Better Life End At Your Hand Than Theirs: R.I.P. Hunterby
Jim
Karger Previously by Jim Karger: Don't Worry About Your Guns: There Is Nothing Left To Defend
Last Rumble In Fat City; Never Apologize, Never Explain; Whooping It Up With the War Junkies; More Notes On The Death Of The American Dream . . . Hunter S. Thompson died 8 years ago this afternoon when a .45 caliber bullet fired from a Smith & Wesson Model 645 passed through his brain. He wanted it that way. Hunter was a profoundly gifted writer, sportsman, gun lover, and cultural icon. Mostly he was my mentor. No one affected my view of life more profoundly than he did. And I miss him But I am glad he is not here today, not forced to watch the death of the American Dream play out like a slow motion train wreck at the hands of low-rent fascists and warmongers while the General Public looks the other way. Hunter never liked government, he hated politicians, and it became especially painful for him in the final years to watch liberties washed away in the wave of fear that was 9/11. Indeed on that fateful morning, Hunter wrote prophetically, "The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now – with somebody – and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives." And, we have.
A Kingdom of Fear "America... a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." - Hunter S. Thompson In the years since 9/11, America has become a fascist state with a happy face painted over a pallet of ugly reality. Bush used 9/11 as a reason to destroy the Constitution beginning with the Patriot Act that led to the secret wiretapping of American citizens, causing Hunter to wonder, "Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?” Civil liberties advocates were likewise outraged and none of it made one bit of difference. No one wanted to hear about someone else's Constitutional rights when they were fear-pissing down their own legs. The Patriot Act turned out to be the warmup for the main acts that were to follow. Today, the government can intercept Americans' international communications without a warrant as long as one party to the communication is "reasonably believed" to be outside the US, as if being outside the U.S. is probable cause to believe someone is committing a crime. The government can now search any documents or papers, including the entire contents of laptops and other electronic devices, without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. Per a secret Department of Homeland Security Report, having a laptop computer or cell phone within 100 miles of any U.S. border results in the complete eradication of your Fourth Amendment right to privacy—and more specifically the right to be free from unreasonable searches. When asked how they came to the conclusion that was Constitutional, their answer was the same as always: "Fuck you," or words to that effect.
After 9/11, the US began incarcerating so-called "enemy combatants" in military detention without charge and without according them the status or rights of prisoners of war, all with the Supreme Court's approval, of course. That included a friend of mine who was standing behind the counter of his convenience store one day and gone the next, deported to Jordan by the U.S. government. Why? Because they could. The fact there was no war was irrelevant and everything seems fixable via semantics in the land of the free. In the U.S. view, the entire world, every square foot, is the battlefield, and if the U.S. government doesn't like you, you just may be an "enemy combatant," giving them the self-ascribed right to torture and kill with impunity. Obama was going to change all that, or so he said, including closing Guantanamo Bay, but instead ended up expanding that prison where people just disappear, people against whom there is insufficient evidence to get a conviction or where the evidence against them has been tainted by U.S. torture. And while Obama threw a bone to civil rights advocates, banning the use of torture by U.S. military and intelligence personnel, he has steadfastly refused to permit any review of Bush's use of hideous interrogation techniques that violate at least a dozen treaties and international laws. And, to show the world the U.S. is still the 900-pound gorilla with a serious grudge to settle, Obama continues the policy of "rendition" – where prisoners the U.S. government no longer can torture are sent to other countries where they can be tortured there.
Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) under cover of night on December 31, 2012, a law that permits the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. Combined with dozens of other Executive Orders and laws passed to "protect" us from terrorism, America has become a full-bore police State, and the most nauseating part is that most Americans didn't even notice. With the expansion of drone attacks and Executive Orders that suspend all civil and Constitutional rights at the stroke of pen, FEMA has gone from flood assistance to the manager of an Americans under Martial Law. Federal agencies with no ostensible use for guns or ammunition have ordered billions of rounds, including FEMA that also sports 2,500 brand new GLS armored fighting vehicles that for sure won't be used to fight forest fires, and a "corps" of young people reminiscent of the Hitler Youth of the 1930's. You think these kids would kill you if ordered to do so? Me, too. And FEMA is only one agency among many that purports to need a lot of killing tools, which makes sense only if government has no limitations. The Department of Homeland Security recently bought enough ammunition to wage a 7-year war with the American people along bulletproof checkpoint booths with stop and go lights which can be used for, well, your imagination is as good as mine. The list of Constitutional violations goes on but that's enough for now and would have been far too many for Hunter.
Guns: The Final Hurdle "Freedom is something that dies unless it is used." - Hunter S. Thompson As civil liberties are peeled away, government is presented with a final hurdle before control over the herd is complete: guns. Not their guns, but those 300 million guns in the hands of citizens. That just won't do. At some point, Joe Lunchbucket is going to wake up and not like what he sees out his front door and if he has an AR-15 with 1,000 rounds of ballistic ammunition, he can express his displeasure in a meaningful way. Joe's guns and millions of others clearly need to be collected and turned over to government. That is the clear intent. The only question is how. Like the rest of our civil liberties that have been trashed on the altar of 9/11 and the irrational fears that resulted, what government needed to move America toward full-bore gun control is exactly what happened: a maniac with a semi-automatic rifle (conveniently the exact type the government wishes to ban first) entered (or was released) into an elementary school to murder children and their teachers. A better anecdotal case for gun control could not have been scripted, unless, of course, it was scripted. Now, before I am arrested for that observation, I hasten to add that I am not saying the government was behind it, but only that it would not surprise me if they were. For sure government at all levels participated in the Big Lie and coverup that followed, to-wit, the shooter didn't actually use an AR-15 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle to kill those children, seemingly obvious since it was still in his trunk after he killed the kids and himself.
The mainstream press ignored the obvious and material, as did Obama and most Democrats in Congress, and all jumped on the event as a justification to ignore the Second Amendment, characterize gun owners as trigger-happy paranoid freaks, and outlaw weapons that look like (but are not) military weapons, stop the sale of high capacity magazines, and eliminate the right to sell any firearm without registration, the final step before confiscation, already proposed in more than one State, including a bill in Missouri that would ban semi-automatic rifles and give law-abiding gun owners 90 days to turn in their firearms to law enforcement or become felons. All ignore the fact that so-called "assault weapons" are used in only about 7% of all crimes involving guns. Indeed, shotguns (like the one being used by Obama in his recent effort to prove he is not anti-(all)guns) are used in crimes considerably more often than the weapons he claims pose an intolerable threat to public safety. Where this goes from here should be obvious to even a casual observer. The right to bear arms will continue to be weakened until it is as meaningless as the right to due process and equal protection. This go around it may be high capacity magazines, the kind that would give you a fighting chance against the bad guys at your door ordering you to come out with your hands up for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. Or, it may be registration – all guns, regardless of who sells them. Or maybe the U.S. goes the way of Canada and requires an advance "license" to purchase a gun with a requirement to then register it under penalty of law. That way government will have all the information they need to do with guns what they did (and may do again) with gold – confiscate them. (See Wendy McElroy's excellent piece entitled, "Will Obama Confiscate Guns and Gold." )
Even Mexico has been drawn into the play orchestrated by Washington, not surprising since the U.S. funds it's drug war south of the border to the tune of nearly $10 billion a year. After the ignominy of the U.S. letting weapons walk across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, Mexico is now requesting a list of all weapons sold in U.S. States that border their country, under the auspices of tracking down weapons that are used in crimes there. One need not wonder long to know that the U.S. is behind that request. Next will be demands under various treaties and war drums against guns will be heard even louder. The irony of it all will be missed, intentionally. Mexico, with some of the strongest gun laws in the world, is one of the planet's murder capitals with 120,000 killed and some 25,000 disappeared over the last six years. Why? Because in Mexico only the bad guys have good guns. That same reality has permitted horrible human rights violations against a defenseless population by the Mexican military. Indeed, in the last five years, the Mexican military opened some 5,000 investigations into human rights violations, almost all of which go exactly nowhere. And, the same is coming to a town near you. Soon, owning the wrong kind of firearm, a magazine that holds more rounds than the government is comfortable with, along with tens of thousands of laws and regulations that provide criminal penalties for behaviors we all engage in daily, will make us all criminals and it will be open season on those the government finds most corrosive to their plans. So be it. Hunter knew the endgame long ago, in 1971 lamenting that “in a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” Indeed. That is where we find ourselves. Don't get caught. Don't be stupid. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante. February 23, 2013 Jim Karger is a lawyer, and frequent contributor to The Dollar Vigilante, who has represented American businesses against incursions by government and labor unions for 30 years. In 2001, he left Dallas and moved to San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of central Mexico where he sought and found a freer and simpler life for he and his wife, Kelly, and their 10 dogs. Karger's website is www.crediblyconnect.com. Copyright © 2013 The Dollar Vigilante
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