Consider, if you will, that more than 200 police departments have recently begun using roof-mounted infrared cameras on their squad cars. The cameras are capable of scanning license plates at the rate of 15 to 25 a second. The information is sent to a database in the car’s trunk, where it’s compared with a digital list of vehicles connected to traffic violations, car-jackings and alerts for kidnapped children.
To most people, it sounds like one small step for technology, one great leap for our society. But for Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, it’s merely another example of American style fascism. He says -- with a straight face, mind you -- “From our perspective, police should be in the business of investigating crimes, not tracking law-abiding citizens.”
Of course only a buffoon such as Mr. Dunn would intentionally overlook the obvious fact that cops are always eye-balling citizens, law-abiders as well as the other kind, and that this device merely helps them focus their attention on the other kind.
Trying to figure out how it is that some folks manage to reach adulthood when their heads are filled with straw is probably as pointless as trying to determine how it is that some people have absolutely no sense of humor, irony or perspective.
Still, how is it that even after all these years of suicide bombers, beheadings and the events of 9/11, not to mention the ongoing murderous rants emanating from mosques, so many millions of Americans elect to ignore the fact that Islamic fanaticism is a far more dangerous threat to the future well-being of the planet than global warming, second-hand smoke and Lindsay Lohan’s driving, put together?
It astounds me that Islam’s propaganda arm in America, CAIR, is treated with such respect by the media when its purpose is essentially, like the German Bund during the 1930s and early 40s, to put lipstick and formal attire on Nazi pigs.
Obviously, millions of my fellow countrymen are quite willing to turn a blind eye to lunatics blowing up embassies in Africa, trains in Spain, school buses in Israel, cars in France, discos in Bali and skyscrapers in the United States. I guess they won’t take the threat to heart until the crazies do something truly despicable, like find a way to interfere with TV reception during a Super Bowl game.
Now I hope you better understand why, like Toto, I, too, sometimes find myself running around in circles, trying to make sense of all the madness. As an exercise in futility, it’s like trying to figure out why the only two things harder to break into than Fort Knox are a package of computer ink jets and a box of matzos.