“Is It Safe?”

     Suffice it to say that opinions vary. But the question reposes upon a fallacy: that safe has a specific, objective, and universally agreed meaning. It does not.


There are no safe substances.
There are no safe activities.
There are no safe places.
Only degrees of risk…
Some of which are incalculable.

     I could go into a long explanation of why this is so. I shan’t; it’s too early in the morning for such discourses. Also, unless you know a lot more physics, chemistry, and strength of materials than the average Gentle Reader, it would fail to impress you. So take my word for it.

     Contemporary Americans are fanatics about safety. They exert themselves in a quest for absolute safety – sometimes they call it “security” – without even knowing what they mean by it. The entire Wuhan Virus / Chinese Crud / Kung Flu fear-porn panic is about that and nothing else. That’s what makes it a turbocharged absurdity.

     Consider this story:

     Washington: The US Department of Homeland Security declared a nationwide terrorism alert Wednesday, citing the potential threat from domestic anti-government extremists opposed to Joe Biden as president.

     “Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” the department said.

     The National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin said a heightened threat of attack “will persist in the weeks following the successful presidential inauguration,” which took place on January 20.

     “DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot,” it said.

     Leave aside that the Usurpers fear to be dethroned from the positions they so blatantly stole. Leave aside the “false narratives” BS – and with all the eyewitnesses who’ve testified under oath to the frauds they saw, you may be perfectly certain that it is BS – and the suggestions that the Right is filled with “ideologically motivated extremists.” Just contrast the tone of the first three paragraphs above with the fourth and most telling one:

     “DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot,” it said.

     The Usurpers, fear-mongers without equal, propagandized the United States into a state of hysteria we never even approached in wartime…and it’s rebounded on them. Now they’re the ones who are afraid. Yet they can’t even point to a credible threat!

     In part, it’s because they know what they deserve. But it’s unlikely to be what they’ll get. Given their smashing success at taking control of the nation’s electoral mechanisms, it’s even unlikely that their Reign of Terror will get them unseated electorally.

     But fear is often useful. Their fear can be useful to us.

     In the days leading up to the Biden inaugural, the nation’s capital has been turned into an occupied military zone like Baghdad. Armed troops authorized to use lethal force are manning checkpoints to enter and leave downtown Washington, D.C. Green Zone and Red Zone perimeters have been established. Several bridges into the city from neighboring Virginia are scheduled to be closed next week for the inaugural.

     The more fearful a regime becomes of its subjects, the less control it has. It must separate itself from those peons, for its own safety’s sake. Political power grows more difficult to wield as the distance increases between ruler and subject.

     People have been speculating about what might touch off a true insurrection:

     Some ‘well known’ talking head goes out to some regional disaster, and tries walking around in ankle deep water again, and gets decapitated live on TV by a .338 Lapua Magnum hollow-point, along with his whole crew….

     Or someone seals the doors to a well-known senator’s exclusive house at oh-dark early, and then throws copious amounts of Molotovs through the windows, burning them alive….

     Then there’s always just the “random walks up to someone and gets shot in the face” completely randomly…like in NYC it happens all the time Even with security cameras, dude’ll be walking down the street casually, and all-of-a-sudden, another guy walking towards him whips out a gat, and does a 3 second mag dump, and is never found or caught.

     Those possibilities might strike you and me as farfetched, but to the fear-possessed Usurpers, they appear far more likely. It’s part of why they’re pushing for America to become the total-surveillance society that was the unachievable ideal of Communist East Germany:

     Wolfgang Schmidt was seated in Berlin’s 1,200-foot-high TV tower, one of the few remaining landmarks left from the former East Germany. Peering out over the city that lived in fear when the communist party ruled it, he pondered the magnitude of domestic spying in the United States under the Obama administration. A smile spread across his face.

     “You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” he said, recalling the days when he was a lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country’s secret police, the Stasi.

     In those days, his department was limited to tapping 40 phones at a time, he recalled. Decide to spy on a new victim and an old one had to be dropped, because of a lack of equipment. He finds breathtaking the idea that the U.S. government receives daily reports on the cellphone usage of millions of Americans and can monitor the Internet traffic of millions more.

     “So much information, on so many people,” he said.

     This is actually good news. The Usurpers are drowning in data. No power on Earth could sift through it swiftly enough to make it useful. Yes, they try, but a genuine threat to them could evade detection by a wide variety of methods. There are codes, ciphers, and concealment techniques that fiercely resist adverse analysis. Look into “one-time pads” and “steganography.”

     Let the Usurpers be the fearful ones. The rest of us should relax a bit – yes, about the Chinese Virus, but about many other things as well. For the title question of this piece will always evoke contrasting responses:

     But also:

2 comments

    • Brian on January 28, 2021 at 10:21 AM

    Now we know. This will be the “theme” of the Biden Residency over the next four years. Whereas during the period from 2015 through 2020, the theme was “Russian Collusion” the next four years will witness a laser focus on so-called “domestic terrorism” aka “Right-Wing Extremism” aka “White Suprema-racist” and so on. This will allow for greater success in passing legislation regulating firearms, increased surveillance…and increased censorship of viewpoints found to be objectionable by the dominant political party. Really, though, when you get down to it…this is just more of the same that we’ve been living with since the Obama reign of 2008-2016.

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