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Say what???!!!
Three men have been arrested in Chicago ahead of the NATO conference there. The trio has been charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism because ... wait for it ... because they had incendiary materials and were plotting to make Molotov cocktails. Beer-making equipment was seized.
The trouble with the miasmic world of "terrorism," of course, is that it aims to cut off dangers before they can be perpetrated. Since no one can see reliably into the future, those being paid as counter-terrorist activists are left guessing and that guessing extends further and further from any credible danger. A car-full of explosives may seem like a good bet. But what about a knapsack? Or shoes? Or underwear? Or toothpaste tubes? Or maybe just the thought processes individuals might have?
It's a politician's or a bureaucrat's wet dream -- millions and millions and millions of dollars spent in the 'prudent' pursuit of defending a nation and its fearful residents from what is imaginatively imagined and only occasionally is true. And the news media trot obediently along, reporting without really doing the real reporting. Freedom of movement and thought are curtailed ... who knows what evil may lurk around the next corner? But the prudence of "terrorism" is imprudent in spades. And it is getting more imprudent as time passes: The genie is out of the bottle around the world and mediocre minds are unlikely to put it back where it belongs.
I have a two-gallon container of gasoline in a shed out behind the house. I use it for the lawn mower or the weed-whacker, but it is true that I have had Molotov cocktail fantasies ... not least when I think of the ascendency of the expositors of "terrorism." I dislike what is worthy of patriotism demeaned and diminished by "patriotism."
Molotov cocktails for Christ's sake?!
PS. And in another bit of cognitive dissonance, the state of Maryland has decided that gay divorce is legal in the state ... even though gay marriage has yet to become the law of that land.
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