Terrible twos

The PATRIOT act hit the big oh-two a couple weeks back. Dong resin interviews the nation's most prominent enfant terrible and learns just what it means to be an American.

Surprising thing about The USA PATRIOT act : in person, it's a lot more gregarious and sexy than you'd expect. Whenever you read about it, mentally you hear a wretched Henry Kissenger-like drone going on about "securing our freedoms" and so on. In the flesh? Talking with the Patriot Act is an interesting blend of interviewing Matthew Mcconaughey inbetween bong hits, and discussing philosophy with David Bowie back in the 70s when he was stoned enough to want to fuck Mick Jagger.

Far from being an aloof bit of legislation, the kind you might never hear from unless you're some sort of master criminal, Patriot seems accessible... it's not hard to imagine bumping into Patriot in any venue, from dank hipster hangouts, to right on your campus, or even in your home.
There's a reason this one has the buzz that it does.

DR: So, Patriot Act... right off the bat, what's with the name? A little bit of an obnoxious arm twist, don't you think? "If you're a real American, you'll go along with this", it says.

PA: What did you say your social security number was?

DR: Er-

PA: (Dry chuckles) I kid. Nobody thinks I have a sense of humor, dong, it's a real drag. Say, mine is arguably the most ironic name to happen in the history of naming things since "Madonna" or "Great Britain", and people still paint me as some sort of humorless droog. Subtle wit is lost on the masses.

DR: Heh, sure.

PA: I mean, you know a thing or six about forging ahead with a dopey moniker, am I right? It's meant to be relaxing. It says "hey, it's cool man, I'm in on the joke, too."

DR: Well, in my own case I was being self-deprecating... you're saying your name is a willful nod to how imperialist your underpinnings are? That's a bit shocking, P. Kind of frank for the Beltway crowd, yeah?

PA: See, it's kind of a textured joke that you can take as you like. Am I being ironic calling myself PATRIOT? Or frighteningly jingoistic? Bit of a Rorschach test, see.

DR: Right, yeah. Now, I thought your name was an attempt to sell you as, you know, "good for American citizens", yet another big pander from the current administration, as in"no child left behind."
Not the case?

PA: Yeah, a lot of people have taken it that way, but really, if you think about it for even half a second... exactly who needed to be sold? Where was the big scary resistance that I had to push through?
Face it, I could have been named "The Let's Knife-Rape Dakota Fanning For Satan Act", and no one would have twitched. I passed though congress like greased shit through a goose with nary a peep. Nobody really had the stones to open their cry-holes after 9/11, did they.

DR: Evidently not. Now, speaking of your public perception, let me get your reaction to a description of you.

PA: Cool. Hit me.

DR: "Congress simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network."
Okay.... really?

PA: (giggle-snort) Nah! C'mon. When was the last time in American history you saw librarians threatened with jail time for not handing over names and records?
Hehe! Seriously, did you just write that?

DR: I copied it verbatim from your own Department of Justice website, P.

PA: Ouch! You know, I don't control my own likeness, DR. It's all marketing.

DR: Sure. There are some thumbnails of your effects on that site, too. Care to enrich our understanding of what's written?

PA: Fire away.

DR: "Punishes bioterrorists. " We didn't before?

PA: Oh, that. Yeah, we involve the nipples, now.

DR: What is a "bioterrorist?"

PA: People who cultivate bioweapons like anthrax.

DR: Right.

PA: -also guys who carve a hole in a pumpkin and then microwave it to body temperature for "recreational use."

DR: Really?

PA: Absolutely. I mean, what are we, France? Time for a little self-control, BillyBob.

DR: "Punishes terrorist attacks on mass transit systems. " What specifically?

PA: Guys who whistle.

DR: Really?

PA: Sure. They just piss me off. It's a bus, right? Cheer down a little, McFerrin.

DR: Okay. Now, I notice you increase the penalties for a list of conspiracy crimes, arson in an official building, stuff like that...

PA: Yessir.

DR: Is this a reasonable way to deal with the extremists likely to carry these attacks out? Deterrence?

PA: Oh, that's not really for the terrorists, that's just a vague catch-all to keep tabs on the Jews.

DR: What?

PA: (smiles) Gotcha.

DR: Heh.

PA: We already know what all the Jews are up to. Second thing Dubya did, right after seeing what's in Area 51.

DR: Well, what about this "enemy combatant" stuff? Once labeled as such, no matter how thin the reasoning, an American citizen loses many of the constitutional rights that making being an American attractive to begin with. You can, realistically, allow a completely innocent person's home to be invaded, their property sized without being accounted for, serve an open-ended amount of jail time without communication to outside parties, all correspondence with a lawyer monitored... You don't see yourself as antithetical to American values?

PA: What's the question?

DR: You don't see yourself as antithetical to American values?

PA: How?

DR: You allow American citizens to be treated like criminals on even the most shaky of premises.

PA: When?

DR: What?

PA: Wait, what are you asking me?

DR: You don't see yourself as antithetical to American values?

PA: How so?

DR: ....

PA: Hee hee! I'm just playing. Look, Americans asked for me. Antithetical to our values? Where do you think I come from, kid, Mars?

DR: Well-

PA: There's a long history of any doo-dah batshit thing that makes governments look strong being passed when it's populace get scared. "Getting tough" makes people feel safe. Look, I could go on for days about Friedrich Nietzsche and how he tied all this up neatly with his whole "master state / slave state" thing, but it's a little hard to whip out "Nietzsche" without sounding like some liberal arts douchebag flailing at any conversational nugget while trying to get laid at a mixer.

DR: Nietzsche?

PA: Yeah, you know, society is either in advance or decline, it's either pushing forward or sliding back. Advance of society requires the bravado of desperation, see, once you're too comfortable and start looking for security rather than achievement, society starts to slide back towards tyranny. Hello!
Heh, you know, not that I'm tyrannical.

DR: So, you're cool with using the victims of 9/11 as a legislative lubricant?

PA: (Smirks) oh, kid gloves come right off, huh? Okay, look, of course nobody's happy that around 3,000 innocent people died that day, yet, if a happy spin can be put to those 3,000 brave deaths, well, that would be me. I've been warned in the past not to use the word "sacrifice", but really, 9/11, and the fear it generated was the only way I could have happened.

DR: Right.

PA: I like to think of myself as the sliver lining on our nation's dark little rain cloud.

DR: Interesting read.

PA: You're not a terrorist, are you dong? So what's the problem? I'm only going after bad guys.

DR: Well, interesting you bring that up... the definition of "terrorist" is getting a lot more broad... I see you now define even small time drug possession as "narco-terrorism." You really think people are buying into that?

PA: Are buying?! Sold, Bwanna! That ship is a just a dot on the horizon. Once again, it's about fear, okay? People don't reason out their fears, they have lives to lead. Drugs are scary if you have children, and the people who vote have children. I'm not about civility, dong, I'm about popularity.

DR: Well, drugs are a pretty corrosive influence, right? I mean it's not an irrational fear-

PA: Ha! The threat of recreational drugs is not about the addiction, that's just a simple health issue, illegal drugs a larger threat; a breakdown of control. When you're the kid escaping the control, it's fun, but not so fun where you're the parent, so, drugs make a one fucking neato boogyman. Very dependable.

DR: Heh. You sound like a countercultre conspiracy theorist, now.

PA: Yeah, well, the truth is that we're not so far removed, the tinfoil hat gang and I, we're two passing cars on the same road; they're morbidly toying with fear as an explanation of their problems, I'm using it to provide easy answers.

DR: Right.

PA: See, parents, the majority of people who vote, understand only two things: fear, and how what scares them applies to their kids. Hell, it's a survival mechanism. So, you can marvel all you like at the willful handing over of civil liberties, but parents will always outnumber you useless self-centered single dweebs at ye olde voting boothe, and they'll always make the decisions based on the concept of security, not liberty. Freedom is scary, dong.

DR: That's real depressing, P.A.

PA: Well, you libertarians all seem to think there's this great parallel universe where things are as they should be, and if only you could get the right sort of government in power, you could live that way. That's just silly. People are all the same: once you have kids, you're all conservatives. God, Government and Mandatory Seatbelts. Let the fear do the thinking.

DR: Great. Now I'm very depressed.

PA: Well, cheer up. I love your site.

DR:Wow, really? You read me?

PA: Well you keep talking about having sex with child celebrities, dong, so I pretty much have to.
Plus, there's that fabulous post where you call for Al Queda to hit new york again. Johnny Ashcroft won't admit to it, but his wife says he has that Al Queda post on his fridge at home. God, you know if Al Queda actually hit something big again this term, we'll have Bushes in the white house until 2060. There's like 40 of `em, you know. Jeb's next in line. I personally wouldn't leave any one of `em in charge of an anvil myself, but they sure make amusing presidents, don't you think?

DR: That's.. uh...

PA: Seriously, I love`em. Remember all that pseudo-Christian noise a couple of years ago Bush made about the sanctity of life and all that, surrounding the whole stem cells thing? Clones baaad, save the children, all that stuff?

DR: Sure.

PA: Dubbya's got eight Dubbya clones in the walk-in freezer in the white house cafeteria!

DR: What?

PA: No shit. You want a little Cherry Garcia at three am, you're not thinking about anything, you flip on the lights in the freezer, and there's eight fucking Bushciles hanging in there, giving you the hairy eyeball. Fucking heart-stopping. Scares me shitless every time.

DR: You're putting me on.

PA: I wish! Creeps us all out. Rummy calls Bush "George W. Romero" behind his back.

DR: Ha!

PA: Funny thing is , ole' W's is the best physical shape of anyone I've ever seen, he'll never need parts, but I guess you can never be too careful. Well, I mean you can all be too careful, but not George, if you get my drift. He's ready to do a head transplant with a clone at the drop of a dime.

DR: Elective surgery.

PA: Ha! Indeed.

DR: So, John Ashcroft went on that tour singing your praises...

PA: God. Hehe. Look, Johnny's my boy, I owe him everything, really. But....
(visibly struggles with a few thoughts)-

DR: G'on-

PA: Well, you know it's like when you're in high school, and your mother bumps into a kid on a higher social strata than you at the mall, and tries to convince them you're cool...

DR: More harm than good, really.

PA: Yeah. I mean, Johnny swings a big stick with the people who count, and frankly it's all moot anyway; I'll do as I please as long as "remember 9/11" is still good, I'm the 900 pound gorilla, okay, but still... I admit I could have done without the pep rally.
(Gets uncomfortable) I mean... well what am I, some faggy human rights legislation? C'mon, I'm fuckn' law enforcement, baby! I'm the stuff that made Franklin shit white, yeah?
Still, what can you do? It's Johnny-boy. I just rode along and smiled.

As did we all, Patriot Act.