An Open Letter, NID and Drinking

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 18 May 2005 02:28:24 GMT
by The Dunedan
[from this Claire Files Forum thread]

To Whom It May Concern,

I hope you're proud of yourselves. I really do. You see, useless bags of bones that you are, you have accomplished something that nobody else in my 23 years has managed; you have actually gotten be depressed enough to start drinking.

Now, I drink a fair bit. I drink to celebrate, because I like Guiness and Plum wine, and to feel buzzed and slightly silly. But I have never, EVER, imbibed alchohol as a result of depression or anger...until now. I, and many like me, are stupified and saddened beyond measure that you have crossed this line, beyond which lies only oblivion. We have, in our hearts and souls, forsworne all other allegiances. Those of us who are married may lose our spouses, those of us who are single may never have spouses...and a lucky few have had their spouses beside them these last few nights. Our children, living and yet unborn, may lose their parents...or their chance of life. We will not bring children into such a world as this. Our wives and husbands may divorce us, thinking us insane or silly or simply a danger to themselves and their own dreams. We weep for them, and for our own losses yet to come.

I'm not sure you realize the significance of this "Real ID Act" monstrosity you've created. I can't imagine anyone willingly creating something that will inevitably result in their own gruesome destruction, ignominious exile, or disappearance amidst the fog of clamouring war. But you, my fine friends, have done just that. For the last two weeks, a lot of people, in a lot of places, have been doing just what I've done tonight. They've sat around with their friends, nursing their Bushmills and Budwiser and their Bombay Sapphire, weeping and raging with infinite sadness...until something else took hold. Through the semipermiable fog of alchoholic numbness, something new and terrifying crept out. Through bloodshot eyes and tear-stained mascara, a slow, hard tattoo began to beat. The hard drums of war are rolling in the minds of an army of indomitable warriors, thanks to you and your machinations. You have torne us from our families, our liberties, our heartfelt dreams and oft-reverenced cherished desires for Peace. "I have set my face like flint," we have said.

The line has been crossed.

I will make a prediction for you, you scoundrels in robes, you misbegotten kings of arrogance, you tyrants in stolen splendour: In three years, sometime in early May of 2008, many of you are going to start dying. It may happen sooner, but it will happen no later than this. If it has not already happened by then, the shooting will start then, and you will have only yourselves to blame as the fire of our retribution licks the floor of Heaven. We are legion beyond even your most terrified nightmares, and thanks to your unrelenting ambition and greed, we have very little if anything left to lose.

But you have just made the situation even worse for yourselves. Prior to the last few weeks, you might have stood some small chance of surviving the Hell we will now unleash upon you. Prior to that, most of us were decent people, with good hearts and reasonable minds. But this has changed. You have torn us from our families. I have friends, even now, who are preparing themselves to lose their wives, girlfriends, husbands, siblings, and parents because, as one so bluntly put it, "I'm not equipped to be married to a Revolutionary." The sadness is leaving us, and it is being replaced by something so black and terrifying that you would do well to turn and run as if every demon in Hell was at your heels.

You have taught us how to hate.

Many of us don't know it yet, but you have taught us the one thing you should have feared most; more than our commitment or our skill, more than our guns or ammunition or our feeble Letters To The Editor. You have awakened something in us that knows no mercy, that has no pity, a thing monstrous and untiring and thirsty for blood. Your blood. It will be sated, it will be fed, and it will not be put off by pathetic promises that "this is not a National ID Card!" In the end, it will consume you.

Before this, you still had time. Before this, you could still back away. But no longer, young feller-me-lads; now you have well and truly stepped in it. As Turkish told Tommy, "Now...we are fucked." Only this time, my ne'er-do-well friends, my future prey, my would-be Massas, it is -you- who will be fucked. The ones who get a bullet will be the lucky ones, and the living might for a short time envy the swiftly and recently dead.

I am a poet, as you can probably tell. I have a literary bent, a penchant for hyperbole, and a bellyfull of excellent wine. As a consequence, I am rambling somewhat and indulging my taste for that great lost gem of Civilization; eloquence. However, Gentle Masters, Good Masters, Wise Masters, do not mistake my eloquence for softness or lack of purpose, and do not mistake me when I say that for all our peaceful desires and soft dreams, we are a people numerous, armed, and filled with the hottest rage. Before this, some of our more dispassionate and "reasonable" members, of whom I was one, repeatedly said "Stop. Please. I don't want to kill you." All that has changed. Though many of us don't realize it yet, we DO want to kill you. Wu Sung, who strangled a tiger, "Went about in the land with his knife, slaying unjust Officials..." and he felt no compunction. William Wallace wore the skin of one of King Edward's Tax Collectors as a belt, and Emelian Pugachov hung the heads of the Tzarina's policemen from his bridle. Do you doubt that we will be any less fierce, any less terrible a foe?

"For every action, there is a reaction. And a Piker reaction...well, that is quite a fuckin' thing."

Sincerely Yours,

A drunken, Irish, Creole, gun-toting un-repentant Fenian Bastard long-haired-hippyfreak with a bad attitude.

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