Dear Dirty America

“You can’t blow up the whole goddamned system! But you can chip away at it with gusto and spark a competition among men who will continue to take cracks at it so as not to be doubted about their personal dedication to liberty.”

–Hubert Humdinger, 1979, talking privately about civil disobedience in America.

In our modern world, articles by mainstream news networks like CNN carry a lot of weight. Their words move ideas and, in a sense, create reality by what is said, and what is left unsaid. When one national event gains the burning eye of the media, you can almost feel the conscious energy of the collective citizenry shift and focus on what is presented to them while countless other newsworthy events go unnoticed.

This is why as a good American like yourself, you must be wary of anything (even the barbarously weepy Nelson Mandela coverage) the mainstream media trumpets out of their foghorns. Anything the gatekeepers of news are promoting or supporting, it’s best to at least be critical, and at most dismiss the entire idea or event as an officious way to warp your thinking patterns.

But sometimes there are good news stories that should be repeated. Sometimes CNN stumbles upon something that another site like, say, Dear Dirty America, covered years ago. For example, the folks in Deer Trail, Colorado, population 598, have drafted a measure to allow their citizens to hunt federal UAVs, more commonly known as drones.

This is a positive idea in a world filled with nothing but filthy news cycles. However, the fair citizens of North Dakota who have, for years, been feverishly digging ditches and dugouts from which to safely blast federal drones have been slighted by CNN and the other gatekeepers, and somebody has to bring a little light to the matter.

CNN lures us with a provocative introduction:

Phillip Steel, a resident of Deer Trail, Colorado, is ready to fight for the Old West values he feels are being threatened by drones.

Asked what exactly he’s proposing to do when he sees an unmanned aircraft, Steel points his weapon to the sky.

“I am proposing to shoot it down,” he said.

But where was that swiveling demonic eye of our godlike media when a few grizzled fellows from North Dakota were digging trenches and drafting plans to build a network of AAA defense systems around the flat, prairie state? Associated Pulp broke the story, and DDA devoutly ran it.

Where was CNN when the same sentiment as exclaimed by Phillip Steel, was uttered before by a beleaguered junior senator out of North Dakota who publicly denounced the “irresponsible, paranoid ideas of a few wealthy citizens”, but, like a true North Dakotan, said behind closed doors, “I hope they knock those motherfuckers out of the sky. It’s our civil liberties I’m worried about.”

I don’t want to say that North Dakota ‘paved the way’ for Colorado to toy with such a brave measure, but a little friendly competition over which state can blast out of the sky more federal drones couldn’t hurt. You know Texas is growling and tearing at its leash, ready to be let loose to snarl and slobber its conservative drool over everybody in the way.

If a handful of states created a free-for-all zone to blast predator drones, that would be a clear message to the rapidly-aging president and stolid defender of drones, and a strong symbol of much-needed defiance in a country ruled by politically-catatonic hipsters and trendies.

Phillip Steel, who was quoted in the excerpt above, was also quoted as saying, “What has me fired up is it’s trespassing. It doesn’t belong there. Yes, it’s privacy. But that’s only one part of it. Who’s going to be flying these drones?”

I’m with Phillip Steel. Let’s run with CNN’s coverage and knock those motherfuckers out of the sky.

[photo by Lauri Silvennoinen]