printWe live in a country where snowballing a “timid” city snowplow driver and a police officer’s unmarked vehicle is a felony punishable by five years in prison, and a maximum fine of $2,500, mens rea be damned.
If you absent-mindedly and fleetingly cross a passenger screening checkpoint to plant a kiss on your girlfriend at an airport occupied by the American federales, you will be arraigned after a nation-wide manhunt. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, promised to put the next such love-sick pup in jail for ten years. The lout is legislating to that end.
Just how pervasive is fascistic America? Search BAB under the categories “Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Law.” Ditto the articles archive, where you can reread “Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro, They’re Coming For Your Kids! Tasers ‘R’ Us, Remember Reno! ‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” and others.
As the state and its stooges strain sights on Iran, let us, of the reality based community, “Fret About Our Own Tyrants.”
That lout Lautenberg is a Democrat.
I’m more afraid of some run-in with some TSA goons than of a plane crash or a bombing. I arrive super-early, only fly for government, and if I miss the flight – so what – I try not to be nervous.
The real fascism in America is the fact that our free-enterprise capitalist system has been destroyed. Capitalism was not wiped out because Stalinists threw entrepreneurs into a gulag. No, it was destroyed by the corruption of the Mussolini Corporate State, which went into full gear with FDR and has continued to this date. Autos, airplanes, railroads, agriculture, steel, banking, education, energy, and others are all basically state-run, state-financed, or so heavily state regulated that to call them “free” enterprise is a complete joke. Little did Benito recognize that his ad hoc economic theories would rule most of the modern 21st Century world.
As far as police paranoia – remember that “9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING” – perhaps we should just lock up the entire country and throw away the key! As Glenn Greenwald noted, even the witches at Salem had trials – now we piss in our pants over putting KSM on trial!
Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot, but Senator Lautenberg is a Democrat from New Jersey. He was the Senior Senator until he retired in 2001, only to return to politics again in 2003. That, of course, was so he could replace the disgraced Bob Torricelli.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/about/
[thanks; corrected]
It’s the controlling attitude adopted by our “public servants”. They generally consider themselves to be elite and above the unwashed rubes not in public office. This attitude manifests itself in laws designed to extend the government’s control more and more in our lives. I notice that there never seems to be new law passed to “limit” government control over anything save muslim terrorists or illegal aliens coming over the Rio Grande.
Those who would create an ordered world would do well to be mindful of the model. Confident in his creation, God gave only six laws to Adam and ten commandments to the Jews, who in turn came up with some 600 mitzvot. When snowballing and tantrums come under the criminal code, the code’s a farce, the enforcers a joke, and the people fools – for putting up with it all.