New York Who?

by Tom Baugh

A few years ago I was living in an upscale golf community north of Atlanta; which one in particular is of no consequence. One spring, the neighborhood was abuzz with concern over Bad Men who were trolling the neighborhood in a white van, filming children at play. This bad news had been communicated to us courtesy of the sheriff’s community watch program. One could almost hear the decorative shutters slamming (had they not been bolted to the brick facades) and door latches clicking. The neighborhood became a ghost town as children at play disappeared from their own front yards, the families retreating inside their media room cocoons for endless replays of “Shrek” and “Lord of the Rings”.

I then made a mistake. I hopped onto the community email list and suggested that instead of hiding, families should play in their yards, with each adult male sporting a baseball bat. And, should the white van make an appearance, some of the dads should approach the van and strike up a casual conversation with the occupants. Or, perhaps even invite them to a pickup game of cul-de-sac baseball.

The resulting furor from these golf course shut-ins was remarkable. Almost universally, people who lacked the spine for a simple show of force lost complete track of the initial threat, and turned their hostility and helpless frustration on one of their own. Some called my employer (me) and demanded that I be fired. Others called the sheriff and demanded that I be arrested. One soccer mom declared that I was, effectively, a neo-Nazi who would take delight in beating her developmentally-challenged son. How she connected those dots was beyond me. Another resident, this time a gentleman, challenged me to a dual in his front yard, I with a bat and he with his sidearm. Yet another resident asked me whether I would like it if someone threatened me with a bat. I wondered whether that particular individual owned a white van.

Note to bandits in the upcoming collapse: if a neighborhood has a golf course, there’s probably a good chance you can take anything, or anyone, you want. But you guys already knew that, didn’t you?

I’m just guessing here, but I imagine that many of these same people show up at tea parties and wave their little flags and stamp their sandaled, pedicured feet. It’s OK to take action, I suppose, as long as you get somebody else to put on a uniform and do it for you. Which is pretty much what New York City has done with the rest of us.

Let’s review. For the rest of this discussion, I want those 9/11 truther types to assume that the official story is true: New York City and DC were attacked by terrorists. Not Idaho, not Georgia, not Alabama, not Arizona, not Texas, not anywhere but those two cities. Two cities, by the way, which represent the source of most of the financial and political chaos in which we now find ourselves. Two cities which represent the source of most of the evil which is blamed on the United States as a whole by malcontents around the globe.

A couple of months ago, I had the honor of being invited to speak at the 2010 Liberty Forum in New Hampshire. I elected to avoid the kind attention of the TSA by not flying, and instead drove up from Georgia in Missy, my SUV. On the way back, full of porcupine silver and vinegar, Shotgun (my videographer) and I decided that we should take a tour of the island whore. So it came to pass that, late on a Sunday evening, we drove through the belly of the beast, looping several times through south Manhattan and across the Battery and back again. I missed the opportunity to pose outside the Federal Reserve, but did get a shot of Missy and the bull.

I was struck like a lightning bolt by several observations, which came in concert as an epiphany to my mind: not the obvious question comedians and script-writers alike ask, “are these human?” but instead the lighter, yet more profound question, “are these people even Americans?” Now, that seems horrific to say, but here are a few things which unrolled before us on this little driving tour.

We were first struck by all the plight. Not only that of Harlem, but also the mile after mile of housing, up-scale as well as low-, full of people who willingly participate in the plunder of the citizens of this country, and of others. Up-scale plight? Yes, that to come, populated by people who, in a collapse, could not even conceive of the act of providing their own food, but who would insist that it be taken from the hands of people they have pillaged for decades, or more. As if in a flash-forward, one can almost see the wide-spread looting by street-performers hand-in-hand with mid-level portfolio managers, as they slowly starve, their tunnels and bridges choked with cars and bodies.

We were also struck by the fleets of shiny garbage trucks, lined up in nice herringbone patterns waiting to collect the inanimate debris piled around the zombie huts. Fleets driven by highly-compensated union workers who retire long before the rest of us accumulate enough wealth for their customers, largely in the financial services industry, to steal.

Times Square wasn’t nearly as impressive as I had imagined. Well-lit to be sure, but no differently than the Griswold neighbor who weighs his rooftop down with lights at Christmas. Only the scale was different, and it is gaudy Christmas every day there, I hear. Why not? Each day millions of us pour our hopes and dreams into portfolios and bond funds managed by these (presumably) people, hoping that our little nest eggs will be there for us one day. And yet, these people scramble our eggs for themselves, charging fees and gambling our money in schemes designed to fail. And then hide behind regulations imposed by their partners on the Potomac, regulations which prevent anyone else from offering better and more competitive financial services. If Griswold hadn’t had his best stolen by these two thieving twins, he might be able to afford that many lights, too. If Griswold’s son hadn’t had his future bankrupted by this same pair, he might find opportunity beyond dying or being maimed for their benefit.

The trendy districts, no doubt occupied by middle-level executives of the sort who planned the bankrupting of Greece, and Birmingham, Alabama, are not the only ones with blood on their hands. No, every single denizen of that island, and surrounding boroughs, is there for one specific reason: the hope that some of the bloody slop will leak into their troughs as well. Everyone, down to the least cab driver or street performer or toll officer, is there by choice for their chance at the brass ring.

The lyrics rang in my head: “Start bettin’ to lose! All over the world! You want to be a part of it, you whores, you whores! If you can (bump bump) fake it there, you can fake it (bump bump) anywhere! It’s up to us, to lose, to New York!” Shotgun and I sang this gleefully as the fleets of midnight hacks tootled non-stop at Missy’s Georgia plates. As an apology, by conflating New Yorkers, particularly their financial heroes, to whores, I don’t mean to denigrate hard-working, customer-oriented prostitutes.

Farther south, the WTC site was hidden behind several layers of fencing and plywood, but it occurred to me that if the rest of the island was bulldozed that night, the next day the world would be a better place.

I want the beads back. And yet even that tale is of pride at subterfuge and dirty-dealing against financial rubes. How appropriate for the genesis of that pit of vipers.

And the media. This past weekend, over a dozen people died in Southeast storms, but the lead stories, even on the tea party network, were of a fireworks fizzle in an SUV in Times Square. Poor darlings, how dare anyone interrupt the never-ending block party that is Manhattan Island. Perhaps we needed a reminder as to why those heartland people send their sons to die and be maimed in retribution for attacks on our twin thieves almost a decade ago. And yet those heartland people, denigrated by that same media as foolish rubes and unworthy of consideration on any issue, duly oblige, and in so doing, become foolish rubes unworthy of consideration on any issue by their financial and political masters.

Did terrorists attack Idaho? Did they attack Georgia? Did they attack Arizona? Did they attack Alabama? Did they attack Texas? No. No terrorist plot could survive more than a few moments in any of those places, as long as the populace hadn’t been disarmed by DC and impoverished by NYC. And had those two not conspired to fling our borders open to all comers, and flood our jobs and schools with virtual slaves, to increase their profits and power while closing doors to us, we would be living peaceably in our united States today.

No. We were not attacked. They were.

By whom? Presumably, by Islamists. Islamists who, as a tenet of their ideology, shun the money-changing ethic which will soon close in on us all. It is no surprise that the only major world religion which forbids speculation, but encourages genuine investment in civilization, has been demonized by the media mouthpieces of that island whore.

True, the Islamists have their own closeted skeletons. The worst of these is the enforced subjugation of women. The burqa is an admission of weakness: that a woman’s God-given beauty is too powerful for men to resist. And an admission that strong and beautiful women must be forced to obey by weak men, rather than led into willing obedience by strong men.

Our own modern culture is a similar indictment of weak-willed men. Without overbearing government, other-than-strong women, such as the hard-core misandrists, would be irrelevant. Our current gynocracy is the result of weak-willed men, unwilling to grab so much as a bat to defend their own children, having handed over political and social power to government generations ago. But demanding, in true pack mentality, that others fight and die for them, as they cower safe in their media-room retreats to thumb through their dwindling stock reports.

But what of the noble firemen and police who rushed to the rescue of the financial elites? Yet, even these firemen and police had been part of the island economy to cash in on a pension trickle from the flood of your wealth that the island whores control. Regardless, their rush to heroism was no different, in principle, than the rush of the heartland to the rescue of the financial elites. Instead of a pair of buildings burning, now the world is burning. Don’t be a fool. Don’t sacrifice yourself, or your children, for people who hope to make you their slaves as they steal your wealth, and hope that you will jump on command for a crumb of it back. Don’t be led to believe that Islamists are a threat to you when our militias, suitably re-fanged, can prove otherwise. The Islamists may be a threat, but not to you. And certainly not to those souls who carried their rifles to the Potomac in April under the denigrating gaze of the island media.

Our developing crises exist, and have existed for decades now, for one simple reason: the destruction of federalism has, among its many crimes, removed the need for honor in international dealings. Under the pre-Constitutional confederation, an out-of-control New York might have to wonder whether it could count on Georgia or Arizona, for example, to send their militias to its aid. Or have to live with the consequences of the destruction of Birmingham when Alabama later refused to play. Or pay. Or wonder why hillbillies and their sons everywhere leave their rifles on the rack when their denigrators wail in need after an attack. Rampant secession, and the restoration of our united States, will force our rabid Yankee neighbor to find honest work. Or to face the just retribution of those who have had enough.

There may be a few good people on that island, who knows? If you are one of those few Lots among them, pack what you can carry and leave now. What, you say? You can’t leave, because you are afraid you might not find work? Welcome to our world, the world ravaged by the financial excesses of your brethren. Then stay, and bear the consequences which must one day come. For you will have proved my point: each and every person who remains on that island is there by choice to participate in the spoils. Form your own militias then, ye millions and millionaires, and go fight your adventures yourselves.

I hold as evidence against you your own heroes, financial wizards who brag that they sold widows investments doomed to fail. Who are these widows? Perhaps those of fallen soldiers who were fighting to serve you? If so, would it give you pause? Would their sacrifice and loss on your behalf be enough, or would you take a perverse delight in taking what little was left for them? I suspect the latter, since you took our love and brotherly compassion for your plight, and turned it into financial terrorism against us. For a decade, you plotted your thefts while playing the victim and abusing our sympathy. Sympathy no more.

They’ve taken our sympathy and twisted it into a double-standard. Take Arizona, for instance. The latest efforts by Arizonans to assert themselves have, predictably, been maligned by the New York media. Yet, where is the protection for Arizona that New York demands for itself? Perhaps if we hadn’t spent so much on Fortress Wall Street we might have something left over for the southern border. To New York ears, those evil Arizonans are starting to sound too much like a state, and are running around making militia sounds. After all, a militarized police under the control of DC and their financial masters in NYC is the only option they admit for solving artificially induced problems. Why, once states such as Arizona begin asserting themselves to defend their lives and property against invading gangs, they might get the dangerous idea to not bother sending their sons to fight for New York.

If you are a soldier reading this, fighting an undeclared war which would never have stood the light of day, tomorrow will be a different day. No longer can you imagine, as firefighters and police might have on 9/11, that you aren’t serving the worst band of thieves in history. Some of you are economic draftees, serving because there are no better options back home for you. Better that you live in a mud hut as a free man with your dignity intact than to protect these vipers. Return to your states, form your militias and State Guards, and then defend your homes from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Should you stay and die, or be maimed, it is now with the full knowledge of what you are doing and why. And for whom.

Because what does New York produce, other than chaos, despair, rhetoric and confusion? Once upon a time we believed the lie that Manhattan supplied financial horsepower to drive industry and production, but now we know it is just a con-artist that preys upon the weak and the helpless. Chances are, most of us would be able to run our own businesses fine without their meddling in our affairs, either directly or through their regulatory pawns in DC.

We’re like a parent, and one of our children was attacked. Only this time, we handed bats to our other kids, who have been running around whacking whomever we pleased, while we deny that our little darling is an addict. In this case, Baby Darling is a power addict, and just can’t resist setting up financial schemes designed to fail, robbing whomever he pleases. We just looked the other way as long as he was pilfering other households.

But while we’ve been whacking people around the world for a decade on his behalf, we now discover that Baby Darling has been robbing us blind back home. Even those of our other sons who have been fighting for Baby Darling’s honor had their rooms pilfered and the valuables sold off to pay for another hit of power. But Baby Darling promises he’ll get better, even as he eyes our watch.

At some point, we have to face the facts. When Baby Darling gets beat up the next time, Baby Darling probably deserves it. And there’s no point in dragging our other forty-nine kids, the hard-working ones, down with him (forty-nine and a half, maybe, if you count the upstate apart and separate). Mommy can’t fix the addict, Mommy never can. The addict has to fix himself, and there’s precious little chance of that, given the spoiling and pampering we’ve administered. Maybe if we had let Baby Darling get beat up a time or two and take his lumps, and not surrounded him in an presumably impenetrable Homeland Security fortress, he might have learned his lesson. But instead, our other children have wound up living behind bars, having done little wrong other than coming to the addict’s defense too many times.

But like stretching a rubber band, this fortress, by delaying the inevitable, has only ensured that when it snaps, it snaps hard. Because they felt free inside this fortress to pillage us, too, and some of us have stopped giving a damn about what happens to them now.

Let them go, and pick out the funeral dress, before the good kids get killed, too. We can visit the grave, and lay a flower once a year after the radioactive slag cools down. We can look at some baby pictures every now and then, and remember the good times, before our darling became addicted and turned into a monster.

Because if we are willing to do this, they might clue in and stop stealing.

But we know better, don’t we? They won’t. And so what must come will come, as surely as the sun rises in the east to open the new day. Only this time there might be two, or three, suns rising in the east.

So, imagine a day when New York and DC called a war and no one came. Imagine turning your back, perhaps shedding a single tear at the shame of it, because we did love them, when both of these disappear in twin columns of smoke as retribution by their next victim of fiscal warfare. But don’t become a pillar of salt by looking back and longing for the lies these two cities promise.

Think this is radical? Ask yourself to imagine this premise one day when everything you own or have worked for has been destroyed by these jackals. Your time will come. And your mind will change.

Stop fighting for the interests of the island power addicts and their pawns on the Potomac. Instead, fight back against them. Fight back smarter by turning your back on them. Simply ask, “New York? New York Who?”

Tom Baugh is the author of Starving the Monkeys, Fight Back Smarter. He is also a former Marine, patented inventor, entrepreneur and professional irritant.