[109219] in Cypherpunks
Four Horsemen and a Light Brigade
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Mar 14 07:52:58 1999
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990314011001.00bddcd0@idiom.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 07:26:48 -0500
To: "Cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 4:10 AM -0500 on 3/14/99, Bill Stewart wrote about the current rash of
simulated military attacks on American cities:
> Well, I saw it on TV, so it must be true :-)
> They're also planning to invade the Oakland area, though I'm not sure
> how much is Jack London Square vs. Alameda or Emeryville.
> All part of the propaganda to remind us that we need to keep
> a strong military to rescue people from really scary threats.
Resulting in a nation seeing their shiny-new, not-even-bought-and-paid-for
standing army practising to invade their very own hometowns. That's the
horror (or at least the noise and bossy officiousness) of war, right here
in River City, folks. Too bad, for the left banks of the Bay Area and the
Charles, that "W" doesn't rhyme with anything.
A pretty stupid thing for a standing army to do, in my opinion, especially
for propaganda purposes.
Just like Viet Nam *showed* war up close and personal, right in our
squeemish living rooms, Uncle proposes to *deliver* thumping choppers and
bawling Marines right into everyone's face, bringing war-as-street-theater
to every block the Pentagon and the Appropriations Committee can afford to
"occupy".
And, heaven knows, the average American don't wanna study war no more, not
having had actual organized warfare on his soil for 150 years or so, modulo
hide-and-seek with Poncho Villa at Columbus, NM in the year three. Six or
seven of these not-so-live-fire exercises around the country would pretty
much screw the proverbial propaganda pooch, I'd bet. Corpus Christi and
Monterey are just the edge of a very big, flat rock being flipped over,
exposing all the fun critters living thereunder for Hollywood's liberals to
go "ewwwww" over. And after Clinton spent so much time making them feel
good about our recent extraterritorial wars of "nation-building", too.
So maybe the military has got Y2K fever and this is just practice?
Maybe they've even decided to show us, not so subtly, what pacification
looks like, to keep us at home when the curfew siren blows?
One could only hope. Like those holing up in the mountains with their guns,
beans and propane, crying armageddon once too many, this kind of practice
is going to, um, backfire, as nothing of significance happens when the
millenium's odometer rolls over.
Four Horsemen and a Light Brigade charge the armored division of public
opinion. Film at eleven.
Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
