The Angry Exile: You there! Yes, you with the bomb!

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday 9 September 2010

You there! Yes, you with the bomb!

Bomb? What bomb? I haven't got a bomb.

Well, no. No you haven't, but you have got a vehicle with a tankful of diesel outside, and we noticed that you've got a few of sacks of fertiliser in the back.

Well? I'm a landscape gardener. I buy fertiliser all the time.

But this is too much fertiliser, you see. What you have here is the precursor to a bomb.

A what?

A precursor, which is as good as the same thing as far as your sworn-to-protect-you-from-all-ills government is concerned, you psychopathic bastard. Now if you'd could just lie face down while we rough you up a bit....

Here, hang on a mom-arrrrrrrgh.

Ridiculous? Why? The Yanks already assume you're going to make meth if you stock up on Sudafed and treat you as a drug dealer. And by 'stock up' they mean buy four boxes at three locations. Personally we like to have plenty of stuff around for when we feel shit and tend to stock up when we're hale and hearty. We're not dumb enough to exceed the dosage significantly and we find nanny state legislation that assumes we are that dumb offensive and patronising, so we would naturally hit two or three different stores and have a decent amount of 'medicine' on hand.* And we would strongly object to any assumption that our desire to not be in a position to have to go to the fucking pharmacy and spread whatever lurgy we have to everyone in the shop to somehow be an indication that we're part time drugs manufacturers. Now for all I know this woman may well have intended to make meth out of four boxes of Sudafed, but did she actually do it? And if not since when did having stuff that can be misused become equivalent to actually misusing it (and one day I will get around to blogging how ridiculous the whole drug law thing is, but I'm glossing over that for now). What the fuck happened to the presumption of innocence? Negated by statute - possession of a given quantity of a substance that could be used in a way the state does not approve of is all that is necessary for the prosecution to prove. No mens rea and not even any fucking actus reus. It's strict liability, the great gift to lazy investigators and prosecutors the whole world over.

Think it can't happen in Britain or Australia? Really? But you can already attract unwarranted attention for carrying a knife in both countries, even if you have nothing but peaceful intentions. So when you're surrounded by armed cops for having enough metal to manufacture a .50 cal machine gun don't be tempted to argue that you had no intention of doing anything more than making some weird modern art sculpture because it won't make any difference.

H/T Mises blog.

* In the same way that the Fremantle Doctor isn't a doctor but a sea breeze in the Exile house 'medicine' may refer to anything from Beecham's Powders and aspirin, to chicken soup and tubs of Cookies & Cream ice cream (which has just made me think of another Thing I Don't Get About Australia), to new videogames and DVDs. It doesn't have to be literally medicinal to be 'medicine' - it just has to make you feel better.