crossposted at My Left Wing
Dear folks,
Can we talk? Because we really need to. It's important.
I have shit to do. I'm in the process of moving out of my apartment, which is running me ragged. I'm looking for jobs. I have to get ready to go to my current godawful one.
So I hope I'm communicating some measure of the importance of what I have to say...
Today in taking a load of stuff home (moving back home until the end of September, until I take off for Pittsburgh) I happened to arrive before my mom went to work. She had ABC News on in the background. I happened to casually glance at the TV...and then I fucking EXPLODED.
See, one of their stenographers reporters was babbling about the latest crisis-that-really-isn't, the liquid explosive idiocy. That wasn't what did it. It was the chyron below her.
It read: "Will we ever be safe?"
Excuse me? Fucking excuse me? Is that what things have to come with you people? You demand complete, total and 100 percent safety or you wail and bemoan and cry "Why? Why can't we ever be safe?"
Because life is inherently unsafe you dickwads
Jesus Christ. No, you will never, ever be safe. Ever. I don't care what you do, what measures you take, what fascists you elect, what kings and dictatorships set themselves up.
You.
Will.
Never.
Be.
Safe.
You never can be. It's impossible. You cannot stop terrorists. You can strike at the root causes of terrorism, to be sure. But you cannot stop it. One person cannot be stopped if they are determined, especially if they are determined to the point of sacrificing their own lives.
Example: What's to stop a terrorist from loading a U-Haul down with half a ton of fertilizer, getting himself a fuse, and driving through the Lincoln Tunnel? NOTHING. Nothing can be done to prevent that or a million billion zillion other similarly horrific, yet completely unstoppable acts of terror.
Christ, anyone who sits down and reads Fight Club suddenly has a whole wealth of urban guerilla tactics at their disposal. Think of how many copies of The Anarchist's Cookbook are still floating around out there. The real fucking miracle is that more shit doesn't happen.
So, no, nothing will keep you safe, no matter how many evil people you enable or how many essential rights you hand over.
The real victory lies in surrendering NONE of them and going about your daily business. There's nothing more satisfying than to give your enemies a big, hearty "Fuck you."
What is life without liberty? It is nothing. It is of no value. If a person has not the rights of freemen and freewomen, their lives can only be spent in a pointless, terrified stupor. The right of self-determination, to express yourself just as you please, to elect whom you wish, to decide your own fate is critical to any kind of worthwhile existence.
You may wish to live your lives in fear--and feel free to--but I do not. So don't go fucking this up for the rest of us.
I say this now, in full realization of all its implications: I would be willing to endure a yearly 9/11 scale attack in exchange for not surrendering one whit, one inch, one iota of any right guaranteed by the Constitution, even should one of the aforesaid attacks take my own life.
They can destroy the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, they can level every city in America but if the people live free, come what may, terror can never and will never triumph.
Christianity has at least one thing right: only blood can purge sins. When the fascists take over for good, when the roundups, the slaughters, the systemic annihilation of all who are "enemies" begins, only then will you pay for your sins against freedom, against humanity.
John Brown understood this.
Your rights as United States citizens have been too dearly bought and maintained by soldiers and activists for your duty to be anything but a fanatical, unyielding defense of all of them.
New Hampshire understands this.
Live free or die
Yours in earnest,
Raybin