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The way I understand it, Homies, is that old John has people all over the Washington, D.C. Beltway area checking their maps. They are trying to figure out how close the "dirty bomb" -- a homemade nuke --- would have come to spreading toxic radioaction to their palatial cribs in Silver Springs, Maryland, or Alexandria, Virginia. The lobbyists wives and social butterflies in the Georgetown district of Washington, D.C, our nation's capital, are thanking their lucky stars that Attorney General Ashcroft was able to unearth this latest dastardly terrorist. We should be, too, I'm told.
Yet, a lot of thoughtful people are asking another question: Is this just another Super Cynical "wag the dog" move by the Bush Leaguers to take the heat off the Adminstration for maybe --- just maybe, possibly --- being suspected of being napping about the 9/11 attack? Is Ashcroft's dramatic announcement supposed to make us forget about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) just the week before pointing the fingers at each other for respectively dropping the live ball? Just asking.
And what sets a brother to scratching his head is that, while the dog is still waggin', El Presidente comes on national TV and tells us that well, because of the complexity and magnitude of the threat to our security, the FBI and CIA weren't made to deal with it. We for sure need us a Cabinet-level department of the government focused on issues of homeland security. Huh? I thought that was just about what that guy Tom Ridge was supposed to be doing already. I thought he was supposed to have direct access to the Oval Office already, too. I must have been confused about that one.
If I do understand the situation now, thank you, Mr. President, the way I get it is that we need to pay a whole lot more folks (mostly Republicans) a whole lot more of our tax dollars in order to get a good night's sleep.
Man! This country is getting to look a whole lot like some other place than American with every passing terrorism alert. What with a national ID card right around the corner ("May I see your papers, please?) and upgraded surveillance of just about any damned body, I'm wondering what's next? When will we start seeing guys in the security force start sporting especially designed, nattily-cut black uniforms so that we can tell them apart from your average cops?
I'd guess it's never been a better time to be a WASP in America than right about now, huh?
That's the funny thing to me about that idea called "security." It seems like the way it always works is that to make some people feel more secure a government has to make other people feel a whole lot less secure. That's what profiling is all about.
There's something blatantly un-American about that to my way of thinking, Homeboys and -girls. Something that creeps me out.
I don't like it when the government gets in the business of spreading fear in our hearts. That's been a job the news media, especially of the TV news variety, has been in now for most of my natural life. TV news seems to live on the basis of making people feel the world is an unsafe and very dangerous place. But there is something horribly off-kilter when a government jumps on that same bandwagon. It makes you wonder about the motivations behind its actions. No government in history has gotten into the fear game and had good things happen to its people as a result. Ever.
In a climate of fear, myth and rumor have the same currency as facts, but lies can be spread much faster than a truth offered in refutation. So I don't think we can expect any good result from government being involved in fostering fear now, Homies.
Oakland, CA, USA - Nobody is better at striking fear in the hearts of men, since the radio character The Shadow (later portrayed in a movie starring Alec Baldwin), than our U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Considering that we already got de facto crimes like Walking While Black and Driving While Black that all the regular cops just instinctively know about, will there be a new list of unknown crimes that we'll all have to figure out down here in the 'hood, too? Just asking.
I know one thang, I certainly wouldn't want to be one of those Muslim brothers right now with an Arab-sounding surname and try to book a flight somewhere from here. Let alone be a swarthy-looking Sicilian, Latin, etc. The poor Sikhs. What most those folks be feeling right now?
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