Number 284, August 15, 2004
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Captain Bligh's Revenge
Exclusive to TLE
Okay, if you're still looking for violent and stupid outlaw states for the New American Empire to invade and crush, forget Iraq, forget Iran, forget Syria and Lybia. Forget North Korea, which is a model of democracy and civilized restraint, compared to the nasty, evil tinpot dictatorship I'm about to point my finger at. Forget them all, every one.
That savage kingdom, the mud-and-wattle village of morality is—Britain.
Doubt me? Then get this: you recall Pitcairn Island, don't you? It's that flyspeck out in the Pacific where Fletcher Christian—portrayed by Clark Gable or Marlon Brando, depending what generation you're a part of—and his fellow Bounty mutineers wound up when they got sick and tired of Captain Bligh back in 1789. On the way to Pitcairn, they stopped off in Tahiti, picked up a bunch of cute girls, and—except for an occasional photo article in National Geographic—were more or less forgotten by the world for the next couple of centuries.
I remember articles like that in National Geographic very well. For millions of preadolescent male Baby Boomers, they served as our initial peek at the female form divine ... and, well, perhaps not so divine. I got to see what real breasts looked like and what splendid technical benefits could be conferred by modern foundation garments. It was at once a splendid and very useful educational period in my life.
But once again, I have digressed.
The current British government is the worst collection of snoops, voyeurs, and Peeping Tonys in history. If their cold, damp, wriggling noses aren't right up your ass-crack, they don't think they're doing their job, which, judging from appearances, is to undo every great achievement in history of which the British people might otherwise be proud.
Not content with merely obliterating Mankind's most productive and progressive exercise in private capitalism and letting the socialism they gave as a substitute destroy what was once arguably the greatest civilization in the world, they now wish to establish their particular brand of ninnyhood all over the planet. The most recent place they've chosen to leave their vile slimetrails is the former paradise called Pitcairn.
It seems that some of the fellows there have been canoodling with girls whom the government deems too young. Never mind that tradition in the South Pacific encourages kids to get started out on real life earlier than may be the case in places like England and America, where—to appease the labor unions and professional teaching parasites—we attempt to keep our offspring in diapers until some time in their thirties.
Never mind that the list of eligible ladies is a trifle limited because the whole population of Pitcairn Island is a mere forty-five individuals.
No, these sexy offenders have been duly arrested and will go on trial for their crimes, even though the British government will have to import a jail to hold them, and a bunch of cops to run the damned thing.
An outrage, you say? Ridiculous? Absurd? Disgusting? It certainly is all of that, but it isn't actually the reason I'm writing this column.
On the typically lame excuse that the Pitcairn population is about to swell by another twenty-five individuals—in addition to a plague of cops, they plan to spoil paradise even further with an infestation of judges and lawyers—they've decided to disarm the people of the island, you know, for their own protection. There is a total of twenty guns on Pitcairn Island, and the thugs want every one of them, right now.
I can't decide whether this pathetic undertaking represents the very definition of stupidity, insanity (those two would be the most charitable assumptions), or pure, distilled, unadulterated malevolent evil.
Don't follow me? Attend: Americans have known for decades that the most dangerously violent cities are those that make it impossible for individuals to legally own weapons of self-defense. The politicians of both conventional parties pretend not to notice what has always been perfectly obvious to everyone except those retarded enough to vote for them.
Despite many who would argue to the contrary, this is a universal human phenomenon. Over the past fifty years, with each and every new restriction imposed on English gun owners, violent crime has risen markedly. Since English politicians exploited the Dunblane massacre—which, exactly like Columbine in the USA was caused by too few guns, not too many—to disarm their constituents altogether, the United Kingdom can now boast of the highest violent crime rate in western civilization.
This effect is not mysterious at all. Criminals now know that they can do anything they want, because people aren't prepared to defend themselves. The same thing has happened in Australia, where a similar massacre provided a similar excuse to similar low, crawling political garbage.
It kind of makes you wonder who arranges these massacres, doesn't it?
At Pitcairn, the Brits have gone too far, interfering in local marriage customs and trying to steal twenty lousy guns from a poor people who need them to feed themselves. Knowing perfectly well what happened after Dunblane and in Australia, we have to ask ourselves if this isn't a deliberate, calculated attempt to elevate the island's violent crime rate as part of some long-repressed revenge they're getting on Fletcher Christian and his pals. Whatever the case, Great Britain must now be expelled utterly from the company of decent nations.
Moreover, if we can invade Iraq because they invaded Kuwait, why not send a regiment to Old Blighty to slap the Tonys back into line and give the good English people back their Enfields, Webleys, and Stens.
The not-so-good among them resented Americans in the forties, even though it's said we saved their pale, palpated public schoolboy asses from the Nazis. They used to complain that our GIs were "overpaid and oversexed". And we all know they think we're overgunned. So, to their historic description of us, why not let them once again add "over here"?
What are they going to stop us with, rolled up copies of the Times?
Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 23 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at www.lneilsmith.org. Autographed copies may be had from the author at lneil@lneilsmith.org.
Neil is presently at work on Ceres and Ares, two sequels to his 1993 novel, Pallas, a decensored and electronically published version of his 1984 novel, Tom Paine Maru, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo" May. A 180-page full-color graphic novel version of The Probability Broach will be released this summer.
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