Goons Over Gothamby
Becky Akers
What is it with Our Rulers and their jihad against sweating? You’d think they’d endorse the act, and enthusiastically, too. After all, when people sweat, they’re often working, and when they work, they’re usually earning money. The more they earn, the more the State can steal. So it’s puzzling to find Our Rulers increasingly suspicious of folks who sweat. Now they’re trying to foist their phobia on us. They’re equating perspiration with terrorism. Last winter, they warned us against passengers who sweat in airports. This time it’s New York City transit. Our Rulers actually seem to believe that perspiring commuters have a bomb tucked in a pocket and are one damp, itchy finger away from detonating it. Worse, the City is deploying cops aboard busses to indoctrinate riders with this malarkey. The New York Post reported on Friday, July 15, "Officers will tell people to be on the lookout for anyone who is sweating on an air-conditioned bus..." As I write, temperatures for the next three days in New York are forecast to burn through the 80's into the 90's, with such fierce humidity as puts saunas to shame. This is the sort of weather in which most people, especially those whose avoirdupois exceeds the Surgeon General’s recommendations, work up a sweat merely sitting. Even on an allegedly air-conditioned bus. Particularly if they’ve had to run to catch it: New York’s government is as incompetent at managing transit schedules as it is at everything else, so busses are notoriously erratic. When riders finally spot one lurching along the avenue, they pursue it as if it were the Holy Grail, perspiration be damned. We can thank Sgt. Luis Pinero for this latest of Big Brother’s insults. Apparently on his own initiative, he invaded a bus last week following the terrorist attacks in London and "reassured" passengers, as the Post put it. "People were very appreciative – they even clapped," Pinero claimed. "They said: ‘We feel safe now. You have a safe day, too.’" Behold the triumph of the socialists running New York, who’ve spent decades turning normal adults into whining wusses and flat-out nincompoops. It’s a wonder their success doesn’t scare them. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was quick to see the potential in Pinero’s posturing. "He did a great job," Kelly said. "We’re taking a lesson from Sgt. Pinero. We can't do it on every bus, but we are going to use that where we can." Oh, I bet they will. Officers on busses will be armed with the usual guns and billy clubs as well as with "talking points." They’ll urge passengers to watch for anything "suspicious." Among such behaviors the cops include not only sweating but "appearing nervous." Gee, that certainly narrows the list of suspects, doesn’t it? Nervous and New York go hand-in-hand. What else can be expected in a metropolis where no night goes unpunctured by sirens, nor does the day dawn when vermin keep to their holes rather than scuttling across one’s path? If passengers aren’t nervous before the NYPD boards their bus, they certainly should be afterwards. These are the murderers who shot unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo 19 times as he reached for his wallet, presumably to retrieve his ID. These are the kidnappers who threw nets over New Yorkers during the Republican convention in August 2004, arresting about 1700 people on charges so flimsy that 91% of the cases were dismissed. These are the thieves who broke into legal poker clubs last month and robbed players of $100,000 – money the City refuses to return. Heck, I’m nervous being in the same borough with them, let alone on the same bus. Alas, what New York’s media love to call the "beefed-up police presence" – shouldn’t it be "pigged-up"? – will continue for the "foreseeable future," according to a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Posting cops in the busses, whether or not they bore riders with their silly spiels against sweating, is costing taxpayers an extra $1.9 million per week as Our Rulers debate exactly which of their pots will cough up the funds (the MTA? New York State? New York City?). You’d never know from these discussions that every one of their pennies has been sheared from us sheeple, nor that the MTA’s spokesman is playing us for fools when he solemnly asserts that this is "money well spent." Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire chief of Bloomberg Communications who bought himself New York’s mayoralty a few years ago, is still learning the political ropes. Regardless of the extra cops cruising the subways and busses, he’s called for more surveillance cameras above and below ground. He seems oblivious to what this implies about the NYPD’s ability to catch those sweat-soaked, nail-biting terrorists. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t dissimulate as well as most politicians. He also wants more "red light" cameras to photograph cars whose drivers flout traffic laws. Revenue, you see. But revenue has nothing to do with all the increased surveillance in the subways and busses, now, does it? No, of course not. Those cameras and cops are there for security. And only nervous, sweaty terrorists object to that. July 19, 2005 Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution. Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com |