Maybe You Should Study War Some More.

I get tired of hippies. Especially old hippies. They are the fucking worst.

I've casually wandered into a few protests in my day. It seems like every time there is a protest the 'old guard' of tie-dye wearing, non-profit working, pot smoking baby boomers shows up and fist pumps, "Yes! It's time for a REVOLUTION!" (smileyface)

No. No fucking (smileyface). You do not (smileyface) that.

I always derail the conversation with a dour, "Yeah, well, if a revolution breaks out, they'll probably shoot you first." Then this happens: "I meant more of a...symbolic revolution."

"I think everyone under 40 should die completely outgunned in a 50 year guerilla war with the most technologically advanced allied military the world has ever seen.
But I really mean that in a pacifist, John Lennon, Ghandi way... LOL!" 

There is no such thing as a Symbolic Revolution. There's no "Spiritual Revolution," nor are there "Social Revolutions." The civil rights movement was a movement, not a Revolution. Twirling around in a patchwork skirt with face paint while a jam band smokes weed in the face of The Man is not a Revolution. The Occupy Movement is not a Revolution. Revolutions involve guns, lots of them, and you damn well better hope you have the most.

Fuck. Throw in some 10 year olds on LSD and I just don't know anymore. They both look horrible.

First, there are certain prerequisites for a revolution, the main being starvation. People will take a lot of shit. But when it gets to a point where they're going to die anyway, then they will take up pitchforks and roll out some guillotines. Hey, why not?

The next case against revolution is this: They don't work. What usually happens is another superpower smells weakness and swoops in like a vulture to pick at the country's borders. I've heard a lot of "Give Congress the guillotine!", and no talk about how history clearly teaches that Austria immediately started a border war and almost ruined France. These types of revolutions inevitably turn into a shit-show that drags on for another 50 years before the people willingly submit to the first iron-fisted dictator who promises a shred of stability. Take a good look at Napoleon I and Stalin.

How close are we to revolution in America, anyway?

Let's compare the current state with the French Revolution of 1789.

1. Opulent, rich assholes in charge? check.
2. A worthless nobility/upper class with a political majority that refuses to be taxed? check.
3. A farce of a legislative government that gives an unfair veto advantage to the wealthy, and no willingness to compel them by force to help the rest of society? check.
4. High unemployment and an economy chipped by outsourcing and trade imbalances? check.
5. Strong barriers to entry for small businesses, such as excessive taxes and fees? check.
6. Inflammatory pundits on both sides? check.
7. An over-drawn military, running at a bankruptcy for unpopular foreign wars? check.
8. Insane inflation, to the point that food becomes inaccessible? Nope.
9. Crop failure, leading to mass starvation? Nope.
10. Foreign influence, or worse, foreign occupation? Nope.

There you have it. If you had a Big Mac today, then we are not heading towards a revolution. (Though I heard Monsanto really screwed the pooch and now we have some kind of terrifying corn weevil problem, so you hippies just might get your wish).

The next question is this: If revolution should magically break out, who will win?

Here are some thoughts: The government has the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, National Guard, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and local police. Now imagine dealing with them, and then setting the reset button and dealing with the next vulture power that decides to "help"... say, the EU or China. By the way, they all have an unprecedented surveillance network, complete with robot drones and satellites.

And in the people's corner, we'll have a morbidly obese, aging, increasingly disabled proletariat class, a small, yet hyper-paranoid right-wing militia subculture, and a completely unarmed, spoiled youth class who are morally opposed to violence. I was watching an Occupy live video feed, and the kid with the camera was surprised the police had live ammo. Damn, skippy.

So maybe everyone from the 'I ain't gonna study war no more' generation should STFU and study some wars before you go web flaming in support of a revolution. And maybe watch the Matrix or Star Wars a few times for good measure.

One final thought? Zach dela Rocha? There's a motherfucker who's on board for a Revolution.

He probably slaps like a girl. At the very least, he has the correct shirt. 

One Man's Trash...

Whilst brushing my teeth, I had the best idea ever to fix the economy. An idea so counter-revolutionary, so very cyclically backwards in its inception, that it practically defies logic.


Let's cancel the election, make congressional service a voluntary activity for the next 8 years, seize a few evil corporations, and rebuild an American replica of the Royal Palace at Versailles...in every state!

Things are so weird, this is what moderation looks like.

Stay with me here...I already have this financed.


Congress has become worthless, a cesspool of wealthy morons who make terrible financial decisions. Anything in its place that could just sit still and not touch anything (like a half-eaten burrito) would be an improvement at this point.  What about democracy? Congressional volunteerism. Ben Franklin was in favor of it. If you love democracy so much, why don't you show up for free?

1. Each senator makes between $170,000 and $200,000 per year, with additional per diem and health insurance perks. That's $107mil per year. Remember-this is an 8 year project. My budget now has $856mil.
2. Past congressional pensions for retired congressmen? C'mon, we all know they were filthy rich to begin with. They don't need that retirement money. That frees up $17mil. 
3. Cancel elections. Seriously. Every 4 years our country dumps out 5.3 BILLION dollars on presidential elections, and for what? We get to watch rich, racist people throw hissy fits on tv while skeletal women parade around in shoulder padded suits? 

Women's business suits,  aka "boner kryptonite".

Fuck that. No elections during construction. New Versailles will probably take about 8 years to finish, so there's another $11bil.

Good... I already found about $12 billion.

We will need the following per site:

2,014 Acres= $3 million (if we raze Detroit, it would probably be free!)

A zoo= $50 million 

721,206 square feet of floor space. Let's go nuts and say we'll spend $1,000 per square foot= $721mil

977 acres of gardens= $54mil

How about an even billion for art? That seems reasonable.

Alright.  Let's round this up to $2bil, for incidentals & such.

A vomiting bronze dog fountain? Build me 20, sir!

$2 billion per New Versailles, per state. That's all I need. I've already funded six!

It's not fair that only six states should get a New Versailles. I need to find another $88 billion.

1. $1bil.-the personal cash we could theoretically seize from the ousted congress.
2. $1bil.- the funds we'll get by seizing just the 2012 presidential candidates' net worth.
3. $20bil. from Michael Bloomberg. That fucker is worth $20 billion. Eliminate him alone, and we could build 10 New Versailles!
4. $3.5bil in back taxes from GE. Those fuckers not only don't pay taxes, they got a credit of $3.5 billion in 2010.  
5. $2-11bil. I hear Monsanto rakes in at least this, bare minimum. Let's do the world a favor and shut those fuckers down too.
6. $57bil. -Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security. They've stopped what, 5 half-assed terrorist plots since their inception? Not worth it. 
7. $8bil. - Get rid of TSA. I think we'd all rather stroll around some fountains and listen to cello music than get irradiated and raped at the airport. 

Are we at $88 billion yet? $92?! Excellent. All 50 states can now have their own!


Here are some reasons why we should rebuild 50 New Versailles.

1. The seething, no holds barred, 'in your fucking face' irony.
2. Versailles at its height housed and employed 3,000 people; Congress houses no one, and only has 535 d-bags who never show up.
3. Jobs! There are all kinds of jobs to be had. Construction, mining, furniture design, landscaping, plumbing, painting, caterers, tour guides, zookeepers, musicians, fashion designers, hair stylists. And probably some neat jobs, like solar engineering (we'll modernize this shit, yo'!).
4. Public housing. Versailles didn't just hold the royalty; it had over 300 apartments. Hell, the Bellagio hotel has 4,000 rooms, so maybe we can finally house some of the people Congress dumped on their asses.
5. Unlike Congress, it's self-funding. We'll charge for restaurant service, weddings, film series, and concerts. I claim dibs on rave production in the gardens!
6. Versailles had a lot going for it, including fresh water, a zoo, and an organic fruit orchard. We're going to need these things when Monsanto completes its poisoning of our food supply.
7. The amount of antique art, and opulent gold and silver. Think about it; all of our money is currently theoretical, and in the hands of fucking idiots who blow it promoting themselves. At least with several tons of solid gold bannisters and some appreciating paintings, our currency would be safe. This will actually prevent inflation when the economy finally crashes and burns.
8. Gambling. Real Versailles was hated for its wasteful gambling. Gambling will not only generate revenue, it will also add even more jobs. The Bellagio makes like, $50 million in profit. This shit will be like the Bellagio, but real. None of that hollow fiberglass and plaster crap they have all over Vegas.
9. The pleasantness of it. Nice jogging trails, some good art museums, some vineyards and live-work studios on the back acres. Lord knows our citizens need to get up and take a walk. I estimate we'll save at least $1mil in health care costs per state.
10. National pride and tourism. Congress wastes enough every year on war to build... 100 fucking Versailles, every year. Maybe if we have a sweet monument to show off, and stop blowing people up for oil, we can get some much needed tourism cash flowing. 

This idea is sounding better and better, isn't it?

Education, American Style.

Americans. We have a global reputation as being dumb, arrogant, and fat. I won't deny it, as I am constantly baffled by my own ignorance.

Our national nutritionist.

Baffled, yet I graduated in the top 5% of my high school class with a 3.96 GPA. I was on the list for valedictorian. I then completed two bachelor's degrees. I was awarded 'Outstanding Something or Other' by my college department (the kind of crap that gets you a special mention in the graduation program, and an $8 plaque which you threw away out of disgust with your life at age 28).

I consider myself highly literate and fairly good at research (though a Ph.D. dissertation might shame my grammar skills). I am functional in 3 foreign languages. I have specialized art education. My world geography skills are well above average. I keep up on science and tech news. I will admit that I blow at math. If I had to guess at my IQ, I would place it in the 130's.

I am what you get if you are looking for a properly educated American.

Here are some more facts:

1. In 6th grade we memorized all the countries of the world... except those on the entire continent of Africa. The reasons? "They aren't that important." and "They are all(!) at war right now."

2. I did not know Russia took part in WWII until I was 26. That's right. I'm sure you Europeans just choked on your croissants. No, seriously. I have a similarly educated friend who asked if socialists were the same as Nazis. I also have a friend convinced that The Philippines are occupied by Japan, and another that thought that Ireland was France on a map.

3. I was never required to take a World History class, neither in middle school, high school, nor college. World History was full, I was busy, and a class on tornados filled the same social science requirement. We spent the whole class watching videos of tornados wrecking shit.

Your world history textbook won't save your sorry ass when this beast rips through your house.

4. Interest calculation (you know...that thing that fucks you on your credit card and mortgage?). Well, I was in a senior level arts finance class my last quarter of college. This was no 'Intro 101' course! The catalog number was like, 'Finance for Entertainment 400000060001', with 12 prerequisites. Our homework quality was so, so consistently bad that we collectively made the elderly guest professor cry. He could not believe that 23 year olds were so godawful fucking bad at financial math. They had to grade the entire class on a curve, where the highest grade was a D. The dean of the department let us write essays instead of doing our compound interest calculations. It was such a fiasco they removed it from the course catalog. Oh, yeah... at that point in my life I was already 5 years and $14,000 into default on credit cards I got from tables in the campus quad.

Uh-oh. They finally figured out that 35% compound interest over 30 years is a fucking scam, and told the rest of them.

5. I spent several (required!) semesters, if not years, of college taking duplicate classes that I had already taken in high school. College algebra? Same as high school algebra. 12 credits of college Spanish? Worse than high school Spanish (the classroom looked like a kindergarten, had piñatas, and we watched Disney movies). I took Biological Anthropology twice, with the same text book, for different credit requirements. Literature classes where I re-read books I'd read in middle school, then watched movies. I've taken the same psychology class 3 times.

6. Nutrition? You jest!

7. My high school US History class was taught by the football coach. On a late road trip back from a concert, I sarcastically wrote an essay titled, "Why Bono is the Most Important Person in American History," expecting to get a D for effort. I got an A+. We were also supposed to wear costumes for our presentation. That's right. Costumes. I wore a U2 t-shirt, and claimed I was Bono. Your kids in Europe are busy learning engineering math and perfect English, and we're prancing around in Halloween costumes.

8. I shit you not, I clearly remember watching both Die Hard and Terminator II in a high-school lab science class.

Photosynthesis, American style!

9. And finally, I had a college business professor posit, "If too many people die from AIDS in Africa, could all the groundwater in Africa be permanently contaminated with AIDS? We just can't know these things."

-----------
Is it any wonder the US is full of fucking idiots? You can sink $40,000 into your education, and you still end up a fucking idiot! I've engaged in decades of independent research, PBS viewing, world travel, conversations with educated friends, foreign newspapers, and library books in an attempt to erase the incompetence of our higher education system.

I think it's by design. The government doesn't want us to know the native culture or history of the next country we bomb. They don't want us to know anything about communist countries other than, "It's really hard to get Levi's there!" I point toward the disastrous housing crash, and ask if it isn't by design that no one here can figure out the life-ruining math on interest rates.

Oh, yeah. The reason for this tangent. This happened.
Kentucky Cuts Education Funding, Builds Bible Theme Park

'Lynching' is the new 'Resisting Arrest'

What's that thing? You know, that thing...when you're out protesting, or happen to be black on some MLK Jr. Parkway in some random urban city, and you see the cops beating the shit out of some homeless schizophrenic, so you jump in and stop the beating even though you know you'll probably get charged with interfering...what's the word for that again?

a). Obstruction of justice?
b). Assault on a police officer?
c). Resisting arrest?
d). Lynching?

The answer is... d). Lynching!

When a fat white cop is beating the ever-living shit out of someone on the street and you step in, you are apparently no better than some 1950's Alabama inbred in a white hood, getting ready to string up a noose.

Occupy Protesters to be Charged With Felony Lynching

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching. 

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups. (Kari Huss, msnbc.com)

My new goal for the year is to get another bus lane violation in hopes that I get charged with felony cross-burning!

Snarlton's Personality Assessment

I often have a conflicting view on my personality. On one hand, I am a raging extrovert. I can be quite the attention whore.  On the other hand, I find myself using the self checkout machines at the grocery store, because I just don't want to have the slightest bit of human interaction.

It understands that I hate people. And I understand that it hates frozen burritos for some reason.

I am not shy. Hell, I am not even an introvert. It's not that I savor space or quiet, but rather that I am constantly annoyed by other people. Constantly. It's gotten so bad that I've become completely nocturnal so that I no longer eat when they eat, or drive when they drive. I've developed weird OCD habits. I will not shake hands. My psychological quirks are not driven by a fear of germs, but rather a seething hatred of being forced to accept other people's stuff. It's not that I'm afraid I'll catch Ebola-SARS-Pox and die; it's that germs are other people's belongings, and I am tired of other people and their stuff in my space.

I blame society and its constant chipping at our privacy. For someone who doesn't like other people in "their bubble," American life is a constant, never-ending onslaught of intrusion. Advertising is Other People's Stuff. Their ideas, their products, their messages. Every billboard, every tv commercial, every garish brand logo has become an ice-pick to my brain. I feel like clowns are constantly waving neon flags in my face.

I am tired of the constant marketing narrative, the constant message that I need what you're selling...because I don't need what you're selling.  I don't have a kid, yet I sit through Toys'R' Us commercials. I don't have a house, yet I get mail for homeowners' insurance. I don't eat meat, yet I just wasted 2 minutes watching filthy grease dribble off a Wendy's burger.

They send me junk mail. I throw it right in the trash, but the very act of throwing it out forces me to handle it. They force me to touch that mail. They force me to look at the message, force me to see their stupid company's logo, force me to acknowledge they exist. I am being forced to physically drag around the garbage of companies that don't even apply to me. It's like harnessing a fish to a bicycle.

I am a focus group's worst nightmare. I have not met a TV commercial I have not mocked, derided, or abused. I also strictly select products by non-brandedness. I buy non-recognizable brands, preferably hidden on the lowest bottom shelf. It is a negative reaction to every screaming NutriGrain bar ad. 

And now we are entering a whole new era of post Patriot Act surveillance. It's not just that I'm forced to look at dumb billboards and commercials anymore. Now our phones are tapped. Our email can be silently read without a warrant. Our internet history is traced. There are GPS surveillance boxes under some of our cars. Cameras on every intersection. We're forced to let The Authority touch our wangs/wangettes at the airport. We are now compelled by law to let any random goon x-ray us and see us naked.


Is it any wonder I've begun to fetishize minimalism? A house with no neighbors, possessions, and no electronics; no brand logos, no surveillance, no barrage of mental garbage. I spend a lot of time thinking about an empty, windowless concrete house in the desert. It occurred to me that my ideal fantasy house might look like a giant prison to some people, and how ironic that is.

This house, with less windows.

It's not to keep me in; it's to keep them out.

A Christmas Note From Snarlton.

I go through these phases. Most of the time I have a seething rage towards America. But occasionally I watch a documentary on some hell-hole like Liberia, and I think, "Hey. I can't afford health insurance or rent, but at least there aren't roving bands of rapey, heroin-addled teenage cannibals wandering around. I should be grateful."

We have good things. Our roads are fantastic. Clean water. Decent air travel. Wondrous natural parks. We have a food supply chain that works like clockwork. I have a rental house with heat and a toilet. Some would argue that we are drowning in consumer goods, and that is a plus to them. We have freedom of speech. Excellent music, art, and satire. Freedom of sexuality. We are working towards a society without racial boundaries. These are all good things.

Then why am I so fucking miserable?

I think the rest of the world may have been confused at the Occupy explosion this fall. How could the most prosperous country be so damn, fucking angry?

I have a theory; One cannot possibly understand how hellishly terrible America is unless you've lived here your whole life. The discontent here is a slow burn, a lifelong collection of harsh lessons. The bullshit is buried so deep in legalese and fine print that foreigners just can't grasp it.

The discontent comes after dealing with the boss who wants you to fire your staff, then fires you. It comes with the $30,000 bill for a 5 hour wait in a shit-stained emergency room full of junkies. It's the knowledge that there's a hospital within a mile from wherever you stand- and if you ever need to use it, the visit will bankrupt you. It's watching a homeless co-worker belittled and fired... for leaving to get their vomiting child from daycare.

My America is a constant string of bullying bosses, bullying landlords, bullying police. It's a never-ending loop of credit collection, garnished wages, broken cars, broken teeth. It's the feeling that, despite your current comfort, it could all come crashing down with one illness, one job loss, one racist traffic cop with a jumpy trigger finger.

On top of this is a steaming pile of advertising. There is never a point in the day when you aren't goaded into purchasing or shamed for not wanting. They shove vapid, stupid, drugged celebrity 'role models' in your face, and then tell you you're human garbage for not buying their mascara.

The news is fake. We are swimming in biased journalism that requires a post-graduate level of education to fully comprehend. They even run the same stories years later! Half of the news consists of idiots spouting racist opinions about geographical areas they can't even spell; the rest is videos of dancing kittens.

If you are smart, you have the knowledge that everything you see was made by some poor bastard in a poor country. It is the knowledge that almost everything you use was made by near-slaves. The system compels you to participate - to sell the cheap clothes, to pump the cheap gas. The poor bully the poorer. Become the slave owner or fail.

This Occupy thing has been stewing. My whole working adult life has been spent with people on the brink of bankruptcy, a powder keg of relative poverty. Every screaming collections agent shoved us towards our breaking point, inch by inch. Enough. The sane amongst us are challenging the inertia of a massive wheel of bullshit. The brake has been applied. The charade is up, the emperor of capitalism has no clothes, the system is failing. A stripped cog has no use for its machine.

America picks at you. It beats you down, day by day. There needs to be a unique word for that feeling you get in a Las Vegas mall after a few hours. It's a distinctly American spiritual exhaustion, an aching headache from knowing that everything shiny is just polished turds, and you were pick-pocketed looking at it.

Make no mistake; we are not the victims. We are the generation refusing to become turd salesmen and pickpockets.

Hey guys. Snarlton's feeling lazy. All those absinthe vodka tonics I chug to deal with the colossal outrage I feel towards this country take their toll. Please enjoy this guest piece from Correspondent Miss S.

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Aren’t you glad we live in America where the Constitution protects us from this kind of treatment?

My name is John Wilkenson and I’m a husband, a father, and a member of Operation USA, a relief group offering aid to civilians in Iraq, whose mission the Iraqi government has been trying to shut down. 

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people in Baghdad. I was sitting in the communal area of our little tent city with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed Iraqi Officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 relief workers who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent, refusing to leave. The Iraqi Officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent”. 

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of Iraqi Officers used knives to slice open every tent in the commune. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the commune. They then did the same with the communal property of Operation USA. For example, I watched as the Iraqi Officers destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Operation USA’s medical tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Operation USA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the Iraqi Officers sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the desert. … 

When the Iraqi Officers finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the Officers to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an Iraqi officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the Iraqi officer would grab the aid worker’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent volunteer, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor. 

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the Iraqi officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyper-extended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the Iraqi officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist. 

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm. 

I was put on a van with other nonviolent relief workers and taken to a parking garage in downtown Baghdad. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The Iraqi officers watched and did nothing. 

At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in our tent village after the police said not to… 

They booked us into jail. Almost none of us could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and with the help of my family at home I could afford it, except the Iraqi Officers spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set… 

I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Operation USA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Operation USA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The Iraqi Officers chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent relief workers in prison for two full days…”

Maybe the American Embassy should have intervened? Eh, who am I kidding. That shit happened here in the good old U-S-of-A and it was the actual account of a prominent white AMERICAN Occupy LA Protester. Suddenly the LAPD are treating white guys like they’ve treated black communities for so long. But at least they were only filthy hippie campers, right?

You can read his full and actual account here:

http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/

-Miss S.

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Disclaimer: In case you are either:  a). stupid, or b). are translating the text, this is a piece of satire where all words referring to the Los Angeles Police Department's brutal treatment of American protester Patrick Meighan have been replaced to frame this arrest through the fictional lens of a war zone. Don't ever quote Snarlton on anything. We are assholes, not researchers. (PS. I am always amazed when I see excepts from The Onion in foreign press, or re-posted by Texans).

Commentary by Snarlton:

Miss S. has a point. Sometimes it's necessary to re-frame the habitual line-stepping of The Authority to understand how far down towards a Second-World conflict zone we've slid, a zone where any citizen can be detained on the street and searched, then violently arrested for no reason under the pretext of 'public safety'.  We are entering an era where acts of The Authority, had they been perpetrated by an enemy government, would insight public outrage.

Wake up and welcome to a new era where upstanding US citizens can be snatch-grabbed. The post 9-11 era of crying eagle t-shirts and yellow ribbon SUV magnets is over. The "War on Terror" has come home to roost, and its eyes are on all who will not shut up and obey.