I am pleased to see the back of 2001, a bloody, breathtaking year full of disaster, depression and death, far too exciting a time for me. Hello, 2002 — the year of Otto and Bob, Nan and Anna, the year that looks the same to us as to Hebrews, Muslims, dyslexics, and most of the world. Perhaps it could be a happy new year.
How the world changed in 2001 and probably not for the better. Oh call back yesterday, bid time return.
George W. Bush — respected world leader and statesman. Wow.
Yes, 2001 was truly weird, wacky, warped and, let us not forget, wicked. A year awash with bad people and evil deeds, a time when we were forced to learn too much about another archaic religion born in a hot, bleak, inhospitable land — a place where life was harsh, Gods were cruel, and nearby disbelievers were enemies and needed to be humbled and oftentimes destroyed.
Why didn't God plan ahead and start major religions here in beautiful California? Would the world be in quite such a mess? Would believers be so savage? Perhaps Gods are cruel or maybe the humor of the Divine eludes us.
You say Usama, I say Osama, you say Bin Laden, I say Ben Lahden, let's shoot him and call the whole thing off.
If only.
Osama will eventually be betrayed and gunned down, but I have an unfortunate image of his demise similar to the finale of the exciting movie, "Viva Zapata." As Osama lays dying, a great white camel rears up (or perhaps more accurately, a white Toyota pick-up revs up) and races away, escaping into a mountainous desert vastness and keep the vicious, malicious spirit alive.
The aftermath of 9/11's bodacious acts of terror — actions beyond the grisly imaginations of Hollywood — still lingers, like a death-defying hangover, sickening, weakening and frightening the West. For months government and the media have kept Americans unnerved with shocking revelations of potential terrorism and angry enough to allow this pseudo-war to be waged. However our new adversary seems different — not an enemy country or a national leader as in the past, but more like the cinematic foes of 007, rich renegades with nasty, deranged ideas, a nebulous enemy that might require an indefinite war. How long can America be kept at this level of fear and anger? What we need is a new 007 to deal with the new enemies. Are we training a Javad Abdullah Bond somewhere? I doubt it, but let's hope the Brits are.
Unfortunately it remains business as usual. No, worse, as September's sad events have revitalized the image of government.
A Poopalanche of Timidity
Washington proudly stepped forward, vowing to lead America out of this terrible, painful mess, ignoring that it was Washington that got us into the mess. The Feds, in fact all government, manically began looking busy, doing things, anything, whether needed, cost effective or even sensible in order to give an illusion of security.
9/11 roused the poltroonish and irrational spirit all too
9/11 roused the poltroonish and irrational spirit all too common in Americans and spewed a veritable poopalanche of timidity across our land. The public-schooled and frightened public, caring little about history and having no experience with critical thought, gratefully embraced Washington's actions, waving the flag like a talisman and, worst of all, glorifying government and its multitude of employees.
The police and firefighters who died at the WTC have been
The police and firefighters who died at the WTC have been cast as courageous national heroes when in reality they were simply doing their jobs, jobs which they accepted willingly, fully aware that they faced a chance of injury or death. These jobs paid them well and gained them honor in their communities, well beyond the pay and honors that fishermen, loggers, construction workers or truck drivers receive for the necessary jobs they perform which are even more dangerous. Most of the deaths of governmental workers on 9/11 occurred because no one expected the buildings to collapse. The deaths were terribly tragic, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time is not, in my definition, heroic.
I imagine this glorification was in reaction to the
I imagine this glorification was in reaction to the brutal events and filled a sentimental and a psychological need to find American heroism. Unfortunately the events seem to have provided government workers in general with an undeserved halo and no group has gained more than the National Guard.
The public has warmly embraced the presence of armed
The public has warmly embraced the presence of armed National Guard patrolling airports and has driven the spooked citizenry to complain if federalized airport security doesn't seem tight enough.
Somehow everyone ignores the obvious fact that what they want security to provide — protection from an airline hijacking by terrorists — is no longer needed. Hijackings will never again occur because crew and passengers will never placidly submit. I can even envision Fliberals (?Frisco-style liberals) swinging into action and using their incessant and contemptible whining and sniveling and self-defecating to cause cringing in the hijackers and make them more vulnerable to the crude physical violence of the plane's other passengers.
In a state of rationality there would be no dramatic need
In a state of rationality there would be no dramatic need for any increased scrutiny of individuals boarding aircraft, but, alas, we are in a state of liberals who demand that the government provide endless airport lines and infringements of everyone's privacy, and insist that the public accept limitless self-abasement and docilely endure all government actions, even public strip searches and cavity proddings, even of elderly white women. But never any racial profiling.
UGEs
Throughout the Bay Area, media and the public have regularly issued paeans to the Guardsmen, praising them as selfless citizen soldiers who put down their careers in order to pick up a gun and defend society. Not quite accurate. In the numerous published interviews with Guardsmen that I have read, none of them have been simple selfless citizens, but rather all have been UGEs (Useless Government Employees) who left jobs at the post office, prisons, police departments, public schools, and other numberless governmental bureaucracies and are now double dipping, getting paid at their regular UGE gig while picking up pay (undoubtably of the hazardous duty variety) for sitting around in camouflage.
And why do they wear camouflage? There are no jungles around the Golden Gate Bridge, no forests at airports. If they want to blend in, why aren't they wearing sweat suits or blue jeans. If we must see them doing nothing, why can't they at least look neat and respectable. Doesn't the National Guard provide presentable uniforms?
This search for a sense of security has led people throughout the Bay Area to welcome the sight of Humvees, armed National Guardsmen and Highway Patrol officers at every bridge approach and no one questions what purpose is being served.
Just possibly, if a terrorist, with bombs strapped on his body, stopped and asked the guards for directions to the center of the bridge, an attack might be foiled. Otherwise being parked a mile from a bridge's center would seem to provide little actual security, but the active service uniforms and the military vehicles further heighten a sense of security and the public welcomes the illusion.
If we must have the Guard involved, if we must have off-duty (and perhaps disgruntled) postal workers packing automatic weapons, then it would undoubtably be better if they only sat in their Humvees or airport cafeterias, ate donuts and did nothing in public more than leaning motionlessly against pillars. When they try to actively provide security, they turn into the Keystone Kops.
I had a recent opportunity to watch the Guard in action at SFO Airport.
The Guard-stapo in Action
An empty bus drove into a courtyard specially designated for tourist groups where, even though this was the fourth time that day that this same bus and driver had entered the courtyard as had occurred at least four days a week for the past two months, the bus was halted by a Guard unit. There, in front of wide-eyed arriving tourists, the Guard thoroughly searched the bus, inside and out, top to bottom; only after this inspection were the tourists and their luggage permitted aboard. The bus then drove a few hundred yards to the second courtyard only to be halted by another Guard unit who, under the gaze of more dismayed tourists, repeated the entire charade and even added questioning the tourists who had been onboard for all of two minutes. What a first and final impression for tourists.
Do arriving tourists need be considered a threat at all? Does their vehicle need to be searched twice? Couldn't the first Guard unit call the next one to clear the vehicle? Couldn't a Guardsman ride on the bus between courtyards so interrogation would not be needed? Unfortunately courtesy and consideration are foreign to government entities, while hassling the public comes naturally, and since hassling the public seems to increase the illusion of security, hassle they do.
Buffoonish harassment is not the worst the Guard can do as SF recently suffered its first casualty in the pseudo-war when a Guardsman at the airport managed, while removing his weapon, to shoot himself in the buttocks. One wonders fearfully, how soon before the first tourist is accidently shot?
It has been a very bizarre time.
Being a foot soldier in our enemy's forces has taken on an entirely new meaning with the advent of explosive shoes. How soon will airlines be asking even more inane questions ? Did you buy the shoes you are wearing? Have your shoes been in your possession at all times? Did someone ask you to wear your shoes?
Lacking a Javad Bond, the public understandably gives the Feds their eager support in the hope that the present administration can negate a century of American hubris and international meddling. Not likely, but neither was 9/11.
How soon before the Feds mandate warning labels on pretzels?
Thankfully we California's politicians can be counted upon to invest any atmosphere with comedy and so I giddily anticipate our upcoming election cycle with its abundance of grotesqueries, ignominy and fatuity, and nothing will provide more farcical moments than the race for governor. Hurrah, humor ahead.
Soon we will be flooded with inane images of candidates posing with glorified politicians from back East and eventually we will learn which bland candidate of the major parties will be made to appear the toughest, whose image will best be shaped so that his vacuity will appear most capable of dealing with crises, and who manages to keep the most vices and venalities out of the news?
His Grayness
I expect it to be, "The Gray Horror II: Return to Sacramento," the reelection of Gray Davis, our dull cyborg of a governor, who has a mammoth campaign fund and an obsessive craving for public attention. His Grayness is a publicity-holic, in thrall of an intense need to see himself in newspapers and on television. His need drives him to extremes that makes Bill and Hillary seem shy and reticent in their lust for free publicity.
This terrible addiction drives His Grayness relentlessly ahead and if it leads California into ruin, well. . . .
In 2001, Gray's "brilliant" energy plan ended with bankrupt energy companies and a huge public indebtedness that will cost taxpayers dearly for years, but the plan garnered publicity for His Grayness and so was a success. After 9/11 Gray's need drove him to ever greater lengths. His asinine, panicky warnings about an imminent terrorist attack upon our bridges was a final nail in the tourist industry's coffin, undoubtably killed dozens across the state due to stress-related deaths, and gave many of us daily views of armed National Guardsmen, but Gray made the news, so it too was a success. One fears his next step, his next answer to a major problem.
A chicken pecking at a Ouija board could have come up with better answers, but no chicken has campaign contributions to match what His Grayness has amassed.
Gray recently signed a massive pay raise for California prison guards and highway patrol officers, whose unions donated more than $2 million to Gray's campaigns — he denies any connection.
If this were a state of honor, Gray would resign in self-disgust, hand back his tens of millions of campaign dollars as retribution to the taxpayers he has callously misused and get a real job, not one in government (something Gray has never held). However, this being a state of liberals, ethical behavior is not required.
His Grayness announced the upcoming state budget that will be billions in the red, but he pledges not to raise the income tax.
Phil Angelides, however, the state Treasurer and chief-thief-in-waiting announced, "It's in California's best interest to do everything possible to avoid unnecessary cuts in state programs." Letting Gray's pledge stand, Shrill Phil and other Democrats debate how high to raise the sales tax and the automobile tax, and how to "restructure" the income tax. His Grayness announced plans to soften the deficit by taking out a massive loan, expecting to use monies extorted from the tobacco company settlements to pay it off. Meanwhile, the state government eyes Microsoft for the next enforced loan.
The Gov also plans to defer for two years $1.8 billion in payments owed to the Public Employees Retirement System. I'm relieved to find out that UGEs, unlike many taxpayers, won't have to rely on Social Security crumbs.
In Fliberal City
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the politicians busily strive to out-Fliberalize each other even though the City wallows in a deep financial crisis. The Dot Com. bomb has shut businesses, cut back the number of well-paid workers (and their purchases), the property market has collapsed and the profuse revenue stream that poured from the many hidden tourist taxes has dried up.
The plentiful tax dollars of the past decade are no more, but the Fliberals have no intention to roll back social programs, will not trim any of the thousands of UGEs hired during the Nineties, nor pare any of the millions heaped on the "homeless" industry, nor reduce the City's pervasive political corruption. No, the Fliberals' one brilliant solution to the budget crisis is to drastically raise the cost of parking tickets. Automobiles are bad.
Reality, even a dire economic one, has rarely slowed the Fliberal plan to red-icalize society.
So, in the midst of curtailed revenue, the City announced that it would provide health insurance for deprived children. If you are the right ethnicity or plead poverty loudly enough and also fit the other necessary political categories, then for $4 a month your kid will receive health insurance, including dental and vision coverage, that would cost c. $100 to families not included in the program. The unincluded taxpayers of the City as well as anyone foolish enough to park in SF get to pay for the caring compassion of those darn Flibs. Since it's "for the children," who can oppose it? To any who question why these chosen people should receive this benefit, the Fliberals quickly advocate further steps toward their goal of "sensible socialized medicine for all."
Bum-barded
Meanwhile, Frisco politicos have called for a regional summit to discuss the "homeless" problem as they, only now, strive to figure out why SF, which provides so much for the "homeless," which feeds them, clothes them, gives them cash, never demands that they modify their behavior and never hassles their "lifestyle," no matter how loathsome, why, when the City does so much for them, does San Francisco have so many bums? Why has our once lovely city been devastated by this bum-bardment?
Only a Fliberal would need to ask.
Some local Fliberal "homeless" advocates quickly announced their simple ideas of how to solve the "homeless" crisis. They demand that the entire Bay Area immediately ameliorate the inequitable access to adequate education, the under funding of substance abuse and mental health programs, unemployment, insufficient affordable housing, the maldistribution of wealth, the unfair taxation system, discrimination, and male-pattern baldness.
I hope that sometime in 2002 a Fliberal can explain to me how it is that any poor person or any bum arriving in SF immediately becomes deserving of taxpayer provided shelter and housing, but any taxpaying type is expected to pay a great deal of money to reside in expensive San Francisco.
Ultimately, Fliberals intend to provide for all citizens as another "homeless" advocate explained when she spoke in regard to the cost of shelters and public housing projects, "Think how much money we would save if we'd provide everyone with housing."
How foolish are we who provide for ourselves.
There is hope that the marketplace and a wet winter might take care of our blight of beggars and bums, nurtured and grown over the past decades by our government. Less easy money might translate into fewer bums. There are now far fewer tourists giving spare change to panhandlers and higher unemployment locally means less charity and eventually there must be shrinking tax dollars available for bums and their synergetic legion of social workers. Unfortunately, the one thing Fliberal-types do not want is massive unemployment of Fliberal "homeless" advocates and social workers. So cuts in tax dollars will be fought ferociously.
I think it is time to reject the "right" to live on the public dole in a place as expensive as San Francisco. If people come to SF in order to be a public nuisance or a public burden, then they should be compassionately gathered up and moved, at the City's expense, elsewhere, to somewhere safe and warm and less expensive, perhaps to an abandoned military base in the middle of a desert where they can freely enjoy their "lifestyle" at a greatly decreased cost to taxpayers. And send their advocates with them.
Happily politicians and liberal-types always provide chuckles even in the dreariest times and keep me from thinking too much about this vague war against a nebulous enemy with no possibility of a clean-cut victory, and that could be with us for a long while, or thinking about the public's pathetic need for protection that has drifted dangerously near to a police state. Perhaps backbone will return our land. It's difficult to acknowledge, but America's hope for a rosier tomorrow might well rest with George W. Bush — respected world leader and statesman.
Other Works by T. E. Ruppenthal
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 6, No 4, January 28, 2002