by Thomas Hart

G21 Muckraker

Austin, Republic of Texas - There's a fellah up in Maryland who has the misfortune to drive a white van. From what I hear, he's been stopped by the police so many dang times that he put a sign on his van window that says, "This Ain't The One!"

Cain't say as I can blame him, my fellow Sanitation Engineers, as he lives right now in the center of Terror American Style. Unless you've been visiting the lunar surface these last couplah weeks, you know what I'm referrin' to here. There is some wingnut up near Washingtoon, D.C., that is terrorizing the Maryland suburbs shooting folks dead on about a daily basis. It's nothing personal, it's just flat-out, mad dog terrorism. This bastard picks folks at random as they's buying gasoline or returning from the local hardware store. This guy is one reason we ain't gettin' rid of the death penalty in this country.

The cops and the FBI are all over the area like a cheap suit, but -- so far -- all they got to go on is that the guy or guys drive around in a white van. Therein the reference in my lead. The whole danged area up there is on lock-down. Gas stations are like ghost towns in them parts. Folks are afraid to send their kids to school. Nobody wants to be out on the street because that makes them a target for a single shot from a high-powered rifle.

What makes this kind of thang so riveting (for the media and us down here in the trailer park) is how American it actually is. We have become connoisseurs of random violence. It's not unusual in this country to hear women in coffee shops talk like Ph.D's about the lives and exploits of serial killers. It's like watching a car crash. Folks just can't look away. We have raised the rubber-necking at horrors to an art form in this country.

"I can make you famous," says that character in the movie "Young Guns". How many movies have been made in Hollyweird about murderous young couples going on killing sprees? For all we know, that could be what this is all about.

Being the Chief Sanitation Engineer here, usually my column is either a rant or just flat out trashy gossip about some celebrity. But this here situation in Maryland has set me to thinkin' along some semi-serious lines about what is happening in this country. I mean, while I sympathize with Mr. "This Ain't the One", I also gottah think it's ludicrous of this fellah to believe that a sign in the window is gonnah be enough to convince any cop worth his salt to give a pass. Anybody could be the one. That's what's so American about this crime. We're all suspect as long as we hold to the belief that guns are a necessary part of our culture.

We've all watched enough movies and TV to know that the typical lone gunman is a lonely, frustrated white male in his mid-twenties to mid-thirties with a huge chip on his shoulder. He goes about life exactly like the rest of us, is considered "quiet and polite" until he starts taking his fellow citizens out to get his nut off.

Some people may want to play around with gettin' inside the head of a freak like that, but Tabloid Hart ain't one of them. I don't care what this nut is thinkin', I just want to see him caught and stopped.

Which, in my own strange way of thinkin', brings me around to the issue of homeland security. You see, fellow Sanitation Engineers, I think we're going about this whole durn thang all wrong. High tech solutions like surveillance cameras, x-ray machines, and national ID cards ain't gonnah stop terror from stalking our lives. It takes people to stop people. Why? Because machines and such can't react to their failures and mistakes and recover from them as fast as your average human.

What I'm talking about is an idea that some folks call "smart failure". Computers just ain't equip to fail smart. The reason criminals have a better chance against say, a home security system -- which can be worked around or decoded -- than against a rottweiler is because the rottweiler cain't be worked around. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out!

By the same token then, it follows that this murderously sick guy or guys up in Maryland is gonnah be foiled by a bunch of humans working around the clock who finally manage to fail smart -- not some high tech system.

So what I'm sayin' here is that the best kind of homeland security we can devise will be people-intensive, not machine intensive. And, in the long run, people come cheaper.

I ain't no genius, but there's my thoughts on the topic. Maybe it's from living down here in Bubbaland, maybe our water is better, but I've always been suspicious of systems that rely too heavily on gadgets and discount the value of a few dedicated, average folks. Maybe our government needs to have more faith in people.

After all, it wasn't a new missile system or Manhattan Project that stopped Hitler, it was a bunch of average grunts.

REMEMBER: It will take more than a few tornadoes to blow away all the trailer trash...

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? E-mail Tom down in the trailer park. Go ahead!

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