Xref: utzoo alt.drugs:9374 comp.society.futures:2343 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!vsi1!ubvax!igor!yoda!jls From: jls@yoda.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) Newsgroups: alt.drugs,comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Congressional nasties... Message-ID: Date: 9 Feb 91 01:11:44 GMT References: <5RDuw1w163w@zitt>, <62555@bbn.BBN.COM> Sender: news@Rational.COM Followup-To: alt.drugs Distribution: alt.drugs, comp.society.futures Lines: 36 As the poet said: "Not with a bang, but a whimper". We are not going to lose our freedoms in one big attack (although the Kennedy assassination probably is an exception...), but, instead, in tiny little bits and dribbles. Riders to little read bills. Fine print. Slightly higher registration "fees" (for WHAT?). Longer lines at the bureaucracy. Ever increasing pinching and cramping and prodding by the ever-present almighty fucking State. Makes me want to hoard assault rifles and canned food. Look, when my grandfather was a teenager, there were no speed limits in Indiana. When my father was a teenager, they had speed limits, but he could still buy fireworks (BIG ones, not these pathetic sparklers and smoke pellets for crying out loud--I'm talking things that you feel in your CHEST when they go off). When I was a teenager, Saturday Night Live made jokes about drugs, and it was still possible to tell a dirty joke without some tight-ass pursing their lips at me for being politically incorrect (whatever the fuck THAT means). And if I was foolish enough to have kids? What for them? The chance to buy really cool videogames? Wowee--I guess that's what they'd have to settle for, since they'll have the death penalty by then for skateboarding (unless someone like 20th Century Fox can figure out a way to make a lot of money renting time at "approved" skateparks for "safe fun" [any oxymoron if I've ever heard one]). Pick pick pick. Nibble nibble nibble. You can't fight back at it because it is so subtle: if they just started rounding up gays one day and sending them to camps, it MIGHT cause some sort of backlash. But if they bide their time and do it all SLOWLY, nobody notices. You just wake up each day a little more tired. And if you DO try to fight back, you look like a loon--"Gee, we just wanted him to fill out a little form and he started raving at us..." Have a nice day.