[Transcribed from Kurt’s “Mail From Jail” letter, which can be found here. Be sure to visit Mail-to-Jail to write letters to Kurt in jail.]
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 A.D., Day Twenty-Six
You may not believe this but a fellow inmate ordered Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” ad he’s finished it. So, while the brainiacs decide whether to give me the book Sam A. Robrin sent me or that it will turn me into a serial sayer of contrarian thought (surely a terrorist) I’m borrowing “Atlas Shrugged.” “Illuminatus” will likely have to wait as it’s only taken over a week for them (officer Fallon) to get past reading the back cover… which is how she judged the book to begin with… so much for that old slogan to “authorize” my reading aptitude. Surely, I will find a home of some kind of solace in the 1,078 pages somewhere, and some day, I’ just may graduate Kindergarten too, while reading Ayn.
This morning, for the 5th time now, the highly sensitive and “caring” people who claim to be here solely to “help you” (us “inmates”, or primates or whatever they tell themselves and the world to justify their paychecks that we are at the given moment and given audience) neglected to bring enough breakfast trays. It’s not that I was starving so much as to eat the 2 slices of enriched bleached flour white bread with its highly nutritious companion corn flakes so much as how typical the government machine functions (or not) anywhere. Sure, people make mistakes, but this is government, on the county level, if you are going to kidnap and cage human beings, please learn how to count first. It may “help you”… sigh. You only know how that will go.
The gymnasium is quiet this morning, except for the two readers (Tom and I) and one other guy who decided to risk using one of the government razors to shave this morning. My face is sadly still attached but seeing as I’m in here for such a horrible offense I thought I’d try to at least look the part so, I’m growing my goatee and I have gotten a jail haircut (done by another primate, and it’s not close to Bill Clinton’s $200 haircut) so all I need now are malformed tatoos (did I even spell that correctly?) made from an old, loose, rusty screw and some pen ink. There are a few guys sawing down some small forests and the occasional grunt of them realizing they are so loud and waking themselves up. The television (which by now I want to destroy) has its usual early morning low volume idiocy humming. Two slaves are called to their tasks. Ayn Rand sits on the cot to my right ready for me to answer the question on Mike’s T-shirt “Who is John Galt?”
For two days I’ve been shaking my head trying to figure out of Orwell predicted all this. “Corrections” officer Dube said to me Sunday night, when I got my 7,000th non-direct answer to why they are tracking and illegally fudging with my mail. After some discussion (and un-or-non-intentional insulting/condescending replies) he said “My sole purpose in being here is to help you/” That part of the book or movie where they were at the “Ministry of Truth” I think it was in “1984,” where he was holding up his fingers in a non, or rather, un-factual equation. Sorry, but my paranoid meter just leapt off the dial. Sadly, it’s taken me two days of thought to shake that one off, there is plenty of time for it but I ought to say that I don’t think I’ve actually shaken it off entirely. Do people actually think that someone is expected to swallow that kind of line without some cognitive dissonance to digest? Can I get a carfax on that statement?
I’ve totally scrapped yesterday’s blog. It wasn’t uplifting in any sense. As I write this too, I am constantly reminded of the awfulness of what it is to be here for no crime. Another formerly free non-criminal (we’ll call him Mike) and buddy of Sam’s shared with me that the judge asked him when he went in for some kind of review, if he had learned anything after his nearly one year of incarceration to which Mike replied “I’ve learned to hate. I’ve learned to hate people. I’ve learned to hate people on a level I never knew could have possibly existed.” Mike is in here for 2 years for driving after having his right to travel violated by the thugs, now his life is destroyed. He knows it too. The sad element in this scenario is that Mike doesn’t get that the statutes, given the FORCE of “law” is the reason he hates and his life, that of his wife, two daughters, his job (gone) and him (now gone) is the fault of an Orwellian beast we have come to worship as the “State of New Hampshire.” An entity or an idea that exists solely in the minds of those who wish to control others in the guise of “helping you/” Oh sure, Mike says “I’ve learned my lesson” he says with semi-clear understanding “I’ll never drive again without a license” to which I ask him why he feels he needs to have government documents to get back and forth to work to feed his family but he knows what I am saying, agrees, and simply says “I would never drive again without a license if they put me in here for 30 days, or even a weekend or a day.” I don’t know if I can explain just how awful the dialogue felt for me, and I know for him too. All he knows is the threat. All he knows is that his life is ruined. His family misses him dearly, and the good news in all this? He’s on his way out in 17 days, if you call that good news. Mike has been a tenacious machinist for 27 years. He’s held jobs steady, each time, the last was 7 years, the prior one was 8. Why is he such a threat to people/ Oh, that’s right, he now hates on a level he never before understood. The cure, it seems, is worse than any perceived sickness. The sickness? Don’t you get it by now people?
Here on Free Keene I’m mostly [reaching to the choir but why people mindlessly go forward begging permissions from some assumed authority is beyond me. I hate (not “hate” but am “sickened”) to quote Jean Shaheen when I state “simply because government exists does not mean it’s legitimate” yet she is the push behind a 2.5% property tax state wide which passed, I think, last year. “Double speak” I think it’s called. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When oh when will people (more people) see this and stop frivolous arguments to further enslave themselves? A badge and a gun or a building with some “seal” on it… my how hypnotized we are. The “empire” exists in your own back yard, in your pockets and purses, in your glove boxes and on the walls and endless paper work in files at your office, it exists in stoplights and street signs once intended to help, now used solely to extort. Parking meters and even in theatre and once private businesses who are enslaved with government “grants” which are funded by further abuses. I don’t know about you, but I get it. For simply telling them to stop aggressing against me and my family, they pushed back harder. Now my life is in ruins and what lesson will I learn from all this? There is not enough ink in this pen to explain how my love’s hopes and dreams are shattered, how I can not care for her when she is ill and how I can’t provide for my family in any way. I’m now a drain on everyone and the not so distance tax-payer (stolen from formerly free human) is now paying dearly for it. Eighty bucks a day at “Hotel Slave.” What else can I do in here? I’m trapped, threatened constantly, for what? Who did Sam hurt? Who did Mike abuse? When will people get to the point where they pull back the curtain and see the man instead of the phony wizard who has no true answers? Why do they pursue Russell Kanning while he’s worked it out on his own? Who knows better, you or some disconnected, mathematically challenged idea called “the state?” Now, how do you take the bite out of a snake? You either don’t go near it or you grab it by tits neck and don’t let go.
You may think me a simple minded man for these statements and I’m not offended. All I want is for you and this imagined collected hive of bees to stop stinging me and my family so we can give something better to the world than the product of “hate.” Lucky for you he doesn’t get it yet, oh, but he does now. Thanks for locking me up. He’s just come on board as someone ELSE who “hates” the “state.”
Just so you know, I don’t allow much room in my life for such a destructive emotion as “hate.” The word is destructive though what is far more destructive is the once productive lives, the once fulfilled lives, the once gifted, enjoyed, charitable, feeling, free lives, that had a cog in this world for good but now has been made broken, but “good” and “love” and “peace” are far more powerful and will fix that cog to better than new effectiveness and precision for the machine of freedom that will peacefully grab the snake by the head, and not let it bite again.
Peace, Love, Blessings from Above,
Kurt
But wait! There’s More!
Now that my morning gripe is over and I’ve read a bit of “Atlas Shrugged” as well as my new Good News translation of the ZondervanBilde that my good friend Joe Mabe dropped off, mail arrived… and disappeared into the abyss of people with fully government educated minds unable to see the forest for the trees. Actually, some (many) of them I feel partly sorry for. I know when I was running my business, I wouldn’t have hired them even back then while I was part of the “collective” (that was a Ridley inspired choice of words, and thanks Dave for standing up for the “Gatchell Part!” It means so much to know that activists are active and there is a great deal going on out there. I can hardly see the sky from this room and the only contact with the outside besides the insanely short visits which lack so very many human elements, is the rag (sorry, I’m just being honest) of the Keene Sentinel. Honestly, I’ve read it every day since the 18th of October and the stories lack fact, research, and I’m sorry to say, even to the folks who have written more fairly and honestly about some local happenings, they lack a whole lot of heart… I digress again so, “Corrections” officer Marsh (Adolf would love this guy) took an issue of the “NH Free Press,” which surely would have “helped” me and my attitude. He had to get approval from Captain Colby who decided that there would be no smiles in the kindergarten today. In my mind, I keep quoting Jim JOhnson when he says to the cops (Jim & Jesse & Aubern & lots of you really) “one man loads the cars, one man drives the train, another man unloads the cars, another man leads the people into the showers, but no one is guilty, they’re all just doing their jobs. So they took my “New Hampshire Free Press” and they wouldn’t even let me know who I could thank for it. How the heck can I figure out the Good news going on?
In talking with my buddy Mike a bit more after I let him read Dave Ridley’s letter (which is great) he mentioned that one day he was sitting on the stoop out back when a bunch of protesters came around the back of the jail, come to find out we talked briefly (until the scared guards filled the room and blared over the speaker system “get away from the door!”) a while back. Oh you know us real scary people with signs and that dangerous thing called “free speech,” what a wicked web we weave.
One other thing they stole from me was a few pictures of Eli Rivera. They looked like wanted posters. I couldn’t see them though, “Corrections” officer Marsh ran to Captain Colby because he feared the danger of paper and ink. Shame on you people. Seriously, shame. I’m one of those crazy people who believe that one day each and every one of us will have to account for each and every one of our actions, I pray they can come up with something better than “I was just doing my job,” you might fool some of us for a while, but I don’t think you have a chance against the creator of the universe.
God Bless You All,
Kurt
