Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  As it turned out, this political calculation of including Bush the First on Reagan's ticket was unnecessary. Reagan himself, not the party, swept to victory by a comfortable margin. Arguably, he would have done so even without the worm contingent. Yet, the nation which Reagan loved so much would be left to deal with the invertebrate legacy which would remain.

  My early understanding of politics was taught in our high school by a deceptively clever woman whom I shall call Mrs. Hooch (the thinnest film conceals her actual name). She taught the intricate interweaving of federalism, individual merit, and states' rights. And the essential role which states' authority versus the national government plays in defending our liberty.

  The most brilliant political scientist I have ever known or heard, Mrs. Hooch once applied for a patent just to see how the process worked. And so, as a young woman she had applied for a means to measure how far a turtle would move in a day by playing out a string affixed to its shell.

  She often mentioned this example to illustrate the importance of tweaking with absurdity systems which might otherwise seem intimidating. These tweaks, she taught, revealed how these systems react. In the process of discovery, the tweaker might learn something valuable which had previously lay hidden from view. I have spent many years since tweaking system after system to my endless delight.

  Mrs. Hooch, mistress of the turned phrase, taught Constitutional government. In so doing she imbued me with a respect for the ideal of this nation which affected me to my core and continues to do so to this day. No thinking person could sit through her classes and not decades later remember her fondly with dewy-eyed affection. Her favorite technique would be to raise issues from current events, and then ask for the constitutional perspective.

  Our little mushy brains would spout some nonsense we had heard on the one or two fuzzy rabbit-eared television stations, and then she would pounce: "Fo get whut you heuh, fo get whut you HEUH. Whut do da Con sta too shun SAY?" she would demand, her piercing birdlike eyes emphasizing each syllable by darting to each of our faces in turn.

  These gazes were timed in concert with slaps of her wrinkled brown hand on the desk, demanding we think for ourselves. At first, no hands would rise, hoping to escape further wrath. "Get yo book and READ, chill wren. Don let no wun tell you whut ta thank, you thank fo YOSEFF!" Timidly rustling through the textbook, thirty or so sets of grubby nails would rustle the few pages which defines our entire corner of civilization. In a ritual repeated throughout the many semesters she taught her course, eventually one hand would timidly edge skyward.

  In my class, that hand was attached to the gawky body of a tallish boy with an impossibly large head. Hearing his answer, she leapt from the desk in excitement, clapping her hands furiously, tears in her brown and aging eyes, "Good good GOOD chile, YOU thawt fo YOSEFF!"

  Seeing the reward of our classmate, the rest of us, one-by-one, would begin to participate. That young boy would one day handsomely grow underneath that impossibly large head and become the head of the Mississippi Democrat Party. And possess an understanding of the Constitution and the role of state governments which eludes many on the so-called right, its presumed protector, or for that matter either party.

  Eventually, as the semester progressed, dozens of chill wren would defend day positions by pointing at passages from day book. And discuss the finer points of da Constitution, fogettin whut dey heuh, an thankin fo dayseff. And so, less than ten years later, as a Marine officer in war I sat in the desert some months after its premature conclusion. I forgot what I had heard parroted by my peers. I thawt fo myseff, an whut I thawt was that President George Herbert Walker Bush was a worm. And that he was only one of the many among the vast masses of the electorate of the nice for whom understanding of or respect for the Constitution eludes.

  As Vice President, he spearheaded the new offensives in the War on Drugs. I saw these as an expansion of the national government's restriction of individual liberty. Taught in school as a necessary evil to protect us from bad people, drug laws originally began as a way to protect the stupid from themselves. Later these laws expanded as a way of suppressing the predominantly black recreational marijuana users without being explicitly racist. For similar racist reasons it would become increasingly illegal to harm a dog which threatened you.

  No one, especially not the oh-so-very-nice, would simply say that the powers of the age wanted to arrest uppity black people. Because to say that wouldn't be very nice. Instead, by framing marijuana users in the early twentieth century as menaces to white womanhood, onerous powers were given to government which would have caused shivers to the founding fathers.

  At first these powers to arrest the harmless who simply smoked themselves into poverty were limited to state governments. But, over time the collective enabled an increasingly powerful national government. Under this corrosive influence, these would become national crimes as well. And in their nationalization, take away the power of the states to decide these issues for themselves. Or for their citizens to choose among these state decisions by voting with their feet. For the recreational user, there would be nowhere to flee. The more backward jurisdictions were given practically unlimited power to frame and arrest. Power supplemented by the invention of prohibition, petty tyrants began to infiltrate the law enforcement profession in increasing numbers.

  This infiltration of the unworthy and constitutionally ignorant behind the badge, slow at first, progressively eroded public respect for the law. The county sheriff transformed from the protector and instrument of the will of the productive into an instrument of mistrust who sought to take away a man's right to support himself. The mere production of a product which others want, and in this case moonshine, was either taxed heavily or prohibited outright, depending on the year. And so the sheriff became known in places as a collaborator of the hated national revenuer, despite whatever merits an individual lawman may rightfully possess. And turned the foothill farmer into a criminal who became increasingly desperate, leading to such innovations as NASCAR.

  As long as criminal consequences remained low, so did the cat-and-mouse game remain almost a friendly competition between neighbors. The purveyors of what had been once roadside weeds and preserved corn continued to ply their trade in defiance of the forces of niceness. The forces of niceness said they only wanted to protect idiots from themselves, and increasingly demonized the outlaw. The sheer defiance of the outlaw itself justified stiffer and stiffer penalties. As the stakes rose and generations passed, so evaporated the pretense of neighborly respect between criminal and the law, or any of the populace who might serve as witness. And then it turned ugly. Such is the legacy of the nice.

  At some point the repeal of prohibition restored some degree of sanity to the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of alcohol. But the use of other intoxicating substances, and the enforcement ethic, would remain in the legal backwater to grow into the menace we know today. The ugliness came to demonize the gun, and so draconian laws were passed to limit the arms which the people may lawfully bear. The more reasonable approach would have been a repeal of the legal environment against purportedly free citizens which had created the ugliness in the first place.

  The same weapon thrust into the hands of an involuntary draftee, formerly defined as free, for firing at someone wearing differently colored clothes, lest he face the noose, would be denied to the free citizen. The forces of niceness who create needless wars and their unfortunate consequences can rarely admit their mistakes. Because of this lack of collective character, the increasingly stiff laws against drugs would only grow stiffer still. And with worse and worse consequences, all in a downward spiral of insanity.

  The baby boomers then faced their own tightening of the screw. Eating through their parents' savings like a horde of locusts, they cast off any sense of virtue or self-discipline like the generation of spoiled brats they are. They destroyed any institution of value for those of us who closely followed, and took to drugs as one of many forms of rebe
llion against prosperity and the individual. The elder generations, not willing to let their little darlings choke in pools of their own vomit, blamed the molecule and the chemist but not the child.

  So, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while civil rights leaders were advocating for a liberty already won, both the left and the right significantly enhanced drug legislation. And handed powers of unprecedented oppression to themselves. Both sides set their differences in policy aside and colluded in destroying the remaining dignity and purpose of the individual. This goal was far more important to them than any superficial distinction between them. Normally, this false distinction was paraded about us for our distraction when convenient, but this was not the time for disunity among the collective. The all-important battle against the individual was enough to unite them.

  Conservative pundits argue that we can't let addicts destroy themselves as we will then be forced to pay for the consequences. Not if we just say no to paying for these consequences and let them starve in their stupor. This simple answer should easily occur to the minds of those who oppose socialized medicine, but on this issue simplicity escapes them.

  To cede this point would deprive collectivists on the right of their main weapon against individual liberty. The collectivists are buoyed by millions of adherents who trade their liberty for a warm feeling in their hearts as they think about how they protect their children by destroying their freedoms. The same pundits who nurse their private addictions safe behind riches which protect them from prosecution demand the stiffest penalties for the poor or middle class caught in their web. Or planted with false evidence to punish some other defiance, the very classes they advocate to save suffer as the collective applies the nightstick or taser.

  And in so doing, advocates of this insanity create more dependents on the state in the form of prisoners who must be fed, housed, and clothed, and then monitored after their release. These millions, by virtue of their permanent record, will never be afforded the opportunity to live up to their fullest potential to our collective benefit. Meanwhile, their wives and children are accused of crimes by association or threatened with placement in foster homes of dubious safety. Thus their loved ones are held hostage to the whim of the state in enforcing their compliance to turn in their brethren. This system of coercion would make any drug kingpin proud. This system destroys the unique American individualism which defined our heritage.

  Midway through the eight years of progress and genuine enlightenment which was the Reagan legacy, the President was busy destroying the Soviet Union. Distracted by this enormous task, he appointed Bush as the head of a task force devoted to bestowing the status of public enemy upon the coca farmer in Latin America. In this effort we, as a nation, decided to repeat the criminalization of the American foothill corn farmer and entrepreneur upon these others. But this plan had one little oopsie. The coca farmer's local constabulary was still his friend and protector, and amenable to purchase if not. These officials were far from the domestic well-trained and fully-indoctrinated agent of the forces of nice.

  Rather than creating the Latin version of the Duke Boys, with lifts and spinners equipping their gaily painted roadster with that funny-sounding horn, we encouraged them to create indigenous paramilitary cartels. These would grow later into international drug cartels, with quasi-official local support. This evolution, after all, was the only rational response left to embattled farmers when faced with a foreign power who wanted desperately to buy their product at ridiculously high prices. And who wanted desperately to kill them for filling that demand.

  These cartels survive today, growing ever more stealthy and powerful, and violent, products of an evolutionary system which need never have existed. Being havens in which terrorists and enemies of all ideologies can purchase sanctuary, they now serve as one of the greatest threats to our national security. And yet, despite all their power, they could be felled, to a man, with acclaim of Congress and a stroke of a Presidential pen. This pen of power would remove their market by eliminating the crimes which support their prices. In so doing we would reduce their fields to mere agricultural colonies for legitimate businesses rather than the printing presses for illicit profit they are today.

  But to do so, the collectives of nice of both sides of the political aisle would have to abandon their control over the individual. Sadly, this is a price neither is willing to pay. For the children. Children they eagerly await to imprison for life in order to save them.

  And so it was under his watch that Bush the First, in his tenure as the Great Man's Vice President, took the controls of this system of oppression for himself. Under his watch he strengthened it further, advocating an Office of National Drug Control Policy. The head of this office was to be known as the Director, but informally known in this nation of free men as the Drug Czar. As President, Bush the First would appoint in this post William J. Bennett to supervise the further erosion of liberty in this nation. Its first director, Bennett would pen notes for his future satirical book of virtues, all the while struggling with gambling, smoking, and drinking vices in his own life. In his official capacity, he denied the less-connected fewer opportunities for mistakes than he procured for himself and his friends.

  Internet Research

  Research William John Bennett, formerly Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Overseas, the long period of nothing following Desert Storm in which we weren't allowed to go home yet became known to us as Desert Sit. During this pointless exercise the national leadership debated how to extract themselves from the decision of not pressing the attack into Baghdad. In these months we heard reports of the Iraqis chanting "Bush Bush Bush" in the streets and carrying posters of his image as they had done with Saddam six months before. Finding myself longing for the lucrative Bush poster concession, I listened to my fellow Marine officers in our tent of twelve marvel at how we had just created a nation of Republicans.

  Tired of this naivety at last, I remarked how this was the natural survival mechanism of their culture, to cheer whomever was perceived as the top dog of the day. They were no more cheering Bush for his merit than they did Saddam before him, and would again mere months hence, as it turned out. I also pointed out that if Bush showed up for one of these rallies, and some thug took him out, silence would reign for only a moment. Five minutes later these same people would be ranting "Thug Thug Thug" whilst hoisting thug posters. As they recoiled in horror from this analysis, I wondered silently about the logistics required to run a five-minute poster shop. This wasn't my first public expression of distaste for him. Most of my carefully worded invectives centered around his ability to squirm into political expediency, vindicating my later assessment of the Nematode-In-Chief.

  Soon after gaining office, Bush the First almost immediately supported tax hikes, a famous phrase during his 1988 campaign indicating that reading his lips was tantamount to reading lies. I made so little back then that taxes in my bracket were almost meaningless. Regardless, I felt he had violated my trust, feeling that my vote had been frauded away in his behalf.

  He also signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a well-meaning piece of protective legislation which would be twisted in unexpected ways against entrepreneurs throughout the next two decades. He re-authorized the Clean Air Act, a liberal staple, thus further crippling our domestic refinery capacity. And so protecting established oil interests against any upstarts who might have new technology, new blends, and new ideas at their side.

  This miracle of political science also caved to the anti-gun lobby almost immediately after taking office, a topic which was of more personal importance. In 1989 he authorized the BATF to ban importation of certain types of semi-automatic assault rifles. This move was, surprisingly, supported to a large extent by domestic gun makers, not caring that this move left the legislative target painted on their heads next. With this act, that Galil in the hands of the friend of The Boss had just tripled in value, though.

  A few weeks after settlin
g into my ratty little house outside the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, I penned a strong letter. In this letter I made fun of his "kindler (sic) and gentler" approach to destroying our liberties. I also pointed out that for those of us without day-to-day Secret Service protection our lives had just been placed more at risk. I am sure this letter ultimately languishes in a Secret Service file against the day it might be used as evidence.

  In my youthful naivety, I had of course mistaken the greatness of Reagan as the standard, rather than the exception. Measured against the former, Bush the First was a gross electoral aberration elevated to near treason. Measured against the latter, merely another species of the normal product of the collective of the nice.

  I had also not yet come to realize that never again would the collective allow entry to anyone even remotely approaching Reagan's love for the country and the people. This fact of life in the collective explains why we never seem to have any real major party choices for President anymore. We certainly are allowed none who inspire with the personable charisma of a Reagan or a Palin. Even this great woman was hidden behind handlers, and the subject of venomous attacks from the elite of both sides. I would later understand why this is so, and see that the true responsibility lay at the feet of the electorate themselves.

  The last Desert Sit pronouncement I would make at the expense of the Bush legacy involved a visit he had announced to Cartegena, Columbia. This visit was intended to show all those coca farmers who was boss. I thought such a visit was ill-timed. I also wondered whether one of those coca farmers might have a howitzer. And put said howitzer in direct-fire mode on one of those ranges surrounding the bowl within which Cartagena rests. A lucky shot from such a preparation would be a terrible embarrassment to us all. All those "Bush Bush Bush" supporters around us might start getting ideas, not realizing that victory had been secured by us, and not him. But sadly, the logistics people had already started hauling off all our ammo and equipment.