Aquarian Weekly 5/28/03
REALITY CHECK

THE HOMELAND SECURITY SHUFFLE

Tom Ridge is a jabbering ass and a con man, and because his Homeland Security is a government appointed quagmire of bizarre innuendo and wild prognostications, we are stuck with him and his ilk for an Edgar Allen Poe stretch of time: Evermore.

That is because Homeland Security is another government agency created from the ashes of the other government agencies that failed to do what they were paid to do in the first place. And it is yet another in a long line of American institutions born of laziness and gullibility.

It is the second full day of the latest High Security Alert sent down from this miraculously insane money pit headed up by Ridge and his posse. It's an Orange Alert don't you know? And what does that mean anyway, High Alert? Orange? Are there instructions that go with this, or are we to assume High Alert and Orange mean something to someone somewhere?

You know what it really means?

Homeland Security is a sham. It is a cover, a band-aid for a gaping wound, and not just the one in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center used to be, but also the bigger ones at the once defunct and now wholly resurrected Pentagon and the vacant hallways of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is the answer to our government's monumental failure to protect our borders, even after decades of international abuses and ignoring the blatant signs of backlash that were oh so prevalent to those mocked as doomsayers and goof balls only five short years ago.

Homeland Security is also a glaring example of the great American tradition: The Excuse. This Excuse annexes a staggered glut of tax monies to provide jobs for the unemployable sops that crawl around the darker corners of Washington looking for a handout while the police and military lounge around waiting for the Next Big Thing.

Because other than that, what in the good name of the Pet Rock do we need Homeland Security for?

To allow the government, ignoring the dangers of pussy footing with Arab oil mob types for a half century, to save face after the next national disaster? Or does it merely allow politicians to make noise after every terrorist rumor so they can eventually congratulate themselves when nothing happens or throw their collective hands up when the shit goes down and tell everyone they told you so?

This is what these people do. They love to specialize and homogenize problems away, a sort of Mr. Clean for social dilemmas.

You see Homeland Security is not unlike the curious invention of the Hate Crime. I can no longer recall a day when beating someone tied to a fence with tire irons for no social reason was not considered a crime of hate. Yet we had to invent something for the abuses of gays and minorities and women. The real laws governing our protection and justice against murderous thugs were not enough. It needed to be qualified to Hate Crimes.

The specialization of America continues with Homeland Security. The Federal Bureau of Investigation isn't an expensive enough attempt at securing the homeland. We needed Homeland Security for this.

This is a practice akin to union workers expanding two jobs to four or five. It used to take twenty men to build an American car. It now takes forty, because there is one guy to rivet the lug nuts and another to shine the windows and so on. This translates well to the United States government. And it doesn't matter who is in charge. There is so much fat and bloated numbers of people doing nothing in this government that it always makes room for more.

And that is the plan. Keep the insiders working on our dollar.

Crank up the alerts and change the colors and pray to whatever god suits you that nothing else happens.

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