Alexander Solzhenitsyn used to say that a single teaspoon of sea water can give you the taste of the ocean. This morning, I had a taste of a teaspoon of what I would call creeping Fascism, and I would like to share this experience with you.
My wife has a business which requires her to go and see people at their homes. I drive her to the needed address and wait in the car for her to come back out. This morning we made one of those home visits in a very typical middle-class neighborhood. As always, my wife entered the house and I stayed in the car, pulled out my Nexus 7 (2013) and connected to the Internet.
After a while I did notice that two of the neighbors gave me a weird look, but passed by and said nothing. Then a guy came out of his house and asked me what I was doing here. I replied that I was relaxing and reading. That did not please him and he wanted to know exactly what I was doing on “his street”. I replied that “his” street was public and that I was minding my business. He told me that the “entire neighborhood” was concerned about my presence and that I better tell them what I was doing here (I later learned that it was true – most of the neighbors were “texting” each other to, I suppose, “coordinate a response” to the “unfolding crisis” or possible “threat” to their well-being). I was really baffled and I asked the guy whether he seriously believed that I was preparing a terrorist attack or dealing drugs and what made them so afraid. His reply was “we don’t know you and we protect each other”. I told him that something must be wrong with them to be so paranoid, at which point he left with this special self-righteous dumb look any kindergartner has when he goes to complain to the teacher.
Sure enough, a cop car soon showed up, cop came out and asked me what I was doing here. I gave him the same reply, – relaxing, reading and minding my business. I asked him whether I had done anything wrong or broken any law, to which he said that no, but that I was “suspicious”. When I asked him how I was “suspicious” he told me that the neighbors had complained about me sitting in my car. I then asked him whether that made me suspicious in his eyes and he said that yes, it did. He then ordered me to identify myself which I did and explained what I was doing here. He said “okay” and left turned his car around and checked my license plate. Then a 2nd cop car came, and they both stayed until my wife came out and we left.
Now some (most?) of you might think that this is no big deal or that I could have explained my reasons to be here to the neighbor who came out. Maybe. To each his own. We all have different characters, different educations, different life experiences and different values. And maybe to some (most) people, this all is a non-event.
Not for me, sorry.
To me, this is disgusting, especially in a country which fancies itself the epitome of democracy, human right and all that kind of crap.
Truthfully, I have nothing against neighbors looking out for each other, I actually find that beautiful, but in this case I was not doing anything which could have caused the alarm. It was Sunday morning, 10:30AM, I was sitting reading in a van with all windows down enjoying the morning sunshine. That’s it. I was not waving a Kalashnikov, or dealing small bags of white powder, was not even listening to any “suspicious” music or even getting out to stretch my legs. I was just there doing nothing.
My wife thinks that I scare the local people for being 6″3, 255lbs and with a beard. Oh, and I drive a van. I am told that this combination makes me really really really scary.
Still, I think that my physical appearance and choice of vehicle cannot be considered as a legitimate reason for a man I have never seen come out into a public space and demand that I explain to him what I am doing on a public road. At least not in the supposed “land of the free and the home of the brave”. If it is the land of the free, then I should be free to mind my business also, and if it is the land of the brave, then an entire neighborhood should find in itself the courage to live for about 45 min with a parked van and with a scary-looking dude inside without calling the cops. But clearly, in the land of the free and the home of the brave this was the neighborhood of the enslaved cowards…
I also resent cops ordering me to identify myself just because *somebody else* considers me as suspicious. If neighborhood is paranoid, does it mean that a trained officer has to act on it and also act in a paranoid way. I keep wondering – did that stupid cop really think I was a danger to somebody?
It deeply saddens me that these putatively “brave” people and these cops don’t seem to care one bit about privacy or about the civil rights which their own military “defends” (or so they think) in remote places of the earth like Afghanistan, the Philippines or Latin America when at home an entire society is taught how to fear and to mindlessly obey any order they are given.
Americans, the vast majority, are terrified, they don’t even know why or of what, but they are terrified. Hence the rent-a-cops everywhere.
In Florida, you will see old geezers who can barely walk in uniforms everywhere: libraries, malls, department stores, hospitals – everywhere. And since they are completely useless, they spend their time trying to do *something* and they end up harassing kids or telling people not to speak too loud.
The USA has turned into a kindergarten where everybody is afraid of everybody, everybody calls the cops out of sheer panic of “something” and were everybody is guilty until proven innocent. And uniforms everywhere. These rent-a-cops belong to organizations like “Internal Intelligence” or “American Security” and they have fancy cop-like uniforms, but they are also totally *useless*: the bad guys don’t care about them, and the good guys are constantly harassed.
But the worst is not that. The worst is in the mind of people: they have accepted all this as normal and inevitable, they have embraced, whether consciously or not, the kind of creeping Fascism which permeates all of US society, on the streets and in the minds of the people.
People have accepted that we have to act like door-mats by identifying ourselves as soon as told to do so, we have to strip as soon as told so, we have to obey, move, stop, assemble, disperse, move left, move right and always always submit to any order given to us. And all that in the name of security.
And if we question any of that – then we are “argumentative”, “hostile” or otherwise “uncooperative”.
So what if I don’t want to “cooperate”? Is that really a sin? Does that make me bad? Was I supposed to be born with a natural sense of love for the police?!
Actually, many (most?) people would say that yes. That I am wrong. Here is how their logic goes:
“You could have “defused the situation” be explaining to the neighbor what you were doing. He was only doing his “civic duty” after all. You have to learn how to live in this society”.
Well, guess what? I don’t want to cooperate! I don’t want to “defuse” a situation which I have not created to begin with! If my mere physical presence creates a “situation” which requires “defusing” on my part then, yes, that is a form of “discrimination” and “violation of my civil rights” (to use the stupid lingo of these so-called “democrats”). I don’t accept that I have a duty to comply with the paranoid arrogance of cowardly assholes just because they happen to be in the majority. I despise the kind of human plankton which spends its life acting like prey, which submits to evil and stupidity and which has no real sense of dignity of freedom.
Call me unreasonable if you want. I don’t want to be reasonable in a society gone insane. If this society is sane, and I am not, then let me embrace my insanity!
I have spent my entire life hearing hundreds of people lecturing me about freedom, human rights, civil right, political rights, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, etc. etc. etc. It’s all “freedom and rights” in their mouths. But in their daily lives, its all about submission, submission and more submission.
It makes me sick.
No wonder so many people drink, use drugs, stupidify themselves in front of flickering screens, suffer from bulimia/anorexia or various phobias. No wonder so many people are sexually dysfunctional in one way or another, aggressive, depressed or delusional. And, finally, it is no wonder at all that so many people have no sense of self-worth, of dignity, of their minimal right to be left alone when they bother no one. The powers that be have given us a real slave mentality and anybody not acting like a slave is immediately singled out as a troublemaker or some psycho suffering from ODD (opposition defiant disorder).
Please get me right – I was born in a country where you have to carry your government issued ID 24/7 and where any cop can ask you for your ID and business without any reason at all. And I have lived under all sorts of authoritarian regimes, including Latin American and Asian dictatorships. I know that in comparison the USA is much better – at least here a majority of cops is more or less honest. But what is so unbearable to me is not that the US cops can act like bullies, but that they do that in a society which still seriously believes that it is “land of the free and the home of the brave”. In all the other dictatorships I have visited everybody was fully aware that there was no freedom, no democracy, and that might made right. Except in the USA. Here the slaves actually believe that they are free.
At least Blacks in the USA do know. If having a beard singles me out as a “suspicious” individual, just image what a Black guy looks like in a White neighborhood. They get that kind of crap day after day, every day. I heard that from my African friends who lived in the USA (who are very candid about it) and from local Blacks (who are usually very reluctant to talk about that). Yes, Black here know that 1) White people fear them and 2) cops are their enemies. And having Obama sit in the White House did nothing to change that. But Blacks are the exception – the rest of the country still pretends like everything is just nice and cozy.
That the rest of the country seems to be sleepwalking in some kind of stupor which prevents them from seeing how a “cultural Fascism” is rapidly taking over their minds and lifestyles. From the Sheriff deputies the kids see every day in their schools to ubiquitous rent-a-cops everywhere, to the constant sound of police vehicles constantly stopping drivers – Americans are living under constant monitoring, fear and a wholesale dissolution of their civil rights.
I feel like the only non-smoker in a room full of smokers. I tell them that the room stinks, that there is blue smoke everywhere, that the air is foul and that I cannot breathe. And they all tell me that no, there is nothing wrong with the room, the air is fresh and clean and that I am over-reacting.
So what do I do? Shall I wait enough time until my nose gets desensitized to the disgusting stench around me? Shall I pretend like I enjoy the nauseating stench just in order to be “like everybody else”?
Or shall I remain true to myself and say that the air stinks?
The Saker
Saker, though you obviously DO rant, what you say does make sense. The social disease you describe has crept up in all Anglo-Saxon societies, and has started to spread to northern Europe too.
My understanding of this disease is that it is based on a wrong social notion, that “rights” have any meaning on their own, and that surveillance is better to punishment. That’s a double delusion. Rights only exist thanks to obligations being respected. And a free, economically efficient and morally healthy society is one where prompt and strong punishment deters potential crimes, not one where everyone is under surveillance.
I am just stating the obvious, that deep thinkers have stated in the past.
Here are the first two paragraphs of Simone Weil’s “The Needs of the Soul”, 1st chapter of “The Need for Roots”, written early 1943 just before she died.
The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.
It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.
And here are, in the original French, the first 4 paragraphs of Simone Weil’s “Les besoins de l’âme”, 1st chapter of “L’Enracinement – Prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l’être humain” (1943), written in the midst of the darkness that had engulfed Europe. If someone could provide an English translation of paragraphs 3 and 4…
La notion d’obligation prime celle de droit, qui lui est subordonnée et relative. Un droit n’est pas efficace par lui-même, mais seulement par l’obligation à laquelle il correspond; l’accomplissement effectif d’un droit provient non pas de celui qui le possède, mais des autres hommes qui se reconnaissent obligés à quelque chose envers lui. L’obligation est efficace dès qu’elle est reconnue. Une obligation ne serait-elle reconnue par personne, elle ne perd rien de la plénitude de son être. Un droit qui n’est reconnu par personne n’est pas grand chose.
Cela n’a pas de sens de dire que les hommes ont, d’une part des droits, d’autre part des devoirs. Ces mots n’expriment que des différences de point de vue. Leur relation est celle de l’objet et du sujet. Un homme, considéré en lui-même, a seulement des devoirs, parmi lesquels se trouvent certains devoirs envers lui-même. Les autres, considérés de son point de vue, ont seulement des droits. Il a des droits à son tour quand il est considéré du point de vue des autres, qui se reconnaissent des obligations envers lui. Un homme qui serait seul dans l’univers n’aurait aucun droit, mais il aurait des obligations.
La notion de droit, étant d’ordre objectif, n’est pas séparable de celles d’existence et de réalité. Elle apparaît quand l’obligation descend dans le domaine des faits; par suite elle enferme toujours dans une certaine mesure la considération des états de fait et des situations particulières. Les droits apparaissent toujours comme liés à certaines conditions. L’obligation seule peut être inconditionnée. Elle se place dans un domaine qui est au-dessus de toutes conditions, parce qu’il est au-dessus de ce monde.
Les hommes de 1789 ne reconnaissaient pas la réalité d’un tel domaine. Ils ne reconnaissaient que celle des choses humaines. C’est pourquoi ils ont commencé par la notion de droit. Mais en même temps ils ont voulu poser des principes absolus. Cette contradiction les a fait tomber dans une confusion de langage et d’idées qui est pour beaucoup dans la confusion politique et sociale actuelle. Le domaine de ce qui est éternel, universel, inconditionné, est autre que celui des conditions de fait, et il y habite des notions différentes qui sont liées à la partie la plus secrète de l’âme humaine.
Welcome to the new USSR. It’s been getting worse for decades but has accelerated since since 911.
T1
Actually I believe things are somewhat worse here than in the USSR. While nobody is going to do hard time in a labor camp for possession of a unregistered copy machine there are few people here who have the requisite combination of rebel curiosity, leisure time, and critical literacy to make any use of the contraband thoughts these machines reproduced. I was in the USSR in the period of 1984-85. The average Russian had far more leisure time to engage with dissident thought than the middle class Americans who are so quick to run squeling to their dull normal minders when they see something they do not understand. And they understand nothing.
This is the way it is. America and a number of other western countries are goose stepping their way to fascism.
Most people don’t want to hear or see the obvious.
Pointing it out can make you shunned at best. The rubber glove treatment to teach you humility and “proper respect” is also possible.
Pick your battles and the rest of the time try to be “the grit in the machine”. It’s not much but it keeps the defiance alive.
Remain true to yourself and say the air stinks, definitely and that the Emperor has no clothes.
In peace, love, faith and struggle for God given rights
Zainab
The air stinks and since most Amerikans have been brainwashed into thinking that smoking causes cancer instead of all the pollution in the air, water and what passes for food, I would say that being a smoker in a room full of antismoking, authoritarian and other assorted zealots is more the feel day to day “on the ground.”
It is quite a ludicrous situation, you can talk but rarely if ever communicate with the true belivers of this or that ______ (insert whatever narrative that is promulgated by officialdom and becomes gospel truth simply because someone(s) said so)
The air stinks and so it is my great pleasure to welcome you amongst the insane. ;)
It is hard to find the word that accurately describes American authoritarianism, because it is sui generis. The old analogies don’t quite hold and we haven’t found the exact name for the disease. The closest thing is the old South under slavery, where the whites organized local militias to watch and control the movement of blacks. It was a popular, not a state institution.
I think we all pretty mch understand the ingredients of the American disease: extreme parochialism at all levels of wealth and education–the situation in the academy is truly ludicrous; no exposure to foreign life–less than a quarter of the population have passports, and you can’t get back in nless you have them. There is also the nsecurity that comes from thwarted ambitions. The up escalator is broken.
Finally, Americans have more than any other country with the possible exception of Britan been deluged by life-style advertising–my personal vision of hell isto spend eternity living in a beer or pepsi advertisement and and having to smile and and jump around while girls jiggle their tits at you. This matches, indeed surpasses any indoctrination the old USSR imposed on people in the name of the new Soviet Man. You can’t have 50 years of being bombarded with that stuff and it not have any effect.
The one thing you can say about these people is that they do not want to fight for their country. They want other people to fight for them. This is what will bring down the whole house of cards. They are not really patriotic, and when the call comes they won’t be there.
As to standing your ground in the Lexus, Saker, I counsel discretion. These are armed and crazy people. Do what you do when you go through American immigration. Turn everything off so as not to provoke a hostile response in the ‘no-rights zone.’
Ummmm… my view is slightly different. My “nice” leafy neighborhood in DC has experienced an unusual uptick in crime. Car robberies, home burgleries and a neighbor held-up at gunpoint one evening. Took her purse, laptop and car. Our car was robbed in front of our house in the 10 minutes we left it unattended. We live 2 blocks from Chevy Chase MD. This is truly unusual for my hood. The police have made no progress in solving these crimes. Our entire neighborhood is on alert. And I confess to watching and making a point of watching, everyone, coming and going on our street. So perhaps the neighborhood you visited had similar events. It changes ones perspective. That said, my sons have been stopped MANY times by police in this neighborhood — day and night — asking who they are and where they live and whatnot. The Obama girls visit around the corner and SS stop my sons ALL THE TIME. Pisses me off to no end. Know how it feels on both sides. Gave one of those “security police” a few choice words one evening as I walked the pooch. Told them to spend less time questioning my sons and be on the lookout for criminals instead while they spend time in my hood. We are increasingly living in an incompetent police state.
@Anonymous 19:20: you raise a very good point and, having lived in DC for 4 years myself (on Quesada Street, just off Chevy Chase circle) I remember the crime issues (Marion Barry was City Mayor then). Anyway, I checked the neighborhood I was in today on https://www.crimereports.com/ to see what kind of crime they had had over the past 30 days. Result? *NOTHING*. One registered sex offender lives nearby. That’s it. Now that was just for the past 30 days, but still, its better than most places and sure does nothing to justify the kind of paranoid terror these folks seem to suffer from.
Zainab: God bless you for your kindness Zainab! Thanks for your always kind words, La tansana min al du3a!
Gabriel: well, clearly the absence of a sense of duty of these people and their cop resulted in an absence of right for me :-)
Anonymous:Pick your battles and the rest of the time try to be “the grit in the machine”. It’s not much but it keeps the defiance alive.
You are quite correct. Thanks for these words of wisdom which I will try to remember next time.
@Everybody
Thanks for all your comments and thanks for being there! You all remind me that the world is not as ugly and insane as I sometimes feel it is and you make me feel less lonely. Thank you.
The Saker
Balaban,,
Half through your rant I was preparing to ask you a personal question, when your wife answered it for me: “do you sport a beard?” (You told us already that something in your looks remind people of Genghiz Khan).
I do not rant. These things happen to me on a fairly regular basis,in another land of the free and brave and of “a fair go for everybody”(who is blond and blue eyed). I sport a beard too. There is no “random” check at the airport that misses me (international or domestic flights, all the same). There is no “random” breath check that don’t signal me to stop. I was stopped by police because at a traffic light I was tapping my fingers on the wheel, breath analysed and asked to produce ID. There was absolutely no reason.
Once, when I was working night shifts I wnet out in a break and sat in my car listening to music and eating a sandwich. The friendly cop appeared and summoned me out of the car, hands on the car, what are you doing. It is my car and I am in a break and eat and listen to radio. Aussie cops are very trigger happy so you take a big risk if you argue with them. Fortunately I had the regio papers on me to show that it was indeed my car.
A friend of mine, talking to Aussies had a word: “We come from your future”. We live “1984” at its home.
And yes the Americans are made to live in fear.
WizOz
Saker
Looks like you got a taste of modern American whitebread yuppydom. My sympathies. What you went through was so common in my own experience when younger, I was surprised when some fascist bs like that didn’t happen. Most of the time it was not harassment from locals, but by the police, though.
Ironicly, when I moved out of the suburbs and into the city the harassment lessened considerably. The suburbs I had lived in were a low crime area with the usual excess of cops, and mostly whitebread, while the city had medium to heavy crime and was much more mixed race and culture. The cops there had better things to do with their time than harassing random people to get their jollies.
A couple of other things that caused a drop in harassment were riding a bike instead of driving a car and getting old. Grey hair seems to deter the harassment, as well – especially if there is only a few of them left. ;)
Agree about the tinker-toys, but it’s easier to get those sods sacked than it is cops, who are essentially immune to legal redress in the USA. Get them sacked when they act out.
Years ago one of the things tried playing bully with me. This was in a grocery store parking lot, in a centre I visited just about every day because it was just a couple blocks from where I lived. What I thought was a cop self-importantly motioned me over, the way cops usually do, when I rode my bike up to the store. His bitch was something about riding a bike instead of walking it. It was something I had been doing for years and struck me as absurd. Once I got next to him, I saw his uniform was not that of a cop, and I started laughing, interrupting his rag. I remember saying to him, while laughing, “I thought you were a cop, but you’re just a tinker toy”, and walked away. I locked my bike up, went into the grocery store and had a little talk with the manager there. Did my shopping and on leaving noticed the tinker toy watching me. So I did exactly what he told me I could not do. With a smile, of course. Next day, I noticed the tinker toy pig wasn’t there. Likely the obnoxious turd annoyed others, he was the type, and they also complained, but it feels good knowing that at least my efforts probably contributed to the tinker toy’s removal, and that of the security firm he worked for, as there were no more tinker toys at that centre after that day.
вот так
Knut 16 February, 2014 18:14
I agree with your comment 100%
вот так
Gabriel 16 February, 2014 17:06
“A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.”
To whom, I would ask. I think it’s the opposite.
A man left alone in the universe would have every right conceivable, but absolutely no obligations.
Why? Because being the only one there, he can do whatever the hell he wants and it wont affect anybody else.
Like the above example of the “man left alone in the universe”, I suspect this argument of obligations vs rights is mostly semantics and surplus complications of something we have been told about since we were young. IE: treat others as one would like to be treated themself.
вот так
Is any of this really new? How is this different from US society of racist laws, or the McCarthy era? All of this is nauseating but is not something that just happened in the last 10 years. Just like with individual people, when societies are prosperous they tend to be relatively “nice”, but when going gets tough so are the attitudes and relations within the society.
What is scary about the US society is not what it is now, but what it will quickly turn into during a major crisis or disaster. The recent emptying of store shelves in Georgia and associated fighting is but a taste.
@Knut:It is hard to find the word that accurately describes American authoritarianism, because it is sui generis. The old analogies don’t quite hold and we haven’t found the exact name for the disease. The closest thing is the old South under slavery, where the whites organized local militias to watch and control the movement of blacks. It was a popular, not a state institution. I think we all pretty mch understand the ingredients of the American disease: extreme parochialism at all levels of wealth and education–the situation in the academy is truly ludicrous; no exposure to foreign life–less than a quarter of the population have passports, and you can’t get back in nless you have them. There is also the nsecurity that comes from thwarted ambitions. The up escalator is broken. Finally, Americans have more than any other country with the possible exception of Britan been deluged by life-style advertising–my personal vision of hell isto spend eternity living in a beer or pepsi advertisement and and having to smile and and jump around while girls jiggle their tits at you. This matches, indeed surpasses any indoctrination the old USSR imposed on people in the name of the new Soviet Man. You can’t have 50 years of being bombarded with that stuff and it not have any effect.
Sadly, I have to agree with you on every single point. As a society the USA is *completely dysfunctional* and while there are as many good people here as anywhere else, the society is truly FUBARed. In the old USSR, which God knows I hated and fought against for years, at least the people were reading. Even in the subway, everybody was reading, if not a book, then at least a newspaper. Here, the ignorance is simply mind-boggling. And the levels of indoctrination are equally formidable. Most disturbing for me is this instinctual submissive acceptance of the authority of anything wearing a uniform. Its totally Orwellian. As for the local cops, they are not the worst I have seen – by far not – but boy are they dumb and paranoid…
@вот так: Agree about the tinker-toys, but it’s easier to get those sods sacked than it is cops, who are essentially immune to legal redress in the USA.
True. I am just sick and tired of them constantly harassing my kids for no other reason than that they are kids. They also bother me with their wannabe cop looks. At least cops DO risk their lives, at least cops DO help people (sometimes), at least cops DO know the law (more or less) and, finally, at least the cops DO get some training (however minimal). These rent-a-cops are pathetic, ridiculous, useless and therefore infinitely obnoxious and irritating. But yeah, I also tell them to mind their business on a regular basis…
@Anonymous:What is scary about the US society is not what it is now, but what it will quickly turn into during a major crisis or disaster.
Maybe. But Americans also have a wonderful way of showing solidarity and compassion when the shit hits the fan. I know about the horrors which happened in New Orleans after Katrina, but I can tell you that here in Florida the locals did pull together when we were hit by 4 hurricanes in 6 weeks. The town were I lived looked freshly bombed out, and yet the people were helping each other, sharing food (with no electricity refrigeration was gone), even handing out free coffee in the street (which is something PHENOMENALLY helpful after a hurricane passed, it makes you feel human again, it sort of breaks the horror spell). I don’t know, it could go either way I suppose, and, as a friend told me, our crisis lasted for 6 weeks, had it lasted longer it could have turned ugly (according to my friend, at least. I dunno).
Still, I want to have faith in my neighbors, I am naive and idealistic I suppose.
Cheers and thanks,
The Saker
What kind of a “van” do you have? Unmarked panel vans are perfect for abductions. That might be the reason you looked “suspicious”.
“So what do I do? Shall I wait enough time until my nose gets desensitized to the disgusting stench around me? Shall I pretend like I enjoy the nauseating stench just in order to be “like everybody else”?
Or shall I remain true to myself and say that the air stinks?”
You could always just leave the room…
I noticed you didn’t even bring up the TSA in this post! Highly relevant – they make travel a truly violating experience.
@Anonymous:What kind of a “van” do you have? Unmarked panel vans are perfect for abductions.
A Hyundai Entourage. But by that logic, any car is perfect for car bombings, any sweater or jacket is perfect to conceal a weapon and any pair of hands is ideal to strangle somebody ;-)
But didn’t you know that bad guys are always the ones in the van parked across the street? Or did you not attend Hollywood Academy growing up?
@SG: You could always just leave the room…
Alas, my family lives here and for them it is better for them to stay here for the time being. If it was just me I would be long gone and living in Russia, believe me….
I noticed you didn’t even bring up the TSA in this post! Highly relevant – they make travel a truly violating experience.
Oh I had my own “TSA experience”. You can read about it here: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2011/08/tsa-circus-ridiculous-wasteful.html
Cheers,
The Saker
(without ever going into whether it’s the opposite of fascism, or which political term are more suited for ranting, or the depth of knowledge the average US citizen about what fascism or socialism really was/is) tyranny of nobodies clinging to their minute fraction of power is socialism. elderly landladies finding your western jeans and lack of moustache very suspicious.
some notable turns of the plot described:
– the local citizen having confirmed there is a non-event on hand goes on to alert the police to demonstrate his power
– the police reaffirms this by guarding the intruding Saker :)
all this is paint over the necrotic uselessness, helplesness, loss of touch with basic rules of human society and reality
it’s a north korea thing going on, but these people will never see this
“Alas, my family lives here and for them it is better for them to stay here for the time being. If it was just me I would be long gone and living in Russia, believe me….”
Understandable.
Just curious, at what point would you pull your family out?
What you are seeing is a predictable result of the increase in demographic diversity: Alienation increase and social cohesion and cooperation plummet.
Harvard professor Robert Putnam (a WASP convert to Judaism) has documented this in his research on what he terms “social capital”:
IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full
The effect is most pronounced in areas like West Palm Beach and Boca Raton where moderately affluent retirees dwell in gated golf-course communities secured by armed checkpoints, amidst a third-world cesspool of impoverished, poorly educated alien thrid world peoples who live just outside these walls.
This is the inveitable result of longstanding Jewish agenda to displace the demographic majority peoples in America and Europe with alien peoples who care little for the historic trajectory and legacy of the nations they have migrated to and who in fact resent the people who built these nations and made them great.
I suspect that in the long run the Jewish agenda of demographic displacement and dispossession of European descended gentiles will not work out so well for the Jews. But their hostility and jealousy of white gentiles is too great for them to see where their real interests lie.
As for white people, the important thing is to come to realization that unless we remove Jews from positions of influence in the media, academia, and government you will not have a country left that you can call your own. You will be surrounded by alien people with longstanding historic grudges against you and a media and eucational establishment that legitimizes their hatred, even if it is directed against your children who bear no responsibility for these hatreds.
Americans suck, America is becoming the country that people want to LEAVE. I was at video shoot and this very attractive polish girl and me began a conversation. She was a former refugee from comunism having fled by way of Greece. She’d gotten her masters degree, she was financially stable.
However she told me that America had changed and that she no longer felt safe in America. We both agreed that China was on its way to displacing the US. I think this country is going down the tubes. I’m dark skinned and I’ve been labeled suspicious many times. I am much more sensitive, blacks in general are very sensitive to subtle changes. Why?
Minorities depend much more on subsidies than others and as soon as they dry up. It creates havok in their lives.
Fernando
@SG:Just curious, at what point would you pull your family out?
First, on balance, I am happy here and the pluses outnumber the minuses, at least so far. Second, the minuses here also exist elsewhere. Third, “elsewheres” usually have their own minuses. So there are too many factors that could influence such a decision so the only answer I can come up “when my conscience tells me that I should”. And there is also that: in my life I learned that it is both wrong and futile to resist God’s will. Worse, we mostly don’t even see what I is good for us. As I always say “in my life, I never got what I wanted, I always got what I did not want, and what I got was always infinitely better than I could have imagined”. I am grateful to God for *not* granting me my (very misguided) wishes. Now, I also know that I have wasted too many years trying to have it my way. It is most hypocritical to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning including “Thy will be done” and then spend the rest of the day trying to impose MY will on things. I am 50 now, and I am too old for that kind of nonsense (at least I try to be). Now I try to accept God’s will and just put my life and future into His hands.
Anyway – sorry for the long and convoluted answer to a simple question. I am a weird person with a convoluted mind with a tendency of finding complex answers to simple questions :-)
Kind regards,
The Saker
Haha no problem, I was thinking you’d maybe answer something like when there was marshall law imposed, or a bank holiday, but what you said is much more insightful and thoughtful. I have a similar, *extremely* analytical mind so that makes sense to me.
@Thy will…
In fact what we should do is to Thank God at all times. That’s the Christ’s command to us: “And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me'”.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”.
So help us God,
WizOz
Saker, I pretty much agree with you on most of your rant, while recognizing some validity to different perspectives. But I’d be interested in knowing your wife’s opinion as to how it might affect whatever business she was trying to conduct.
What Saker is describing is outrageous because we live in a period of relatively low crime and in particular, low violent crime.
It’s a paradox that as communities become safer, more gentrified, and tamed people become more cautious, anti-social, and submissive to authority.
You can see an analogous trend with the prevalence of helicopter parents today. It’s much safer for kids to play outside in most neighborhoods than it was thirty years ago, yet parents mostly keep their children cloistered inside these days.
You tell it how it is.
But don’t bother with people such as these.
Imagine if things had gone worse. If the police officers reacted more aggressively. Would it be worth the aggrevation? Or would it be worth to fight small battles like these when you want to inform us of so much more.
Bend like the wind in the reed where it’s about you, and stand like the oak when it’s for others. In this of course it was for more than about you personally. But be more careful. All us “non smokers” need your rants.
Mindfriedo
Saker
“It is most hypocritical to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning including “Thy will be done” and then spend the rest of the day trying to impose MY will on things.”
Interesting how you put that. A similar philosophy pervades much of “Eastern” religious/philosophical thought. That related to Buddhism/Taoism especially. It’s not called “God’s will”, and the idea is a bit different from that of Christianity, but the basic concept is very similar.
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@вот так:A similar philosophy pervades much of “Eastern” religious/philosophical thought. That related to Buddhism/Taoism especially. It’s not called “God’s will”, and the idea is a bit different from that of Christianity, but the basic concept is very similar.
This sounds very very interesting. Could you please either share some more details with us or point me to some article to read about this? Thanks a lot!!
Cheers,
The Saker
Welcome to Communitarianism
http://nikiraapana.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/abstract-anti-communitarian-manifesto.html
“I scare the local people for being 6″3, 255lbs and with a beard. Oh, and I drive a van. I am told that this combination makes me really really really scary”
I had to laugh when I read that….
if that makes you scary, that says much about what the people who are ‘scared’
But it tells me nothing about you except, you need a shave! lol
My hubby has no beard.
Zainab said it best
“Zainab said…
Remain true to yourself and say the air stinks, definitely and that the Emperor has no clothes.”
And you did. Which is what makes you, you.
As for the neighbours?
What can be expected?
People are brainwashed by fear all the time- they lock themselves in their house and soak up the fear signal emanating from the idiot box
I had something similar happen to me once, in the dead cold of winter
I was wearing my fashionista leather coat and wrapped my head in a very fashionable scarf my daughter had got me for Christmas
Since my fashionista coat had no hood and not enough collar,I was cold, but dam I had this beautiful scarf
Did I mention I love scarves?
I have the most beautiful embroidered peacock one..
Anyway
So, while channeling Grace Kelly and Jackie O, off I went
As I was walking down the street
(not singing do wah diddy, diddy dum diddy doo)
This ignorant woman approaching me gives me totally venomous and hate filled looks
I was gobsmacked, what the hell!
Yes, I have a Mediterranean look about me, since, my heritage is Italian… but really the fear and hatred was palpable
I looked at her, like what the hell is your problem
In hindsight I wished I would have said “BOO”
That incident told me much about that woman.
As for me, I still love scarves.
They dress up the plainest outfit
Some dumbed down brainwashed woman isn’t going to push me into changing a thing!
Stupid and whiny by the Saker. I am often in the same situation as he was as I take my wife places then sit in the car reading my Nexus 7 ;-). I am 6’2 260. Every once in a while someone comes out and asks me what i”m doing. I say I’m waiting for my wife in a friendly way and they buzz off. No big deal. Compare the Saker’s vast sense of entitlement and righteous anger. I make it a five second pleasant interaction. He makes it a 911 call and a 2500 word blog post. Is he really handling it in the best way?
Stupid and whiny by the Saker. I am often in the same situation as he was as I take my wife places then sit in the car reading my Nexus 7 ;-). I am 6’2 260. Every once in a while someone comes out and asks me what i”m doing. I say I’m waiting for my wife in a friendly way and they buzz off. No big deal. Compare the Saker’s vast sense of entitlement and righteous anger. I make it a five second pleasant interaction. He makes it a 911 call and a 2500 word blog post. Is he really handling it in the best way?
Bravo Saker, another excellent and insightful piece. Many (not all) Americans have been deracinated and dumbed down, and it is very much in the interests of their masters that they remain so. The behaviour you describe is the root of the tree of fascism, the 0.1%’ers who have merged the offices of state with the corporate sector are the fruits. We are fast approaching a singularity.
Hi Saker
Great writing as usual. The Russian gene probably.
Looks like the US has become the land of “No Crime but Punishment”.
Paradoxically here in Myanmar (still a dictatorship), uniformed men are all smiles and I have never been harassed since I moved here 18 months ago (although there must be some plain cloth MI monitoring me from time to time).
Also, I was wondering how Alain Soral’s video subtitles is going on.
Do hope it will be on line sometime soon so I can share it with my non speaking French friends.
Best
“Creeping Fascism” pretty much amounts to what I’d label “the discreet charm of the petty bourgeoisie” — at its VERY pettiest at that, mind you. And the rant shows eloquently that “Das deutsche Schwein” of Nazi-era notoriety is but a clone of “The ugly American”. Just as there are parasitic people and strata of society, so too are there wholesale parasitic countries and peoples on this planet.
I’m happy to know you accompanied your wife while she did her business in a strange neighbourhood. Being a bearded, tall white male, you really have no idea at all what it is like for any woman any night of any week/month/year/decade. You just don’t. Having said that, it would be interesting to see if the same would occur if it was your wife in the vehicle reading her Nexcus waiting for you.
Saker
“Could you please either share some more details with us or point me to some article to read about this?”
A found web search this short, but well written piece about the general idea:
Flowing with the Tao
http://www.themessenger.info/content/spirituality/spiritual-development/item/1125-flowing-with-the-tao
If you are interested in pursuing further I would strongly recomend these 2 books by Alan Watts:
Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal & Does It Matter?: Essays on Man’s Relation to Materiality
Both books take Eastern philosophical concepts and explain them so westerners can easily understand them and apply them to modern western lifestyles. Watts has an easy, “down to earth” writing style.
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Thank you Saker, your blog is excellent.
I am 50 like Saker, I have been in the USA for 25 years, I emigrated from Scotland where I was born and raised. I’ve been a good citizen here and have worked very hard since I arrived with only a suitcase and $100 USD.
I contribute to my community in a number of ways, I am a business owner and an employer, I pay good wages and I am told I am a good husband, father, friend, and boss.
I came to America because I was a fully qualified engineer who was unemployed for 4 years in Scotland (age 21 to 25) in the 1980’s due to Mrs Thatcher’s policies and that is the “only” reason I came here.
25 years ago the USA was not a fascist country, today it is without doubt an extremely fascist country who’s law enforcement and judiciary are completely out of control. To call them corrupt would be the understatement of the century.
In the past 20 years the USA has turned into a madhouse of authoritarian oppression, citizens are murdered daily in public by costumed thugs who have been given complete immunity from the law.
Saker you could easily have been another statistic, shot for “resisting”, and of course today in the USA the murderer would not even be charged, and they know it.
I don’t make serious statements like these without evidence, so here it is… this murder took place in public with 100’s of witnesses AND a full and clear 30 minute video with audio, this took place about 15 miles from where I live.
THE MURDER – OF A MENTALLY ILL MAN BY THUGS IN COSTUMES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ariXIEUJkyI
THE HOSPITAL PHOTO
https://publicintelligence.net/graphic-photo-of-kelly-thomas-victim-of-fullerton-police-brutality/
THE VERDICT OF THEIR PEERS
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-kelly-thomas-verdict-readers-react-20140114,0,5919865.story
There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind this jury was corrupted, the jury foreman was a local attorney, how convenient. The judge directed the jury as follows.
http://fullertonrag.com/2014/01/07/judge-trusts-jurors-to-recognize-unreasonable-force-why-dont-city-leaders/
To further make my point of how widespread this oppression and judicial corruption has become, and how it has changed my view of the USA, and why I am planning on returning to Scotland I will say this.
This murder victim Kelley Thomas could easily have been me, or anyone I know, and I am not a black or latino gang banger living in the hood, I live in one of the wealthiest counties in the entire USA, I drive a nice car, I am white, I have been a local business owner and employer for many years, I am law abiding, but I assure you all… that could “easily” have been me (or you) getting beaten to death by these thugs.
All it takes is to get stopped at the wrong time by the wrong cop in the wrong frame of mind and it’s… “stop resisting”… “im not”… “stop resisting”… “im not”… bang bang and your dead forever… it can all go south very quickly with a fascist on a power trip with a gun.
The “only” thing I can suggest to others is to consider leaving the USA if you can, there are many better places to live and raise children without fear of being beaten to death or shot dead should you for whatever reason encounter a thug in a costume.
I don’t want my own 2 children to grow into the type of crass screwball which seems to make up the vast majority of American society, which is exactly what would happen no matter how hard I try to influence them. Luckily for me they are still both young so I have some time to make plans to return to Scotland.
I once loved America, I even became a citizen, I didn’t have to do that as I had a green card, but when I became eligible I thought it was the right thing to do. I pledged allegiance to the USA and I meant it, but I did not pledge allegiance to live under fascism and neither should you.
Sincerely,
JC
Vote YES for an Independent Scotland 2014
I’m really curious to know what sort of work your wife does.
Maybe next time you should threaten to sue the bastards for harassment. It sounds like you were dealing with George Zimmerman wannabees.
@JC:
@Anonymous:
@Axel Sohn:
First, to all of you, my sincere apologies for the very late reply. The madhouse in the Ukraine is really sucking up all my blogging time.
JC – thanks for your long comment. the day I saw it I was really moved, but I did not have the time to reply. I just read it to my wife and said “look, there are still sane decent people out there!”. Thanks also for the (sickening) video. The dumb macho attitude of these pigs was exactly the one I got from my own copper. Frankly, it is scary that that kind of people are allowed to carry weapons and even use them. I would not trust that kind of retarded macho with a paper clip. And yet, I still love the USA. The vast majority of people I met in the 15 years I lived here are all decent folks. I just am going to let one group of scumbags corrupt my view of most of the welcoming, friendly and fundamentally decent people I have seen here. Sure, I have met my share or cretins, retards and other kinds of assholes, but most of them are on TV (which I don’t watch) in in positions of power (where I ignore them). Heck, except for 2 exceptions, ALL the cops I met in the USA were decent people, that is a higher ratio than in most countries I have to say. I even met one friendly TSA agent once. What I never met is a rent-a-cop who would to be an asshole – with them it seems to be wall-to-wall morons. As for Scotland I will say this: I really really support your cause 100% and I think that an independent Scotland would be a fantastic asset for a European continent gone absolutely crazy.
@anonymous: veterinarian
@Alex: I did consider filing a complaint, but consider that these folks get away with murder, I mean that quite literally, so what is the point of complaining for an incident were no actual violence took place? The system is on their side, and I am just a “legal alien” with barely enough money to make it to the end of the month. No, in the USA you can only get justice if you got money. Everybody else can go and get lost. Sad, but true.
Sorry again, guys, and thanks a lot!
Cheers,
The Saker
Penny said…
“But it tells me nothing about you except, you need a shave! lol
My hubby has no beard.”
And I’m sure the lack of beard is entirely “his” decision. But Let’s put this in perspective:
“But it tells me nothing about you except, you need a shave! lol
My wife has no bush.”
That sounds pretty messed up, don’t it? But wth, it’s an American tradition to be pussy-whipped and hypocritical about it at the same time.
The real sad thing is the zionazis managed to conflate their own supremacism with such male/female divides already long delineated in American society. Why would a liberated woman feel the need to humiliate her husband in such an obvious manner?
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@вот так: Penny was joking (did you see the “lol” she put?), so no need to talk about anybody being pussy-whipped or bushes, ok?
@Penny: my beard is actually a religious obligation. Orthodox Christians believe that it is a bad idea to try to “re-design” that which God created. Hence, our men typically have beards while our women typically have no make-up. Furthermore, we also think that it is healthy to be strongly gender differentiated, so our women typically only wear long skirts. We are not too anal about it, and its not like these are iron rules to be followed, but it is generally encouraged and practiced, at least amongst pious families. When my wife and I married, I had no beard and she was in pants, but then we realize that this was not how we wanted to be. So we took a joint decision at the same time: would let my beard grow, and she would get rid of her pants. Also, please consider that the purpose is not to improve on our looks or to look “cool”. Aesthetics are simply not a consideration at all. But I will say this: soon after our marriage my wife, a female friend of ours and I were shopping in a French store (all the woman in pants and short hair) and from afar I saw my wife and her friend, both in long skirts, and it really did strike me how beautiful they look, especially when compared to the locals. Likewise, my wife tells me that she now find shaved men looking rather effeminate. All I can say is that having shaved for years and hated every second of it, I love having a beard and I would never even consider shaving it. As for the looks? To be honest, I don’t give a damn. And if I frighten the local Americans – well, that’s just too bad. We are a “gender differentiated family” and that is how we will live :-)
Cheers and kind regards to both,
The Saker
PS: do you know from where the fashion of shaving comes from? Pagan Rome. You know why? To make boys look more effeminate. As for lipstick, well, look it up for yourself, LOL! :-P
Saker
Your probably right. Having a beard most of my “adult” life, I’ve run into a lot of women who insisted “their” men be clean shaven. So I’m a bit sensitive on that issue.
I knew about the lipstick origins, but the clean shaven-boy connection in ancient Rome I didn’t. Makes sense, though. The current western fetish for short haired, clean shaven men has strong man-boy relation overtones and coincided with European rediscovery of Roman social history and art in the 19th century. Later it became a demanded aspect of social conformity.
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