Arpad Toth writes the Sentinel this excellent letter about the Bearcat and how fear is hurting us:
Fear leads to BearCat
There is a specter haunting our nation — a specter of fear.
To me, and I know that in this evaluation I am not alone, it is apparent that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the motivating force for change across the United States.
Where do I see fear? For the present I use but one parameter — despair, the need to arm one’s self, seek protection against the “other.” The “other” is too often an illusion than a reality but what a powerful one it is.
It is “we” against “them,” often irrational fears of the future.
For example:
New Hampshire could become only the fifth state in the country to let people carry concealed guns without a permit. The House voted 193-122 to make gun permits optional.
Members also voted 204-110 to allow loaded rifles and shotguns in motor vehicles, as long as there is not a round in the chamber.
The National Rifle Association reports that: “There are well over 250 million privately-owned firearms in the U.S., including nearly 100 million handguns and tens of millions of “assault weapons” — the types of firearms that gun-control supporters have tried the hardest to get banned — and the number of firearms typically rises about 4 million per year.
Annual numbers of new AR-15s, the most popular semiautomatic rifle that gun control supporters call an “assault weapon,” are soaring.
“In 2008, there were more than 337,000 new AR-15s configured for home defense, competition, training, recreational target practice and hunting”
Homeland Security News reports that: “At a time when officers are facing a more cold-blooded criminal element and fighting a war on terror … For the second straight year, law enforcement fatalities in the United States rose with 173 federal, state, and local officers killed in the line of duty during 2011; this represents a 13 percent increase over the 153 officers killed in 2010 and a 42 percent spike when compared to the 122 officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2009.”
Do you not find it rather unsettling that the Keene City Council, with one dissent, elects to purchase an armored vehicle (BearCat) that a newly elected mayor may in the future authorize the law enforcers (them) under his command to deploy it against the very people (we) that elected him? Or maybe he is not in command?
I further ask which group is the more fearful, who needs an armored bullet-fire-proof offensive device? Is it meant to be a threat – “Stay off the Central Square lawn or else?”
George Orwell, 1984: “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
Google: “The girl in the blue bra.”
ARPAD J. TOTH
11 Houghton Point South
North Swanzey
