unthinking.

The photo here is that of the wound inflicted by a federal sniper, shooting from ambush on October 6, 1986. He was, I've always believed, trying to prevent my testimony at hearings preceding and attendant the first Omnibus Taxpayers Bill of Rights. In 1987, you see, the U.S. District Court for Colorado ruled in my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that to give me federal records having to do with me would "irreparably damage the tax collection system of the United States."

Gentlemen, Mr. Beck, this isn't the country you seem to think it is. I wrote what follows here the other day, responding to persons who seemed to feel the same way you do about civil rights, quaint old documents (or however cavalierly it was that the Attorney General dismissed those "unimportant" - that the comment of one reader on my site - concerns), like the U.S. Constitution, and all that.

My essay was entitled 'Why IS the right to be left alone so important?'

As I may have mentioned on my website recently, I came home the other day after a bike – bicycle – ride, to discover that the government is still up to its old tricks. The guy or guys who were in the house had been betrayed by the electric garage door at the front of our new place. The overhead door, you see, has an automatically-operated light. When the door goes up, the light comes on, and stays on for two minutes after the door has closed again. Automatic, like I said.

I had ridden the bike for an hour, part of the morning workout I have been doing for fifty-five years now. Wary of any kind of gadgetry like door openers, I had left the dead-bolt on the place’s other front door, the one beside the attached garage, un-bolted - locking only the keyed lock. I left through the garage, using the house door there and the remote device on the garage’s overhead door. Returning, I came in with my key through the residence’s front door, going immediately to the house door opening into the garage. It’s about four feet distant. When I opened the door, the automatic overhead door light was still on. I waited the twenty-two seconds before it went out, timing with the second hand on my wristwatch.

Damn! I’d thought I was free of the bastards. Stupid, that - in this kind of government, no one is EVER free. In fact, it was with something of mixed emotions that I discovered the federal (how do I know? – tell you in a minute) intrusion. It’s been four years now, since the last of the “harassment on the highway” incidents. That's the “cop stop” by a belligerent and provocative minion of small-time law enforcement looking to make his statement of patriotic righteousness. Whereas every day had once been fraught with the high tension of anticipated confrontation with the power of conspiratorial totalitarian government, the sudden absence of it seems to be nearly as unsettling as its presence.

I suppose I should explain that. I’ve told here how for more than twenty-three years the United States of America, Land of the Free, Nation of Laws, deliberately and with malice aforethought tormented one of its citizens, me. After several overt attempts to kill me outright – that’s murder, in case relating "subject" and perpetrator has you confused – the U.S. resorted to its more subtle methods where enemies of the state are concerned. Oh, the attempts ran the gamut, from poison (two or three times, matter of fact), to blatant, right-in-your-face, mugging by professional goons.

One, matter of fact, was a two hundred forty pound karate expert. Failing by the method that would have further inflated his already over-inflated estimation of his martial arts lethality, he came back to try again with a silenced H&K handgun. He was as feckless with one as with the other. Pretty federal, when you think about it. It's like Iraq, and the "War on Terror."

The most insidious, though, was the “cop stop” method. Run-of-the-mill cops are generally accidents – murderous ones – looking for a place to happen. Supremely under-trained for theie purpose, they know it, too. It must be one of the worst traps society can spring on an individual, something akin to President Harry Truman’s “I felt like a load of hay fell on me” realization that he was suddenly the nation’s chief executive officer. As an "officer," you get six or eight weeks instruction and training, then hit the most deadly jungle on the planet, the mean streets of the U.S.A.

Armed with weapons capable of inflicting instantaneous death, including a handgun you generally can't hit the side of a barn with, you have the authority to use them in only the most precisely defined circumstances – circumstance for which the definition will come AFTER you have exercised your lethal authority. To appreciate - understand even remotely – one would have to be put through a SWAT, FBI Hostage Rescue, or the like special operations team “fun house.” It’s supposed to train you to make the “shoot – don’t shoot” decision correctly. No mistakes, or you flunk the course. Death is final, you know, whether that of a “perp” or of a housewife or her baby. Like the confrontation in that will occur in the street, the "fun house" target leaps into view in second, and you have half a second - or less - to decide. Shoot the wrong target, you flunk. Like I said.

Shitty occupation, really. Twenty or so years of walking the razor’s edge. Fuck up just once, lose everything career is about; and the longer you go without trouble, the higher the stakes get. I know, because I lived that way once, too.

You see, that cop who stopped me because the radio and police records told him to do that had also been told that I was probably “armed and dangerous.” I was, were that not bad enough, the radio or records said, a state pistol champion and master pistolero, an instructor. More, it said, I was a sixth degree black belt in judo, twice a national champion in its sport phase, capable of killing a man instantly with empty hands. The cop who came walking up along the side of my care was in his mind a mongoose about to confront a cobra. Except that this mongoose knows he’s a housecat. A rabbit, even.

He’s got one chance, he thinks - that handgun on his hip. I could always determine how much the “officer” had been told by that phony, "dummied up," record, just by spotting that sidearm. The retainer strap told me everything I needed to know.

So did the manner. Now and then, usually a state trooper, the guy was as courteous and professional as an Iowa Highway Patrolman (they’re without equal in this respect). Strictly no sweat. But I wouldn’t know that for a minute or two, damned near eternity, under the circumstances. Even when I realized this one had no ulterior motive, no fears provided him by the vicious bastards using him, termination of the “incident” would leave me drenched with sweat.

For a while, anyway – the human psyche can get used to anything.

Still, it was always there. One hundred and nine times, at least – I didn’t start a record until realization of what was happening came to me - in ten years. Each time, it was the run-up to a gunfight, the anticipation of having to fight or die. Damned clever trick, I’ll tell you. Win-win, for the bad guys. Were I over-react, lose my temper or “cool: and kill the cop, I die and they win. If I don’t, and do keep my “cool,” I live in torment worse than any SERE training or brain-washing by an enemy. Maybe I break down emotionally, even lose my mind. Clever, damned clever.

A couple of times, a cop came within a split second of instant death. Had one Corpus Christi, Texas cop or deputy sheriff moved the shotgun he held at port arms ready even perceptively, my bullet would have destroyed the hypothalamus of his brain – instant death.

Another time, a squad of cops suddenly and with utterly oblivious confidence in their really bumbling power, assaulted me as I sat eating a cup of ice cream in a grocery store coffee shop. Were it not for the fact of nearly twenty years of unintentional and inadvertent training by our federal masters, the first of the men who put his hands on me with insulting force would have died instantly, his brain destroyed and neck broken by the hands that had an instant before held a cup and plastic spoon. The same would have happened to the three men with him, this time by means of the loaded, cocked, and locked .45 caliber pistol I wore (I get off four aimed shots in a little more than a second, gentlemen - something your federal masters know very well).

But this night I was barely ruffled, even when I later discovered the cops’ deliberate attempt to wound or kill me. As I said, the human psyche can get used to anything.

Still, I’m wondering as I type this. Where is the f------ “bug?” Camera, even. What did they do to the computer? What did they plant? Pot? Cocaine” Heroine?

Don’t worry, gentle reader. I’m an old hand at this, now. The listening devices I located around the house the day we announced our intentions to move in have let me track all of the two people – a man and a woman – around the residence. I’ve disposed of the contraband – down the stool and by way of the microwave – and there’s nothing left but the “bug” – which I warned Rita about and pointed out to her. We’ll use it (I’m drawing up a lawsuit in U.S. District Court as I write this) later.

The practice drill I’ve made de rigueur with each change of residence was truly remarkable recently. The SWAT team breaking suddenly into the place was taken down in 1.3 seconds – all five of them.

(Don’t come, guys – not that way. There’s no way you could be ready for what’s here, or me. Just call me on the phone, first. We’ll talk. You’ll live. I’ve NEVER been your enemy, not matter what Lord Acton's "absolutely corrupt" say, and that record – the one you live by – makes that clear even to the stupidest clod among you. THINK about it.)

But the effective silence is deafening, and unsettling. I’ve carried the load for two decades, and for it to leave suddenly is . . . strange. I don’t know what to make of it. I haven’t been “tailed” menacingly - or otherwise, for that matter - by a patrol car in four years. I seldom even see a cop. Recently, letting Rita off at work while her car is in the shop, we passed a squad car and a cop writing a woman a ticket. Rita sensed my sudden readiness. You’ve never noticed – no reason, probably never an occasion – but a man who lives with or by the gun develops mannerisms apropos. The power to inflict sudden death is an awesome one, and the responsibility that goes with it is even worse. You think about it many times, every day. It changes you.

And Rita lives with me. She sees me with the gun every day, sees me practice with it. Every day. She knows that I am NEVER without it. She knows I sleep with it beside me. She refers to it by the same, “pet” name I do – “Sweetheart.”

She saw. She saw that I moved forward slightly in the seat, assuring freedom of access to the pistol on my right hip (actually better with it left-handed, slightly more accurate, I wear on the right side because the other means less access - a little slower - when seated in a car). At sight of the cop, I stopped chatting - and blinking my eyes, too - abruptly.

I don't suppose you've ever happened to notice the eyes of a stalking cat? Can you imagine that the mongoose closes his eyes, even for an instant, when he faces the cobra? There’s more, but, never having been anywhere like that, you probably wouldn’t recognize or believe what I say.

The cop never even looked at us as we went by. Incredible! Now, I’m thinking about it. What’s going on? Why are they leaving me alone? A trap? To device by which to inveigle me into un-readiness? A false sense of cease-fire? What? In a way, it’s as bad as the “cold war” – the war with IRS, that is. Maybe THAT’s it, another offensive move in the battle of wits and wills.

It’ll be all right, I’ll handle it. THEY WON’T GET ME, NOT EVER! The old dictum of Friederich Nietzsche, I've discovered, is true: “Whatever fails to kill me makes me stronger.” My enemy, you see, has made me invulnerable to everything he is capable of. Maybe that’s the reason there’s no more.

Yeah, maybe that’s it.

P.S. You know, I can't for the life of me understand why you don't learn from the troubles of folks like me. Like I said here, in a country like this NO MAN EVER FREE! Freedom is for fighters alone. It is not the nature of government - not once in all of history has it ever been so - to leave those subjected by its power, plebiscitic or otherwise, alone. Therefore, by simple, syllogistic logic, it must be FORCED to leave us alone. Worse, to leave the power to force government to respect our rights in the hands of the same government is by the same logic absurd.

If your government, the same government I hear federal hacks like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly (though lesser, I must admit), Glen Beck, and their like apotheosize and suck up to, is so damned respectful of individual rights, if you have nothing to fear from their relentlessly illegal invasion of your privacy, and more, then how the hell do you explain what that same government did to me?

If you wonder why nations like Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and more don't trust the United States, tell me why they should trust any government that treats its own like the United States treated me. Do you think ANY of that would have happened, had I been able to say credibly that I had planted a nuclear bomb in one of our major cities (or anywhere else, for that matter), or had the ability to launch a nuclear attack?

WAKE THE HELL UP! The reason we are headed inexorably for a war with an entire race and their religion is because YOU - goddammit - have gone derelict in your responsibility to assure that what happened to me couldn't happen. Government is like disease - a logical case can be made that it IS disease - in that it must be controlled from without or it becomes an epidemic monster nothing can control. When G.W. Bush in his messianic obliviousness incites World War Three, IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT, and your children, who will pay for it and die for it, will hate you - righteously.

Wake the hell up. DO SOMETHING!