Good news! It’s easier than ever to be a terrorist these days. All you need to do is oppose the government and not shut up about it.
For example, if you live in Maryland and joined a left-leaning group like the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, your name might be on the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Database. This list of “badazz mofos” includes one Max Obuszewski, a peace activist who has been arrested more than 50 times for various kinds of nonviolent activism, such as handing out pamphlets to shoppers in a local mall.
Wouldn’t want to meet Max in a dark alley, now would you? The only way he could be classified as a terrorist is for the incomprehensible last name. Add an “al-” to it, and Max al-Obuszewski becomes downright swarthy.
And don’t let Josh Tulkin on a plane with you, either! He’s a hardened environmental activist whose claim to fame is a campaign to reduce coal emissions from factories in Maryland.
Phew! All these terrorists are making me fearful for my safety as an American! I only hope that the American government can catch these deviants before they strike again, lest I become their latest victim!
This story is only the latest of its kind in the history of this country’s terrorist watch lists, which are flawed to the point of uselessness. The FBI has watched anarchist groups very closely, groups like Food Not Bombs and Indymedia, because giving vegetarian food to war protesters simply reeks of malevolent intent.
Obviously the watch lists don’t have anything to do with terrorism. Sure, a real live anti-American bomb-making crazy might make it on one of the lists, but it seems to me like it’d be more by coincidence than anything else. No, the watch lists are simply a repository of those who won’t shut up, those who just bug the authorities so much that they need their own little file.
You know, John Lennon was being watched by the FBI, too, at the time of his death. Which is why I’m pleased to announce a little campaign, right here, right now, on Election Day in the pages of Pipe Dream.
The object is to get yourself on a watch list or, failing that, become a target of surveillance by the police or other law enforcement officials, simply by speaking out nonviolently. Spread your message, whatever it is. Get on the news, get in the paper. If you end up in a file somewhere as an “enemy combatant,” you’ve done your job. Congratulations.
No matter who the president-elect is after today, we’ll be watching. If we don’t like what we see, we’ll let them know. And if they want to watch us back, they can go right ahead.