A recently surfaced video of an EPA official's rant confirms what many of us already knew about the Obama Administration: they imagine themselves to be the rulers of conquered territories populated by restless barbarians who must be subjugated at any cost, complete with indiscriminate and severe exemplary punishments.
Al Armendariz, Administrator for EPA's South Central Region (appointed by President Obama on November 5, 2009), thought he was among his cohorts when he said this:
"The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."
Considered to be one of the 25 most powerful Texans, Armendariz has used his government position to do just that - crucifying some oil companies on trumped-up charges in order to terrorize the others.
But his reference to a "Turkish town" gave me pause. Turkey didn't exist at the time the Romans conquered Asia Minor. At the time, it was inhabited mostly by Greeks. Romans could only conquer a Turkish village if they were to take a time machine ten centuries into the future, given that Rome fell a thousand years prior to the Turks brutally invading Asia Minor and calling that land Turkey.
But random execution so as to terrorize conquered peoples into submission was exactly what the Muslim Turks later did in order to subjugate the non-Muslim natives in their own ever expanding empire, as the Ottoman Empire swept over much of the former extent of Rome's empire.
This Texan Young Turk's appalling knowledge of history makes me wonder about his knowledge of other fields, including environmental science and business management. Knowledge and the scientific method of inquiry have been replaced with the feeling of righteousness and superiority towards the "savages" - i.e., those of us who do not share his "progressive" worldview.
From my unprogressive "barbarian" perspective, however, if the Romans had today's EPA to crucify the dissenters, the Roman Empire would still be around today and the Turks would be in real trouble. And not just the Turks; the rest of us would also live under the fascist jackboot.
I would have liked to make a prediction that if fascism were to come to America, it would come wearing a friendly smile as a protector of the people and the planet. But such a prediction is too late: the friendly, smiling fascism is now here.
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