even carry keys anymore and I give away all my loose
change to strangers just so I don't set something off.
And I don't drive no dung near the diesel pumps.
Is that enough? Hell, no. It's still almost
the anniversary of Waco and the trial is starting in
Denver, and my old pickup makes it look like I don't
respect the government in the first place. The FBI has
reason to be suspicious -- "Pull him over, Edgar,
that looks like cow poop in the back."
Look, I don't mean to be disrespectful. I'm
not trying to compare the FBI to the Gestapo, or to the
Keystone Cops for that matter, but I'm a little wigged
out by how easily the national media is manipulated by
federal authority.
Whatever happened to an alert Fourth Estate
which our free society so proudly said was a last bastion
against government excess? Whatever happened to the idea
that the federal government could not get away with
criminalizing a class of people without even stating the
charge against them? When did suspicion replace evidence
as a cause for signaling a nationwide "terrorist
alert?"
Sorry, but this is serious stuff, folks. That
little false fertilizer alarm reminds me of the old
Emergency Alert System broadcasts
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they used to use to get
us ready for an A-bomb attack in the Cold War.
"Had this been a real emergency, you
would be advised to tune to your EBS station and await
further information on the approach of 50-year-old white
men."
What if it was just a test? What if the real
purpose was to see how easy it is to mobilize most of the
nation against an invented enemy?
I don't know if Timothy McVeigh bombed that
federal building. I'll be interested to hear the evidence
that he did, and, if so, why he did. I'm still not quite
sure why those two guys in Texas got their few minutes of
fame for hauling around some fertilizer in a rented
truck. I have no idea if what's going on in Atlanta is
some right-wing plot.
And there are a few other things that I
definitely know I don't know. I know the federal
authorities don't know, or won't say, what caused Flight
800 to blow up over Long Island. I know they don't know,
or won't say why that bomb went off at the Olympics. I
know they don't know, no matter what some of them say,
who set off the smaller explosives on weekend window
sills at Forest Service buildings in Nevada and New
Mexico.
I know the media in general,
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