In my mind I envision a visit by MIBs

Who have stopped by to *warn* me about safety.

They are sullen, and frightening – beyond all control...

They are viciously quiet and crafty!
 
 

They remind me I can be squashed like a bug...

They remind I don’t have *any* rights...

They show their contempt and their lack of respect,

Suggesting their tax boys could "turn out my lights."
 
 

"...And, would I be *surprised* that my wife used cocaine"?

"Or my son was a gun-running *drug lord*"?

"And what of your *problem*, Mr. Lehmberg"?

"...Fond of young children, the classroom your smorgasbord"?
 
 

...And it does me no good to protest these are LIES!

History is the way *they* have it written.

They sit in my house... proud smirks on their faces,

...And I am silenced, hull-breached, soundly beaten.
 
 

Now none of this has to happen, they caution...

Just be careful what you "write" and "do" and "say,"

Or we’ll be back with all the *proof* that is needed,

"And we’ll take your whole life away."
 
 

"...So this is America," I ask them at last...

"This is what I fought for in war..."

So my country could disgrace me as a loser,

...And without a backward glance just shut my door!
 
 

And I’m more scared then, than in  any  time past.

...And I’ve flown down the muzzles of big guns!

The terror I felt was cold steel in my guts.

On their *whim* I'd be snatched from the sun.
 
 

And it wasn’t just me; it was my wife, and my child.

Our lives had no *value*... just *owners*.

To them we were worse than the scum of the Earth...

We were worse than their pimps, or their stoners.
 
 

So what will I do if they come for their visit?

Trusted others have told me they come.

My life would be hell were it bound up and muzzled,

Were I hounded or threatened or put on the run...
 
 

And that’s no way to live a life.

So says my AlienView.

When all I wanted was the "truth"...

What am I now to do?
 
 

alienview@adelphia.net
 
 
 
 

I’m open for any suggestions. -What- do you do! What do you -do-!
 
  Damned if it does not make one a little paranoid – and let’s see . . . just what was that definition of paranoia?

...Fear without threat...

OK, so there is no threat, and black box government agencies do not exist! I am a fool to fear them, and only express a weakness in my character when troubled by the errant thought.
 
  Let me tell you why I’m troubled. I’ve been federalized for a quarter of a century in an honorably completed military career. Though I witnessed all the bad that that implies I also witnessed all of the good. The reach for tolerance across ethnic and individual lines was commendable (albeit for pragmatic reasons, a military -has- to work), commensurate with the times, and it warms this old memory. We were always reminded that we worked together for the Constitution, ultimately, and that the president was the chief commander.  I bought into the idealism of -classical- liberalism, or, respect for the individual, and individual rights in a free society, unrestricted by tyranny, terror, or even testosterone!  I bought in without really understanding why!
 
  Consider. . .
 
  "Need to know" is a terrifying concept. It has its roots in an ethic of arguable utility that proposes conditions where one man may make -arbitrary- decisions on what another man may know.  Please hear the word *arbitrary* in there. Arbitrary is a bad word. It is a nine letter four-letter word. In that word hides more questions than we have answers to or have a right to hide. There is no oversight in that word – no accountability, no responsibility. I know about "need to know."  I know that the people who practice *need to know* are seriously ANAL about it.  By was of example, I was deeply involved in military aviation for a quarter century and  never  heard a peep about the stealth program! 

ANYTHING can hide in there!

I’ve had friends mysteriously drop from active duty rolls, their military histories vanish as far as I was concerned.  I'd assumed them dead or otherwise departed, but then they pop up again in my life subsequently, later, looking gaunt and hard edged.  Always they'd have non-specific hair raising tales that one did not find in the papers. They were all quiet, different, and changed from when I'd known them before... and I certainly don’t mean that in a good way! 

They had a new scariness they didn’t have before. When these guys said that they’d have to kill me if they told me any more, my chuckle was half hearted and forced past a gulp.  

I knew these black box agencies existed – but I never truly understood their import!  I suppose that I was so far under their cowl that I felt they were some kind of necessary associate – we were on the same team... in a brotherhood or something... Then I retired from military service and went to college...

There is nothing more dangerous than a guy my age, open minded, and looking for something useful to do, than going back to college <g>. I understood the import, then. The import is that if one gives -any- reason at all, one can become an *arbitrary* target of one of these agencies.  Simple as that.  Read Koontz’s "Dark Rivers of the Heart," for a not-so-over-the-top illustration!
 
  I am unsettled with even *known* agencies like the FBI, CIA, ATF, and DEA -- clearly running amuck in an incompetent fashion. My honest expression of that discomfort provides them with the excuse to make me a target. 

I, somehow, as a function of buying -in- to the -classical liberal ideals of this nation (Chill, reader – Newt Gingrich was a *classical* liberal) -- have been made over into an enemy of it???  Now, that’s not MY disconnect! That is no failure on MY part! That is not me betraying MY country, and I say this understanding the true evil of knee-jerk nationalism.
 
  I discovered in college that truth is not what we think, much of what we know is wrong, and -I- was the reason that there is not more GI Bill <G>. I'd read too much Tom Paine, I'd read to much Thomas Jefferson, I'd read to much John Stuart Mill.  I listened to too much National Public Radio, Jeff Rense, and Alan Dawson Graham.  I'd read enough to evolve an AlienView that seems to make sense of the craziness I discover around me and to challenge the faiths or positions I have learned -may- have secondary agendas – agendas that get more light with my effort, I think, and at very least are fooling ME no longer.

MIBs -- there's more suggested by them than most folks are comfortable contemplating...verily.