The Tao of Spartacus Jones

Just Shoot the Bastards?

To "just shoot the bastards" or not to "just shoot the bastards;" that is the question.

I owe a debt of thanks to a good and wise friend whose acute mind I respect and whose nobleness of heart I cherish. That friend is one I trust because I can depend on him to be honest, that is, to disagree with me and speak his own mind. Just the sort of person I like to have around, and just the sort a President needs close to him.

There's a law of physics that says for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The law of karma says you will reap what you sow. Every computer geek understands the law of "garbage in, garbage out." And the law of justice requires the punishment to fit the crime. These are all expressions of the same natural principle of reciprocity, symmetry and balance. Poetry, if you will.

Believing this principle to be true because I have witnessed it in action countless times, I find that my first instinct regarding Mr. George W. Bush and his cohorts is not one toward leniency. It would take three men and a strong boy to carry in a complete account of the crimes these despicable people have committed, to catalogue the pain and misery and death they have caused to thousands and thousands of innocent persons, in particular the most defenseless: children.
Their cold viciousness is an outrage.
Mr. Bush, the killingest governor in the history of our country, not only mercilessly sent people to their deaths, but even mocked them for their desire to live, like a demented little boy pulling the wings off a fly — which, now that I think of it, might be the most apt description of him ever posed.
As the presidential figurehead, hand-picked by a long-standing fascist cabal and installed in the oval office by two fraudulent elections, Mr. Bush certainly makes no decisions. He does what he is told, speaks — or tries to speak — words written for him, his every moment carefully calculated and staged by his handlers. Yet, he seems sociopathically peerless for the role and he plays it with such vigor that he is as much a guilty party to the crimes as those whose greedy minds conceived them.

It is temping to follow the natural law here. Let Mr. Bush and the rest suffer the same tortures they have inflicted on so many others. Why not wire up his indisputably meager genitalia to a car battery? Why not send him on a "water-boarding" vacation? Why not cuff his wrists to his ankles and let him squat naked, hooded and vulnerable while dogs snarl around him? I can only think of one reason and, I admit, it may not be a very good one. But it's the only one I have, so it will have to do. Here it is:

This story is allegedly a true one, but it doesn't matter whether it is or not. It was alleged to have happened, coincidentally, on my birthday, but I may have been told that just so I'd never forget the story.
A few years after the end of World War II, in West Berlin, there occurred a terrible traffic accident. Two of the victims were a young boy and his father, who'd been one of the drivers. The attending physician saw to the father's injuries quickly. In so doing, the doctor happened to see an SS number on the man's arm identifying him as a former member of Hitler's nastiest group of murderers.
The son was much more seriously hurt than the father. It took the most heroic efforts, but somehow, against all odds, the doctor pulled the boy through. When the lad was stable and in recovery, the doctor sought out the father to tell him that his son was out of danger. The grateful man wept with gratitude.
It was then that the doctor revealed to the former SS-man quite a different tattoo on his own arm, a tattoo that he'd been given at a place called Auschwitz.
The irony was not lost on the former superman.
"You know," he told the doctor, "to be honest, if places were reversed, I don't know that I would have done the same for you."
"I understand," replied the doctor. "You see, that's the difference between you and me."

Maybe I'm clinging to this story as a lame excuse, to explain why it is that I haven't gone out, gotten a good rifle and eliminated at least one pusillanimous pustule from the aching backside of humanity.
There have been moments when I've seriously considered it.
But I've not taken that action, and I don't believe I will. Not because killing is "wrong" or because I'm afraid of what would then happen to me. Regarding the former, I think a good case could be made for either "self-defense" or for "necessity" in the "greater good" sense. As for the latter, if things go on the way they're going, what's going to happen to me — and probably to you, too — is foreordained.
No, I don't think putting a large hole in Mr. Bush's tiny brain is the best course, and here's why, in three closely-related points:
First, it would be much too quick and painless and, frankly, I think the man deserves to do at least a little bit of suffering, don't you? He'll never have the pangs of conscience or be plagued by the nightmares of remorse endured by better men, so that leaves physical pain. I think he's earned some.
Second, if I assassinated Mr. Bush, although it would be the moral equivalent of scraping a smear of dog droppings from the shoe of the body politic, it would be inescapable that Mr. Bush would be included in that category of "people who were assassinated," along with Abraham Lincoln, Medger Evers, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Ghandi and Martin Luther King. My stomach just churns at the prospect of a George Bush being mentioned in the same breath as any of these other gentlemen. He's unworthy of their company.
Third, I believe in the rule of law. The only way we can redeem our self-respect is to arrest Mr. Bush (and all his cronies), put him on trial for his monstrous crimes, and upon his conviction, send him to prison for the rest of his ignoble life. How else will we ever be able to look ourselves in the mirror without retching? How else will we ever be able to show our faces again in civilized public? What will it say about us, and what fate do we deserve if we allow a George Bush to literally get away with murder, and mass murder at that?

I have said I believe in the rule of law and that's true — as long as there is some law. But what happens when there isn't any? What if there remains no way to petition for a redress of grievances within the law? What if, as it was in Nazi Germany, the entire legal system is corrupt, with all three of our branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial — under the control of the ruling fascist junta?
And is that or is that not our very situation?

I have said that a reasonable course of action would be for a million armed and angry citizens to descend on Washington, drag Mr. Bush out by his heels and string him up from the nearest lamp pole.
Do I mean that literally?
No.
And yes.

I am not above using a bit of exaggeration to make a point and my point is simple:
any republic is only as good as its citizens.
We will enjoy precisely that amount of liberty we demand and fight for and not one scintilla more.
And we will suffer precisely that amount of tyranny that we will tolerate and not one scintilla less.
We are fools if we dream that somehow the Democratic Party — at best a collection of impotent idiots and at worst a cartel of devious collaborators — is going to save us. We are equally foolish to think that any other organization, or committee or group will magically imbue us with a strength or integrity we do not each individually possess. "Getting organized" is the pathetic last gasp of people on a sinking ship who drown standing in line, voting on which lifeboat to get into and what the seating arrangement should be, and who should be in charge — when they could just as easily swim to shore and save themselves.
Only cowards must fight in groups and cowards are easily defeated. This can work in our favor — and it can also work against us.

Further, as we learned from the COINTELPRO abomination of the late 60's and 70's, it is the special forte of the police, intelligence and other "security" forces to infiltrate "suspicious groups" and either dance them around in order to squander their energy and resources in ineffective ways, or to act as agents provocateurs, giving the authorities an excuse to make arrests.

Do NOT wait for a party, committee, or organization to tell to what to do, when to do it and how. That, you must certainly know as well as I do.
Instead, ACT.
Act as if your actions will make a difference and they will.
Act as if you have power and you have power.
Act as if you were free and you are free.

It's been said that Tyranny is when the people fear the government and Liberty is when the government fears the people.

Haven't we been afraid long enough?