Lule of Raw - 3

"I'll tell you one thing I don't want to see, armed confrontation, leading to domestic warfare."

"I know of several armed militia groups who are planning to do just that."

"Yeah, but they've been planning to do it for years, what's stopping them? They're phonies, that's what. When tea party protestors showed up in public flaunting their guns, I began to worry, thinking militias were making their move. Turns out, thankfully, to be nothing more than political theater, an empty gesture."

"I'll tell you who is not a phoney, combat veterans. They're returning home from overseas to find themselves locked out of the culture they thought they were defending. Their homeland has been privatized by international corporations and all the jobs have been transferred to other countries. What more do they need to convince them to join a militia and pick up the gun again?"

"Don't talk like that. Don't even think it."

"What else do you expect them to do? Join a hippie commune? Smoke medical marijuana to treat their post traumatic syndrome? Organize a new society based on empathy, cooperation, and sharing? Despite being marginalized and excluded? Or because of it? Without representation in government, unprotected from fraud and corruption in the marketplace?"

"Yes, a new society based on empathy, cooperation, and sharing would be nice."

"We've been too passive, allowing them to go too far. Now they want absolute control, over everything. And they want it immediately. They're consuming vital resources like there's no tomorrow, destroying the planet in the process. We can save it, stop them, turn it around. We still have a chance. But we don't have a choice. We must do it, now. Or never, possibly."

"You're scaring me."

"Hey, it's scary. Think about it. Ignorance, over population, pollution, malnutrition, disease. And it's all preventable. Yet a relatively small group of powerful, greedy people with a sociopathic ideology and a large cadre of paid crones in business and government are in fact preventing it. It doesn't fit their computer model of how free market capitalism should work."

"Free market capitalism doesn't even exist."

"That's what I'm saying. We've been subjected to a campaign of irrational thinking. Political propaganda, commercial advertising, corporate media programming our entertainment. It's difficult to separate truth from fiction anymore and their model of capitalism is designed to take full advantage of this confusion. It's a fraud, a scam, and it's working like a charm."

"An evil charm."

"Are you sure you want to go there?"

"How can we avoid it? They frame their justification for war in terms of good and evil."

"They manipulate people's fears and emotions using terms like evil empire, evil mastermind, evil drugs, evil religion."

"How do you define evil?"

"I'd rather not. That's my point. It complicates the issue. It opens up a whole new can of worms. That's why they use the term. Let's remain rational. Move one step at a time. Staying in the here and now."

"Okay, here and now, what's next? We already have bars on all the windows and doors. Our dogs are outside patrolling the yard. Your guns are loaded but you promised you wouldn't use them."

"I said I wouldn't use them carelessly. But I'll use them, if necessary. To defend our home. That's what they're here for."

"Put them away."