[Part IV] Word Gets Out: From the Top Down

(typos corrected, May 22.)

Earlier we contrasted and compared between the madness of people who conduct driving tours to point out the neighborhood "crazy" people (including, allegedly, Yours Truly), and real dangerous things more worthy of concern. For example, the 18th Street Gang, early in 2009, surrounded and abducted a 15-year-old boy from a bus-stop and stabbed him 72 times and then dumped the body cross-county.

Next, we discoursed of Men and Mockingbirds. Mockingbirds make an immense amount of trouble in the world of birds, and carloads of gangsters circulating around Montgomery County can do the same. You'd never suspect either a mousy little bird, or crappy late-model Nissan Sentras and Civics full of young central-americans to capable of so much hell-raising, and that's how they get away with it.

In Part III we covered heinous crimes here -- and elsewhere -- which were clearly gang-related, and pointed out that our pattern detector indicates that most of the most-heinous crimes in recent months have been committed by illegal aliens, most of which had at least loose associations with notorious gangs of transnational scope.

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I beg the reader's indulgence -- and beg them to cultivate an attention-span capable of handling a lot of subtle nuance of complex thought -- and beg pardon in advance for a bit overmuch seeming "circumstantiality".

If you have time, read the digressions, if not, go to the Main Article.

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People say I'm crazy, but it's not the people who meet me here and there around town. People who I meet randomly, with whom I have ordinary conversations about the topics that are in the news, probably come away thinking that I'm pretty well-informed, actually think about what I've read or seen in media, and that I'm struggling to emit proper grammar above a slight speech impediment. Well, I cannot read their minds and so I can not say for certain that this is the impression they have, but they generally seem to be willing to continue the conversation as time will allow and either of the parties interest can be maintained.

The people who say I'm crazy -- as in, dangerously disordered and perhaps criminally insane -- are people I've never met, for the most part. The vast majority of mental health professionals will say. when they hear someone else using the word "crazy", "crazy isn't a word that we professional use. It's more than a bit imprecise, and has so much stigma attached to it that it is far more of an insult and an incitement than it is a diagnosis".

From this, one would conclude that anyone actually using the word "crazy" is in no way enough of an authority to have an opinion on the subject.

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Many of the people that I meet at random, while shopping or wandering around on my various errands -- with whom I exchange bits of conversation long or short -- are pretty relaxed once they understand that I can and do speak with some depth on matters of timely topicality, national newsiness, and even local politics. Here we may agree to disagree but we disagree agreeably. Such is the nature of civil discourse.

Many of the people I meet in fairly predictable places -- such as various retail stores, etc. -- frequently evidence a change in behavior between our first encounters and subsequent encounters. Where before they had been initially a little tense and then relaxed somewhat as the strange became familiar, now they exhibit the cautious artificial relaxedness, a sort of forced "pretend everything is normal" sort of stance, as if they are trying to not give away that they're ready for anything.

For a long time, I encountered this for so long that I just assumed that this was how everyone was at all times: all keyed up, trying to act casual, but expecting to have who-knows-what break loose with little or no warning. And I wondered how long society could last like this, with everyone on guard against everyone else, and it was at this time when I began to wonder how, exactly, it was that we as a society came to be so fucking crazy.

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I must digress yet again: there is a famous story about the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius.

A powerful prince heard of Confucius's reputation, and insisted that he take a long and dangerous journey overland to come to the court of the prince. Confucius and his retinue had no choice but to comply.

Yet when Confucius was at the court of the king, he was seated near the prince in a position of middle rank of honor, generally reserved for wealthy guests who were permitted to attend and observe, but who would almost never speak, and who were not to be approached. Confucius attended for many days, but he was never addressed by the prince, nor for that matter by anyone. Confucius felt misused, being brought all of this way simply to sit there and do nothing.

Confucius began to whisper to his retinue, "so-and-so has just entered; he is wearing a lovely brocade in green and gold. So-and-so has now entered, he is wearing fine silk garments in gold and red. The ornaments are lovely throughout the court, the hangings of the most superior workmanship, the calligraphy is very learned," etc etc. Confucius did this at all times when he was in the court.

Eventually, after most of a month, Confucius begged for leave to depart, and leave was granted, and even as he begged leave and took his leave when departure was granted, he carried on with a monologue of description.

Out on the road, the wise man ceased his monologue. One of his retinue asked him, "Master, when we were at the court, you carried on a descriptive monologue. Yet we were there, we had thought, so that the prince might question you and learn from your wisdom. Yet he never did, and you merely stood in one place and, unbidden, described all who came and went. Why?"

And Confucius said, "regarding my descriptions of all who came and went, this is traditional when in the company of the blind."

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As appendage to my digression, let me note that another, later, wise man once said "there are none so blind as those who wish not to see."

I would update this, in the modern day, to add "...other than those who both wish not to see, and who have been prejudicially misinformed".

How did we, as a society, get to be so fucking crazy?

Perhaps it was by listening to wandering packs of unqualified bozos who carry slanders to the reputations of others, rather than forming our own opinions of those others over time.

Who the hell are these people?

More importantly to your own sanity, why do you listen to them as if they knew whereof they speak?

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To digress even further -- I'm feeling very digressive today -- I should point out that most people aren't interested in buying a weapon unless they feel that they have reason to fear for their lives or for the lives and safety of their loved ones.

In the same way, it might be a little difficult to maintain levels of taxpayer funding for mental health-care clinics and outreach programs if you don't have a widespread public fear of mental illness. If you don't have widespread perception of "crazies wandering the streets", mostly people don't much care about the funding of mental care and outreach. Homeless people only concern most taxpayers when those homeless are seen everywhere, begging at storefronts and intersections and sleeping in public places.

So, if you think that there is insufficient widespread public apprehension of mentally-ill persons at large in the community -- and thus that you won't be getting the funding you want to spend -- all you have to do is to send a few of your staffers out into the community to "alert the locals".

Nothing like a nice Witch Hunt to drum up business for your clinic! At least you'll see dividends on your stock investments in local hospitals if the "alerted locals" put your witch-hunt targets in the Emergency Room and they wind up getting billed at rates for the uninsured, usually about four times the rates of insured persons.

Once again, despicable misuse of reputable office -- for personal profit -- provides plausible motive, means, and opportunity. Now all you need are targets such as people in subsidized group homes.

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Digressing even more: You can take a perfectly sane cat that has a long tail. You can put a perfectly sane cat into a small room that is filled with rocking chairs. Put people in the rocking chairs to rock the rocking chairs.

The first time the cat moves his tail wrong, a rocking chair will squish its tail. This will make the cat rightly angry, and it will lash its tail to indicate its displeasure. Of course, the more the cat lashes his tail, the more the cat gets his tail caught in the rockers. Before too long, that cat will be crazy with pain, with anger, and -- if it can think clearly enough -- rage for whoever put it in this ridiculous situation.

But this cat isn't actually crazy, although anyone might think so who lets it out of the room and then tries to pick it up. It's not crazy, it's just been through a lot. It has been repeatedly traumatized. The cat isn't crazy, not so much as the situation it was in was crazy. Far crazier than the cat, if you stop to think about it, was the person who set up the experiment, and the people who kept rocking their rocking chairs even though they had to understand that all they were doing by rocking was torturing some poor cat in a madman's cruel experiment.

Stop rocking the chairs, or move the cat out of the room with the rocking chairs, or move the rocking chairs out of the room with the cat.

In any case, since it's clear that harm is being done, and no good can come of it, stop doing that.

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Digressions complete!

Now let's get to the meat of the article.

First, the Gazette reports the suspects list for the murder of a 15-year old abducted from a bus-stop and stabbed 72 times has grown to 10 individuals.

I suppose that when you do the math, that's only 7.2 stabs per individual, which makes it merely viciously-criminal, rather than criminally-demented as if one individual stabbed some teenager 72 times. Face it, if one person stabs one other person 72 times, that's either deeply personal hatred or seriously-psychotic serial-killer sex-substitute or something equally twisted. Ooops, that's right, only one weapon was involved and they went home and used to to spread ketchup on their meatloaf.

Secondly, the Gazette further reports that new Driver License Rules go into effect June 1. though it will be 2014 before the very last illegal alien's valid Maryland license expires, this is a great day for which many Marylanders have worked long and hard, myself among them. I have been fighting for public safety through deportation of illegal aliens since the mid-1990s, when the Mexican BOLSA stock-market collapsed and the first mass wave of invasion saw nearly a million people illegally cross the border in just the first half of 1994.

Indeed, astute readers will remember my letter to the editor to the Gazette in which I pointed out that since half of 2008's murders of citizens were by illegal aliens, with different immigration-status-checking policies in place, the County government could conceivably have cut the murder rate of 2008 in half. Much public outcry was added to my own, and all persons arrested in Montgomery for crimes of violence and for weapons violations are to have their immigration status checked against the databases of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But, as in the title, From the Top Down, we find wonderful news from the Obama Administration, in a Washington Post article, U.S. to Expand Immigration Checks to All Local Jails: Obama Administration's Enforcement Push Could Lead to Sharp Increase in Deportation Cases (Hsu, Spencer S, Washington Post, May 19, 2009).

I'm looking forward to seeing how Montgomery Executive Isiah "Ike" Leggett can possibly analogize demands for increased county assistance in enforcing Federal Immigration Law to slavery, as he has done in the past. Further, I'm anxious to see how he can make very thinly veiled attributions of Racism as the sole motive, considering that the President himself has been widely hailed in Montgomery political circles for being the "first black president". Really, I'm waiting.

I've been at this fight for re-establishment of national sovereignty -- a nation that cannot control its borders is not truly sovereign, nor will it long remain a nation -- for 15 years now. I can wait a little longer to see what hoops Mr Leggett and his appointed law-enforcement personnel will jump through. Will Mr Leggett continue to condemn demands for local assistance (or even mere enabling) of enforcement of immigration laws as being rooted only in diversity-hating racism and Republican extremism from the Reactionary Right? Or will he finally get the message that even the First Black President thinks that enough is enough and that it's time to put public safety first?

Or will they wait until another Tai Lam gets shot dead on a bus, or until another Guzman-Saenz gets stabbed dozens of times, or another elderly lady gets her house burnt down around her, or another elderly lady gets tied up and beaten to death in her own home in a burglary gone murderous?

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More to come? Tune in tomorrow, I might even tell you exactly how "crazy" I am. Hint: as crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs... and for about the same reasons.

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