September 10, 2005

As the great waves from hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, the city gradually crumbled into ruin. Walls of water breached the levees and flooded homes and businesses, toxic chemicals and raw sewage were churned into the flood, snakes and swarms of fire ants floated among the poisonous brew and the people trying to escape it. But although the situation in the south has calmed and the deluge is receding there is yet one more wave, the most powerful and far-reaching of them all that will soon break across our entire country. Its long term effects will be far more destructive to many more people than anything we have yet seen.

I am speaking of the tsunami of government laws, policies and regulations that will be rushed virtually unopposed through a legislature suddenly desperate to justify its existence. Rushed through by our internationally ridiculed, self-humiliated rulers who will now do or say anything to convince the country that this tragedy was not the result of their obvious corrupt incompetence but came about because they need to acquire greater and more specific powers. Oh yes, and more of our money. Hundreds of millions of dollars, billions more likely, to be expropriated in the interest of concealing the fact that the trillions we have already been suckered out of have apparently just vanished.

There will be a big push to expand some of the more inherently fascist provisions of the Patriot Act by adding looters, rioters and the uncooperative to the open-ended list of "terrorists". This will effectively eliminate such people's constitutionally protected rights just when such rights are most inconvenient for the government. They may find themselves imprisoned in secrecy, denied trial by jury or just plain summarily executed.

And let us not forget what is sometimes called The Domestic Terrorism Act of 1996; rushed virtually unopposed through the legislature in response to another tragedy, one that Washington could not only have handled better but probably could have prevented all together; the Oklahoma City Bombing. If anything totalitarian seems to have been omitted from the Patriot Act it's because it was already available in this one. With very minor adjustments these acts would provide a quasi- legal foundation for any means our rulers might find necessary to quell future disturbances, especially the now apparently real possibility of mass insurrection in the face of inevitable government failure in any disaster on a national scale. Remember that this grotesque legislation does not just punish those proved guilty; it allows the state to suspend human rights and render legally helpless anyone it designates as merely a 'suspect'. In a crisis, anyone not doing whatever they are ordered to do is a 'suspect'.

Such bodies of law are a natural political tool for putting a whole nation in lock down, a means of not only acquiring power far beyond the limits of the Constitution but rendering such power almost completely free of accountability. It should also be possible, with some minor tweaking of either act, for Big Brother to claim the authority to forcibly disarm the citizens of any area it has designated as unstable. For their own good, of course.

There will probably be many lawsuits filed by those injured or 'traumatized' during their stay in mass shelters where they were apparently held as virtual prisoners. To indemnify themselves in the future the state and federal governments must create for themselves as much authority as possible to concentrate citizens at specially prepared internment facilities and once they are there to restrict their movements to whatever degree is felt necessary. Legally, of course. Sports stadiums are ideal for such projects, especially those with large and strongly enclosed parking lots. I would expect laws requiring such places to hereafter maintain a supply of emergency provisions, medicine, water etc., as well as regulations creating new standards of parking lot enclosures; minimum fence heights, acceptable placement of razor wire, etc. Such 'common sense' precautions would of course protect the occupants from hostile forces on the outside.

In light of the supreme court's recent outrageous expansion of eminent domain I think it is safe to anticipate further assaults on the rights of property owners. If one's home or business can be stolen from them in the hopes of generating greater tax revenue, think what ravages could be justified under the pretext of 'public emergency'. Forget the 3rd amendment and the 4th and the 9th; that famous slogan of Germany's National Socialists, "The public good comes before the private good" will again be dusted off and waved about. And if it is waved about often enough then hopefully the citizens will forget that in America the public good is the private good.

But there are lessons we can learn from the Katrina tragedy, ways to protect ourselves when history rolls around again, as it always does. Let's say a group of people were to suddenly find themselves trapped and helpless in a flooded, lawless landscape and it is not an election year and they are not major taxpayers or big campaign contributors, how can they possibly get Big Brother to respond? Simple; just spread the rumor that to ease their suffering they are using medical marijuana. There will be federal goons all over that situation like ugly on an ape.

Come to think of it, maybe that's not such a good idea. The thought of human beings treading water in a fetid stew of sewage, snakes, toxic chemicals and government agents is too ghastly to entertain.

Lee Robinson welcomes your feedback!

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