October 14, 2008
by Steve Osborn

The Seattle Times/PI Sunday paper has a headline to the effect that the new "bailout bill" has about a hundred billion in pork buried in its additional hundred unread pages that the earlier one didn't have. That explains why the first one failed. It was not the protests of millions of Americans to their alleged representatives that doomed it. There was just not enough pork!

I watch what is going on today and it makes me think of the old Frankenstein movie. In the culminating scene, the villagers, frightened and impoverished by the depredations of the monster, storm the castle armed with pitchforks, scythes, and torches. Their aim is to drag the monster out, tear him to pieces, burn the pieces and scatter the ashes.

I fear that is the only way the United States might return to its Constitutional roots. The monster is in charge of the Constitution and the wealth of the nation. If the Constitution is not already destroyed, it is definitely buried in the dungeon of the castle.

What is needed is for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to be storming the castles of local, state and federal government. They will have to drag the current, entrenched government out of its castles, tear it apart, burn the parts and scatter the ashes. In theory, this could be done by the ballot, but the people are complacent and the government controls and plays games with the voting process.

The fallout from the latest misfeasance of government could conceivably cause the awakening of the American People.

Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Perhaps, as hundreds of thousands of complacent, "middle class" American families lose their homes, their jobs, and begin to get hungry, they will rise up to attack the monster. If they have nothing more to lose, perhaps they will put their lives at risk to achieve freedom, just as Iraqis and Afghans are doing today, and as French, Norwegian and Balkan patriots did under Nazi occupation during WW-II, and as our forefathers did when they revolted against the English King George in 1776.

The main problem this time is that the current King George and his mentor, Darth Cheney, have been preparing for this for the past six or eight years. Posse Comitatus has been repealed and NorthCom is even now training troops to suppress civil dissent. With the stroke of a pen, numerous restrictive policies will go into effect under martial law. We will live in a country where Predator Drones will troll the skies, tracking GPS transponder chips planted on suspected patriots, so we will have homes and cars destroyed without warning.

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The concentration camps have been built, the protocols for the handling and control of forced civilian labor is in place. No doubt Blackwater will feature heavily in this scenario, especially as camp guards. Martial law will predominate. People on the streets after curfew will be shot, or picked up and disappeared, groups of more than three will be arrested, and with surveillance equipment at its current state of development, it will not make much difference where you are, you will be detected and monitored.

This will put us in the same position as any people under occupation. (Occupation doesn't have to be foreign, it just has to be oppressive.) It will probably take years and thousands of lives of patriots to root out the evil which we have slept our way into.

On the other hand, we can continue to watch American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, interspersed with Football, Basketball and Baseball, bitch about the high cost and poor quality of food. Borrow what we can, or sell what we have to get through another month and sympathize with our neighbors when they lose their houses, or family members disappear in the night, and just hope it will all go away of its own accord, like a nightmare upon awakening. Believe me, it won't. History is not taught in any meaningful way anymore, but if you look, you can find this same scenario played out time after time over the past few millennia.

Rome, too, started as a Republic, then degenerated into a heavily armed Empire, kept its citizens pacified by a corn dole and lots of entertainment, and its military occupied by conquering foreign peoples. Eventually, it overreached itself and was destroyed by rot from within and attack from a world fed up with Roman domination.

So, we are down to two choices, drag the monster out of its castle and tear it up, or huddle with what little we have left while the monster consolidates its ill-gotten gains, and builds its strength until it will be a truly ghastly task to get rid of it.

The choice lies with We the People, or we the sheeple, but whichever choice we take, time is running out.

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Stephen M. Osborn [send him email] is a freelance writer living on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. He is an "Atomic Vet." (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll 1956, ) who has been very active working and writing for nuclear disarmament and world peace. He is a retired Fire Battalion Chief, lifelong sailor, writer, poet, philosopher, historian and former newspaper columnist.

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