What has America Become?

I am responding to a 'letter to the editor' which has gone viral among some circles. I felt I could respond to most of the concerns. Here is the letter and I'll pick up afterward.


Has America become the land of special interest and home of the double standard?
Lets see: if we lie to the Congress, it's a felony and if the Congress lies to us its just politics; if we dislike a black person, we're racist and if a black person dislikes whites, its their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but it is wrong to execute a mass murderer; we don't burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of communist and socialist threats by renaming them progressive; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.
You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it is wrong to use an animal.
We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work; we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology; we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being politically correct; parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games; the land of opportunity is now the land of hand outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help.
And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who's at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign.




Continue reading on Examiner.com: What Has America Become by Ken Huber of Tawas City - Fort Worth Christianity & Culture | Examiner.comhttp://www.examiner.com/christianity-culture-in-fort-worth/what-has-america-become-by-ken-huber-of-tawas-city#ixzz1E4ra1k5q






So, I'll break down the counterpoints per his points:


1. Lying to congress vs. congress lying.
- Oliver North seemed to skate through a series of lies to congress and land a job with Fox News. Isn't that special..


2. The black racist vs white racist.
-When my girlfriend spoke about her occasional 13.5 mile bike commutes to work (all while owning a car that worked fine) she was told "That's some white people shit. No offense." None taken, but naturally if she did the inverse of that situation, sought out a black person who doesn't physically exercise and proclaim "That's some black people shit," I'm sure she wouldn't be working there. I'm in a position at  work where things I do or don't get done are heavily scrutinized while my black co-worker sleeps at his desk and magically has 33% less of a file load than I do (since they don't assign him work when he's not present, which is a day or two a week, and I'm doing overtime on the other hand.) I don't think his being black is why he has less of a work ethic. I also don't think my claim of racism would be taken seriously since I'm white. So I agree with his opinion, but it's just that. What I wonder is why he is interested in having his racism accepted? Why not take the high road?


3. Not compensating Victims vs. millions to fund 'rehabilitation.'
- Nothing like getting raped and having to pay for your own forensics investigation 'rape-kit' because of some budget cuts made by Sarah Palin as governor. Meanwhile the guy goes to jail and watches Judge Judy on the public dime. But that's how you skrink government, by making more people responsible for their own condition. Unfortunately, a lack of responsibility for one's own condition is a good description of a criminal personality trait. I see his point.


4. Abortion is legal vs. it's wrong to hang Saddam.
-The possible debate stemming from this could take days. But, as quickly as I can, 1 Who cried for Saddam? Was there really a public outcry of note? I don't think so. And if people can't have abortions fine, but lets not rely upon the useless "Abstinence Only" public education model. The guy who authored this for George Bush was accused by his ex wife of repeatedly attempting forceful anal sex with her. He claimed in court that he was just having,, um, aim issues. So what is advice worth from a Gynecologist who can't find his wifes vagina?


5. Getting rid of Communist Threats by renaming them as Progressive.
-From another differently biased perspective, we renamed Progressive causes as a 'Communist threat'. I'm glad we didn't become the Soviet States of America, but I think we certainly did our part to demon-ize people instead of working with them peacefully to coexist. The spy game went both ways with both sides interfering in each other's affairs. The last group of Russian spies Caught in the US were an 'international incident' and we made this huge deal about it and then we swapped some of our agents for theirs because we were doing the same shit. The fact that we 'caught' their spies is probably that our spies got caught first doing something objectionable enough that they had to be stopped whereas the Russian agents who were guilty of doing stuff like applying to go to public colleges and then analyzing the enrollment process were monitored over time and, in my surmise 'caught' so we can get are guys back. Also, this guy's letter shows such a lack of faith in what our system of gov't has created so who is he to throw stones against another system? If my Ford is in the garage every month do I make fun of Dodges? Well, ok, yes, but only because they are in twice a month.


6.Crossing the Border VS Crossing the Demilitarized Zone.
-As someone who did patrols in the Demilitarized Zone, I hope my country keeps it's border policies as different from North Korea's as possible, even if it means *gulp* helping people. And to go back to 5, why is this guy against communism while admiring their methods. Need to talk about something letter guy?


7. "we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology"
-Agreed. But only because of number 8


8.Parenting has been replaced with ritalin and video games.
-Although the Socratic method of philosophical debate can boil down issues into a logical and agreeable point much of the time, America is more rich with a cultural history of Dumbassedness than Socratic debate. Therefore I debate his statement with 'we all support the constitution.' I think most people don't attempt to read it.


9. We give money to those who don't work.
-The guy who sits next to me at work is asleep some of the time. I agree.


10. We have freedom of speech but only if we are being politically correct.
-Ever hear of the WestBoro Baptist Church? They have freedom of speech. God hates fags. There, I typed it, lets see how long the cops take to come get me.


11. We teach homosexuality is OK but can't say God in public school.
-A. They teach diversity in school so people don't assault one another and think it's OK when it's actually a bias crime. If sex education was as effective as adversity education maybe abortions would go away like, oh, I don't know, lynching.
B. They've got all the God you want at private school. So do you want a gov't so big it has religious education options or do you want to exercise your conservative personal accountability and enroll in private school? If there's a public God school, so too must there be a public Gay school.  If you don't agree that that constitution provides that standard, you are probably the type who "support(s) the Constitution, but only when it supports (y)our political ideology"


12. Using human fetus's for research VS animals.
-Fetus? I think he means embryo. Like the embryo's left over for invetro fertilization that were just going to be thrown away if not used for stem cell research.


13. Hurricane Katrina VS Oil Spill.
-When the San Francisco great quake happened in 1906 the response through telegraph enacted a plan in the first day for govt troops to assist. Not so with the internet in 2005. On the other hand we once again need a huge government to satisfy this guy because we need a government that has oil drilling equipment and more know-how on how it's to be used than British Petroleum. Or perhaps just some more,, regulation? Like the regulation that flew out the window under an oil president?


14 pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park.
-Once again comes private vs. public. You don't have to buy a tv so arguably pornography could be available over the airwaves. However you need to order cable and specify you want a package upgrade that includes pornography. Violence is available with the standard package. The internet is less regulated (the idea of less regulation being all many republicans need to pleasure themselves) but once again, you dont' have to get a computer, and you chose to view whatever you'd like when you get the internet. And again with the mish-mashed beleifs. Are you saying you want the 1st amendment or not?


In many of this authors so-called 'double-standards' he's simply matching a freedom afforded to us under the constitution up against a public attitude which is not itself an actionable law. If you think gay people aren't equal theres no law against that. If you are racist it's not a crime. There are just popular opinions against these ideas. It's not a double standard for different kinds of Americans to have different beliefs. It's just America. If you don't like it move north of the 38th parallel.


Should this letter hold a lot of weight as being something really important? YES! Because it is just nothing more than a Mish-MashofBuzz-Words! And sometimes those are worthwhile.

Drunken Recollections of a Fight

I recently bought a Kindle having went back and forth on whether I needed that as my next electronic gadget, for reading and being inspired to write,, or a GoPro high definition wearable-camera for the cheaper thrill of recording biking excursions, dash-camming the douche-bag drivers of Austin and in the case of last nights missed opportunity, recording fights.

And the Award for Best Male in an Austin Bar-Scene Street-Fight goes to? (opens envelope) Roger Huerta!

Ok, so that didn't happen last night nor was I there. But it's probably the most famous street fight that year from right here in (single tear) Austin Texas's Entertainment District.

Not that I condone this kind of junk, although the adrenaline seeker and other-people's-misfortune gawker in me is drawn to it for reasons that satisfy the lower parts of my brain, but I'd sure as hell like to pull out a camera when it occurs and get better footage than this.

Last night outside of Plush (Red River and 7th) two males exited Swan Dive (Between Plush and Barbarella) and had an exchange of words. The second man to exit seemed to be following the first man out. We'll identify them as the man in the dayglo baseball hat and the man in the black shirt who seemed more concerned about not dropping his cell phone than fighting.

Hat man starting using his fingers and thumb like a big mouth and saying "Yap Yap Yap" to black shirt. He also laughed at him childishly. When the fight started, I was momentarily not paying attention but I saw the next few seconds of it where Hat landed a solid shot on the face of Black Shirt who was trying not to drop his cell phone. Hat man's hat fell off and during the middle of the swinging he ducked down to retrieve it in what was actually a somewhat skillfull maneuver to fool Black Shirt and take him off guard. Had Black shirt any fighting experience he'd have laid a devastating kick into the ribs or head of Hat man but then he might have dropped his cell phone or something. Hat man popped back up, placed hat on head, and walking away, laughed at Black shirt who followed him and got popped again on the face.

At this point Black Shirt is pursuing Hat man across the street to a waiting Party Bus that Hat Man is entering, albeit while walking backwards continuing to taunt Black shirt. Tyrone from Chappelles's Show was on the corner of red river and 7th across from Plush next to the Barbecue Stand. He flagged down a passing officer (fighting downtown is about as good an idea as peeing on the steps of a police station) and began explaining that (wasn't there to hear it but just guessing) Black shirt was the victim of an egregious crime: getting into a fight, fighting like a drunken 12 year old girl, losing, and feeling like a fag. Obviously this was a matter for the police and not just a lesson to be learned.

I don't really think either was the victor or the victim. Two guys fought, one landed two punches and got his hat back. The other guy didn't need to follow him outside. Hat man, for whatever he did to make the other guy angry, was retiring to his party bus for the evening when the other guy followed him, willfully fought him, lost, and in my opinion, should have just fucked off instead of following the guy down the block and getting the law involved in a matter of testosterhol.

As Noelle and I departed we walked past the bus and saw Hat Man in handcuffs, perhaps because he didn't have his half of the story told to the police by Tyrone.

Why didn't I stop to offer my appraisal of the situation? Intoxicated witnesses are often dismissed and occasionally may be themselves threatened with arrest for public intoxication or interfering with an investigation. So, peace and out.

I gotta get me that camera!

Soldiers Against the New World Order

"We got high and decided to go buy some Ak-47 ammo, which, at the time, seemed like the patriotic thing to do."

I have a life-long on-again off-again friend. When I was 24-25 years old he was my best friend and as 7 year olds at elementary school in rural Pennsylvania I, can say the same.  By the time we went to High School in the suburbs, we'd grown apart. Days after graduation I had left the scenic, sparsely populated river valley of my youth for military service. Four years later I came back to settle down, or so went the plan.

A few weeks after I left the Army and came home I remember driving down the local thoroughfare, a two lane road, and looking into my rear-view mirror to see the silhouette of a head in the car behind me. Through pane of mirror glass, my rear windshield, and his front windshield. No matter the fact that I hadn't spoke to him in at least 3 years, I could spot his head driving at 45 miles per hour through multiple bug-crusted glass of two aged Pontiac's, my Grand Am and his mom's Grand Prix. That's how familiar the guy's noggin was to me.

I saw him in the rear view, cracked a smile, and stuck my hand out the window motioning over my roof to the right shoulder of the road with pointed finger.

I pulled over carefully next to the abandoned post office, shut off my engine and exited the door. As I walked back I looked at his puzzled face, and upon getting it, he cracked a smile and jumped out the door as well. Next to the rocky cliffs, across from the rushing rapids of the river, two old friends approached one another.

"I thought I was about to get into a fight," he said as we met to shake hands. No worries, just thought I recognized the guy in the rear view. "I thought you were somebody I know but I couldn't think of who. How long are you in town?" For good now, I moved back down here. "How about that!"

How long do you talk to somebody on the side of a two lane highway? Not long, but you make arrangements to meet again, not on the shoulder of a road.

Steven worked for his father at a machine shop located off the side of that same road, albeit on the other side of the river and down a driveway that set the building between a creek and a steep embankment. Up the embankment and through the woods was his family's house and a field they'd hunt deer in each year.  The creek ran down to the river and we'd spent days as children fashioning small rafts to float frogs and crayfish down the waters. We'd surmise that within a day or so, they'd have floated to the Chesapeake Bay. Off to a world we couldn't imagine, those frogs.

Like most people I went to highschool with, I am somewhat reluctant to meet their acquaintance again. Too many awkward moments as we recap the times since and all I can think of are difficult military experiences matched up against their debauched college exploits. Steven didn't go to college as it turns out. He works with his hands, always had.

During one of our 'out' phases in middle school my mom told me we were doing to head over to Steve's house. She was friends with his mother and to her I was still a kid, and I, as a kid I was friends with Steve, therefore I still was.

But I haven't talked to Steve in like, a year. "Did you have an argument?" ... No."Then you can come with me I assume." I guess?

We entered the house and Carol, Steven's mom, said "Oh, he's in the basement." I thought it was funny that she also had no concept of the fact that we hadn't seen each other in a year.

I entered the basement and heard a machine coming from the carport. I walked that way and found Steven, at all of 14 years old, with a reciprocating saw and a series of cut-out diamond-board pieces. "Oh hey! Come and hold this for me," he said.  No matter to him how I got there after a year of him having his friends and me mine. He had acquired an alcohol fueled snow-mobile engine and was working to build a go-kart that could feature it.

Forward a decade from that night to about two years or so after we met again on the side of the road. His mechanical skills were as sharp as ever, although dulled to the monotony of day to day grind work at his father's old shop, which was now his.

As had become somewhat routine after I moved back to my hometown, I was driving home to my fathers house, where I lived for two semesters while I was on the GI-Bill and stopped as I was to pass Steve's shop. I sat at the counter by his cash register, a box of money with a calculator and notebook next to it. I lit up a cigarette and on this occasion, he dropped a bomb on me.

Up until this point we'd become friends again, heading out to bars and coming up just short of getting into fights with strangers. We brushed up on where we'd been for some time. Adventures, girls etc. It was fairly superficial until,

"Do you ever think about what you'd do if you had to leave it all behind and just take off into the woods?"

What are you kidding me?

"No, I'm serious.. I."

No, so am I, deadly 100 percent serious that I probably think about that like 9 times a week.

"I don't know sometimes man. I think maybe thinks are going to fall apart."

Well, I think about that too, the kind of 'Zombie Apocalypse" scenario, but even just like, hiking the Appalachian Trail, I think about that sometimes. I have some gear.

"I'm not talking about Zombies. I'm talking about Fema."

To put this into perspective, 2005 brought us Hurricane Katrina and between gun seizures and hard to believe stories of Police vs Citizen, which actually turned out to all be true, Steve wasn't the only guy with a little paranoia.

In 2009 when we are having this conversation in his shop, public trust is at an all time low nationally, but also locally. Covered somewhat prominently in national news and eventually turning into low hanging fruit for Michael Moore's documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story", Kids for Cash, as it was called, involved crooked judges in our area sentencing as many kids as they could to as much juvenile prison time as possible. The prison builder paid them a stipend per head and they became millionaires.

With children around us being sold to the machine, young adults becoming cannon fodder in a questionable war, and the general high idealism of younger 20 somethings (and the general boredom of rural Pennsylvania) I was apt to be interested in his tails of possible martial law, the central fear of the FEMA and  rex 84 conspiracy theory.

We met up at his house, a rented farm property complete with a barn where his many mechanical side projects were hid away. We'd head out to that barn with a twelve pack in hand and play poker, share stories, shoot darts. Inevitably the topic of revolution would arise.

"I like being up here in the hills. I'm growing a garden this year. I have a field to hunt in. I can clear out these stalls and grow some pigs. When you think about it, I can survive up here without anything from town." Farmer Steve.

I told Steve how he reminded me of Dick Proenneke. When he was 50 Dick retired and moved to Alaska, lived off the land with only the material possessions he could carry to his new home in backpacks. He built a whole compound to live in with a cabin, a tower for keeping his food from bears, eventually a wall around it all as I recall.

"That's probably where we'd need to be."

Alaska?

"Well think about it. There is a road to my house. If I was off the grid nothing could ever touch me."

The content of his new found views was getting pretty hard to beat around, so into the bush I went.

You are saying that living self sufficiently isn't enough because we are eventually going to be rounded up like the holocaust?

"Well, here's what I think. We have all this debt, and people are out of work. People are already stealing from one another. Around here there are guys who come siphon gas out of your tanks at night. I had to get a camera in case of that. I have had a break-in in the barn but the hit the side full of rotten potatoes and didn't get to see any of my quads I've been working on. My shop got hit and like eighteen hundred in chainsaws are gone"

So you're saying eventually society will just come apart?

" I really think so. Everybody I know is talking about how they don't know if they can make it to the next month and some of them even say stuff like they'll do whatever it takes. One guy tells me 'there's plenty of everything out there, we just have to start taking it.'"

Was he wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt?

"What's that?"

Nevermind. I think that stuff is a sign of the times. Look at the market. People get scared and the market plummets. The fear is that if they are the last person with their hands under the weight they will crush their fingers against the ground. So they dump their stock. But what happens before anything big hits the ground?

"What?"

The bailout. Our system of money is a con. Money costs more and more every year, that's why your dollar today buys less tomorrow. If you saved a nickel in 1960 to watch a movie at the theater today you show up $9.45 short, and here you thought with a dime you could bring your wife. When money is as messed up as that it leads you to believe they can solve this problem as stupidly as we got into it and I'm sure that's what will happen.

"That's it though. I think it's like a diversion."

What, money?

"Yeah. Ever notice how some people don't take it seriously and then they have it all? Ted Turner was millions upside down and how he's one of the richest men on Earth. I think some people realize it's a game and some don't."

Well what about the people who went upside down and now they work at Wal-Mart? His story is only fun because it worked out.

"Well what I'm saying is, I think money is a diversion to get us into a daily grind, get us competing with one another, at eachothers throats, sneaking into barns, stealing gas, and the people who control money have enough because they have all of ours because they are the government. And what do we really work for?"

He had me. I didn't know.

"The national debt."

Yeah but what does that really get anybody? The debt?

"All of that money that goes to taxes just pays the interest on the national debt."

But the national debt is just made up. Nobody got ripped off. Nobodies waiting for a check.

"The Chinese are."

I'm sure they got the money to buy our debt from the same place we loan ourselves money from. It's like a credit card. Nobody had to turn the thermostat down because someone didn't pay the credit card bill. It's just interest.

We went back and forth like this for some time. I was reluctant to accept his point. Some things about the Nation don't make sense but I might have assumed it was because I just didn't have the intellect to understand our financial system.

Whether he was right or wrong he had gotten to me at an interesting time in my life. I was coping with never being able to find work in the midst of the recession. I had anger from my combat experience and dealing with the bureaucracy of Veterans Affairs. I subsisted on the Gi Bill which was ample for an ordinary life, but it wouldn't last forever.

With these little talks about inequities between citizen and government, or our outrage and the mutiple felons in our local govt, I started feeling comfortable pushing myself back from society. I grew my own vegetable garden, which, in any context, is a wholly gratifying and therapeutic experience. I also stopped buying brand name cigarettes to roll my own instead. I brewed beer and collected bulk foods, often having over a month of protein and carbs on hand if not dairy and other 'luxuries'. Self reliance eventually become 'survivalism' is you use it to disconnect from the world. Maybe I never got that far but I started to let certain other purchases slide. I let my vehicle registration and safety sticker age to roughly 2 years expired. Revolutionary indeed.

Eventually, it led me to kill.

I tried not to act nauseous in front of the other hunters as I reached into the chest cavity and pulled out the lungs with my bear hands. I have had trouble forgiving myself since. A deer, not terribly large, gunned down with a 30-06. A fellow large North American Mammal. I ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner. No antibiotics, no MSG, no RBST, free range organic. Healthy all natural grass fed protein. But still, the blood on my hands.

In the summer I'd spend much of my time chopping wood with an axe, running, biking and doing 200 hundred push ups in as few minutes as possible, then trying to beat my time a few days later.


Steve and I would have another talk about things we'd read, strategies we'd learned to be self sufficient. We'd sit down and write a list of any food we could grow and then go find all of the seeds and write a schedule for planting along with notes. Watermelons, from Africa and die many degrees before it even frosts. Eggplants, start in a window several weeks early.

"You think we could grown rice?"

Yes, but I've seen them plan the stuff in Korea. Seems like a bitch-load of work for something I could buy a 5-year supply of for a week's worth of beer money.

"Good point. Where can we get vacuum sealed buckets then?"

My dad, as it turned out, was about ten times more convinced that the world was going to collapse than we were. I discovered this while remarking upon the price of gold.

I knew I should have bought it at $485.

"How's that?"

The TV just said gold is $1200 an ounce. I thought about investing in it at $485 two years ago and getting 4 ounces. I'd have made a good deal of money selling today.

"It's not about high and low Don, it's a ticket out of the country. It's a couple loafs of bread when people are shooting each other for it."

And that's when it all started to unravel.

I had always seen my dad as a product of his upbringing. If my son someday is as smart as I am I'm going to tell him all about my parents and hope he can tell me what I'm all about. I'm pretty sure my psychoanalysis of my dad is on point as he almost never surprises me.

Grandma was a severe presbyterian of some kind of 'end of the world' sect. Dad had become as dead set in his Atheism as his mother had been in her bible thumping, more than likely as a protest against her. How would you feel about the ideas that kept your mother in church 7 days a week while you needed her?

Eventually this happenstance conversation with my dad  came to undo my new world view. But not before, the trip to Wal-Mart.

Steve and I were a few beers into a case and I'd lost some money to him at darts. I was nearly about to win it back when he proposed we stop playing as was his style.

"Let's go buy some ammo."

My reaction to this was almost aways something like, Fuck yes! Why?

"I just want to know I have enough."

Perhaps his paranoia came from the fact that we had just ripped a bowl a few times. We were once again comparing notes on how to survive the enslavement of the human race. Step one, avoid the bread lines, they are a trap. Step two,I don't really remember so we'll just skip to having enough ammo.

We got high and decided to go buy some Ak-47 ammo, which, at the time, seemed like the patriotic thing to do.

Upon perusing Wal-Marts selection we decided that prices on ammo had become totally fucked.

"It never cost this much before. I bought like a thousand rounds for 100 dollars before. This is 40 rounds for $15. That's roughly,,, a 250 buck difference for a thousand rounds."

Don't forget tax.

"Yeah, fuck this."

We searched around and found out we weren't the only ones with a government enslavement phobia. The prices of ammo were like the price of gold. Spiraling upwards out of control.


Our initial reaction of course was not to give up, but to price equipment for making our own shells, which it turned out, was also climbing in price. Whenever there is a lot of money to be made, cries of conspiracy are not far behind. So what of the conspiracy to make our conspiracy cost more?

Look at my father and see the product of fear mongering. He can tell you the financial system, or bird flu, or political upheaval will bring about the end. Drilled into his head by an end times quoting religious mother and a childhood in the Cold War. The world ending was omnipresent in my father's mind for his formative years.

My childhood was spent seeing a world of plenty. The 90's provided for all and new wealth in technology and dot-com booms fueled a nouveau riche as well. Now, albeit in an economic lull, I started to question why the ammo makers were so rich in a time of fear.

Fear is the ultimate motivator. It's great advertising. Narcissism? Let's put fear and narcissism together. It's happened before.

Let's dissect the beliefs.

Grandma- God is good, devil is bad. The good are the people who pray and go to church and bad are out sinning and having short term fun.

Dad- Gold is Good, debt is bad. The good people provide for themselves and the bad people are out running up credit cards and buying motorcycles.

Steve and I- People are good, enslaving people is bad. The good people fight against the New World Order and the bad people are the unprepared who will sell out their own families to get bumped ahead to the VIP breadlines.

Call us crazy but during this time frame, The Road, I am Legend etc etc *** all came out to reflect on the numbers of people who were apt to receive the rapture message.


I realized the common elements between all these various raptures. I have knowledge of the end of the world. If you don't believe in my message you are a sheep who won't be saved. I am saved and that makes me better and wiser than you.

It's why the Jehovah's Witness is not afraid to be rude to you and continuously harass you to listen to him. It's why people have been burned at the stake. It's why we went on a ammo bender. Belief in the end times and the urgency of now to prepare. Grandma prayed, dad bought gold, I bought ammo.

In the same few short months that it took to get on board with the fun of frenzied paranoia, I excused myself from it. I searched online for anybody who could offer me any proof of government prison camps. I found that most people would just curse your out for not being on board with their beliefs.

What made me more ashamed that I'd entertained these notions of conspiracy is that like my father, I'm a shameless atheist. Only I didn't do it to rebel. The conspiracy theory as I came to realize is a whole lot like religion. The absence of proof is actually seen as evidence. 

In reading up on lists of purported FEMA prison camps locations, I found out that the military base I had lived on was marked on a google earth map as containing a prison large enough to hold 10,000 citizens captive. I had been stationed there for 2 years and explored every corner of the base and never found anything of the sort. The buildings that were supposed to house prisoners were a couple of old barracks that were renovated.

I pointed this out in a youtube video. I asked why they would enslave people in military bases when military bases would still serve a purpose during martial law. Why don't they assume college campuses would become prisons since the intelligentsia would be rounded up and nullified?  Or hey, ever see a Wal-Mart that wasn't made out of this cinderblock walls?

My video had over 8700 views at press time and almost 99% of comments are just insults to me, and anyone who comments positively on my ideas gets spam flagged until I unspam their comment.

I dug further and found out that some of the people making videos showing purported prison camps and railyards admitted it was just a scam to get a bunch of youtube hits fast.

It was a fun and entertaining horror story to pound some beers about in a barn in the winter of Pennsylvania but it was a fad that went out with Bush's presidency and the very valid cries of an over-powerful executive branch that came with it.

Until....

By the Spring of 09 I was off of it and had joined in the mocking of those still on board. When talking with Steve I'd still refer to the 'Break out' as he coined it. The mythical time when society would crumble leaving us to succeed as our ability allowed. I think we' d have made a good stand. Until the infrared camera helicopters came and gunned us down in the corn field. Fuckers.

He kind of gave up on it too. I might have inspired him when I told him I was going to move to Texas to follow up on a new life. He ended up moving to Alaska temporarily but came home to keep the shop alive.

The first time I came home to visit he enthusiastically showed me the pictures from his 5,000  mile drive across the continent.

In retrospect our fears of society crumbling seem funny from the perspective of now living in peaceful affluent  Austin. Then I think back about how much harder Pennsylvania was hit by the economy. I had my apartment broken into and hundreds worth of my possessions stolen. Steve's home and place of business were ripped off. We were somewhat entitled to our concealed carry permits.

I guess you can say Steve and I are 'off' now. I don't call, I don't know his screen names. He's not that kind of friend. I can't imagine what an Email from Steve would look like and I don't care to find out. I know what his head looks like and I'm sure I'll see it again.

We talked a few times about buying some dual sport motorcycles and driving them on and off road together. I figure one of these years I'll call him up to tell him he has 6 months to get one and then I'll drive all 1750 miles up there. I can get that old Pontiac out of the garage and running again and tow a bike trailer up there and ride around for a week with him. I'm positive it would pan out. I don't know if we'd ever bring up 'The Breakout'. I know I'm pretty embarrassed about it sometimes.