The Pantywaist Index

I began to assemble the items on this Pantywaist Index very soon after 9/11, when it had already become obvious that our (federal) reaction to the terrorist attacks was going to be . . . sort of odd.

Or, rather, that it would be completely in keeping with past federal behavior: close bureaucratic ranks, summon up more taxpayers' money, continue everything as before except for hurling more money at the usual suspects, and look out especially for captious critics (a.k.a. "terrorist supporters" in Ashcroft's view) claiming there might be something wrong – gasp! – with government itself.

This is by no means an exhaustive index, so I'll plan to keep adding to it, but it seemed time to let the world in on my first draft and perhaps invite ideas for it.

My thesis is this: you can tell things aren't going well with these States in the current unpleasantness, and that the pantywaists are in charge, if:

Commercial airlines are not ordered at once to arm their pilots with guns (and perhaps their cabin personnel with stun guns, etc.). If the airlines are doing it on the qt, I say bravo.
The President as Commander in Chief fails to remove at once, by executive order, all women from army fighting units, ships of the line, and military aircraft.
The hue and cry among many politicos for disarming the public, that is, for vitiating the 2nd Amendment, proceeds apace, or even grows more assertive.
The Bill of Rights is not vigorously and loudly reaffirmed by the regime as fundamental to the safety – to the integrity – of the nation.
The federal lands in 50 states and all our seacoasts are not immediately declared open to exploration for oil. (It would be even better if the federals began to get rid of the 40-odd percent of the nation's land they have engrossed, and the states followed suit, too, by privatizing much of the additional 18-plus percent they hold.)
Plans for atomic energy plants and coal-fired energy plants are not pushed forward as rapidly as possible.
We do not radically revise our immigration policy. (At the least, why not a moratorium, so we can have some open discussion, that is, no topics off the table?)

I am leaving off the list for now anything to do with "gays in the military" as way too esoteric for a quickie item. After all, no one can really tell what someone else's "orientation" is, and even people whose orientation is quite kosher have been known to play tiddlywinks at one time or another. Further, I guess the present schema allows for eliminating people who are openly predatory. At least I hope so.

And I suppose that for the time being there is no hope of taking a serious look at the Federal Reserve's habit of wrecking our money, or the IRS's addiction to grabbing huge chunks of it. Those items will have to come up after the present "war" is over (if it ever is).

Reasonable men will realize that I have only nicked the corner of what ought to happen if the nation is serious about defeating terrorism. But these seven items alone will demonstrate that our hairy-chested, machismo leaders and heavyweight computer warriors are, at least for the present, pantywaists, that is, according to Webster's, sissies.

Or is that they merely seem to be? Which is it? These questions raise a further question: Who is really running things? The wannabe-machismo politicians we see on TV? Or someone else who sets the themes for what the public faces may say and do, and thus determines their enduring pantywaistism? Who are our real rulers?

The main thing to know about them is that they are largely invisible. But you can posit a couple of things about them: the majority is white, they are male, and they are old. Think "bankers" and "munitions makers."

(Yes, Virginia, your worst fears are realized; those big, bad men really are in charge, and they aren't about to hand things over to you. And they are rich, very rich. They spend a lot of time and money trying to put it across that they don't exist, and that they certainly aren't white, male, old, and rich. The idea is to get everybody to think that old kind of stuff has gone by and now everything is multihued and gaily poor. And indeed everything is, on your block.)

Something to realize about the Real Power Folk and their public agents (Bush, Cheney, Greenspan, etc.) is that they are trapped by fate; they can do no other. Somehow they have lost the power to reform (that is one definition in Catholic Christianity of being in the condition of mortal sin). They must plunge ahead, pushing for one-world government, manipulating other nations, fostering general cultural immorality, anti-Christianity, minority "rights," women's "rights," gay "rights," open borders, and Western cultural suicide, all in service of their overmastering greed for more power and more wealth, which they will gain by dividing and conquering, always selling arms to both sides in any sort of local conflict.

The primary lust of our true rulers is simply the lust to dominate; they wish to rule the world. At present they are close to getting there. Probably the only thing that stands in their way is the same thing that stood in the way of the builders of the Tower of Babel. They are opposing the way God wants things to go, and that in the end cannot succeed.

Listen to a reliable 3000-year-old admonition: "Do not put your trust in men in power, or in any mortal man-he cannot save, he yields his breath and goes back to the earth he came from, and on that day all his schemes perish." (Ps 146:3-4-Jerusalem Bible)

I can hardly wait.

December 24, 2001

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