Being Reasonable

Within the last several days a few people have commented on my restraint in this blog and in my online radio interview with Jeff Rense. One, Mr. Rense, complimented me on it, while others may have wished I would be more forceful. I am sure there are many with an opinion one way or the other, and since I have been wanting for some time to talk about it, this seems to be the right time. I’ll get back to Mr. Novak’s email in another post.

Every morning I wake up saying to myself, “What if they actually mean no harm? What if they have a perfectly honorable agenda and we are unavoidable collateral damage?”

I want to believe that the people running Los Angeles County, the California Department of Fish and Game, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (or Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority—take your pick), and Metrolink (aka Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCCRA) and aka Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)) are all decent and empathic people who are horrified at the thought of hurting their subjects. Maybe they are doing the very best they can to unravel our access problem. Maybe two of the organizations just simply cannot open up our access, for whatever legal or idealistic reasons, and expected the other two would be more open minded. I want to believe that the decision makers in these agencies are ethical and caring, but stuck in some kind of principled dilemma.

I said I wanted to believe that. I did not say I did believe it. I mean, for our legal access to be shut down by four separate entities all in the same brief time span? What, they just accidentally happened to be on the same schedule?

But I do want to leave the door open to the possibility that this is all a sad, decade-long misunderstanding. Because if it is, and I come on like gangbusters, it will be as hard for Messrs. Antonovich and Hickling, Fish and Game, Metrolink and the Conservancy to back off honorably as it was for Johnson to quit Vietnam.

Also, if it should be the case that those folks have been carelessly wrong-hearted, I would like it to be as easy as possible for them to have a change of heart. Being screamed at does not make it easy to give in to the screamer.

And, finally, just in case all these players are in it for their own gain, whether egotistical, dogmatic or financial, the world will know. And the world will recognize our tone as reasonable and their actions as unconscionable.

Works for us.

By the way, speaking of numbers, I stated a month ago that we were dedicated to assisting Michael Antonovich in case he was engaged in a quest for fame. This blog had enjoyed some three thousand pageviews and was perused around the world in ten different countries. I will not list the countries this time, because there are more than twenty-five of them, and our pageviews have almost doubled. I’d give a number, but it is changing too fast. 

Not bad considering that we started all this only last November.

And I just want to say, in case our international readers get the wrong idea, that this is not an example of American democracy in action. The five incumbents on the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors are known as the “five little kings.” Each one “represents” a couple million people and is so difficult to unseat by election that they are now subject to term limitations. The head of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (why do these organizations have so many aliases?) is also beyond the reach of the people and never has to stand for election. 

This is not how America properly works. The America we love and take pride in has a system of checks and balances that are meant to prevent this sort of bullying, a system of laws—which by the way prohibit actions like those taken against us—and elections. Some people’s human nature leads them to seek and exert unreasonable power over their fellow citizens, but please understand: this is not the American way. Nobody’s perfect.

Just OPEN (RATTLE) THIS FREAKIN’ (RATTLE RATTLE) GATE!!! RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE.

There. Is that better?