This was going to be about something else. I was going to take the call for a list of “subversive” books to be saved so that copies would be available for use if the regime bans them over to its own post so that it would be easier to get to. Now it can stay at His Majesty’s THREAT IDENTIFIED post below.

Now there is something of more import, questions that bear on the future of “ourselves and our Posterity”.

Give us more, O Emperor! »« AIIIEEEE! My EYES!

…Baghdad Bob presidential spokes-tool Gibbs with a preview of the SotU tonight:

“The president’s going to explain why he thinks the American people are angry and frustrated,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on “Good Morning America” today.

Something we’re sure that those angry, bitter, bible- and gun-clinging sister-humpers will be thrilled to have explained to them. It’s not as if they themselves have a chance in Hades of knowing why they’re angry and frustrated without TOTUS explaining their own thoughts to them.

Our guess as to what the Lightworker is going to tell us? We’re angry and frustrated because of Bush, of course. An anger at Bush so fierce, so passionate that it got a Republican voted in to replace Swimmer Kennedy’s bloated corpse.

Heck, if we get any angrier at Bush, we might just elect Dick Cheney president, whether he wants us to or not.

The one thing we do know about tonight’s eruption of oral flatulence is that there will be not one ounce of blame laid at the feet of Teh Won™ who is, after all, the Savior of All Mankind.

But we’re not about to tune in to check. We got a hold of one of the several SotU Drinking Games™ circulating on the net currently, and we quickly realized that we would die of ethanol poisoning within three minutes of Teh Won’s first “let me be clear.”

Thatisall.

We of the Empire are a varied lot. But we do share one characteristic. We are NOT normal. “Normal” people do not pay all that much attention to what is going on outside the small sphere that is their life. Events intrude on their cozy little worlds, ambushing them, and they have no idea from whence the events came; or being in shock at the intrusion, of what to do to react. They stand like deer in the headlights, and not all of them react fast enough to survive.

We, on the other hand, watch what is going on around us. And we try to read signs, and to warn those who are not on watch. We are walking point, trying to detect the ambush; and trying to keep those behind from walking into the trap. In the process, we draw a lot of fire first. But we do it.

Why? Because we are Grey Tribe Sheepdogs, and we know that we are what stands between the Wolves and the Sheep. I admit that the metaphor gets visually jarring when you add in the streak of Browncoat in most of us; but the willingness to Misbehave to protect each other, our Pups, and our Sheep, and even by extension those Sheep of the Pink Tribe who are not too stupid to live is what defines us. We are genetically programmed to go for the Wolves of either Tribe.

We have been walking point politically, and looking for the signs of an ambush. The sad fact is our Sheep do not understand that elections have, up to now, had consequences. We may mistake something we spot as signs of an ambush ahead, but then again we may be spotting that we are all entering a kill zone. It is our job to prepare, to warn, and to try to save as many as possible of our Tribe.

There are several branches in the trail ahead that seem to be broken in un-natural ways, disturbances in the undergrowth that are not random. It is time to stop and read them, before the hinge swings closed.

Give us more, O Emperor! »« AIIIEEEE! My EYES!

In His Majesty’s thread on the Doomsday Clock below, I mentioned that Patriots may have their own individual Doomsday Clocks. They would be based on the perceived level of thirst of the Tree of Liberty, more than on the perceived danger of nuclear war. They are as yet unsynchronized and are ticking at different rates.

I fear I have to bring to the discussion something that will at least wind a couple of those clocks.

First, let us consider the existence of “think tanks” and their role. Government departments have specific functions. As much as they would like to, they cannot afford to keep the in house expertise to engage in theoretical conjectural studies. Empire building may be a bureaucratic watchword, but building an empire of boffins is hard to defend against other empires in each department. Further, even the Federal bureaucracy recognizes to some extent that, with the exception of rare niches like DARPA, the government by its nature is generations behind the technology and research ability of private industry. Finally, there is the added benefit to contracting out that you can pay off political allies and the possibilities of kickbacks are stunning. Thus, when trying to plan for the future; government agencies contract studies out.

Rand Corporation was one of the first think tanks, and is still one of the largest. I used to get the bi-monthly index of their unclassified, public papers; but that fell by the wayside. I was recently pointed to a study that amazingly IS public, having been released in December. And it is disturbing.

Here is the title: A Stability Police Force for the United States; Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities

Give us more, O Emperor! »« AIIIEEEE! My EYES!

It made our Imperial Heart swell with pride to note that old-fashioned standards about not associating with pigs still live on in our noble nation when I read this about Ben “Man Whore” Nelson trying to dine out in his “home” city of Omaha:

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when a patron began complaining about Nelson’s decisive vote in favor of the Senate’s health care bill.

Other customers started booing. A woman yelled, “Get him the hell out of here!” And the Nelsons and their dining companions beat a hasty retreat.

…and the smell in the establishment improved immediately upon their departure.

You see? That’s what we’re talking about. In the old days, utter lack of honor and disreputable behavior like that of that overpaid prostitute, Nelson, would lead to what used to be called “shunning.” No violence needed, no pitchforks, no torches (although we’ll be the first to say that there’s nothing wrong with pitchforks and torches), simply an open and unequivocal declaration of gentlemen and -women that they will not be found anywhere near untouchables.

You simply declare a person or persons unfit company for anything other than swine and proceed to avoid them in any way possible, treating them with the same respect that you would show a hog pissing in the street. They become non-persons, undesirables, pariahs and outlaws, exempt from the common rules of civility that govern interactions between civilized people.

Back then, we didn’t need laws telling us who we should “tolerate”, much less laws hitting us over the head when we chose NOT to treat scum as anything but scum. If somebody behaved like an utter knave, they would know it soon enough and they would soon mend their ways, because it’s not easy to get by when people will not give you the time of day.

We didn’t need “anti-discriminatory” laws because we A) believed in people’s RIGHT to be boors if they wanted to and B) we KNEW that if they chose to be pigs, they’d soon find themselves very lonely and universally despised indeed.

And we still don’t need them. It is unconscionable swine like the Nelsons that need them to protect themselves from the just and proper consequences of their choices.

You can legislate fines and imprisonments as much as you like, but nothing is more devastating to a cur and a blackguard than to be excluded from decent company, to have people greet them with a derisive spit on the ground when they show themselves in public, to have people look at their outstretched hands as if somebody just offered them a pile of rancid pig shit or to just plain refuse to acknowledge their presence.

Humans are, whether they like to admit it or not, social animals, and nothing hurts them more than to be shown, in every possible way, every day, that their presence is not only not required, it’s also not desired in any way.

If His Imperial Majesty had been in that establishment that day, he would have simply called over a waiter upon the arrival and seating of the Nelsons and said: “we’re sorry. There must have been a misunderstanding. We weren’t aware that your establishment chooses to serve farm animals. Would you be as kind as to cancel our order? Goodbye.”

And then we would have left without another word.

But we would have meant every single one of the ones we’d uttered.

See what we mean?

Thatisall.