All hail to the townsfolk of Keene, New Hampshire, who are opposing the acquisition of a $285K armored vehicle for their town’s police force. As the Occupy movement has brought into sharp focus, our police departments have, behind the scenes so to speak, gradually morphed into paramilitary organizations staffed by people just off the Star Wars set. All this the result of the anti-terrorist mind set-keep ‘em scared-that the Pentagon and the U.S. government generally has used so effectively since 2001.
These behemoths are manufactured in Pittsfield, and the spokesperson makes what he believes to be a persuasive case for the proposition that every Podunk in the country needs its own tank:
Jim Massery, the government sales manager for Pittsfield, Mass.-based Lenco, dismissed critics who wonder why a town with almost no crime would need a $300,000 armored truck. “I don’t think there’s any place in the country where you can say, ‘That isn’t a likely terrorist target,'” Massery said. “How would you know? We don’ t know what the terrorists are thinking. No one predicted that terrorists would take over airplanes on Sept. 11. If a group of terrorists decide to shoot up a shopping mall in a town like Keene, wouldn’t you rather be prepared?”
Were I to be struck by a meteor, I would probably feel like it would have been good to have built a meteor shelter, but looking forward from my present vantage point, I’m just not convinced I should invest money in one. The same logic would seem to apply here. There are literally thousands of towns in the US. A tank for every one seems a bit much, but as they all share Keene’s peril, presumably each needs its very own tank. And Oh, by the way, someone actually did predict that terrorists would take over planes, you can look it up.
On the other hand, there are a lot of higher percentage threats for which I’d rather be prepared that we never seem to get around to preparing for. I’d like to be prepared for global warming. I’d like to be prepared for the foreign competition that will crush us in the coming years, as we reap the harvest of right wing attacks on, and defunding of, our public educational system and our relentless extermination of middle class jobs. It is so very strange that we always seem to be able to afford the very expensive things we don’t need, but can never find the money for the things that we do.
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