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by dkarl 4727 days ago
Warning: this comment gets very silly, because I think the story here is actually a very silly one, and can only be understood with a sense of humor. Yes, I'm gonna go against my hippie liberal leanings and say this story is probably mostly harmless. I believe that the plan to "engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary" was formulated for the contingency when Occupy threatened to undermine government authority altogether, plunging the United States into anarchy. Because we know what happens next: a coup, followed by fragmentation into various regional governments, which in turn become subsumed in a race war as patriot groups and groups of parasitic degenerates battle to define the foundations on which civilization is rebuilt.

This is not an uncommon fantasy. Most people who are into guns are content to enjoy them for sport, as objects, and for limited self-defense scenarios, but a few like to have one or more elaborate fantasies for every exotic gun they own in which that gun becomes eminently practical. So some guy works for a police department that has some suppressed sniper rifles (thanks, War on Terror!) and naturally gets to thinking about the heroic ways he could use them to save the world by averting a horrible catastrophe. He knows it's all bullshit, but it's still a potent fantasy enabler.

It's no different from when you think about your hot sister-in-law, and you're thinking, "Oooh, yeah, she's so goddamned hot, I would just... wait, I would never do that to my brother. Well, supposing my brother died in a car accident. I would totally bend... wait, that would destroy my marriage. Okay, so my wife and my brother are in a car together on one of those dangerous mountain roads in South America, and it goes careening off a cliff... no, a bus containing everyone in my family except my sister-in-law goes careening off a cliff on the way to Lake Titicaca, and then we would console each other, and then, ooooh, yeah, so hot."

Except instead of a bus accident, you have Occupy undermining government authority, and instead of your hot sister in law, you have hot, hot, sexy firearms. Boom-chicka wow. I mean, it's never going to happen, but let's face it, you're only ever going to get the old familiar, and you get that, what, once a year? If all the stars align correctly, that is. And at your age, it takes a little more than the old familiar to get you remotely excited anyway. Your fantasies are all you have left. Put one such dreamer in a police department, and I'm sure some weird contingency plans get drawn up.

1 comments

Really? Government plans to kill people is the same thing as you thinking your sister-in-law is hot??

You were right the post being silly......

Sorry, I just can't get excited about a "plot" that never went beyond the stage of fantasy. When it was revealed that the FBI had a habit of finding nutty losers with terrorist fantasies, encouraging them in their planning, promising to provide them with explosives, and then "stopping" them and marking it up as an averted terrorist attack (and putting the poor saps in prison for years) everyone knew it was ridiculous. This is pretty much the same thing. Fantasy is a long way from reality. (Is there any unhappy fourteen year old who hasn't dreamed of offing a few of his teachers and classmates?) I really don't care if some weirdos in the Houston PD have daydreams of heroically saving civilization from Communists or crypto-Islamists or patchouli-scented reptilian overlords or whoever they thought Occupy was. Their only real crime (as opposed to fantasy crime) was not being able to tell the difference between a document that belongs in the "/Users/HoustonPopo/MelGibsonFanfic" folder and a document that belongs in the "/Users/HoustonPopo/ContingencyPlans" folder. Sounds like a good reason for internal disciplinary action, but not for FBI intervention.

Meanwhile, we have no idea what this plan is contingent on. The U.S. military made contingency plans for a hostile invasion of Canada, for goodness' sake.