The Arrogance Of Government "Protection"

Today - 1700 miles and 5 years away from South Carolina - I received a letter from the Department of Revenue, State of South Carolina. It advised me that my 'account' - where I have filed taxes since I was 18 - was probably hacked and that I should be on the lookout for any use of my SSN, tax info, etc. The records stolen go back to 1998. Of course they hasten to assure me that no one has reported any use of this information, and that they have established an account for me at one of those 'information-lock' sites.

Seven years ago, I received a letter from the Department of Revenooers. That letter was not so nice. It said that they knew - HAD PROOF! - that I had worked for some place I had never heard of, and that I owed them $5000 more in taxes. Well, I protested. They shrugged. Not their problem; they had PROOF. So I found the owner (retired) of the business where they claimed I'd worked - and she said that I was not the first person to contact her. (I had to track her down in another state, btw.) Apparently I was one of several people. I faxed her what I had, and she faxed me a letter stating that I had never worked for her. I sent it all to the DOR. They sent me a brief statement that they had gotten it... but that I still had to prove that I had not worked there!

 Well, you can't prove a negative (as government bureaucracies intimately know). So I picked up the phone and called my buddy, Joe Wilson, and told him about it. After some investigation at the Federal level, it turned out that at least 15 people - and several companies - in SC alone had fallen prey to this scam.

This all puts me in mind of another bureaucratic fiasco; when, 15 years ago, our idiot SC Legislature wanted to sell all of their constituents' drivers' license info to a company that promised to put a "life-lok" type of credit assurance on every single person's ID. Well, I and several hundred other people testified at the Legislative Judicial Committee's hearing against this idiocy - even if the state would get $.07 per license out of it. The most telling testimony (and the one that shut the house down) was the friend who brought his laptop into the chamber with him... and with the flick of a few keys, pulled up the Chairman's granddaughter's full DL information. "If I were a stalker, sir..." he drifted off.   End. /30/. The Legislature voted to not do this... and two years later, we discovered that the whole thing was a scam - not by some salacious profit-seeking entity, but by our own Federal government, set up to gather as much info about as many people as possible.

With "watchdogs" like these guarding our 'precious' information, how - or, why - should we trust them with anything?

A Surge of Evil

Yes, everyone's talking about it; everyone's trying to figure out why, and some talking heads will sanctimoniously come up with one answer or another, and ponderously tell everyone that there is an answer, and that they have it.

They don't. Because the only answer is - there is Evil.

Most people shy away from this, just as they shy away from talking or even thinking about God or the fact that their lives are mere fleeting seconds in time and space, not the important and world-changing events that they believe them to be. They deny Evil, try to explain it, try to pretend it is something it is not, try to insist that there is an explanation for it, that cause equals effect, that it's about science or medication or even the chemical composition of some peoples' brains. It is none of these things.

They want to deny the creeping and resolute surge of Evil in their own families, neighborhoods, and communities. They want to blame GMO foods, the hapless weapons used to perpetrate the Evil, the social strata of the criminal or victims, even the very water and air that sustains them. They are all wrong. Like people insisting that they are going to ride out the next hurricane in their own homes, they wrap their arms about each other as the storm surge rises, higher and higher, and demand or plead for help that will not, can not, come. 

I know Evil. I have seen its face, looked into its dark, dead eyes, and felt its icy presence even when it smiled and laughed and tried to behave under a facade of normalcy.  I have seen it in the eyes of the man who has killed, without justification or remorse, in the eyes of the woman who has bludgeoned her own children or swapped her teenage daughters' innocence for drugs or favors. I have seen it in the smiling politician's face who has promised everyone everything they could ever possibly want, with that smirk in the corner of his mouth at the gullible stupidity of the masses who believe in him. I have seen it in the early morning light, when accosted by four men who thought that I was a helpless woman alone and open to their predation. I have seen it in the dark of night when three men tried to beat down my door, thinking that, through their size, force, and power, they could pursue their own pleasures. Both of those latter times, what stopped them was the barrel of a gun shoved in their faces, and the cool stare of determination that dared them, "one step further".  I did not know what they wanted, nor did I care. I knew what I wanted - and it was to survive, preferably unscathed. I did so.

Because, you see, Evil is only afraid of one thing - a bigger, more determined, and adamant faith. Evil believes in its own righteousness, its own ends, and only when faced down by someone who can - and determinedly will - put a stop to them, does it back down.  To prey, Evil must have prey. To fight Evil, one must determine to - not be prey. Not plead for help or succor from others. Not try to legislate or preach against it. Not try to turn it back to good, or educate it, or psychoanalyze it.  Not try to deny its existence or pretend that it will never encroach, because we are richer, smarter, better, and kinder than others. Evil is visceral, as one's reactions to it must be.

Long ago, my father taught me to always be at "code yellow", alert and aware of everything around me.  The guy walking between the parked cars at a shopping mall, the glow of concentration deep-set in someone's eyes in a crowd,  the hiss of a snake's belly sliding through the leaves; anything curious, out-of-the-ordinary, unusual. Folks pooh-pooh this, say it is living in fear. It is not. It is living in awareness, living life to the fullest, yet being always aware that there is Evil out there, that it waits to pounce, that it awaits weakness and fragility and helplessness as its encouragement to overtake, overcome, and even kill - without compunction, without remorse, without any emotion other than self-gratification.

Those who deny Evil's existence, those who believe that Evil can be ignored, legislated against, calmed, changed, or brought into the light are fodder for the further perpetration of Evil. It is they who permit Evil to grow, to flourish. By their denying that there are snakes living under their porch, allowing them to breed and perpetrate, unheeded and unmolested, they ignorantly and yet wholeheartedly permit Evil to flourish. Sooner or later their home becomes a den of snakes, and there is nowhere for them to go; nowhere the snakes have not infiltrated.

The battle between Good and Evil is not coming, it is already here - and those who choose to excuse it, placate it, or deny its existence will be its willing, hapless victims - or encourage it to take more and more innocents as its sustenance. Evil voraciously feeds on the innocent babes that ignorance and denial throw to It, to save their own sensibilities and protect their own hapless, mindless belief that "everything will be all right".

Secede Your Ass.

Yeah, right.

Growing up in South Carolina, I learned all about "States' Rights!" and the right of any state to secede. I also learned what happens to them when they do. The TRUTH of secession is that the South was richer than the North, and wanted to be free to buy their supplies from the lowest bidder - and the North insisted on putting more and more sanctions on them to keep them from buying anything from anyone other than the North. It wasn't about slavery - many Southern blacks owned slaves, while only 17% of whites did. But that s the emotional trigger that the gullible and ignorant use to arm themselves.

Now people from every State have filed secession petitions. They have literally NO idea of how intricately their finances, both personal and state, are bound so tightly to the Federal Government that extrication would immediately impoverish them and their home states. They are lucky that Obama is such an arrogant ass that he'd call in the National Guard and force them to remain at the point of a bayonet. A common-sense guy like Reagan would let them go, just as he did the air-traffic controllers, and watch them collapse.

Aw, but you don't believe me? Think about this...

Your educational system, from Pre-K to PhD, is built on government input. It isn't just the free-and-reduced lunch subsidies, that pay your schools for every lunch that they serve, not just the free ones. It's the high grant monies that go for Title I - SPED classes - some of which keep entire school systems afloat. The more kids you have in SPED, the exponentially higher your Federal income. (Which is one of the reasons schools see no need to teach children - smarter kids means less funding). They get federal grants for everything from anti-bullying classes to how many students they retain in school for a set number of days during any given year. Cut those out, and your schools, which are already swirling the drain scholastically and financially, die.

Then there's USDA grants for water, sewer, HUD grants for housing, USDOT monies to keep your roads from becoming graveled cowpaths. Protest against these all you want - the sudden recall of all monies that all communities relay on, to build, replace, and restructure would stop, and it is your local residents whose taxes will go up - incredibly - to foot these bills.

To secede means to cut all of those gossamer threads that bind you inexorably to the Federal government. Are you ready for that? Just in your own community, ask your Town board, City Council or County Council people what would happen if they were suddenly cut loose from all of the Federal monies - or had to repay them at a moment's notice. I guarantee you'll get a rapid education on reality, even though you may not want it, or want to pretend to yourself that you and your neighbors could survive it.

Stop wasting your time on endless and fruitless pursuits like secession petitions,  and grow a little fiscal comprehension.  Because if your state DOES secede, you and they will be broke in less than a year. Then it won't matter how many of your fictitious angels can dance on your fantasized pins...

 

Goodnight, Jim Demint.

Jim Demint has resigned from his elected position as the Senator from South Carolina, to take the position as the President of the Heritage Foundation.

Way to go, Jim. Get the fuck out while you can.

I know just how he feels. When the Stupid People vote in Santa Claus as their President, and continue to vote in liars, thieves, and charlatans at every level, the smart person can read the writing on the wall, writ large by the Fickle Finger of Fate. People who choose their own self-destruction over their own salvation deserve to die, as horribly, bloodily, and wretchedly as possible. There is nothing that you can do for them. You cannot stop them in their headlong, panting desire for self-flagellation. You can only stand up and scream, "YOU LIE!" so many times. (Yes, that was Congressman Wilson; thanks, I know.)  All you can do is back off and let them hack at their own wrists with their Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-dinner sporks. Masses of stupid people cannot be overcome. They cannot be stopped. They move as an insensate wave over everything, demanding, screaming, decimating everything in their path, bleeding everywhere, from every orifice, all over their own food, into their own wine glass, shrieking that all this blood is sloppy, messy, and always someone else's fault. They are right, they are good, they know better, they are going to change everything into hopeful happy pastoral goodness with the blood that they spill.

Nothing else to do but walk away from them, as quickly as possible. Let them eat their poisoned food and drink their tainted water, calling it manna and wine. Let them sully themselves in each others' beds and brothels, telling each other how grand it all is to be 'free' to do so. And let them die, unlamented and unwanted and unloved, curled into screaming emotionally-encrusted fetal positions, drooling, urinating, and defecating on themselves, while their progeny follow them down the same twisted and filthy paths, further into infamy. 

I have never called myself a Christian, mostly because I don't believe in fanaticism of any stripe or polka-dot. But I do believe in God and Jesus Christ - in a quiet, faithful, trusting way - no church-going, no praise-singing, but only in a firm belief in the black-and-white differences between right and wrong. I don't believe God is a judgmental prick Who likes to terrify people into behaving, any more than I believe that He has anything to do with good people coming to bad ends. Mostly I believe that God is a nice Guy Who likes to surround Himself with other nice guys; that He has a sense of humor, that He knows more than anyone, and that a person who strives to do the right thing will be rewarded, and a person who is selfish or ruled by selfish thoughts and actions, without any thought of responsibility or payment, will pay in the end... far more than they ever will realize. 

Its why I could smile when those arrogant pricks defended my ex husband's violence and abuse, and decided to make an example of me because I refused to bow to his and their pressure to 'be an obedient wife'. It's why I could grin and shake my head when those people insisted that I was offending them by choosing to take care of myself and my family instead of being their punching bag. It's why I laugh to myself when some people insist that they are right and they know it, why don't I fall in with them?

Flee, Jim. Flee the insensate and ignorant masses, who wrap themselves in the filthy swaddling of purposeful ignorance, sloppy and sodden self-indulgence, and endless entitlement demands. Flee the Stupid People and their encroaching self-annihilation.  They are their own Horsemen of destruction, and are too stupid to know it. Cast not your pearls before swine.

Cheese with your whine...

Wow.
Everything I posted last December has proven even more true.

Sorry, kidz, I've been busy. There's work, and then there's the farm, and if you think that isn't work, guess again. The drought this year decimated many of my neighbors' ranches and hay fields - bare hard dirt that blew in the wind, then fires that swept thru and ate huge acreages.

But not mine. Nope, my little cows were quite happy and had enough to eat, a small herd of small cows, vigorously producing. Ranchers here have to 'preg-check' their cows to make sure that their overbred bulls and cows are reproducing - we don't. Our bull loves his job so much that he wants to service everyone else's cows, too. Yet yesterday I went to the fence, and he came up and licked me with his big black tongue,  nuzzled me with his big furry head, and demanded his alfalfa cubes and 'scritches'. We traded two bred cows for hay - last year's and this year's - and at the end of the month, the next steer goes to the butcher... beef for another year. But it's OK - we have two more steers and a cow coming up, and the two older cows are pregnant again.

The potato farm south of us gathered in the harvest last month, and I got a truckbed full of free "leftover"potatoes; all I had to do was go pick 'em. I was a "cannin' fool" for a few days, and the rest are happily ensconced on a huge shelf in the cool basement, covered up with newspaper. I harvested and canned corn and green beans, too, and canned some nice pumpkin. There's a giant turkey in the freezer, cleaned and ready to go - when Tammy comes for an early Thanksgiving next week, we shall have such a party!

My nephew came to live with us last week, bringing along his 5 year old daughter and 4 year old son. Coming from uneducated SC - and Mike's miserably illiterate and drama-queen family - they were filthy and poor, and the children were whiners and criers, acting out the drama with which they were raised. I stopped that crap posthaste. Now those kids "cowboy UP!" and are learning to read and speak properly, as well as bathe and have a little respect for themselves. Damned straight. That's what I do and who I am. Two of our three kids - and our nephew, whom we raised in his teen years after his mother tossed him out  - did well under it, and learned from it. One of our own children did not - where he still gets the idea that we and the world owe him a living, I have no idea. He's a selfish jerk, and I have no time for him and his endless self-pity as an adult. He'll merely grow older, never grow up, and will blame everyone but himself his whole life. I have no time for that crap. Man up or shut the fuck up.

But that's kinda the way the world is going. Like I predicted last December, nothing changed, the pawns just rearranged. Stupid people proved themselves again this week during the elections - voting for whatever sneering, smarmy, useless bastard promised them everything that they deserved - from other peoples' paychecks. Blame the rich! Blame the poor! Blame the Illuminati! Blame Soros! Blame the Democrats! Blame the Republicans! It's Bush's fault!

Nope, it's yours. There's a blizzard coming in two days, and I have stacks of wood piled high for the woodstove, a warm and tight and toasty house, food in the basement, live and reproducing food in the pasture, barns, and coop, and a busy productive life. It sucks to be you if you don't, if you'll be waiting like the people of New Jersey and New York for someone to come save you, and I have no sympathy for you. Want some cheese to go with that whine? Tough shit. Like the little red hen, I grew it, I made it, I harvested it, I butchered it, and I'll eat it my own damned self.