"Storm Warning..."

Mr. Atos

NOTE: I first posted the following essay here in September of 2004. At that time, and in the midst of the Iraq and Presidential campaigns, the political aggression of the American Left seemed to be conspiring (for all intents and purposes) with the violent aggression of fanatic butchers in a growing storm that threatened to ravage the defenses of this Nation in one of its most critical hours. Today, in the face of yet another emminent threat, the Left continues its rampage, even as the danger has escalated from a tempest of terrorist aggression to a maelstrom of global armageddon. It is as clear now as ever it was that America faces one unified enemy both without, and sadly within. The warning was sounded during the 2004 election. Now in 2006 before another pair of critical campaigns, the storm is upon us...

... and the aftermath is very, very uncertain.

Growing up in Texas, it was exciting to watch the great thunderstorms come rolling dark and ominous out of the northwest sky. They were fast and frightening to be sure, yet quite safe to watch right up to the last minute, when the crash of the thunder united with the flash of lightning, and the eerie green glow warned of the eminent danger that was upon you.

But, the storms did not always make a deliberate approach across a 200 mile horizon at 60 miles an hour. At times, they erupted overhead... the air ripe to seeding the very tempest that approached. Suddenly, the danger was not eminent. It was among you, growing in the very space you occupied; wind, rain, lightning above and beyond, trapping you where you stood, exposed and in peril.

Since September 2001, Americans have been watching the horizon for the storm's inevitable approach, preparing refuge and reaction. But, like a surprise summer storm, the atmosphere about us is seeding a threat that has already engulfed the Nation. CBS's rather absurd memo debacle is merely the thunder and lightning warning in unison that danger abounds. The enemy is without and now within, and we are suddenly engaging the conflict in every manner and from all directions.

The enemy-without is clear enough and ever present beyond the gates. It uses terror to paralyze. The more horrible is the atrocity the better, for it's weapon is fear. It negotiates with shrapnel bombs that disintegrate flesh. It tortures and executes school-children. It flies passenger jets into towers serving as offices/apartments/daycares. And when traditional methods of terror become passé by the it's own standards, the enemy-without regresses to the saracen barbarism of individual beheadings. This may surely be followed by an aztecan approach involving the flaying of victims and dancing about in their fresh skin (Reference). Perhaps that enemy will descend into more stygian depths of lovecraftian horror, and simply devour Western victims in front of Al Jazeera's cameras... the official network of cthulhuan vulgarity.

Yet, if the self-righteous purveyors of mainstream news flow in America consider themselves any better than their primeval counterpart, their complicity in sabotage proves different. They are equally guilty of their own brand of journalistic vulgarity. CBS is but one insurgent body exposed. Like the enemy-without, the enemy-within dispenses with fundamental principles governing it's existence, to manifest desired changes that are imperative to a preferential reality. The favored ends justify questionable means. In fact, the method makes it an enemy of it's own cause by detaching it forever from any semblance of moral justification that renders reason possible. Just as a cancer is a body's own tissue turned deadly, so to has the fourth estate, become a fifth column where mainstream American journalism is concerned. Behaving like saboteurs, partisan journalism works to undermine the fabric of principle that unites the people of this nation to fundamental ideology on which the foundations of civilization is built.

The CBS network’s latest foible is not the beginning of the process. It is merely the most readily observant sham, in a long history of pretense that has stretched back nearly 40 years (Reference). Toto (in the form of a handful of bloggers) pulled back the curtain of the latest charade to reveal but one charlatan who has been making fools of the American public - possibly since his career began. It begs the question... How many other times has a member of the press manufactured the story of the news, according to their fictional image based on cultural and ideological bias?Indeed, Anne Morse, in her recent piece at National Review Online demonstrates that this is not the first time that Mr. Rather has been exposed as a fraud. She recalls the controversy surrounding his 1988 CBS ’documentary ‘ that made Michael Moore a veritable historian by its standard of journalistic malfeasance. Could it be that Dan Rather was merely the ‘Jason Blair’ that didn’t get caught? Fool us twice, Mr. Rather, shame on us, to be sure. But, how fitting it is for Dan's career to end with he as the biggest fool of all. Nevertheless, dare we assume that he and Blair are alone in their endeavor to undermine arguably the most critical institution of American Democracy? To do so, would make us not merely fools, but imbeciles to boot.

Imbeciles do however, make more manageable subjugates; a fact not lost on CBS orJohn Kerry for that matter. Likewise do intellectuals devoid of the capacity for judgment. Discrimination has been chiseled away from contemporary sensibilities. Grouped with words like 'prejudice' and 'intolerance', the tools of logic have been abandoned to a linguistic slag heap of unacceptable profanities that ironically includes no actual profanity. And so, we have surrendered discrimination to tolerance without judgment. We are told that our nation is evil, that our neighbors are confused, stupid and degenerate, that pride must be divested from personal identity, and esteem is a gift of benevolence bestowed on the unworthy. We are warned that we have more to fear from our brethren than from the butchers of global terror. And we are expected to believe without question. Ignorance is clearly the perfect environment for monsters. Is it any wonder that schools are under attack in Beslan and Afghanistan?... and in America as well?!

The enemy-without invades the schools of children, taking them hostage to torture and murder them before our eyes. The enemy-within imbeds itself inside the system and destroys our children's minds by the systematic obliteration of knowledge, values, and principles. It teaches that justice is subjective, equality is determined by outcome, convictions are subordinate to consensus, gender is neutral, ethics are personal, and religion is repugnant. Outright murder might be more humane than the tortured existence of a conflicted, relativistic, proto-human aberration that is dispensed into a rational universe that refuses contradiction. Survival in that state is virtually impossible. Good judgment does not simply require the recognition of the difference between food and poison, but acknowledges the quality of sense not to eat the one that will kill you. Lacking that judgment, one is left dependent exclusively on fate... trusting blindly in the charity of friends, and the mercy of villains. It is a recipe for suicide. The enemy-without wants to slice our throats.

The enemy-within implores us to slice our own throats.The storm converges on all aspects of civilization simultaneously. Once the impact has undermined the stability of structure and foundations, it can dismantle components with ease. The enemy-without ignores legality altogether; civil relationships among men, being an inconvenient anathema to violent persuasion. Their code consists of one article: "Agree with us or we'll kill you." The enemy-within alters legality by semantic confusion to render a despotic precedent that states: "Agree with us or we'll sue, fine, fire, or jail you." Compulsion being the preferred form of violence, the enemy-within manipulates the system accordingly. It infiltrates our courts and mires due process. It hijacks legislative authority to implement mandate by rogue edict. It destroys justice by substituting the moral concept of liberty with an indefinable abstract called fairness. The enemy-without practices violence with no law. The enemy-within uses the law to justify violence in the form of tyranny.

Like the arrival of hail, the CBS debacle is the final indicator of eminent demise from a storm that has ripened in conditions of degenerating perfection... the meeting of fruit and rot in a celebration of violent putrifaction with Dan as it's worm. The enemy-without finds our very existence, repugnant. Likewise, the enemy-within detests humanity and it's perceived global impact while thriving on human ignorance. It despises wealth and a free-market economy. It diminishes the primacy of individual identity and subordinates choice to prescription. The enemy-within surrenders the conviction of leadership to the consensus of collective approval. It undermines the mandate for decisive action by incessant challenge. It superimposes an ambition for political power over the necessity for national security. It indulges fear, suspicion, hyperbole, rage, and malfeasance as means to its ends; blinding it to the consequences of those actions, and its own collusion with monsters. The enemy-without places bombs in trains and police stations to destroy the spirit of resolve and demoralize a population. The enemy-within dissents without contribution (Reference), and quashes free speech (Reference). It destroys property and commerce (Reference). It produces video propaganda(Reference) and distributes it via production companies or even mass email and on to friends and co-workers and says, “...isn’t this interesting and disturbing,” without mentioning that the depiction is factually incorrect. Propaganda does the job of an I.E.D. while preserving the semblance of integrity... if only in the mind of it's distributor. Both are the tools of mayhem, deployed by an adversary. Like the violent storm, forces converge upon an unsuspecting nation to deliver destruction within its midst as one united front.

That storm is not coming... it is upon us, now.