This Putin Thing Is Good News After All

I know everyone's up in arms about Putin invading the Crimea, then next, perhaps, Ukraine, and then the vorld! I am, too, since it's always been my belief that a guy ought to live a humble, peaceable life, for the greatest personal happiness and also for the good of the community. On this point, apparently I and the ex-KGB agent, for unknown reasons, disagree.

I actually sensed all along that the guy was bad news. There was his background, right away a red flag, so to speak. Then there was all that business of him having the actual control of the country even after they had elected a president. Then the macho pose he was striking for the last several years, killing bars with his bare hands like Daniel Boone, and shirtless to boot.

And when you get me going on this stuff -- stuff I'd much rather ignore -- it can be very unsettling. Because, being an old guy, I have clear memories of the old Soviet Union and the way they haunted my childhood. There was always talk of us being blown off the map, etc., which never happened, as it turns out, but as a child I didn't know it'd have a happy ending. I was also a child in Sunday School every week, so I went to bed each night with two terrors: a literal Hell and a literal Soviet Union. They vied for which might be worse. It wasn't till I was an adult that I realized they were people very much like us and not big raving monsters. And that was just Hell. As for the Soviets, the thought of Brezhnev's ugly blockhead and shadowy features still creeps me out.

Now, looking back over all that, except for my grief and that of millions of other kids, the key thing is it did have a happy ending. Despite Ronald Reagan's best efforts to keep the grief going, the Soviets finally crumbled on their own. And we thought we were home free.

Now all our enemies would be pipsqueaks we could swat like flies, our industrial might would transition to fulfill domestic and global peacetime plenty, and we would be free of Republican warmongering. Instead, we got brazen terrorism on the home front, industrialism shipped abroad, and Republicans up the ass, not only with warmongering but every other evil. This is not the world I signed up for when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were doing the right thing by committing national suicide.

So Putin's forays, gobbling up his neighbors and making feints at a larger global hegemony, might be good news after all. If it means we become more insular, nationally and industrially, we can have jobs and a better standard of living. If we're focused again on mutually assured destruction, hallelujah, because we know it's only a fiction. (And if it turns out not to be, at least we'll die heroically, not with a whimper as it'll be with global warming.) Speaking of global warming, troubles with the Russians is something the Republicans won't deny, so we'll be in it together. We can heal our divided nation, bringing reasonable people and these others, the crazies, back together.

I honestly think the best thing after this would be to give up the Internet to hackers, then at the height of their reverie, destroy the whole thing. Again, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, insularity and the fever of fearful nationalism is our only hope. And without computers and the Internet, we'll have an even better jobs outlook. Phone operators will be back, we'll be building filing cabinets once again, and getting to know our neighbors in a friendly way over coffee, not berating them in anonymous chat rooms and shocking them in endless sexting sessions.

Viva le Putin!

The NSA Cleans Out My Garage

The news reports are telling us these guys -- the National Security Agency (NSA) -- can do anything. They're able to keep track of every call you've ever made, every piece of mail you've ever sent or received, and every note your friends used to pass in school. There's nothing they're not good at! Giving lie to the old complaint that the government can't do anything right.

Seriously, with this record of efficiency, we need them to keep going and take over the rest of the government. Get in there and start with Congress. Congress can't get anything done, anything that does anyone any good. Put the NSA on the job. Start right at the top and maybe they can accomplish something. Then they can work their way down. Far down, as in helping each one of us with our day to day lives. I know I could use some help cleaning out my garage.

And if they didn't want to do it just to be nice guys, maybe I could trick them into doing it. Sort of like Tom Sawyer and the fence, except I'll have to drop hints that maybe there's something incriminating in my garage. They're actually is ... more about that later ... but by the time they get here, of course I'll have that stuff safely tucked in the hidden room I've been building. Which is right there in the garage, but it's small -- they probably won't notice it.

For the most part, all I have in my garage is the typical everyday crap of life. Stuff that would overrun the house if I kept it in here. Nothing too important, but still too good to just throw away. Old books, records, rugs, lamps, a typewriter, and just boxes and boxes of miscellaneous stuff. There's quite a few Christmas decorations, some of which are only in sacks, and some of those are tipped over. It seems like I step on and break an ornament every time I'm out there. If I can get the NSA to clean it out, that'd be great. Who knows? They might find some unregistered nicknacks, bought with cash at garage sales, very tough to trace.

Then there's the other stuff, which will have to go in the hidden room. I know everyone will think I'm kidding, but that's only because you didn't have a Great Aunt Natasha working as a secretary at the Pentagon in the late '50s and early '60s. The fact is, I have extensive Soviet correspondence from the '60s, going into the '70s. I was one of those kids, thanks to Aunt Natasha, who was a "goodwill pen pal" with Khrushchev, which later bloomed into a nice relationship with Breshnev. For them it was an in with America's youth, hoping to undermine us, but for me, I was only doing it for extra credit in Social Studies.

Still, it probably should've been cleared through official channels. As it was, I was only too happy to fulfill their strange requests. Like going to Air Force installations and using my "secret spy binoculars," which they provided and periodically showed up "to have developed." I never knew what that meant, developing binoculars? Other than that, we had quite a bit of correspondence about the comings and goings of local Civil Defense volunteers. I still remember this one old guy from town and the day his Jeep blew up. Must've been something wrong with it.

Natasha's husband, our Great Uncle Boris, was also a help. Anything he needed, us sneaky kids were happy to help him with. Especially if it meant being paid off in rare Russian candy. Which I, ever the entrepreneur, used to trade with other kids for Krugerrands and Cuban cigars. It was very good candy, they say, but the cigars were better. There was more than one bright side ... The kids at my school did great on international affairs quizzes.

Later, and this is stuff I shouldn't mention; it's all more recent, there were Uncle Osama and Uncle Saddam, not really uncles but that's what they called themselves. Wow, the things they used to send! Gift certificates for flying lessons. I always figured they were kidding. And the things they would say! No one could be that crazy, wanting that much destruction for the United States. After all, I was like their favorite nephew. OK, they did tell us they wouldn't completely destroy America till they got us to safety. So we didn't say anything to the cops. Those records will go in the secret room, for sure.

I just got back from the garage. And speaking of Christmas decorations, there's a bag of ribbons on the floor that must puff up with air by miracle, because every time I try to walk through the garage, I step on it, and I can hear the air hissing out again. Weird. The things I put up with.

I looked around and there isn't much else that would be incriminating. I have a hymnal from Burma out there. But that's nothing to worry about, is it? Only the channels I went through to get it, it probably involved some persecution. And maybe a death or two. I need to hide it.

Criminals And The Finger Of Suspicion

I've been thinking a lot lately about crime.

I'm not myself a criminal, knowingly or actively. If I were, I wouldn't be writing about it, because I firmly believe the first rule of being a good criminal is to keep your mouth shut. But I do tend to think like a criminal, or how I imagine a criminal would think, since I used to think that if the Soviet Union ever took over the United States I would probably be part of the patriotic, though criminal, resistance. So I'm forever thinking, If this were Soviet-occupied America, how would I misbehave? It might be time to quit thinking like that except I have little actual control over what I think.

The biggest difference between now and when I first started thinking that way back in the '60s, other than there no longer being a Soviet Union, is the increase in surveillance technology. Back then a kid could easily imagine himself in a successful, ongoing resistance movement. I was very stealthy in my comings and goings. I was like a magician in my ability to divert people's attention and do all kinds of underhanded things while they were watching. But with surveillance technology being so much improved now, all they'd have to do is check the video and you're busted.

It seems like we used to talk about these things, too, me and other kids, unless it's just a dream I had. We would sabotage everything the Soviets were trying to do to us. And they'd never catch us, that's how good we'd be. But, alas, not now, with video and DNA, etc., the two biggest killers of anonymity. All they had back then was fingerprints. or turncoat eyewitnesses.

But what I'm thinking about today is crime pure and simple. How hard it is to be a criminal, or how hard it should be if everything's working. I've been reading the crime news in the paper. And it's astounding to me how many people persist in criminal activity, even though they're about guaranteed to be nailed these days. Yet, there they are. A few days ago it was this: A party of guys, four or five, went to the apartment of four other guys. One member of the visiting party was an acquaintance of one of the guys at the apartment. But still, even with this acquaintance, he (and they) robbed them and made their getaway. Is that dumb or what? Before morning they had one of the guys in custody, and I wouldn't want to be the other guys for anything! If you're going to be a criminal, dumb ass, there can't be anyone there who knows you!

I seriously think I would make a pretty good detective. Because I'm always thinking, "If the Soviets were here, etc., what kind of trail would I be leaving if I did this-or-that job?" And I frankly can't come up with the perfect crime! Because I'm running it through my mind, A B C, how they'd catch me. It's not just video at the crime scene; it's video at every point along the way, how they could easily trail you no matter where you went. Beyond that, of course, there's DNA. You drop a hair follicle and you're done for. And I'm taking into account hairnets, shaving my head, a complete body shave! You shave and there's bound to be at least one hair left on your clothes...

OK, if it were a matter of national security, sabotaging the Soviets, it'd be a small price to pay to give your life for the country. But to give your life to rob someone at their apartment when they know you? Not near as lofty!

But there are criminals who are a lot more cagey. Like guys who come from out of state, rob a bank, then immediately go to a different state. They've got the advantage of no one knowing them, and they're going where no one knows them. But they're still up against the same thing. The Soviets, or in this case the proper American authorities, have ways of dealing with them. Cameras, the ability to phone ahead to other police departments, profiling, and other forensic resources. Footprints, tire prints, torn jacket on barbed wire. It's not a good way to make a living! Let's say you get $50,000. Big damned deal! $50,000 is peanuts. If you go to prison for 20 years, you traded freedom for 2,500 bucks a year. You can easily find a job, even in today's tough job market, that would pay more than that. Crime is idiocy.