“A HARD LIFE WITH MANY STINGS”
by Thinkwell
(Mar. 23, 2014) — A man seeking a change takes a home in a faraway land. The law of the land guarantees that all who live there should expect to live vermin free (and the landlords even employ caretakers to effect this right). But the man soon discovers that he shares his new dwelling with a nest of nasty wasps and that he is not free to live undisturbed in his new home.
Right away he asks the caretaker to remove the infestation so that he may live in peace, but the caretaker says, “No, I put those wasps there so that people cannot bother me with requests that I maintain their homes, for I am actually quite fat and lazy. How dare you ask me that they be removed!” and he proceeds to lock the man in his own dank basement for a long while.
After a time passes that the corrupt caretaker believes should break the man’s spirit, he unlocks the basement door. But all the while the man’s head had been filled with thoughts of the wasps, “If I do not remove those wasps right away, surely the nest will grow larger and one day they will kill me or the other people who live in this land.” So instead of being broken, the man’s spirit soars with righteous resolve and he immediately goes and pokes his hand into the nest of wasps, for clearly it is his right to remove it.
Of course the wasps become angry, sting him very badly and one especially big and mean wasp nearly bites off his ear. Again the caretaker banishes the man to the dank, unheated basement. The angry wasps fly throughout the house and take away many of the man’s things. But even when he comes to know this, the man really does not care, for now he is obsessed with removing the wasps.
But the man knows that the wasps are strong and many and he is but one man, so he tells his story of outrageous injustice far and wide to all who will listen. Many sympathetic listeners are transfixed by his story and cry out with righteous indignation at the unfairness (and some even send him a few coins now and then). And the man becomes even more filled with the knowledge that he is RIGHT and his cause is JUST. Again and again he pokes the nest of wasps for surely he has the right to live free of vermin. And again and again he is swarmed and stung by the angry wasps until his body becomes sick and weak.
But the man is very stubborn. After all, he is in the RIGHT, so he should not have to move or give in. Indeed, one day, traveling throughout the land in his Van of Iron, a maverick exterminator of infestations happens upon the man and agrees to help him rid his new home of the nest of wasps. The man is filled with hope, but when the maverick exterminator comes to the man’s home, the caretaker simply ties the exterminator’s hands and will not let him remove even a single tool from his case.
But the man has the persistence of a mule and is not deterred. Now he lowers his head and butts it directly into the heart of the evil nest. This makes all the wasps very angry and even those without stingers fetch those with the biggest stingers to threaten the man. The man cries out to the caretaker, “I am RIGHT and my cause is JUST. Please protect me from the wasp.” But the caretaker becomes very angry and again locks the man in the cold, dank basement.
Part two of this story has yet to be written, but the moral of part one is “If you insist on sticking your hand into a nest of wasps, expect a hard life with many stings.”
Steven,
The government corruption and unjust thuggish treatment of innocent citizens that is happening in Tennessee is barbarous and unconscionable and I believe Commander Fitzpatrick is fully in the right in his fight against the forces of evil there. But evil is what evil does and is not likely to spontaneously change. Bad government must be wiped clean of evil, by force of law. This means that the forces of good law have to be smarter, braver and/or carry a bigger stick than the forces of evil. This action was effected by the people themselves one time many decades ago in Tennessee.
The Commander’s bravery and determination is undeniable, but maybe plunging one’s hand into the hornets’ nest is perhaps not the most effective tactic after one has seen no results from all the many prior attempts to attack it directly. I also don’t believe this is a cause worth dying for in such a manner (would a brave martyr’s memory spurn on people who are so historically beaten down?). And I do fully believe that if Commander Fitzpatrick persists in sticking his hand directly into the wasps’ nest, they eventually will kill him.
Paton is purported to have said, “No b-tard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb b-tard die for his country.” This is good advice for the Commander. Perhaps it would be best to make a strategic retreat and regroup with more powerful forces or attack from safer ground. Commander Fitzpatrick has amply proven that he will get no justice from local law enforcement or the local judiciary – they are too corrupt and too criminal to expect them to change their spots on their own.
He must either go up the chain until he finds an honest, God fearing ally in higher government or rally the people in the court of public opinion to the point where the fat-cat politicians fear that they will be routed out of office (strict, short term limits should be standard practice anyway).
Perhaps he can catch the eye of someone who is not an officeholder, but wields power behind the scenes or has considerable public gravitas (Sarah Palin comes to mind).
I am not the one paying the price on the ground, so it is not my place to tell the Commander what to do, but I fear for his safety.
this must be the story of Walter Fitzpatrick in a nutshell. Our wimpy sheriff knows the truth about the illegal grand jury and does not have the backbone to do anything about it. It is certainly his shame to bear. Meanwhile Walter is in the jail biding his time just like the guy in the dank cellar. Pray for Walter’s release quickly.
When I joined the Marines, my oath to my flag and country basically said the same thing that has been said for centuries, “I’d rather die fighting for freedom than live as a slave”.