“We gotta get out of this place”
“Exit Strategy” has become a common term in today’s parlance. It
seems to have originated when U.S. Rangers on “intervention” in
Somalia had their dead bodies dragged through the streets in front
of the world’s television cameras. It was a miserable way for brave
young men to die, but it did indelibly highlight the importance of
having a strategy to protect oneself while retreating from a
hostile situation.
More recently, “exit strategy” has been added to the discussion
list that the press uses to script its talking heads and sell
American intervention overseas to the public. Thus intoned, the
term produces vaguely comforting feelings about risky action in
distant and dangerous lands: We get in, fix the problem, and then
exit, leaving only (presumably) our goodwill behind.
As I pondered the meaning of this term, I began to wonder if an
“exit strategy” might not apply equally in our personal lives, as
well as our national ones? When we as individuals see a dangerous
situation clouding the horizon and ponder intervention, ought we
not also consider our own safe exit?
As individuals living in the United States of America, many of us
face just such a situation today. We see the storm clouds gathering
over the horizon. We hear the distant clap of thunder. We assess
our chances to warn and instruct. But we must also consider our
exit strategy. Once the storm begins, action will be impossible.
The national storm clouds gathering over America are obvious only
to experienced eyes. A largely controlled media produces a nation
of homogeneous views, increasingly intolerant of political or
intellectual dissent. New communication switching technology has
given expanding federal police and intelligence agencies hitherto
undreamt of power to see and hear private conversations and read
correspondence. The government “clipper chip” would have given the
nation’s spy agencies a backdoor key into everyone’s personal
electronic encryption envelope. All knowing; all controlling.
Congress and the courts have blissfully eroded our right to privacy
from government snoops, at the same time they have expanded the
snoops’ budgets and authority. Increasingly, the IRS and other
federal bureaucracies make their own “administrative” laws, hold
their own “administrative tribunals,” and execute asset forfeiture
in lieu of a fine, the latter of which still requires conviction in
a court of law — what we used to call “due process.” In these
administrative star chambers “justice” is meted out against those
challenging bureaucratic authority with constitutional platitudes.
Our courts have conspired with Congress to corrupt justice and
embrace double-jeopardy, under the guise of “civil rights
violations” and other made-up crimes, when plain old murder and
mayhem seemed too difficult to prove. Civilian suspects (witness
McVeigh) are increasingly held in military prisons, tried in
federal courts, and kept out of state jurisdictions.
To assure that none of this is upsetting to our young people, our
educational system has teamed with Hollywood and truly produced
students “dumbed down” to the lowest common level: All are educated
to celebrate sexual perversion and honor condom usage. The lowest
common denominator doesn’t get any lower.
Lest all of this become too disturbing for those educated prior to
the National Education Association’s intellectual and religious
values holocaust in our nation’s schools, we are distracted by our
leaders, journalists, and commentators openly discussing on the
evening news the merits of assassinating Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and
other foreign leaders who oppose America’s agenda in the world! Yet
these same national “leaders” recoil in horror — no breach of
freedom is too costly — to protect themselves from similar action
by their intended victim! How long can this schism continue? George
Orwell’s “doublethink” has become our children’s future. Yet who
will speak out?
Of course, we are all still free to speak up. This is America. You
can prove this to yourself by a simple experiment. Stand up at your
company’s next diversity training seminar and say something like:
“I think the behavior practiced by homosexuals is disgusting,
perverted; an affront to the morals of religious people, and a
danger to children.” Shortly thereafter you will experience intense
personal freedom as you are fired for “intolerance” to the
carefully scripted view of the establishment elite. Germany’s Jews
found the same type of freedom under Hitler. We are indeed free to
do as our masters would have us to do.
The bottom line is simply this: We have become a population too
ignorant to know that it is losing the freedoms mankind fought and
bled for over two millennia to gain. A population that will be
putty in a dictator’s hands. Technology and tools of control
undreamt of by despots of the past. And the opportunity for
unqualified evil to finally step forward into the spotlight.
I don’t believe the battle is lost. But I do believe that it’s time
to ponder your own personal exit strategy.
