When I was 17, working a summer job at the track in Saratoga Springs, New York, some co-workers and I managed one night to illegally purchase a case of beer.  We took it out back of the local high school, into a dark area where we thought we’d be hidden, and started drinking.

A police cruiser, on a routine patrol or perhaps alerted by people living near the school, pulled up into the parking lot by the side of the school and spotted us.  We ran, climbing an 8-foot chain-link fence behind the school.

When I got to the top of the fence I heard the police firing shots into the air and commanding us to stop.  I didn’t stop — I vaulted the rest of the way over the fence and ran though a succession of backyards until I’d put the school far behind me, eventually making my way to where I was living without further incident.

I was breaking the law in several ways that night — I’d helped buy beer while under age, I was consuming it in a semi-public place while under age, and I was trespassing on city property.  If this had all happened in a black section of town, if I had been a young black male, I wonder if the police might have felt empowered to shoot at me instead of into the air as I was failing to abide by a lawful police order.

Michael Brown had apparently broken the law in several ways on the day he was shot in Ferguson, Missouri — swiping some cigars from a convenience store, walking down the middle of a street, perhaps failing to abide by the lawful order of a police officer.

You could say he was acting like a thug on that day, just as you could say I was acting like a thug that night in Saratoga Springs — except that no one would have said it of me.  Because I was white, I was just a teenager doing something stupid and irresponsible.  It never occurred to me that I might get shot for running away from the police, for acquiring and consuming beer illegally.

It was a youthful indiscretion, which probably amused the police more than it outraged them — a youthful indiscretion that I was proud, at the age of 17, to have gotten away with.  I knew it was wrong, but at 17 I didn’t care.

Michael Brown paid for his youthful indiscretion with his life — because he was seen and treated as a thug . . . and it’s hard to doubt that he was seen and treated that way primarily because he was black.

In the wake of events in Ferguson, Missouri:

Barack Obama has called for calm and reflection.

Hillary Clinton, clearly still huddling with her handlers to find the the most politically advantageous position to take, has said NOTHING.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul has called for the demilitarization of the police — the only response that might actually help black Americans in a practical way.

Nanny State, Surveillance State, Police State — ultimately they’re all connected. When government feels empowered to push you around “for your own good”, there is no rational limit to its tyranny.

Normally I can keep in check my rage against modern American Puritans, but that’s mostly because I live in Las Vegas, where vestiges of social freedom remain.  When I venture out into Saudi America, I lose it.

America has become a land of moral pygmies — able to coolly tolerate the Surveillance State, the Nanny State, the epidemic of obesity, the murder and mass incarceration of blacks at the hands of the Police State, the fraud of corporate “democracy”, the subversion of The Constitution, but outraged like a ravished virgin if someone smokes a cigarette within 20 feet of the entrance to a non-smoking establishment in, say, Arizona.

To all of you Americans who support laws restricting smoking, just because you don’t happen to like the smell of tobacco smoke, among whom are many people I consider friends, I say — “Fuck you, fuck you where you breathe.”  You are pathetic moral zeros who need to get a life.  Now.

I love you — but you are pathetic moral zeros who need to get a life.  Now.

. . . is not Barack Obama’s security state.  It’s not the government in Washington owned and controlled by corporations.  It’s not the majority of morally insane stooges of the plutocracy currently sitting on the Supreme Court.

America is you and me, we the people — with the power and the duty to take our nation back from the deranged criminals who’ve hijacked it from us.  It’s a mission we must undertake, by any means necessary, out of obligation to our past and to posterity.

So when we think about the nation we think about our country, we think about our home, we think about the people living in it and we think about its values. When we think about the state, we’re thinking about an institution.

The distinction there is that we now have an institution that has become so powerful it feels comfortable granting itself new authorities, without the involvement of the country, without the involvement of the public, without the full involvement of all of our elected representatives and without the full involvement of open courts, and that’s a terrifying thing –- at least for me.

That’s Edward Snowden speaking in a new interview in The Guardian.  We’re so lucky that we still have American citizens like this, though they seem to be in shorter and shorter supply.  Their enemies, like Barry Obama, are the real traitors, and belong in jail.

If you think that Barry Obama represents this country, represents America, represents you, you’re living in a dream world.  Barry Obama represents a totalitarian corporate state of which you are merely a dispensable subject, with no rights beyond those he chooses to grant you out of the goodness of his heart.

Read the whole interview here — it’s long, but essential:

Snowden Speaks

With thanks for the link to PZ . . .

The people of any country are ultimately responsible for the actions of their government.  Any alternative view is horrifying — suggesting that people are sheep, in thrall to whatever political faction happens to get control of their state.  People do act like sheep all the time, but they cannot evade moral responsibility for this.

If the state is armed but the people are not armed, this offers an excuse for ovine behavior.  This excuse is not acceptable.  The people of every morally responsible state must remain armed, and prepared to resist an immoral government by force of arms.

Click on the image to enlarge.

It’s not much comfort in the short run, but a consoling thought for the long run that the family which owns the Hobby Lobby retail chain is going to Hell.  Technically it’s already in Hell, but someday it will realize it and be suitably surprised.

No one should object to their beliefs.  This is America, where arrogant, mean-spirited nuts have always had a home and, God willing, will always have a home.  If the Hobby Lobby family wants to believe that IUDs are a form of abortion, in defiance of common sense, who are we to judge them?  I myself believe many things that defy common sense, and I don’t think that’s anybody’s business but my own.

But wanting to impose one’s beliefs on others is something else again.  Wanting to do it in the “person” of a legal abstraction called a “corporation” is shameful.  Corporations are not people.  Corporations created by closely-knit families are not people.  They don’t have God-given rights.  Only people have God-given rights.

Wanting to stand before God as a corporation, asking God to love and uphold you as a corporation, is sinful and blasphemous.  It defines you as an inhabitant of Hell.

All people of goodwill should pray for the souls of the family that owns Hobby Lobby, and for the souls of the Supreme Court Justices who have a habit of ruling that corporations are the children of God.  The state, Caesar, creates corporations — God alone creates human beings.  God and Caesar are not the same — never have been, never will be, as a great teacher once reminded us.

Preserve the Constitution, break the crony-capitalist grip on Washington — these are the only goals that matter right now.

You can afford to vote for any politician who takes strong positions in support of these goals, even if you disagree with them vehemently on other issues. You cannot afford to vote for any politician who takes weaselly positions on these goals, even if you agree with them enthusiastically on other issues.

Don’t get distracted — keep your eyes on the prize, which for the moment is nothing less than the survival of the American republic.