Hello everyone:
I've been a very occasional commenter at Daily Kos since late 2003, a nearly daily reader, but never a diarist until now.
Within the last two weeks Eric Cantor (a school classmate of my wife) has chosen to meet with the elite of his district, closing himself to all but a few of his friends, while kicking out others who do not agree with him.
My friend Max, who is the main founder of our local community radio station, is one of these individuals. Following is his account of what happened when he and a small group came to Mr. Cantor's office in the West End of Richmond.
Mr. Cantor clearly is serving his corporate overlords at the expense of the people of Virginia and even of his district. It is also clear from this story that we need to be wary of people who call for civility, because civility usually ends up being tacit support for the status quo. The following story, while long, is another piece of evidence that Mr. Cantor is only interested in the perspectives of his region if they are the correct, pro-corporate, pro-rich people ones:
Max frisked, detained, & interrogated - then - banned from Cantor's office for disturbing a fellow protestor.
At the lunchtime political rally someone I had never met had made a hand-printed sign that said, "Let them eat cake."
The gathering outside one of Republican Virginia Representative Eric Cantor's offices on Tuesday, July 26th,had been promoted by MoveOn, & three people had taken off from my workplace to lobby for an equitable balance of cuts in deficit reduction measures.
Within a few minutes of our arrival at the meeting place in the shady end of the parking lot, some casual observations exchanged within the small crowd of about thirty people - recollection of basic high school lessons from history, physics & cooking classes - turned into my being frisked, detained, & interrogated.
The detention lasted far longer than my comments that the interrogators had me repeat over & over to successive officers from the Innsbrook complex's security guards, the Henrico Police Department, & some guy in a Hawaiian shirt that was way too cheerful to be called "plain clothes", but he was a plain clothes officer, & he showed me his badge before having me tell the story again of what I had said that had so rocked the lady-in-the-sun-hat that she had called the police.
The "lesson" that my treatment at the rally was intended to teach me is that we are not supposed to recognize, much less mention, & in no way should we try to understand the inevitable ends of empires, especially the imminent end of our own.
What might be most curious is that the "lesson" was not imposed on me by Cantor's office, it was actually called for by an attendee of the rally, the tidy lady in a full-brimmed sun hat.
On the way out of the interrogation, I was struck with knowing the full meaning of Rush Limbaugh saying something like, "Don't trust weinie Democrats." With friends like that, who needs Republicans?
The lady-in-the-sun-hat confused speculations with threats. Even when I deliberately made the distinction between "what could happen" & "what should happen", the lady-in-the-sun-hat was purportedly so shaken by my comments that she suddenly had to take a seat on the curb.
The police were called in to investigate because I was singing the simple truth to the choir who were supposedly already on the same side as me. The lady believed that it was really not appropriate for me to examine what might come to pass if the nation goes into default & the government shuts down. Whether she was truly that naive or a planted operative we may never know.
So what kind of radical proposals were we tossing around at the rally?
None. There were no proposals; I made predictions.
Who was threatening? The government was threatening not to fulfill its role to keep the country functioning, threatening not to pass the debt ceiling increase to keep the most basic & necessary infrastructure operations functioning, threatening to take the budget down into international default & suddenly sunder the social safety net. Congress & the president were considering allowing decay of conditions to the point of desperation for those not insulated by wealth.
The truths that I recalled had been said aloud to me in classes on history, science & home economics (yeah, I was one of those few guys who took home ec, & I got to meet girls & learn useful things like recipes & sewing.)
The people who were standing around the edge of the Innsbrook parking lot, talking in small groups while awaiting our turn to go inside to write our concerns to the senator (which I did not even know at the time was going to be the format), were not spouting dates & factoids, but just for the record here: the apocryphal quote "Let them eat cake" is often mistakenly attributed to Marie Antoinette, the last princess of Versailles, even though the line had been quoted about other royalty for years before her arrival in France as a 15-year-old Austrian.
The sign-holder at the Cantor rally had seen how the blithe dismissal of poverty in the infamous taunt "Let them eat cake" struck the populace as accurately portraying the majority of the French aristocracy as supremely ignorant & selfish. The effects of the deficit of their time had pushed the peasantry over the edge into full-blown riots that turned violent. How could we not see the parallel with our country's elected officials, blustering as the did over how the deficit will be allowed to collapse the financial basis to run the entire nation before the rich will pay their share of taxes to support the infrastructure?
At Innsbrook the afternoon of the rally statistics of the French Revolution were never detailed. No one mentioned that commoners bearing the tax burden in 1789 escalated all the way to bloodshed, that Marie Antoinette herself was beheaded in 1793, or the fact that there were thousands who died at the guillotine & more who were murdered by angry mobs who resented generations of oppression by the ruling classes & the clergy. The hunting & execution of priests during the French Revolution was never related to primitive Christian right-wingers' support for regressive tax policies that will harm them as much as they will harm the rest of us.
What I had talked about as my contribution to the conversation in the group was in the context of the coming week's vote on whether the United States would willfully go into default on its world-wide debt. It went something like this: Don't rich people & elected officials know that people who were driven to desperation by infrastructure collapse would feel like they been abandoned by their country? Wouldn't some of them want to "act out" their sense of betrayal & frustration? Wouldn't some of them remember their science classes & know simple ways to blow up sizable sections of the grid or lock up the water supply? All they would have to do is...
... well now. Shall I repeat cooking class knowledge and basic electric and science class information again? Would that be "terrorism" to simply repeat what you already know from your classes and life 101?
OK. Let's see how far down the hole America has gone.
If you put corn starch into water, and then pressurize or shock it, it becomes gelatinous. That's how pudding forms and how some toys work.
If you were to blow metal shavings into a power switching station and timed that with several friends to hit several switching stations at the same time, you could take out a whole region of the grid, even knock nuclear power plants off line (see: Lake Anna during the earthquake. It was taken offline automatically by the earthquake shaking the breakers into the open position and disconnecting Lake Anna from the power grid).
My point was that, once people have nothing left to lose, they are less likely to be constrained from taking yours down with them.
So, as is usually the case at a rally, I engaged in conversation about the topic, which was Eric Cantor's position on the debt issue. Seemed that there were a lot of other conversations also going on about the major changes in the path of our civilization. Irresponsible changes.
So in the context of the "Let them eat cake" sign, I pointed out something that I had been saying at rallies & to business clients for decades. That is that we are more & more reliant on an infrastructure that is actually very fragile, & that if people are left to become desperate & they take action, they are going to remember their science & cooking classes. They are going to remember that if ordinary grocery store corn starch is dumped into water it is going to lock it up. A second example was bringing down a whole regional power grid by dumping metal shavings into a metal can with something to propel them like a gasoline mixture or a black powder shotgun shell propellant, & cohorts coordinating to short out the whole series of power switching stations at the same time. So, one of the women at the protest group said, "Well, that is just wrong."
To which I agreed & said, "Yes, and that won't change anything. Desperate people do it anyway. Just because it is wrong doesn't mean that people won't do it."
Other people around were nodding. I was not trying to persuade thousands of people to believe me, or to do anything themselves to the infrastructure that was already under seige by a budget vote. I just intended to warn them. The shit is hitting the fan. You better duck.
I agreed with the lady that it would be wrong, & also said, "It won't matter if it's right or wrong. You watch, it will happen."
This is the reason that a lot of people are putting in solar & ways to conserve energy, because the grid is fragile. Infrastructure takes maintenance that is being cut out of the budget. The country's roads & bridges & municipal water & sewer & electric grid are what taxes are all about. Maintenance can be deferred only so long before replacing something that was allowed to fall apart costs a lot more than keeping it in repair would have. That is one reason that empty houses cost more to insure. It is why boats are expensive. You go away & leave them for three months & come back & the ropes are worn & there is water in them & the rodents have chewed things up.
The lady said something to the effect of "Why, I hope that we could stop it before that happens." & I said something like, "Yeah. I'm hopeful enough to come here & maybe this demonstration will change something. Let's not let civilization fall apart.
Yep, I was just saying to her what I have been saying for decades to clients & at political rallies, that the grid is vulnerable to things that people learn back in high school science & cooking class. Her reaction felt like an argument but I wasn't disagreeing with her. Other people were making expressions & gestures of agreement with me.
And then Napi said the JFK quote of whatever that quote was, something about people who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. Then at that moment, one of the officers walked up & said that the next batch could go in & write their letters to Congressman Cantor, so we did.
We were ushered around a big conference table with pens & tablets of white, lined paper at each chair. I had just started writing when the two police came in, another standing at the door. One said, "We need to speak with you," & I said, "Me?" & they said "Yeah" & took me out into the hallway. As we went out I started recording on my cell phone. One officer said something like, "Hey, he's recording," & the other officer said that is all right.
They asked me if I had any weapons to which I said no. So they frisk me & of course they don't find anything. They took the information from my driver's license. Then the second cop asked me something to the effect of, "Did you advocate setting off a gasoline bomb in a building?" To which I said, "No, you should get correct information." To which he agreed & asked, "What did you say?" I talked about "There was a sign out there that said, Let them eat cake. Like the French Revolution. You remember France, right?"
Throughout history people have acted when they felt that there was nothing left to lose & I gave two examples. He asked what two examples. & I told him about the cornstarch & the power switching stations, & that I had not said anything about inside any buildings.
People are going to remember things from basic science class in high school. "You remember high school?" They looked at me a little bug-eyed & didn't say anything. Somebody asked me what I did for a living & I answered, “I install solar panels.” They had this “Ahhh” look like they saw why I was talking about the grid.
So, then the first cop comes back over with a video camera & asks the same questions on video. After that, I asked, "So, are we done?" The first cop, a little heavier, a little more cherubic than the taller, thinner one, said, "Well that is not illegal. But don't you think it is a little inappropriate at a Congressman's office.
Then another cop pointed out, "Well, you wouldn't talk about bombs on an airplane." & I answered, "Actually, I do. Whenever I go through the airport I have a boom microphone that looks just like a stick of dynamite when it shows up on the x-ray. I always have to take it out of my pack & show it to them & talk about how it looks & demonstrate how it works as a microphone & how it has to be shaped like that to receive sound from one end & not from both sides. That cop seemed flustered but didn't carry it forward.
At that point they said that there was another person who wanted to talk with me. After ten-fifteen minutes of waiting, I said, "Can this person just call me later? I have work to do." & I started to walk out. Just then, a person in a Hawaiian shirt came in. He asked, are you talking about me? I said, “I don't know.” He was surprise that I was the guy that he was here to see. He then whips out a pocket badge that says he is a detective, & pulls out a note pad.
He asked me to take a seat & then asked me the same questions all over again. He said, "I just want to know if you were planning on harming the Congressman." & I said, "No, what would be the point? He has a hundred minions behind him." He asked me if I intend to harm anyone. I said, "No. It is fascinating to me that I have been saying this for decades & it is only now that civilization has decayed to the point that you guys feel the need to question me about it. This is the time that you actually think that people are going to do these things now."
He just kind of nodded & didn't really say anything for a few seconds. Then he said, “Nothing you say is illegal. You are just exercising your right to free speech. Nothing you did is illegal. Are you going to harm anyone?” & I said no, & he said, “That is what I want to hear.” I perceived then that I was being allowed to leave.
Let me note at this moment that the Henrico Police actually behaved very professionally.
Its the Rent-A-Cops of Innsbrook that were such classical ... well ... here's where it gets really stupid.
I proceeded halfway across the lobby, whereupon I was blocked by the rent-a-cops from Innsbrook who asked for my information. I asked, "Are you a cop?" When they said no, I asked, "Then why do you need to see my information?" So they asked the county police who gave them my information & they then detained me while they wrote me up a trespass warning notice banning me from "any entry on the above named premises". Verbally, they told me it was for "creating a disturbance". The sheet of paper (tresspass warning) says nothing about a disturbance.
While they were writing up the trespass warning, I asked, “Don’t you think that it is ironic that my taxes paid for that office that you are banning me from?” They refused to discuss it.
The lady-in-the-sun-hat, & the officers who are charged with keeping the peace, might need to read:
Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil & the End of Empire, by Alexis Zeigler
www.energybulletin.net/stories/2009-02-28/book-review-culture-change-alexis-zeigler
http://conev.org/
The Long Emergency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The Fourth Turning:
http://www.fourthturning.com/
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They might also need help from:
Peak Oil Blues Blog, by psychologist Kathy McMahon, Psy.D.
www.peakoilblues.org/blog/?page_id=2>
The Waking Up Syndrome, ecopsychologist Sarah Edwards, PhD
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tubMttrmuRA&feature=player_embedded>
PS: Please note that the Pentagon is taking this problem very seriously. They are working on alternatives to oil and are working on energy efficiency. And how ironic is it that Eric Cantor behaves like a Hamiltonian representing an district that once contained Thomas Jefferson!
Energy Efficiency and Independence is as American as Thomas Jefferson's call to grow your own food so that you can say no to tyranny.