From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Rational observers of the current environment of this country are watching as divisive policies championed by the Obama Administration have torn apart important opinions about what this country should stand for, how our Government should operate, what our Constitution and Bill of Rights mean, and much more. The citizenry is torn apart by who has primary responsibility for the education of their children first, how our healthcare systems should be paid for, what energy policies are rational in a period of extreme recession, who should be relied on to protect this country from its enemies, and much more.
The Obama Administration has for the first time in decades managed to wake the American people from their perennial political slumber, and they have chosen to do this while they try to sell an old standard of invasive big government, whose competency and integrity are both non-existent. They try to sell the American people the idea that they should trust the US Government, which has managed (or better, mismanaged) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare with a ham-handedness that boggles the imagination, to handle now their national security, their healthcare, their access to affordable energy, the jobs creation process and more.
This agenda is NOT supported by the majority of American people, who want healthcare reform, but not national health, who want cheaper and cleaner energy, but not a fascist energy industry, who want jobs, but not at the cost of the destruction of our capitalist system, and more. The response of our legislators is to go for the big lights, when the dimmer answers are right in front of them. Those answers are to make health insurance competitive on an interstate basis, to make rational tort reform, to seek out affordable energy sources domestically, and to penalize liars.
One of the big lies Obama told over and over again during the election was that his new policies and programs would not increase taxes on anyone but the top 2% of wage earners. Having to face realities that make his lies that much more offensive, he instead chooses now to engage in parsing the word “tax” when in fact, he would hugely increase tax burdens on ALL Americans for their energy use in their transportation, home utility bills, and health care costs. It is very simple. A tax by any other name is a TAX, period, end of story. He gets no right to re-define the word tax because it is inconvenient for him.
Many years ago, I became very interested in the key kinds of “luck” that can work on behalf of a situation, or against it if that may be the case. Those responsible for our national security have seen luck work for them in the capture of Timothy McVeigh, against them in stopping 9/11 despite every hint imaginable, for them in waging specific kinds of war, against them in the capture of Bin Laden, back and forth, much like a weird ping-pong game.
It has fallen on the modern mathematicians and statisticians to try and engage in using principles uncovered in the last 150 years to estimate elements contributing to possible outcomes, and they have made some remarkable discoveries about how arcane principles such as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle have altered their perspectives. By looking at history, they have discovered useful principles for looking for synchronous conditions, and they have seen that attempting to observe a system cannot help but alter it, classic serendipity.
Today, those who look at the design of systems to deal with problems can and do suffer from a form of decision myopia, a kind of impaired sight related to being too close to a problem to remain objective about it. When commentators look at a dynamic system, today they know that to the extent they can get their mental pictures of a situation or problem into the political equation, they can alter it, for good or bad being the viewpoint after the fact. A dedicated professional military imbedded inside a democracy finds itself in a repeated quandary, which is that they are subject to being controlled and second guessed about their behavior in a way that they don’t get to put back on their civilian leaders, a great number of whom could not stand up to any close personal examination.
It is this last problem that prompted one observer to say that he feels in his personal opinion that there are conditions which will force the military into an unwinnable situation, which is that they see our republic allow democratic elements to undermine or abandon that philosophy to which they have sworn an unalterable oath. They swear to protect and defend the Constitution with all they have to give. How can they then allow anyone to destroy that document?
The vast majority of professional military men and women chose to serve their country first, even knowing that they would never have the economic opportunity of their civilian brethren. That consideration isn’t part of their life. Conversely, career military people agree to this in exchange for Government guarantees of fair retirement benefits, rational medical care alternatives for them and their families, and more. They now see this package of contracts under the most severe of attacks, just after the meaning of the word “contract” has been demeaned by the GM and Chrysler settlements.
Many see today for the first time in their lives the possibility of our Government becoming a socialist/fascist regime, one which would disavow specific individual rights, deny and destroy capitalism, decimate personal opportunity, and betray our role in the World. I can forecast their being asked to engage in a suppression of freedoms of speech, assembly, and affiliation, guarantees of the rights of property, protection of their rights under the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, and more, much more. Will they choose to obey orders that violate these precepts?
I can honestly say I can’t predict their behavior under such conditions. Given the manner in which our police forces, sheriffs, and military are intertwined, neither can I predict their collective behavior. The American people have proven they can bear heavy burdens, but I don’t know if they will allow their fellow citizens elected to public office to be treated as if they were ruling elites, and not be subject to the same burdens they impose on the electorate.
There is a simple probability analysis that any individual can handle to begin to estimate why our current risks are so dramatic. Since 9/11, it has been estimated that more than 8000 terrorist events have been averted by astute action of our Federal agencies, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, and more. It only took 200 terrorists and their supporters to execute the attacks we now call today 9/11. They only had access to about 100 weapons of limited destructive capability, i.e., Planes. They killed nearly 3000 Americans. Today, we face 10,000 terrorists and their supporters, many imbedded in the US, with access to more than 4000 prospective weapons from different sources, and over 10,000 prime targets which could be attacked. The controlling statistic is that the number of law enforcement officials involved hasn’t changed, still less than 11,000 FBI agents by way of example, protecting thousands of targets from tens of thousands of terrorist actors, which can be randomly aimed to cause hundreds of thousands deaths. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to tell what the ultimate outcome will be.
Every time such arrogance has been exercised by the ruling classes of other countries in history as we are seeing today, it has been the beginning of the end of those societies. I would like to be wrong here, but I see this country heading down the same path. This augurs for the beginning of the end of what has been a grand experiment. This crisis comes at us when never in our history have we had so much risk, first from external threats, and now from domestic threats. If you care about the National Security of this country, about the safety of your families, or about your oaths as citizens, speaking up won’t be enough. You must act, first at the ballot box, and if called, then wherever you are needed.