This world stole a good friend of mine a few years
ago. My German buddy lost his fight with cancer; it was an awful battle, long
and drawn out. He wrote me an email a couple of months before he died that
said, “I am not long for this world.” He was correct. Two weeks or so before
his last breath, we had talked on the phone and made plans to play chess after
my return from a Christmastime visit to the States. I never got those games of
chess.
From health to stolen in a little over a year, and
yes, I often think of him and have conversations in my head with him sometimes.
At any moment, there must be millions of people around the globe holding a
conversation with a dead friend or family member. My dead friend was a wise
young man who, when he died, was three years younger than I am as I sit here breathing
and hitting the keyboard. Maybe I bring him up because it is a gray and wet day
in Frankfurt. Yes, we are inflicted with the disease of death, are carriers of
death, and none of us are long for this world, and perhaps that is why so many
of us seek to change this world of ours, to make it better, to somehow build a
barrier between us the inevitable.
And this thought of making the world a better place
leads me to S's The Patriot
Terrorist and a response to it from someone on twitter. This someone
tweeted:
“PS-instilling sense of pol impotence, disaffection
is powerful tool, rt up there with propoganda [sic], divide and conquer
tactics.”
Huh? This person is likening S's first chapter to
propaganda. My, that is stepping into the land of the ridiculous, if you ask me.
The previous tweet of this someone said that our tools are the US
Constitution and the legal system. I surmise that our to this someone means citizens of the US.
To me, these so-called tools of the people have been
turned upside down, inside out, whatever is kind of useless. One example I will point to is this make-believe right to
privacy that US citizens “enjoy” for now, and specifically, the Fourth
Amendment to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To witness how the Fourth Amendment is not our
tool but their (they being the government) tool, I present a Supreme Court
case that blew my mind when it was decided. Sure, go ahead and read the holding
as narrowly as possible, but someday in the not too distant future, the clicking of your keyboard will
represent the possible destruction of evidence. The US government has never
been hungrier and we're all on the menu. Carefully read and contemplate KENTUCKY v . KING (563
U. S. ____ (2011).
Only the courageous Justice Ginsberg dissented, and
her cogent argument is worth a few gleans.
One thing I admire about S is that he is an optimist
and believes that individuals can triumph over tyranny. I, on the other hand, do not believe they
can. It's too late, it's over, as far as I can see. We'll be swallowed by the inevitable, and
death too.
I have yet to be pointed to an example in history
where a system has changed without violence. I wish someone could point me to
at least one example, but no, no one can.
And someday, while you are strolling around London,
maybe you'll come upon a house with a plaque on it that says, "Benedict
Arnold, Great American Patriot," or something like that. It's there
somewhere. I came across it many years ago as I was wandering about London. Your patriot is my . . . you know.
Perhaps this twittering someone is more intelligent than I and
is correct about S's book being equal to propaganda. I'll just keep eating
pomegranates and see who ends being right.
