.
.
.
.
Let me conjecture a visit from MIBs. They stop by to "question" my "safety." They are sullen, and frightening ... beyond all control. They're officious and quietly crafty.
.
They're advising I can be "...squashed like a bug." They remind me I'm sans any "rights." They ask how I'd weather their IRS "audit," suggesting their tax guys could put out my lights...
.
Too, was I surprised that my wife was a "whore..." ...Or my son was a "gun-running drug lord"? "...And what of your problem, you big-mouthed old fool? Aren't you fond of young children and the classroom your smorgasbord?”
.
See, it does one small good to forswear these as lies... History's the way it is "written." They sit in my house, knowing smirks on their faces, and I am silenced, hull breached—soundly beaten...
.
"Now none of this has to be foregone conclusion, consider anew what you do, write, or say. Or, we could come back with the *proof* that is needed... and the whole of your life's pissed away."
.
So this is America, I'd ask them at last? This, I defended in war? So my country could paint me the worst kind of loser, and cast me away to behold its closed door!
.
...That makes me more scared, friend, than in any time past, and I’ve flown down the muzzles of guns! The terror I felt is cold steel in my guts. On the whim of these "monsters"... I'm fork-poked and done.
.
...And it wasn’t just me; it's my wife and my son. Our lives without value to "owners." Treated worse than the worst, as mere thugs had it measured. We were worse than "glad pimps" or "meth stoners."
.
So what will I do when they visit, pray tell. Trusted others have told me, they come. I’ll be treading thin ice, I suspect, without feeling. What could I do, then, undoing what's done?
.
...And that’s no way to live a life. So says the Alien View. We are not served to allow unjust treatment... for demanding more of the truth!
.
alienview@adelphia.net
www.AlienView.net
.
I’m open for any suggestions.
.
What do you do! What do you do! What do you do! What do you do!
.
What. Do. You. Do?
.
Everywhere you turn the "ominously effecting" looms up at you. Burned, one gets shy.
.
...And, damned if it doesn't make one a little paranoid ... and let’s see ... just what was that three word definition of paranoia, again?
.
...Fear without threat...
.
OK, so there is no threat? Black-box government agencies don't exist! Unelected governments don't rule from the shadows! Closed institutions don't facilitate the increasing tyranny. Verily, I was ever a fool to fear these wholly imagined entities, and only express a weakness in my character if troubled by any thought of them?
.
That's well-wishing and naive BAT squeeze, good reader!
.
Let me tell you why I’m troubled. I’ve been federalized for a quarter of a century in an honorably completed military career. Though I witnessed much of the bad that that implies, I also witnessed much of the good.
.
...The reach for tolerance across ethnic and individual lines, for example, was commendable albeit done for pragmatic reasons... (a military has to work). It was commensurate with the "awakening" times, and it warms this old memory...
.
We in the military were always reminded that we worked... ...together... for the Constitution, ultimately, and that the President was our chief commander and protector/defender of same. I bought into the idealism of classical liberalism, or, respect for individuals and individual rights in a free society... unrestricted by terror, tyranny, or even testosterone!
.
I bought in without really understanding why! I understand now.
.
Along the lines of that new understanding, I discover that "Need to know" is a terrifying concept. It has its roots in an ethic of arguable utility presupposing conditions where one man may make arbitrary decisions on what another man may know. Please hear the word *arbitrary* in there. Who arbitrarily decides who "needs to know" and why!
.
See, "Arbitrary"...is a bad word. It is a nine letter four letter word. In that word hides more questions than we should have to have the answers to. There is no oversight in that word ... no accountability, no responsibility. There is misused power in that word because the arbitrary tends to the absolute, and absolutes are corrupted, absolutely... always.
.
Retired military as I said, I know about "need to know." I know that the people who practice *need to know* are seriously anal about it. By way of example, I was deeply involved in military aviation for a quarter century, and never heard a wayward peep about the stealth program ... ANYTHING can hide in there, reader. Anything.
.
Too, I’ve had friends mysteriously drop from active duty rolls, their military histories vanish as far as I was concerned, but then subsequently pop up again in my life with non-specific hair raising tales that one did not just find in the papers. These returning friends were quiet, different, and *changed*. Too, they were no longer friends. Pity.
.
...And I certainly don’t mean that in anything less than a completely tragic way– they had a new scariness they didn't have before. When these guys said that they’d have to kill me if they told me any more, my chuckle was only half-hearted.
.
I knew these black box agencies existed–but I never truly understood their import! I suppose that I was so far under their cowl that I felt they were some kind of necessary *associate* ... that we were on the same team... brothers in arms... ...or something. Then I retired from military service and went to college... read a different book...
.
...There is nothing more dangerous for a guy my age, ...open minded, and looking for something useful to do..., than going back to college. It's why there is less GI bill, you know, not more.
.
I understood the *import*, then, reader. The import is that if one gives "the authorities" any reason at all, one can become an *arbitrary* target of one of the aforementioned agencies, governments, or institutions. Simple as that. Read Dean Koontz’s “Dark Rivers of the Heart” for an illustration...
.
I am unsettled by even *known* agencies like the FBI, CIA, ATF, and DEA! These clearly run amuck in an incompetently contrived and gerrymandered fashion, but run amuck regardless! Why, my honest expression of just the aforementioned discomfort provides them with all the excuse they need to make me a "target."
.
I know. Then why throw rocks in the mouth of the dragon's cave. Because, reader, that dragon comes out to feed, regardless. I'll even settle for the relief my illusion of proactivity provides. I have to.
.
More? Somehow, as a function of buying in to the classical liberal ideals of this nation (Chill out, "Nicky Neocon" ... Even Newt Gingrich is a *classical* liberal), ... I have been made over into an enemy of same??? Who's the enemy?!
.
See? That’s not MY disconnect! That is no failure on MY part! That is not me betraying MY country, and I say this understanding, now, the true evil of unbridled nationalism. Remember Hitler's Germany...
.
I discovered in college that *truth* is not what we think, much of what we *know* is wrong, and that I, by way of example, was the *reason* that there is not more GI Bill! See, we read too much Tom Paine; We read too much Thomas Jefferson; We read too much John Stuart Mill; We listened to too much National Public Radio, Mike Malloy, and Alan Dawson Graham.
.
I read enough, at any rate, to evolve this "Alien View," reader, a view seeming to make some new sense out of the craziness I discover around me! Sure, and it provokes me to challenge the faiths and positions I have learned which may have secondary agendas ... but, unheralded agendas getting more light for my small effort, eh? Agendas, at very least, fooling ME no longer.
.
Look up, good reader, see the UFOs that ARE there... and read on.
.
Let me conjecture a visit from MIBs. They stop by to "question" my "safety." They are sullen, and frightening ... beyond all control. They're officious and quietly crafty.
.
They're advising I can be "...squashed like a bug." They remind me I'm sans any "rights." They ask how I'd weather their IRS "audit," suggesting their tax guys could put out my lights...
.
Too, was I surprised that my wife was a "whore..." ...Or my son was a "gun-running drug lord"? "...And what of your problem, you big-mouthed old fool? Aren't you fond of young children and the classroom your smorgasbord?”
.
See, it does one small good to forswear these as lies... History's the way it is "written." They sit in my house, knowing smirks on their faces, and I am silenced, hull breached—soundly beaten...
.
"Now none of this has to be foregone conclusion, consider anew what you do, write, or say. Or, we could come back with the *proof* that is needed... and the whole of your life's pissed away."
.
So this is America, I'd ask them at last? This, I defended in war? So my country could paint me the worst kind of loser, and cast me away to behold its closed door!
.
...That makes me more scared, friend, than in any time past, and I’ve flown down the muzzles of guns! The terror I felt is cold steel in my guts. On the whim of these "monsters"... I'm fork-poked and done.
.
...And it wasn’t just me; it's my wife and my son. Our lives without value to "owners." Treated worse than the worst, as mere thugs had it measured. We were worse than "glad pimps" or "meth stoners."
.
So what will I do when they visit, pray tell. Trusted others have told me, they come. I’ll be treading thin ice, I suspect, without feeling. What could I do, then, undoing what's done?
.
...And that’s no way to live a life. So says the Alien View. We are not served to allow unjust treatment... for demanding more of the truth!
.
alienview@adelphia.net
www.AlienView.net
.
I’m open for any suggestions.
.
What do you do! What do you do! What do you do! What do you do!
.
What. Do. You. Do?
.
Everywhere you turn the "ominously effecting" looms up at you. Burned, one gets shy.
.
...And, damned if it doesn't make one a little paranoid ... and let’s see ... just what was that three word definition of paranoia, again?
.
...Fear without threat...
.
OK, so there is no threat? Black-box government agencies don't exist! Unelected governments don't rule from the shadows! Closed institutions don't facilitate the increasing tyranny. Verily, I was ever a fool to fear these wholly imagined entities, and only express a weakness in my character if troubled by any thought of them?
.
That's well-wishing and naive BAT squeeze, good reader!
.
Let me tell you why I’m troubled. I’ve been federalized for a quarter of a century in an honorably completed military career. Though I witnessed much of the bad that that implies, I also witnessed much of the good.
.
...The reach for tolerance across ethnic and individual lines, for example, was commendable albeit done for pragmatic reasons... (a military has to work). It was commensurate with the "awakening" times, and it warms this old memory...
.
We in the military were always reminded that we worked... ...together... for the Constitution, ultimately, and that the President was our chief commander and protector/defender of same. I bought into the idealism of classical liberalism, or, respect for individuals and individual rights in a free society... unrestricted by terror, tyranny, or even testosterone!
.
I bought in without really understanding why! I understand now.
.
Along the lines of that new understanding, I discover that "Need to know" is a terrifying concept. It has its roots in an ethic of arguable utility presupposing conditions where one man may make arbitrary decisions on what another man may know. Please hear the word *arbitrary* in there. Who arbitrarily decides who "needs to know" and why!
.
See, "Arbitrary"...is a bad word. It is a nine letter four letter word. In that word hides more questions than we should have to have the answers to. There is no oversight in that word ... no accountability, no responsibility. There is misused power in that word because the arbitrary tends to the absolute, and absolutes are corrupted, absolutely... always.
.
Retired military as I said, I know about "need to know." I know that the people who practice *need to know* are seriously anal about it. By way of example, I was deeply involved in military aviation for a quarter century, and never heard a wayward peep about the stealth program ... ANYTHING can hide in there, reader. Anything.
.
Too, I’ve had friends mysteriously drop from active duty rolls, their military histories vanish as far as I was concerned, but then subsequently pop up again in my life with non-specific hair raising tales that one did not just find in the papers. These returning friends were quiet, different, and *changed*. Too, they were no longer friends. Pity.
.
...And I certainly don’t mean that in anything less than a completely tragic way– they had a new scariness they didn't have before. When these guys said that they’d have to kill me if they told me any more, my chuckle was only half-hearted.
.
I knew these black box agencies existed–but I never truly understood their import! I suppose that I was so far under their cowl that I felt they were some kind of necessary *associate* ... that we were on the same team... brothers in arms... ...or something. Then I retired from military service and went to college... read a different book...
.
...There is nothing more dangerous for a guy my age, ...open minded, and looking for something useful to do..., than going back to college. It's why there is less GI bill, you know, not more.
.
I understood the *import*, then, reader. The import is that if one gives "the authorities" any reason at all, one can become an *arbitrary* target of one of the aforementioned agencies, governments, or institutions. Simple as that. Read Dean Koontz’s “Dark Rivers of the Heart” for an illustration...
.
I am unsettled by even *known* agencies like the FBI, CIA, ATF, and DEA! These clearly run amuck in an incompetently contrived and gerrymandered fashion, but run amuck regardless! Why, my honest expression of just the aforementioned discomfort provides them with all the excuse they need to make me a "target."
.
I know. Then why throw rocks in the mouth of the dragon's cave. Because, reader, that dragon comes out to feed, regardless. I'll even settle for the relief my illusion of proactivity provides. I have to.
.
More? Somehow, as a function of buying in to the classical liberal ideals of this nation (Chill out, "Nicky Neocon" ... Even Newt Gingrich is a *classical* liberal), ... I have been made over into an enemy of same??? Who's the enemy?!
.
See? That’s not MY disconnect! That is no failure on MY part! That is not me betraying MY country, and I say this understanding, now, the true evil of unbridled nationalism. Remember Hitler's Germany...
.
I discovered in college that *truth* is not what we think, much of what we *know* is wrong, and that I, by way of example, was the *reason* that there is not more GI Bill! See, we read too much Tom Paine; We read too much Thomas Jefferson; We read too much John Stuart Mill; We listened to too much National Public Radio, Mike Malloy, and Alan Dawson Graham.
.
I read enough, at any rate, to evolve this "Alien View," reader, a view seeming to make some new sense out of the craziness I discover around me! Sure, and it provokes me to challenge the faiths and positions I have learned which may have secondary agendas ... but, unheralded agendas getting more light for my small effort, eh? Agendas, at very least, fooling ME no longer.
.
Look up, good reader, see the UFOs that ARE there... and read on.
.
1 comment:
If I am not mistaken, the Dean Koontz book you mention is the one that originally contained a note telling the reader that all the weapons and surveillance equipment described in the book currently existed and were in use by the U. S. government. I loaned the book to a friend who did not return it, so I purchased another copy. The aforementioned note was no longer to be found in the book. Apparently Koontz made someone rather uncomfortable. Also, shortly after that, his writing came to be of such a noticeably inferior quality that it almost seemed as if a Dean Koontz machine had been employed to write surrogate novels for the original author. I haven't read anything from him in a few years, but his first works were impressive.
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