Elders, Bullies & Gulags

Elders, Bullies

& Gulags 

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She hobbled in leaning on two canes, her hair soft, white and abundant, piled in a loose figure eight, yea, sloping toward infinity. She thumped down into the chair and stared at me with the unblinking scrutiny of grand age.

"How long have you been here? I've seen you around."

"Um, ditto. Not as long as you."

"Not hardly. You see those mountains? They rose up when I dug the Rio Grande!"

I guffawed. 

A man poked his head around the curtain, grinned, and hushed us; a filming was in process.

She had wonderfully sparkling eyes, an elder with long life experience and heart enough for wit.

It set me to thinking about maturation, the contentment of hard-won self-scrutiny, and of kindliness. 

Or not, as the case may be.

Lately, I've had an encounter and ending with an older but immature bully. This, while crafting a children's book about bullying, speaking of guffaws! http://tinyurl.com/jeremiah-jay

Not a great leap from my little life micro-ugly to governance gone rogue, bullying one's own people and launching wars.

Distract, divert and obfuscate power-greed in the maelstrom of chaos. But fear not, Darth Vader will bring order, Ordnung, compliance. The Boys in Blue, gone goth-black.

Strange military training of "law" enforcement, target practice to de-humanize targets. Tim Laden the CIA operative, dead repeatedly, caves, villages, buried at sea... and the mouths of Navy Seals magically sealed by opportune copter crash. 

Those fearing loss of control, need new scapegoats: Old bulls-eye targets no more, bring on civilians, the domestic irritants to absolute powah. 

A company with DHS funding came up with the "No Hesitation Series" to focus on civilians as "Domestic Terrorists." Not met with universal acclaim, but who ARE these control freaks, these bullies?

"There are seven targets in the series: Pregnant Woman, Older Man 1, Older Man 2, Older Woman, Young Mother, Young Girl, and Little Brother."

theblaze.com

First order of business of Hitler annexing Austria, Stalin seizing power and Australia for goodness sake, was to confiscate hunting rifles from farmers. 

I have a classmate in Oz; his ranch is crawling with poisonous snakes. He never checked fence lines unarmed. He shot snakes. Don't know what he does now.

Criminals of course are not discommoded by gun confiscation; they'll always find sources. After Australia seized guns, murders and felonies increased. Criminals ran rampant, unchecked by citizenry.

If the government itself turns criminal, what then? Eighteenth Century writers in Europe and the American colonies had a lot to say about that, the so-called Divine Right of Kings and infinite corruption of empire.

Any wonder that history and civics have been expunged from gov-issue education?

“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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