From Ft. Hood to the Internet

I recently re-read through most of my blogs and realized that most of them turned out to be rants. I guess I wait until I "well-up" enough to vent before I post anything. I don't always post links to the articles that have raised my ire, sometimes the news is just inundated with the same general story. Hearing or reading the same thing over and over sometimes leads to projecting the question of "How will this affect me?".

Take, for example, the Ft. Hood shooter. There are a lot of nationwide consequences that this single event can lead to. Not too far off-topic is the Columbine shooting. This is what the Columbine shooting has led to:

That event led to "bullying" becoming a crime in most schools. Maybe not as a legal ramification for most bullies, but certainly reason for expulsion from school. Instead of teaching our kids to stand up for themselves against bullies, and encouraging schools to support that silly notion, we've taken less-intelligent bullies and put in place measures to ensure that they remain undereducated.

That is a great service to society! I don't think we have near enough qualified stupid thugs running around in this country. Maybe if schools could again administer corporal punishment, these bullies would be corrected before they become adolescents.

Bullies seek out the weak. The weak are a target because they just put up with it or are afraid to act. The weak physically may also be mentally weak and then one day...bang-bang. These are the kids the schools should be watching and strengthening. The weak minded consider themselves "victims" of everything. This person may not bust caps into people at school, but what if he gets a job at the post office later.

The USPS isn't going to fire a bully-expel them, if you will, they'll just tell the young lad to deal with it. The next thing you know, this guy feels 'bullied' by everybody and is dealing with it from atop a clock tower.

He will deal with it this way because he never had to deal with it at school and never learned how. "...But he was a quiet kid in school and never got into trouble, no signs of this in his behavior. Wow, such a surprise." Sometimes people have to learn to take the bad with the good. Our country is making everybody victims, which makes everyone that is not you personally, bad.

Now, back to Ft. Hood

The shooter, in this case: had ties to extremists, had made extremists statements in the base chow-hall while standing on a table, written anti-American statements in emails, was questioned (behind his back) with the words "is he unstable?" by colleagues, was on an FBI watch list, gave away his possessions shortly before the shooting. He was Muslim. Whew, I certainly would not want to piss this guy off by doing anything that might be considered politically incorrect.

I know that all of these things were from individual incidents and were not combined into a single source until after the shooting. Their were no "signs" really to be missed. He was a psychiatrist. Getting the mindset of Muslim extremists is important to his task of helping soldiers deal with them. I think that if one were trying to get into the mindset of a terrorist, they'd have to pretend to exhibit some tendencies to gain their trust, so email exchanges between himself and a Muslim Extremist Cleric is not suspicious. But, because he shot up a base, it will justify monitoring all email traffic with all citizens, because you just never know where the next nut is lurking.

What if his anti-American statements were nothing more than a loud and clear objection to his orders to Iraq and the words were simply..."the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time" ? Hell, even John Kerry said that. That's not what his statements were I am sure and I am not defending this guy, I am just trying to show how our Government will use this as the rallying pole to take away more of your rights.

I support the war, I remember Desert Storm and 911. I think also that there is valid opposition to the war. I may not agree with those folks, but generally because I know that Sharia Law and the extremists that practice it will just keep on and on and on if they are not defeated. Their goal is terror, not victory. They attack soft targets, not strategic ones. They want to break the resolve of the US to fight, and with some, they have succeeded. They are the Bullies attacking the weak.

Now, Suppose that I didn't support the war, would verbal opposition be one day considered a possible threat to the security of the nation- would I look like an extremist instead of a newly self-proclaimed pacifist?

Colleagues questioned his stability, but did so behind his back. Was this just in general conversation and based on something benign? Was it a statement based on a psych. evaluation. I have questioned the stability of many people, usually people I've had to work with or around and usually in a non-serious manner.

Realistically, there is no evidence that the statement made by the collegue wasn't in response to something stupid, like not saluting a senior officer or something similiar. That is not a sign of instability. I saw an Ensign (out of uniform) get all pissed off and "go ballistic" on an airman when I was in the Navy. The airman was standing a post-watch and didn't salute the officer's ID card. We usually do question the stability of assholes, it's normal to do so.

The fact that he was a Muslim I also do not find suspicious. There is a rather large sect of muslim extremists who take the Quaran litterally. What they practice is called Sheria Law, but comparing all Muslims to this is like comparing the Westboro Baptist Church to all Christians. If there were millions of Westboro Baptist Church members, they would be a threat to you also. Muhammid Ali is also a Muslim, but was a pacifist during Viet Nam.

The shooter had been investigated by the FBI. I am betting it was because of his email communications with the Terrorist Cleric. I imagine that their investigation resulted in his communications being justified given his job in the military.

He gave his possessions away, does that mean he was suicidal and homicidal, or simply that he didn't want to store his crap for a year. The reason I am posing these as questions in such a way is to show that there really was no sign beforehand that this guy was a loon. Nothing indicates that he was going to try to go out in a blaze of glory for Allah.

If you watch the news, it seems that everything was suspicious. Many of our fellow citizens will buy into this. That getting suckered by the media will result in more loss of liberties, particularly in the ares of privacy, and more specifically, the exchanges of information that occur via Internet. I posted earlier that the net was going to be reigned in and probably turned into something that makes EVERY site fee based-similar to cable. Those fees generate taxes to the government and diminish the flow of information because people will visit fewer sites.

The Ft. Hood shooting IS the event that will be the "something needs to be done because" event that will get new Internet legislation passed to prevent this from happening in the future. If even email becomes fee-based, then electronic tracing will be easier. Some sites-like infowars.com and worldnetdaily.com will be "watch list" sites because they are conspiracy oriented. If they become fee based for any access, then there will a record of the transaction.

I believe that our current government will twist this heinous act on the very best our fellow citizens, -the American Military, into far reaching negative legislation. The deaths of these men and women will be the cause that is the opposite of their reason for volunteering to serve. I believe that instead of the name of freedom they swore themselves to protect, their deaths will be used as the reason to take more of our freedom away. I think this will make free speech more dificult to use in the future that there might as well be no right to privacy.

But then again, using the Internet to communicate is a choice, just like driving a car is. Maybe reigning it in will bring back company and conversation for dinner. Maybe limited internet will make neighbors 'neighborly' again. It has only been around for about a blink in our history anyway, and we managed to build the greatest country in the world without it.