I understand why they did it, especially Waco. But were the repercussions worth it? Do we really want to go back to those days? Or is the plan to make sure the media never covers when the FBI, ATF, Blackwater’s latest incarnation or any other governmental group assigned to protect the very German-esque “Homeland,” burns up a family because someone said they might know something about terrorism? Or they waterboard to death 8 year old Suzy to try to get Dad to talk about his fictional connections?

We’re headed in that direction. The only difference is the media has now been corralled into going “anywhere but there.”

And, amazingly, the dynamic has flipped. Many of those who screamed the loudest regarding Ruby, angered by “jackbooted thugs,” many of those who defended David and his group, seem to support all this. They have become pro-Ruby Ridge, pro-Waco in the amazing flip-a-rooni partisans too often seem all too capable of these days: OTTDAWM. (“As long as they Only do it To Those who Don’t Agree With Me.”)

“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia”

-Orwell’s 1984

“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for…”

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

“We came for Blacks. We came for the immigrants. We came for anyone who might have had the thinnest connection with Communists, or religious Right Wing radicals. Now we come for you. All we have to do is claim you might have some remote connection to terrorism.”

-the state of affairs in America: 2010

Meanwhile those of us who did have questions about Waco and Ruby Ridge, but saw blame on both sides, are enraged at the direction the “war” on terror has taken us. Dare we ask..

“Brother can you spare… some of your righteous rage?”

Since Ruby and Waco we have lived in increasingly impoverished times when it comes to morals and ethics. Times where Timothy McVeigh’s actions are rationalized and those who do so cheer on those who put live wires on a man’s testicles in the name of fighting terrorism… and then adapting these tactics to our own citizenry. Don’t they see the contradiction? “Fraid” not.

They behave like a soldier who drops the American flag in battle and fight for the other side, while claiming they’re “patriotic.”

Imagine if; instead of waiting over 50 days outside the compound in Waco for example, they simply snatched cult members off the street and waterboarded them over and over. No warning. No bullhorns. No due process whatsoever. Played sex games with them as if they were blow up dolls, burned their holy books. Imagine if they simply don’t shoot Weaver’s wife, they locked up all the wives and children in trailers at well over 100 degrees under a hot desert sun. Accusations of them being beaten to death, children raped in front of their parents… you know the litany. No need in repeating. And can you imagine at the same time members of unrelated groups had their homes ransacked; searched while being accused of also being terrorists simply because they were Teabaggers, or members of some Conservative group. National Rifle Association members, Pro-Life groups, anyone associated with Libertarians or a religiously Conservative church…

Do you think Hell wouldn’t be raised?

Yes, it would it would be raised.

And Hell yes it would.

Of course, if passing health care alone creates such a big stink, “Hell would be raised.”

Recently it has been reported that the FBI; and other jumble of letters government organizations, have been spying on eco groups, anti-war protest groups, invading, without warrants, their homes: ransacking them in search of any excuse to throw them in jail. How long before they don’t need an excuse? If we follow the trends in this “war on freedom…” Ahem, excuse me… Officially called “war on terror,” we are only a few steps away from Ruby or Waco.

And my guess is many of the same folks enraged by Ruby and Waco cheer this trend on.

Hence my “not in my backyard”-like acronym: OTTDAWM.

And what the %$#@! is wrong with the Left these days? What will it take, something like Ruby Ridge? A Waco? Sadly, probably not even that. I swear they’d protest, at best, meekly. I saw this trend years ago when visiting liberal college students in Buffalo. When discussing how some in my generation had turned from revolutionary to Nazi, they spoke fondly of the Nam protests, King’s march and all the positive energy, passive resistance. And when I asked…

“Why wait for an aging generation to take a mantle back up again? You can do it. Organize. Get out there…”

They got real quiet. I was met with sudden cynicism that translated into, “What actually do something instead of get drunk, smoke pot and chase tail?”

Sigh.

We have become a caricature of the “good German.” Hear no evil. See no evil. Support evil when it’s personally convenient. Partisanship rules over all: even claims of patriotism.

And our president has yet to react to what he himself objected to: the continuing excesses of the war on terrorism despite orders to stop. Not just the excesses of the overseas prisons, but here at home where unrelated groups are spied upon and homes broken into. We saw all this during Nam and the 50s. We saw it during Bush II. But now we have a Democrat in office who campaigned, in part, against such excesses.

Seems the more things “change,” the closer the march unto Ruby Ridge and Waco become. And, frankly, compared with the destination the tactics of this “war” is taking us to? Ruby and Waco should be remembered as minor inconveniences in comparison.

And much of the media cooperates by shoving it all down Winston’s memory hole.

“Look! Over there! Isn’t that Lindsey Lohan? Paris Hilton? Quick! Pay attention to them instead!”

Now back to the “real” news.

And for you who wait in your own castles, your personal compounds? Just remember how ironic one 60s phrase may soon become…

“Burn baby, burn.”

Is that a mechanical hound I hear outside my door, or the FBI?

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
©Copyright 2010
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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