TERROR IN THE STREETS!!
I am afraid to go to sleep at night. What if Hamas decided to stage an attack on my house in Rockford. Please don't ask for my address, because that has to be a carefully guarded secret what with all the guns and ammo, freeze dried food, cases of Francis Ford Coppola cabernet, and the complete microfiche edition of National Review, The American Spectator, and The New American that Ron Unz has produced.
Why the panic? If you can ask that, you cannot have read today's headline: The FBI Warns Agains Hamas Copy Cat Attacks on US. I called a friend of mine--you've maybe heard of him, Jeremy Chiaroscuro?-- to warn him, but the fool wouldn't listen.
"Look," he said, "the Bureau on principle never tells the truth about anything."
I asked Jerry what had led him to this preposterous conclusion--adding that I despised his unpatriotic cynicism.
"Why? First of all, because what the American citizenry doesn't know cannot hurt the bureau. It is a first principle of the Bureau that anyone and everyone is capable of comiting a crime against the Federal Government, whether it is boarding a plane without a vaccination or paving over a precious wetland, or trying to bring soft cheese into the USA. It has been shown by recent studies that nearly everyone in the USA commits at least one crime a week, so we are all guilty. Why would they share accurate information with 330 million criminals?"
"You said 'first of all.' What's another reason?"
"Even a trusting chump like you should be able to figure it out. Suppose the FBI has absolutely no knowledge of any Hamas activity, but some 16 year old Arab kid throws firecrackers at a synagogue. The Republicans in Congress would be howling for the heads of all the senior officials. On the other hand, if absolutely nothing happens, we can expect the Bureau to issue a statement that by their watchfulness and the brilliance of their intelligence operations, they have foiled all the terrorist plots that had been set in motion. Maybe they could even set up a Harvard Palestinian with a terror plan and nail him with a car full of fertilizer and ammonia. It's a win/win situation."
Realizing for the first time that my friend Jeremy was a just a fanatical Trump supporter, I hung up the telephone and ordered a truckload of toilet paper. Remember those shortages during COVID? Even my fanatical friend would have to admit the government told us the truth then. I wonder if it is time to update my COVID vaccination.
Precious…just precious!
As Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin said, “paranoia is true perception, sanity is a lie.”
Maybe this quotation could be affixed to our printed currency.
How about this, which I just came across in Sciascia’s novel Il Cavaliere e la Morte (The Cavalier and Death): Si può sospettare, dunque, che esiste una segreta carta costituzionale che al primo articolo reciti: La sicurezza di potere si fonda sull’insicurezza dei cittadini.”
In a language less beautiful and concise: One may believe, then, that there exists a secret constitutional declaration that states in its first article: The security of power is based on the insecurity of the citizens.
I wonder if only a Sicilian could have written that.
Perhaps a written constitution based on that model would be a good exercise in understanding reality. We could call it something like The Constitution of Raw Power. It would openly declare the realities of power, human greed and corruption, theft, con artistry, depravity, manipulation, and vanity. We could terrify Machiavelli with it. It would be the universal constitution of the whole world in all but name.