10July06

Coincidence, or something more sinister?

In a booklet of advice to South African farmers, who were targeted for extermination by the ANC during the Apartheid era (and continuing today, now that the ANC IS the government!), one stanza reads, "Don't con yourself i nto thinking you're too insignificant to be targeted." A Soviet infantr y manual, dating from the 1930s, puts it this way, "Don't touch anything unnecessaril y. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls, bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, dead horses, and men lying on roads. They are not there accidentally!"

"Paranoia" is a mental disorder, characterized by irrational belief in delusory threats. Taking reasonable precautions in an effort to protect on eself against known, active threats, endemic to Planet Earth, is not a manifestation of paranoia, although the shallow and naive always identify it as such, usually in an effort to convince themselves more than to convince you.

I've been asked more than once, "Since you go armed and keep guns in your home in a high state of readiness, may I assume you have no faith in the pol ice department?" I customarily reply, "Because you keep a fire extinguisher in your home, may I assume you have no faith in the fire department?=80 When it comes to protecting my life, the only one I'll ever have, I leave little to

chance, and I'm not about to believe that someone else cares about me more than I do. In the end, we're all dead anyway, but it's a tough and dangerous world in the interim, and, while some day, I'm confident my body will succu mb to bacterial attack, I'm determined that it not succumb to criminal attack between then and now. I consider my life too precious for that!

As professional gunmen therefore, we have to be cynical, shrewd, and wary, while at the same time being appreciative, inquisitive, and caring, taking f ull advantage of all this life has to offer. Only fools sit on the sidelines. On the other hand, only fools con themselves or allow themselves to be conned by others, and only fools permit fear to drive them to inaction, and maybe crazy (paranoid?) too!

"When young, I worried about making mistakes. When old, I wish I'd made more!"

/John