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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Thursday, March 6, 2003
00:32 - The Gestapo is upon us
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/crossgates1.html

(top) link
So there's been this flap over the Crossgates Mall incident over the past couple of days, even making it onto The Daily Show-- which as anybody who's seen it lately means that the show's ridicule was aimed squarely at the incompetence of the mall security guards and the oppression of the Peaceful T-shirt Wearers for Peace by the iron boot of The Man. It's all about the silencing of unpopular opinions-- and isn't that funny? Isn't that hilarious?

And that's what's been going on throughout the Net, too, apparently-- not many people have bothered to read further into the story than the "Mallgoers Arrested For Wearing Anti-War T-Shirts" headlines-- certainly not so far as to read the actual police complaint filed, which describes what really went on: a couple of guys were accosting shoppers and passers-by, getting into loud arguments, and generally causing a disturbance in what was effectively private property. Their t-shirts were just a part of the equation; they were seen as an "attractive nuisance", and when the guards asked the guys to leave or to change shirts, they refused to do either. At which point they became trespassers on private property. And isn't it convenient how nobody seems to recall that mall owners and patrons have rights too?

I swear, looking over some of what's happened with this case, you'd think people were unable to distinguish between the Big Faceless Mall Owners and the Totalitarian Police-State Government. It's all the Man, one way or another.

The natural knee-jerk response is to think, "Oh no! The forcible suppression of dissident ideas has begun! Let's all run for the border!" I'm put in mind of the scourge that runs through classic 70s rock, an otherwise musically very admirable genre, and possibly the last great one we've seen: the simpering and repetitive whine, from members of the richest and freest society the world has ever known, about needing to be "free". The sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply! Much as I enjoy the music, I swear the number of times I've wanted to reach through the speakers and strangle the songwriters through a nexus of time and space has neared my threshold of tolerance for idiocy.

And in that vein, my friend Zjonni ("batratblue" in the comments to this post) came up with a nice list of the things we are free to do in this country-- a list that no other country, quite frankly, can match; and it's not even as complete as it can be, either.

If Nazi-style fascism is a 1 and total libertarianism is a 10, we're floating around a 6 or 7; yet these dorks see an incident that even just looks like a drop to a 5, and they all scream out invocations of Godwin's Law. It's like someone rubbed off all their skin. It's like if you put them in the middle of the desert for a week and then sprinkled water on them, they'd wail about drowning.

And we're so terrified of offending them, or of resembling their accusations even in the slightest, that we let them win. Notice how the charges against these guys have been dropped? Notice how they became the victims in all this? Notice how all it took was a hundred protesters to come out and get in the cops' faces and tell them "No, you'll have to arrest us before we stop our illegal trespassing", before everybody caved in and started shoveling on the appeasement?

I hope the rest of us don't forget any of this, so that once it's all over they can't simply quiet down and slink away and thereby absolve themselves of this kind of thoughtless reactionary horsecrap.

Getting caught up in the heat of the moment is no excuse for failing to educate oneself, when one has unfettered access to the largest store of knowledge and facts ever assembled by mankind.


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© Brian Tiemann