Greg was irate. It had been the second time in a week he had been cut off like that. His car recovered from the swerve, the offending gaggle of cyclists barely paid him notice. He pulled into a nearby service station, checked his tyre. All seemed alright.

“Those pricks think they own the roads,” he said loud enough for a nearby man to hear.

“Yep, like a plague.”

The men agreed while others looked past their conversation including two Lycra clad bike riders who looked Greg up and down as he entered the service station. A pair of police officers were entering as he was leaving, Greg nodded and greeted them with friendly sincerity. He was fond of the hard working boys in blue. He had grown up being told to trust and respect them, his traditional values ensured he still did.

Later that night Greg sat on the couch, flipping through his phone. The social media feed gorged him with random and cultivated images and clips. A short video of cyclists cutting off a semi trailer truck caught his eye. They rode on while the truck crashed into a tree. He could not help himself, he shared the video with a comment, “these bloody cyclists think they own the roads. Enough is enough!”

Later that night Greg was about to set himself to bed. It had been a long day. In his seventies, his dear wife had passed away three years earlier. A photo of her watched over him as he smiled in it’s direction. He looked at a collection of her rare dinner plates she had restored, they belonged to her mother and were precious to his wife. Now to him.

He yawned while he flicked through the channels, fifteen stations of the same thing. His empty screen gaze was broken by heavy knocks on his front door. His heart pounded, carefully he walked to answer, robe concealing his naked torso and faded pair of underwear.

“Greg Smith? Police, can you please open your door regarding a post you made earlier this evening.”

Greg complied. Four police officers stood armed and ominously in his front porch, “can I help you?” he asked.

The senior constable, a burly man with twenty years of service held up a printed paper inside a plastic sleeve. It was Greg’s post from earlier in the night.

“At approximately seven PM this evening, someone from your account made an offensive and intimidating post, was this person you?” The senior constable asked.

Greg nodded, “yes.”

“After a responsible member of the Bike Riders Awareness Group reviewed this post, they concluded that it was hurtful and contained elements of hatred. They felt intimidated and in danger from this post. We are now placing you under arrest.”

“But I have done nothing wrong,” Greg defended.

A female officer, much shorter than the senior constable stepped closer with a hand on her sidearm, “at around two pm, while entering the Lamewank petrol station did you mutter the comments, ‘Those pricks think they own the roads’. In reference to nearby cyclists?”

As two police officers secured his hands behind his back he replied, “Um, I may have but they cut me off. They blocked my car and I had to swerve.”

“A minor traffic incident like that is hardly cause to use hateful words, you are aware of the implications of your speaking?” the female officer said.

“No, not really,” Greg frowned.

“You are under arrest for a hate crime. A review board will consider your situation. We will take you into custody for a period of up to forty-eight hours.”

“Do I get a lawyer?”

“No, due to the severe nature of your words and how much it hurt the feelings of a responsible member of the targeted community, you will not be allowed any legal council. A review officer will consider your case and severity of what you have done.”

“But, it’s a free country, don’t I have rights. I didn’t hurt anyone,” Greg pleaded as he was stuffed into the back of the lockable cell of the police panel wagon.

“The price of living in a free society is obeying it’s laws. Offensive and hateful speech is akin to terrorism.”

The police left his house unlocked for the two days he was inside their prison cells. He returned home, tired, confused and sore. He had been handed a caution and a fine, any further offences of such a nature would result in severe jail time. He found his house a mess, belongings stolen and his personal effects vandalised. He sat with sadness as he looked at his wife’s photo ripped among the pieces of shattered dinner wear. He felt a terrible sadness as he picked up her picture, then delicately placed her mothers precious dinner wear into a container.

When he filed his police report about the robbery of his home, he was told, “it’s unlikely we will locate the offenders as they are likely long gone. Perhaps in the future you may find it wise to lock up your house.”

Greg sat at his phone later that evening with a sense of dread. He was unsure what he could look at, what he was allowed to say. He deleted his social media and turned the television on, he would watch the State approved stations and hide inside of his home. He was too old to fight and but one man. He did not know what he could or could not do any more. He felt hurt, in pain and sad.

Later that week while he drove his car, a bike rider cut him off, Greg looked the other way and pretended as if it never happened. He thought what he might say, mumbling inside his own mouth, “those pricks.”

A police car drove past a moment later, “fuck you cunts too,” he whispered with a hatred he had never before felt.

New WarNotes episode: Ep 020 “The Jerboa That Squeaked: Broke and Woke NATO on the Warpath”

The Greenland debacle is bringing the NATO relationship into better focus on just how bad the EU/SSR has become. America should take a non-interventionist pause and get its internal house in order before standing astride the world again and lighting fires that never go away and continuously make things worse.

Stop the madness.

Recent episodes on NATO.

First parts here:

Ep 009 “Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part One”

Ep 016 “Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part Two”

I now have a Signal Group Chat for my CG Paid Subscribers.

You’ll find the new episode right here at the Institute under the blogs.

He stood composed, the wind pushed him. The trees waved and leaned above and around. Clouds considered rain, though retained a deep grey. Birds, breeze and his own breathing a convalescence of harmony. He was alone. Standing as if on a horse, the ancient position tested his legs. If his eyes were closed, he could see. When open, he saw nothing. With each breath, he wandered free of thoughts. No mind, no past, no future on the presence of the present. With each, breath, breathe, breath, breathing, breath. Only a Now.

Anger, rage, it boiled and simmered. Concealed beneath the skin of formality and politeness. The lava of violence bubbled, as a limp witness to anguish and as a child tormented by restraints while innocence was plunged away. The stench of barking breath, puffs of laughter and the humiliation of helplessness in self and while watching the tears of others with inability to save. Breathe, push away the darkness, the hate, the viscous fumes. Breathe.

Sadness, sorrow, frozen in miserable rivers of turmoil. Those lost and moments of poor timing and ill placed sincerity or, worse, insincerity. Actions and inactions. Tears and blood, washed into the soils of the past billowing into weeds of resentment or distance. Or, like fallen leaves of the tree and plucked pedals from the flower, never to return. Lifeless and discarded, soon to decay or blown into the winds of memory and soon, forgotten. Breathe with those winds. Remember, whispered within them.

Regret and resentment washed away with each breath. They lingered and toiled at his mind and heart but struggled to retain any foothold. Want, what was there to want? Need? Here he was, not in need but in control. The master of his breathing, his mind. He had done no wrong, harmed no one, he lived to be at peace and not wrong others.

He moved, not quite a Kata or any martial form. It was not combative, though it resisted the wind and darkness which now consumed him. Soon, there was no wind or trees. Only the darkness. His mind returned to the crashing of waves, the oceans relentless blast, a sea breeze and the song of gulls above. The wet spray across his face, and foam curling his toes. His mind took him deeper into the water, he now swam. Beneath those crashing waves and into the depths of a sea which transcended here and now, spanning time and space.

Pulling and drawing himself from the wet fluids of beneath to the searing heat of a still desert under a constant sun. Blue sky. Yellow sand, far, beyond the horizon. A snake coiling near to where he stood. He watched it, the sand it’s tapestry to sing out shapes. Long and round, skipping at points until he could read the music left for him by the sands reptile. It was free. As was he.

Breathe. Breath. No mind. No thoughts.

A heavy rapping rattled from the darkness. Slowly his eyes opened. The small room, a bucket, dim light, no window, only the glass and bars through a port in the door. The rapping turned into a knock, followed by a pair of armed men who entered. He remained standing, still, in the middle of the room. The men pushed and pulled at him. The storm trying to topple him, he breathed and yielded like an ancient willow. He did not resist. They lifted him, threw him to the floor. Kicked and stomped him. Thump, punch, kick. Their violent actions ratified by his peaceful inaction, it was embedded into their uniform. Jeering and laughing. They left. He could taste the spit and blood, they understood force, violence. It was their doctrine, their ideology and their income depended on it.

He crawled to his feet. The door shut over. Breathe. His ribs heaved from the pain. It hurt. His lips bled tears of salty red, drooling from his mouth and across his shirt. Scars slowly tried healing elsewhere on his body. Barely fuelled by the morsels of gruel he was fed inside his solitary den. Like the snake crossing the desert sand, they left their mark. But with each breathe and the wandering spirit of his mind, the wind washed their snake tracks far from his sand. Breathe, the dignity returned. He knew they had none. They knew it to. They expressed it.

He was imprisoned but freer than them. He had nowhere else to be. A man who had done no wrong, but was a prisoner for saying the wrong thing. He spoke, while others coward their whispers. He saw and yelled the truth, while others closed their eyes and spoke what was allowed. From the trees of his forest hang no lynched corpses, no mobs of the self-righteous held down any wailing victim to plunge away innocence in his wilderness, no strangers earnings lined his pockets, no bread stolen from a neighbours plate, no distant lands burning beneath the paperwork of policy. That was for his captors to be purveyors of such misery and claim it law, rights or destiny. He had no victims. They built cities upon their bones.

Breathe. The unjust roars with insecure recklessness. Peace finds away, especially after the storm. His mind returned to the smiling innocent, soon their tears would be no more. Breathe the waves of peace, they will only sink in them.