RMStringer Photography

Mack Hall, HSG

Thanks to Mack Hall, HSG for letting me publish this.

The Drones Club

The FAA is expected to grant permission for public and private entities to fling into the spacious if somewhat crowded skies above the fruited plains of freedom some 30,000 pilotless aircraft to spy on Americans (http://rt.com/usa/news/drone-spying-memo-leaked-088/) in addition to the hundreds flyin’ ‘n’ spyin’ domestically now. Further, no privacy rights in public or in private are recognized; the Fourth Amendment has, oh, evolved. And, hey, is that an electronic eye peeking through your bedroom window?

There is some babble about how useful these 30,000 projected drones will be in finding lost hikers, and, sure, if there’s anything the Founding Fathers focused on, it was finding lost hikers.

Indeed, the repeated drone telephone calls that interrupt our days and evenings have repeatedly stressed how important this election is for lost hikers.

The Daily Mail recently published maps of drone-launching sites in use now – there’s one near you: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134376/Is-drone-neighbourhood-Rise-killer-spy-planes-exposed-FAA-forced-reveal-63-launch-sites-U-S.html.

The drone looking at you can be as big as a fighter aircraft or as small as a toy rubber-band airplane. Not only are these almost silent flying Orwellian telescreens capable of face-recognition and wifi intercepts, they can be armed with a catalogue of missiles, machine guns, and death rays.

Thus, when you step outside your door tomorrow morning you can be monitored by a pimply oaf whose online name is Dork Lord of the Thunder-Sith and who perhaps has access to a little red button connected to Newarkfire missiles aboard his remote-control hunter-killer, the USS Steve Jobs. May it please God he isn’t still traumatized by that late-night hissy-fit-flap in Starbuck’s over Star Trek versus Star Wars.

Once upon a time the skies over America were guarded by brave military airmen who had taken the military oath and who were the products of a culture of honor and integrity. They protected us by watching for Soviet missiles flying in over the Arctic Circle or from Stooge Castro’s occupied Cuba.

Now we are snooped on by peeping-tom nerds in Pink Floyd tee-shirts.

The greatest risk to a not-a-pilot in some bunker is tennis-finger from playing with his joy-stick (Resist the obvious joke. Resist it.).

A young man or woman who successfully completes flight training is honored to have a loved one pin his pilot’s wings to his uniform. A drone-hero asks a guy in an R2D2 costume pin a plastic thumby-toggle-thingie to his knee-pants.

A real pilot returning from a successful mission does a victory roll; a drone-pilot high-fives his Bill Gates poster.

The dialogue in new war movies will certainly be different: “You’ve got an enemy fighter on your tush!” and “We have a decaf triple latte at twelve o’clock high.”

But, seriously, one is sure we need those drones. After all, private enterprise clearly reads our emails and site accessions now, and governments at all levels can do so if they wish. If we travel, we are subject to identification checks, strip-searches, and touchy-feely-we’re-not-even-married searches by capos. All that is left to make control complete is visual spying. What are you growing in your garden? Now move your thumb so the Eye can read the complete serial number on your grandpa’s 1955 J. C. Higgins .22. Where are you going? Is that a low-flush toilet, comrade? Let’s check to see if you possess illegal light bulbs.

There is an old hymn about how you’ll never walk alone. And it is truer than ever.

-30-

“Croydon is a remarkable place. I went there once or twice, and I discovered that it possessed, among other things, at least five or six new religions.”

– G. K. Chesterton

Posted by RMStringer | 20/05/2012 | Categories: Photography | Tags: teacher, Texas, Writer | Leave A Comment »