Not So Wise Women

I did some travel writing during a decade of constant travel and my favorite part was having an excuse to talk to elderly ladies.  Someday I will dig up more of these photos and interviews.  It was sheer enjoyment and curiosity that drove me to them.

I really had no agenda and I’d been advised to steer clear of politics, but sometimes I’d ask about the ‘communist’ takeover, quickly followed by the Soviet occupation, though it was probably still too early to discuss such recent wounds in polite company in the 1990s. So, sometimes I’d seek out un-polite company.

It always stuck with me how often I hear a lady say some version of: “We had no idea what they were capable of!”  I believed them.  “Of course, how could you possibly have known, so tragic,” is what I’d be thinking.

Now that I’ve grown I’ve gotten a different take on this well-worn phrase.  Now I think, well, why the hell not?  Had you not gotten the news of their atrocities in Poland and Hungary and East Germany and so on? These are your neighbors, after all. 

But, of course they had, these were not peasants in the countryside usually, they were worldly elderly women living in Prague, most of them still working into their 70s, because that’s what happens when the government ‘collectivizes’ all your family properties, businesses and homes.  That’s what they called it, collectivized, because it sounds so much nicer than confiscated.

They had a suspicion of ‘volunteers’ that was completely unknown to me previously and was actually the hardest thing for me to overcome in the beginning, since part of the time I was living there I was a Peace Corps volunteer.  Now I get it.  It’s the ‘Trojan Horse’ thing, and the fact that volunteering was forced on them by the government as part of their ‘civic duties’ along with voting in sham elections and showing up for cheesy government-sponsored parades and celebrations.

I would do dumb touristy things without a second thought, like photograph folks’ houses I found lovely.  One time a horrified middle-aged lady ran out of her front door in her robe to scream at me: “No taking pictures here!  Are you healthy?!”

That line stuck with me for years.  “Are you healthy?”  What in the world did she mean by that, like, I looked sick or something?  I was very healthy indeed, her house was so beautiful and I so admired it I was doing what was completely natural for me to do, take a picture, duh!

Then many years later I realized she must have meant ‘healthy in the head’ because the paranoia in these folks ran really deep.  Though apparently they adopted it too late to save themselves from the real enemy.

The Soviet tanks rolling into other major Eastern European cities was in the papers.  They knew.  They just thought, “Oh, but that could never happen here!”

I would not have pressed further back then and I took these ladies at face value.  Now I would press, because what I think was really at play was what I see all around me today in this country: denial, suppression, wishful thinking, neglect, misdirected hostility, and so on.

They are showing you what they are capable of, right now, Americans: police state, mass surveillance, technocratic overlords, end of private property, mandatory vaccinations, end of free speech, and the very long list goes on.

Thanks very much to Decker, Dispatches from the Asylum for this brief sampling of the day on the capabilities and intentions of our current overlords:

“Check out the latest of these shitards and their latest, choicest f**kery:”
First wireless insect-size robot takes flight – via roboticsnews.com

That Sign Telling You How Fast You’re Driving May Be Spying – via technocracy.news

Your Volvo Will Soon Call The Cops On You If It Thinks You’ve Been Drinking – via zerohedge.com

Finger Vein Vending Machines And A Global Biometric Police Database – via activistpost.com

NYC subway denies using ‘real-time face recognition screens’ in Times Square – via theverge.com

Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk’ Database– via vice.com

MAIN CORE: GOVT “THREAT LIST” NAMES AT LEAST 8 MILLION AMERICANS WHO WILL BE DETAINED WHEN MARTIAL LAW IS IMPOSED – via amg-news.com

DARPA Seeks FAA Approval For Military Drones Over American Cities – via technocracy.news

AT&T Creates FirstNet For Law Enforcement Surveillance – viatechnocracy.news

Homeland Security To Scan Your Face At 20 Top Airports – via technocracy.news

Law enforcement taps Google’s Sensorvault for location data, report – viacnet.com

Snitch Switch: Smart Assistants With “Moral AI” Could Call Police on Owners Who Break Law – via thenewamerican.com

Take a good, hard look, because I really don’t want to have to say, “I told you so!”on my death bed.

But, of course, if it comes to that, I certainly will.