TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY--AND BEYOND

TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY—AND BEYOND

With our help, the terrorists have defeated us. They helped us create the Transportation Security Administration. “Get Scared, America!” is its motto.

Every two minutes in our airports, a serious voice warns us: be above suspicion, personally--and always be suspicious of everybody else. We must keep our luggage with us—or it will be confiscated and destroyed. And if we see any unattended baggage, or suspicious-looking persons, we must report them immediately. Everybody is a potential enemy—particularly anybody who isn’t a regular northern European looking American. “Be Vigilant, America!”

First we had metal detectors. Then shoes off. Then no liquids: but that was a bit extreme, too soon, so we modified the restriction. No more than three two-ounce bottles of liquid. (Who decided that it would take more than six ounces of a liquid explosive to do something awful?) Pat-downs. Now full body radiation scans. And sexual groping by specially trained gropers. And a cancer survivor required to take off her prosthetic breast for checking. “Be Terrified, America!

Be so terrified that you will submit to anything.

It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, wasn’t it, who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Let me suggest some ways we might really begin to protect ourselves and these United States.

1. Quit making enemies. Quit bombing Afghans and Pakistanis and then calling the people we kill “Muslim terrorists.”

2. Quit referring to Islam as “the enemy.”

3. Instead of more bombs, start rebuilding the countries that we have destroyed, house by house, village by village, city by city. And rebuild the infrastructure that our bombs have destroyed.

4. And start rebuilding the failed nation called the United States.

Build schools. Hire teachers, and more teachers, and more teachers.

Build decent housing for the poor.

Provide medical care for everybody except the rich.

Tax the rich. Tax all wealth that exceeds five million dollars at the
at the rate of 100%, and use the money to pay off the national debt.

Disband the military. Depend on moral strength instead of armed force.

Use the money we spend on the military—two billion dollars a day?—to
do good things, both at home and abroad. Teach our soldiers to build
things and help people, rather than to destroy things and murder people.

Lead the world in getting rid of nuclear weapons.

Quit honoring guns. Take them out of American life.

Quit pretending that God blesses America and nobody else. Only
a perverse God would bless us and the way we live.

Learn to honor peace.

Learn to make friends, and be friends.