A couple of new friends have been poking at me to use PGP for personal communications.
I'm agin' it.
Their arguments have relied mainly on the contention that Big Brudda has been wasting a lot of time scanning Web traffic, trolling for folks that can be palmed off as "dangerous" to the mainstream media, a currently safe smoke screen that the forces of the clampdown indulge in before hammering poor schmucks via legal action (the best case scenario if the accused can get Spence-quality legal representation) or heavily-armed assault squads.
The most interesting thing to me has been that, to date, those most fervently promoting this supposed dodge are personally pushing what I consider to be opinions only slightly outside of the mainstream of political thought. Heck, if merely arguing that the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land now qualifies as ThoughtCrime, then it's time to pick up our toys and start looking for a new yard to play in.
Personally, I can't think of anything I've written, aside from my earliest college bits during a thankfully short socialist period, that I would feel uncomfortable reading out loud before any court that claims the right to try me. So screw 'em.
Despite my reputation, I've never advocated the outright overthrow of our current system of supposedly "representative" government. I'm confident that the whole rotted structure will collapse under its own bloated weight within the next eight years, when the bills for the Roosevelt and Johnson welfare Ponzi schemes will finally, totally, come due. I am predicting that our pals in Washington will react by hyper-inflating the currency, enacting massive tax increases, or both, which should inspire a street brawl of nationwide proportions. My advice is to start stockpiling gold (its price is at the lowest point in a long time) and ammo now, and in a few years follow up with medicines and non-perishable foodstuffs. I shamefully admit to having made fun of survivalists for years, but now they seem fairly rational, except in the matter of timing. To those who have been choking down C-rats and scampering about in the wilds of Montana and Wyoming for the last couple of decades, I can only say, "Hey, take a fucking shower, willya?"
While libertarian-style anarchy grows more attractive to me as I get older, fatter, and more introspective, I comprehend that it is not a system which can ever be imposed via revolution -- which would defeat the whole purpose -- that it must be entered into freely by those who decide to shoulder the burden of creating a new, separate nation which respects individual liberty. Despite the downright childish rhetoric from some on our side, I'm confident that most Americans would be terrified of such an alternative. So the answer is to make such a destination available and then let the "wheat" sort themselves out by voting with their feet.
If any of that manages to offend some powerful whatzit who commands lackeys wielding cereal-box badges and H&K MP-5s, well, I just hope they don't dust me on my nickle.
I'm a single guy, lacking a family to protect, so appeals to the "apparent propriety" of trumped-up charges should prove a ridiculously feeble riding crop if I'm asked to turn in supposed co-conspirators. I've kept all my paperwork, so any gun charges will be obvious fabrications. I've never potted any richly-deserving fascists, nor called for their physical elimination, and so cannot be faulted for that. There's nothing that I'd like better than to read about Newt stuffing his porcine noggin into an oven, Hillary being consumed by a village of empty-eyed zombie children, or helicopters full of fed goons autorotating into cliffsides. I just don't want to associate with any chuckleheads flapping their yaps about actually making it happen.
If anything, I'm against using PGP as a communications conduit for intensely personal reasons, as it may allow interested agencies to "discover" content that I never keyed in. If I state that all of my nasty yet unactionable correspondence is obviously protected under the First Amendment, and a FBI boffin claims that her incredibly-reliable supercomputer-cracked transcriptions contain wild-eyed droolings about ZOG conspiracies requiring massive quantities of ANFO blend to head off, who do you think will end up experiencing the wonders of rectal bleeding in one of our more entertaining penal institutions?
If y'all want to use PGP for whatever reason, that's more than fine with me. I've got a copy. But here's a warning: If you give me advance notice of anything involving actual horrorshow, I'll drop a dime on you so fast that your empty skull will spin. Who knows, maybe some local station's helmet-headed "roving reporter" will toss me a hoover in the back of the mobile unit while we wait in the parking lot of whatever maximum-security hellhole you deservedly get tossed into, in between bouts of color commentating on your impending injection-fueled demise. Darwin wasn't just whistlin' "Dixie", kiddies.
On the other hand, if PGP gets banned outright, I will immediately begin using it for all of my correspondence.
Vote from the rooftops!