Back when I was a young starving musician, I was driving the band’s van loaded with equipment back to our storage room after a long gig. At about 3am I ran into a police roadblock — a common enough occurrence in apartheid South Africa. The block was manned by a single cop who’d parked his SUV across the road and when he saw headlights approaching, would just turn on his flashers to cause the oncoming car to stop. So I did.
“Where are you going?”
“Back home — well, back to offload all the band equipment first, then home.”
“Open up the back.”
“Now open up the side door.”
“I can’t see anything; all that crap is blocking up the doors.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of equipment.”
“Unpack it.”
“Why?”
“I need to see that you’re not carrying anything illegal in there.”
“I’m not not carrying anything illegal.”
“Unpack it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Look, be reasonable, can you? It’s three in the morning, I’ve been working since 5 yesterday afternoon, and I’ve still got two more hours’ work before I can get into bed.”
“Not my problem. Unpack the van, now.”
I lost it. “No. You want the van unpacked, you can fucking do it. I’ll sit here at the side of the road, and after you’ve discovered that I’m not carrying anything illegal, you can pack it all back again, and then I’ll go home.”
I think he was more surprised that I wasn’t going to obey his orders — probably the first time it had ever happened to him. He stared at me, I stared right back at him. (My kids call it my “hitman” look.)
After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “Just get back in your van, and fuck off.” (I think he figured out that he and I were alone on a deserted road in the middle of Fuck Nowhere, South Africa, and I was a LOT bigger than he was.)
So I got back in the van, and drove off. As I did so, I touched the Colt Combat Commander strapped to my hip (which he hadn’t discovered), looked back at him in the rearview mirror, and murmured to myself: “You don’t know it, sonny, but I just let you live.”
I was that angry.
I told y’all that story so we could talk about this one.
We all know about the asshole who teases a normally-placid dog until it snaps at him, then beats it or kills it because “it’s dangerous”.
Feel free to read this article, then this one, and tell me if you don’t know exactly how that dog feels.
I should point out that almost every single incident of law-abiding people turning around and killing government agents or officials has been because someone’s property has been destroyed, confiscated or otherwise appropriated.
So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start doing stupid stuff.
Note that I’m not talking about those assholes who go round assassinating cops in cold blood — they need killing more than their victims do. But at some point, a government official is going to fuck someone over because, in terms of Government Regulation #132-22-47, they can.
One day, the person they’re fucking with is going to snap, pull a gun and start shooting. And of course, it’ll all be his fault.
If you think this is unlikely, ask yourself why so many government agencies have started installing bullet-proof glass in front of their customer service counters. They know how people feel, and still they carry on doing it — because that’s what petty bureaucrats do when their actions are protected or even “justified” by some law or regulation.
The fucking government agencies (like those in the attached articles) need to start backing the fuck off before the shit really starts to fly.
