ARE WE LOCKED UP?

ARE WE LOCKED UP?

An analysis and story from Murph

As we continue to be amazed at the sordid escapades of the political elite, the brazen pursuit of power and privilege, the unbridled lack of respect for the less than rich citizens of this country, we can wonder at what to do about it. All we see is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg from articles and exposés on the internet and occasionally in national news media. I get to speculating about how far down the power ladder this corruption falls. Here is what I am observing.

I am seeing more and more of the neocon method of governance trickling down to the local community governance. I suppose we could assume that attitudes and political agendas at the national level might take a bit of time to filter down to local politicians. Now I realize that corrupt local politics have always been around, I’ve seen too much of it to deny its pervasive intrusion in our lives. But I also see intensification at the local level to run things along the neocon line, namely, ‘it don’t matter what the citizens want, or whether they take us to court, we are going to do what we want’, attitude.

Why would the citizens at the local level or even at the federal level be willing to put up with this? I suspect there are a very few basic replies to this. One of which is fear:

fear of losing income, fear of losing privilege, fear of incarceration (or worse), fear of losing respect. The amount of fears we can list can be quite extensive. Fear is probably the most effective means of keeping citizens from objecting too heatedly to policy and corruption.

I suspect that all these fears that keep us inactive or paralyzed from taking action against the power brokers has more to do with a desire for security. In order for any society to be able to have security for its population, it demands a certain amount of conformity; there are some things that simply can’t be allowed to happen if you want security. The more security that is demanded by the population, the more regulation accompanies it. While we haven’t quite reached the extreme position of Orwell’s book “1984”, we are sure getting close to it. Part of the regulations that we are going to have is going to be loss of individuality, loss of decision making, loss of independence. This is accompanied by a very steep increase of authority and authoritarian governance. It is a vicious circle, each increasing component creating an intensification of the other components. It is easy to view this process and conclude that individual freedom is a long past glitch in the human condition.

I would like to propose that it is not long past. Admittedly, it sure looks grim at this time, but we do have 5000 years of recorded history to look at to see there is reason to believe it has not always been so, and that it will not always be so into the future. I would assert that the complexity of a society is not a necessary condition (it can be a sufficient condition), for this search for security, nor is the loss of freedoms for the individual. It does not appear to me that there is any logical reason that there cannot be a complex society and still have freedom. This of course would necessitate a change in the rank of what we consider important in our lives. If security is at the top of the list, yes, nothing will change. The problem that I see we have as a complex society and civilization is that we have been sold the concept that security is something that can be legislated, can be enforced by law. I assert that is bull shit. I will assert that there are degrees of security. If you want no risks in your life, you are making a wish for something that is not possible. Anyone, and I mean anyone that tries to make a promise to you that they can provide security in this life is a liar. And if you accept this as a possibility, you will notice what accompanies the statement: “you got to give up freedom to get this security”. At the present time, we are promised security in the form of protection from terrorists at the expense of having none of the freedoms that were guaranteed in the original document contract with the government and its citizens. The liberal administrations had their own version of selling security at some expense.

So what we have currently ended up with is a society of cowed, non independent fearful citizens that increasingly are willing to sell their souls for the mythical god of security.

It is my observation that this type of society is more a product of human density than anything else. What I have observed and experienced is that the less human density, the more independence and freedom the individual exercises. And that is what I am going to point out now.

I live in a fairly low density populated area. The town that is a mile down the road has, by last census, 6500 people. The close surrounding area that is about 20 square miles has maybe another 8 to 10 thousand people. I have lived where there is far less than this. I lived in a county that was the largest in the state that had only 5000 residents. I could see my closest neighbor’s roof in the fall when the leaves were off the trees, and it was a long way to the next neighbor. I assert from these living experiences that as I went down in population density, the self reliance went up, the independence went up, and the relative freedom to do as you please went up.

In this community I now live in, we are in the process of fighting the very forces that try and keep us in fear and subjugation; the county commissioners. I want to give a brief description of the issue and how it is being handled in an effort to show that independence and self reliance and freedom is not entirely dead, in bad shape and struggling for breath, but it is still there.

In 1995, long before Freeacre and I moved here, the county got its ass on a drive for clean water. Incidentally, this area has the national rep of having some of the cleanest ground water in the country. As an advanced projection of increasing population density that is going on in the county, they concluded that a study must be made of how to keep the water clean with the increasing population pressure. That I find to be admirable. Advanced planning by the government? Holy wowsee! You don’t see that every day. So, they got the grant money (holy s—t, 5 mil folks) and started studying the ground water, focusing their study on the south county area where we live. The EPA, CDC, DEQ and god knows what other 3 letter government bodies got in on the act. At the present, the methodology and data isn’t complete, parts of the study have not been concluded even, and when requests for the study data and methodology are requested, you are turned down with the statement that it isn’t complete. Oh oh, does this sound familiar?

Well, moving on. So in the year 2000 they decide to declare some kind of emergency. This supposed emergency was to take place anytime between 10 and 40 years down the road. The emergency to the ground water aquifers was nitrate contamination from individual home septic systems. They were also focusing their attention on contamination of the river waters, which, believe me, are pristine and gorgeous, trout fisherman paradise. Depending where you live in the county, you can have ground level water as high as 2 feet in some areas. In our particular area it is 15 feet. So, the county commissioners hired a staff to put this information all together as it came in and to make recommendation at the prompting of the CDC on what to do about this coming emergency. They have proposed a thing called the “home rule policy” which mandates that in 10 years every person not hooked up to some kind of municipal sewer system must put in what amounts to an approved nitrogen reduction system that costs anywhere from 8-25 thousand dollars, depending on who you talk to about it. To even build in the area at this time, or in our case, get rid of the single wide trailer and put in something better, there is the prerequisite that you install a 14-18 thousand dollar sand filter system which does not do anything at all with nitrates. So to take care of the non existent nitrate problem at this time, you have to retrofit ALL existing systems with this nitrate reduction system for the 8-25 thousand dollar cost, and they want to mandate it happen in 10 years. To enforce this, they will institute fines for every year you are out of compliance, put a lien on your property and make you install the system and if you can’t pay the lien, take the property. I am assuming that all of you reading this understand the impact this will have on people with fixed incomes, those that are working poor, and to property values. I think I saw a figure that over 40% of the south county residents are either retired on fixed incomes, or are at or just above the poverty level.

So since the county commission has not for the last 15 years notified people of this and not encouraged or allowed public input, clear up to 5 months ago, when the information came out about this proposal, a citizens action committee was instantly developed. Freeacre and I were in on that at the ground floor. We now have a whole bunch of very pissed off older folks that are threatening physical retaliation, like about 5,000.

The commissioners then had to have public hearings. The first one was two weeks ago and was a disaster. Held at the high school auditorium that wouldn’t hold more than 800 seated because of fire regs, they turned away close to 300 people. Standing room only. For 3 hours. Needless to say the meeting got a bit testy and some verbal rowdiness happened with the effect that the commissioners said we either acted ‘professionally’ (whatever in hell that was supposed to mean) or they were going to take their slide presentation (bat and ball) and go home. They proceeded to give one of the most ridiculous presentations I have ever seen for a public hearing. If you were a professional hydrologist or lawyer, it would have been informative. They even had the gall to put on the screen a calculus formula showing how smart they were in programming a computer model for the next 50 years of ground water contamination. Thank goodness they said they would be back next week, same time same place, for public input.

Now here is the important part of this story. About two weeks before this meeting, during meetings of the action committee, (2-3 per week) we laid out how to deal with this and what the issues really were. After that 3 hour meeting with the commissioners, the one that was in charge of the meeting said the attendance was a “fluke” and would never happen again. After all, we were south county and we couldn’t get together on anything. The woman that had headed up the action committee told him, just wait, there will be even more at the next meeting. His statement was the momentous neocon attitude, that in effect said, “dumb tobacco chewing drooling hillbillies don’t cooperate”.

Next meeting this last Tuesday, more showed up. They had a large amount of additional seating and the place was packed again, with even more people and standing room only. You could literally see the commissioners faces becoming longer and longer. It is true, that for this little community, this was very unusual. But, now there was an issue that affected every single person in the area.

During the meeting, the first 40 min. was taken up with written questions that they hadn’t gotten around to answering during the last meeting. That involved a lot of prevarication on the part of the people supposedly answering the question. THEN came the presentation period, you could get up and make a presentation to the commissioners and their staff. Because so many people had put their names on the list, we were held to 5 min each except for the first one. The first one was from an executive of the Orenco Co. which is one of the approved systems to put in. He has a doctorate in 2 disciplines. He chewed up and spat out every single rational that the commission had put forth to justify this new proposal. Every single one. He got a standing ovation. Then 40 more presented their statements. Freeacre and I were two of them. People that had signed up for a presentation that had their points covered by someone ahead of them graciously surrendered their place. I was blown away. Retired engineers, retired bio engineers, medical people, a few housewives, chamber of commerce, mechanics, ranchers and cowboys, and just plain folks got up and laid out well thought out articulate condemnation of the commissioners and what they propose, disputing every thing these people have been saying since 1995. All of this done by internet research on an individual basis and it didn’t even cost 5 million dollars to do it. Amazing, right? Even our local wing nut got up and presented a thoughtful commentary. (But, keep in mind, he is OUR wing nut) The commissioners were put on notice that if they pass this, they are going to be involved in an extensive legal battle which will eat up funds and a probable recall action initiated.

The point of this narrative? Well, it is what I consider a rare example of a small community pulling together regardless of social or economic background. Showing once again that cooperation and passion can accomplish a block for these power people. The issue is to have the final vote the end of the month with the one more meeting for public input which I anticipate will be very similar to the last one I described. I know that if they fly in the face of public pressure on this issue, the real fight will be on, Freeacre and I in the middle of it. If they turn it down, we plan a whole south county party in celebration for the community coming together.

In response to those people that say that this society is completely made of up sheeple who will not resist the power brokers, I offer the preceding story as a refutation. The drive for independence and freedom is not gone, only seriously crippled. Get your communities together and learn how to fight these ass holes.

Anyone else has a similar story? Write me, Sunrise3@coinet.com.