On the Day I Die

prostar.com ^ | Deborah Marie Pulaski, as told to Claire Wolfe

[mindprism.com]

On the Day I Die

by Deborah Marie Pulaski, as told to Claire Wolfe

This week I learned I’m dying. Of course I’ve always known, in the everyday, human sense, that I was going to die. But this week I learned I am going to die soon. In a year or so at most, I won’t be on this planet. No more breathing. No more Zinfandel or chocolate cake. No hugs. No sorrows. I won’t ever again have to worry whether there’s a run in my stocking when I go to a meeting with the boss, or whether I remembered to send a birthday card to my best friend’s husband.

It’s a peculiar thought, looking at my own death, so close. But you know, it isn’t a bad thought, all things considered.

I’m 53 years old. That isn’t old. I might have had another 30 years, if one little cell hadn’t decided to start mutating out of control a while back. But 53 is old enough to have lived a good life. It’s long enough to have become a full person, without all those "who am I’s" and "what do I want to do with my life’s" that make youth so over-rated.

It’s enough time to have loved-both in the frantic, desperate way of being young, and in the comfortable way of being an adult. That’s been an amazing, and a very happy, transition.

But I don’t want to talk about love. I want to talk about freedom.

Well, I guess that means I do want to talk about love. Because I love freedom more than I love anything. Really, more than I ever loved my husband. Even more than I love my kids--and I think they’ll understand and forgive me for saying so, even though that statement might require a little more explaining for strangers who might be reading this.

I have to say it again. I love freedom more than I love anything. More than I ever loved anything. And that’s what makes the thought of dying so bitter, and at the same time, so welcome.

I guess that idea is going to take some explaining, too. Claire, tell them about me. I’ve never been able to write, or even talk all that well about things that matter to me. So you tell people what kind of person I am. Make them understand.

I’ve always been a political junky. You know me. Like some women shop, I do politics. No, that isn’t putting it right. Not at all. I do politics...

I guess I’d better say I used to do politics...because I couldn’t stand still and let "them" take away our world. You know, the types who aren’t happy unless they’re running other people’s lives.

When I ran into a neighbor, co-worker or family member like that, I could just say, "Sayonara, Baby," and avoid them. But the people who really got to me were the ones who wanted to make endless rules for the whole country, the whole world, and make everybody else obey them. Just obey, all the time. I swear, you know, that these people don’t even care what the particular rules are. They just like making and enforcing rules "because." For the power. For the control. For their other powerful, controlling friends. So they can all feel important and be in charge.

So I always had to try to stop those people. But there wasn’t any stopping them. I found that out.

God, I wish I were a writer like you or a great orator or a wizard about the law or something like that. I wish I could have done something big during my life. But you know me, I was never anything but a little precinct worker, a drone, a little deputy voter registrar, doorbeller, meeting attender, envelope licker. One of those women you see in every campaign and every organization, never getting noticed and never particularly wanting to be. Just wanting to make the world freer-- or at least keep a little bit of the world away from the people who want to make it less free.

It was really kind of stupid, looking back on it, because nearly all of the people who said they believed in freedom turned around and, once they got in office, acted exactly like the other guys. They didn’t really want less government and more freedom. They just wanted to be the ones in control.

But I just had to try, didn’t I? Anyway, I did try. Just about all my life.

That expression "just about all my life" has a different ring all of a sudden. It really has been just about all my life. Will be just about all my life.

I wanted freedom so much. I wanted it just so that I and my kids could live an ordinary life. Making a living. Paying our way. Doing what we wanted to do, within the bounds of polite behavior to our neighbors. Just to live, without being ordered around, threatened or tangled up in red tape every time we tried to do something. I didn’t have any spectacular ambitions. I just wanted to be let alone to live a peaceful life.

I have two daughters, you know. They’re both in their early 20s right now. The youngest one, Edyie, was always a dreamer. She had all the ideas and ambitions I didn’t dare to have. I remember, as a little kid, she swore she was going to go live on Venus someday. Then, when she learned Venus was really this awful place, she pouted for about two days, then switched to Mars. She figured we could colonize Mars.

I don’t know whether that’s realistic or not, but I always wanted to see Edyie get the chance to try if that’s what she wanted to do. I wanted her to have the chance to try anything her wild little imagination could dream up. Maybe she’d fail. But maybe she’d succeed. And isn’t that what keeps the human race moving? Edyie, impossible though she can be at times, is the kind of person who keeps the human race from sitting on its dead butt, getting nowhere.

But Edyie isn’t going to have the chance, unless something comes out of the blue to turn things around. Edyie’s never going to get to Mars. Heck, she isn’t even going to get a chance to build a little earthbound business because she’s too independent to jump through all the hoops the government requires.

Yeah, I can just see my Edyie filling out forms in triplicate, collecting taxes from her employees and begging for government licenses--NOT! She isn’t going to get a chance to make many personal choices-beyond what brand of soap or TV to buy-- because our choices are being limited day by day, and everywhere you turn, you run into something illegal. Maybe even something that was legal yesterday, but is illegal today, thanks to some regulation nobody ever heard of. She just won’t put up with that--but I don’t know what she’ll do instead.

I used to dream, as I worked on all those campaigns, that someday I’d win back the right for Edyie to have the risky, but hope-filled future she craved. When I thought about dying, someday, it was with regret that I might not live to see Edyie go to Mars or to accomplish whatever other big thing she wanted to do.

But now I don’t have any of those regrets, because it isn’t going to happen.

Even three years ago, I wouldn’t have said that. I’d still have said, "Darnit, there’s hope. Freedom is just common sense. We’ll win." But some of the things that have happened in the last couple of years make that all different. No, don’t say "things that have happened." They didn’t just "happen." People in government did them to us. On purpose.

In the last couple of years, they finally did what they’d been moving toward for a long time. They passed the laws that just plain make us slaves. They did it, and hardly anybody’s even talking about it. That’s what amazes me.

For one thing, they passed a law that makes our driver’s licenses into national ID cards. They’re doing it right now, while we sit here talking.

A year or two after I’m gone, all you people who are left are all going to have to carry around cards with all your numbers and fingerprints and retinal scans and "personal data" coded on them. The law says so. You won’t be able to cash a check or get a passport without supplying your "biometric data" to the government or the bank. I thought it was some big conspiracy story when I first heard it. But it’s true and it’s happening. And where are all the people screaming to stop it?

And they’ve now got this database that everybody who gets a job gets put into. Some national database in some big stone building in Washington where they’ll know where everybody works, all the time. They said it was to track "deadbeat dads." Yeah. Then why are they going to put Edyie and my other daughter Pat and everybody else into it? Since when are they, or you, or I "deadbeat dads"?

Along these same lines, they’ve even got what they call "pilot programs" to make people get permission from the federal government before they can get jobs. Employers in these "pilot programs" have to get scanners to let the federal government check people’s Social Security numbers before they can hire anybody.

Isn’t that just great? Some bureaucrat in the Social Security Administration or someplace gets to decide whether you can work or not.

And this other database. All your medical records are going to go into some other big, stone building in Washington. That’s going to be on line about the time I go, too. Any old bureaucrat who wants to look at them can see them. You can’t, of course. But they can.

All this stuff is real. It’s not in some novel about the future or in some right-wingy pamphlet. It’s in the law. It’s in America. Right now. They did it all in the last couple of years. Mostly by sneaking a paragraph or a page into bigger laws when nobody was looking.

And what’s all this about? Is it really to help "welfare moms" or to keep illegal immigrants from taking other people’s jobs? Oh, come on! This is about one thing. It’s about slavery.

They give you a citizen registration number shortly after birth. As soon as you get old enough to start moving around, doing things and making decisions on your own, they make sure that they’re in a position to know every move you make, to record every transaction, to examine your whole life’s record any time some bureaucrat gets curious. They not only want to know where you are at any given moment--where you’re working and living and banking-but to make sure you can’t work someplace if they don’t want you to.

And they even want to be able to check up on your health. That one seems especially silly. I mean, why should some bureaucrat in Washington give a hoot about how some woman’s pregnancy is going, or whether some man is boozing it up a bit more than he should? Or whether a middle-aged lady is dying of cancer or not? What business is it of theirs, and why should they even want to bother? But it makes sense when you realize what they’re really doing. After all, if you own animals, of course you want to make sure your property has got all its vaccinations, is producing healthy offspring, and isn’t being overfed or something.

It’s just like a modern-day farmer, keeping track of his cows or pigs on his computer. You want to know they’re healthy and whether they’re producing as much as they can for you. So you track them. Track everything about them. They belong to you, after all. If you’re a kindly, efficient farmer, of course you want to watch over your livestock.

There’ve been a lot of bad laws passed in my lifetime, Claire. Sometimes I thought, "This is just the worst, the worst. It can’t get any more horrible than this." But these laws, that authorized all this tracking, are really the final thing. They’re the declaration that the people in Washington own us. That’s all. They’re plain and simply saying we’re their property.

There are going to be a lot more bad laws, yeah. Really bad ones that will follow these and will be possible because of these. But before this, the bad laws were passed against free people.

After this, the laws are passed to control slaves.

Neither of my girls has children yet. Like every mother, I always wanted them to get going and do it, you know. I wanted my grandbabies! Now! Believe me, I had to bite my lip a lot to keep from nagging them about it, like some mothers do. But to be absolutely honest, now I wish neither one of them would have children. I don’t think Edyie will. We’ve talked about this. She’s a lot like me in some ways, and I think she won’t bring a child into a country like this one is becoming.

Now my other daughter--we always called her Practical Patty--probably will have children someday. I’ve kind of given Patty short shrift in talking about all this.

She was the sort of daughter who never gave any trouble and was more interested in doing well in band and glee club than in thinking about all the "heavy" things. Her big dreams were just of having a nice little job someday, then getting married to a decent sort of guy, having a nice house and, yeah, children. So all this won’t affect Patty as much as it will Edyie, or as much as it would have affected me if I’d have lived to see it all come to fruition. To Patty’s mind, it isn’t "sensible" to worry about things like this.

So Patty will have children, and I can only hope that at least their lives will be comfortable, if they can’t be free. Maybe they’ll be well-fed, well-cared-for little citizens. And maybe I should hope they turn out to be the kind of people who don’t think or question too much. Because if they’re the other kind--like me or Edyie--their lives will be miserable.

The next step, you know, after getting ownership of your slaves or cows is to cull out the ones that don’t fit the mold...that make trouble, or that don’t produce the way you want them to. If you aren’t nice the Social Security Administration can just "lose" your records, or the health care people can just fiddle your medical history around so you look like a mental case. Then they can "help" you to death. So I guess for that reason, I should hope those grandbabies I won’t live to see are quiet, obedient sheep.

But damnit, if there are grandbabies, I hope they’ll be as stubborn and freethinking as their Aunt Edyie, and that they’ll find a better way of fighting for freedom than their Grandma Deb ever could.

Let their lives be worth something deep and true, not just the "worth" of good livestock or laborers. If they fight, maybe they won’t live happily or long. But if they have to live at all, I hope those little kids live bravely, in spite of all the odds against them. The poor souls.

Do you remember the hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross"? It’s been on my mind a lot since I got the verdict. When I was little, I thought it was such a beautiful song. I knew it was partly about dying, and about being at peace in dying because of the singer’s beliefs, but I didn’t completely understand it.

There was this line, "Till my trophies at last I lay down." I knew it meant "when I die." But since I didn’t have any "trophies" and couldn’t figure out what giving up awards had to do with dying, I put my own little girl interpretation on it. I figured the word had to be "trophis," and that it was some fancy, adult word meaning "body."

Well, Claire, I’ll tell you. In a year or so, when I lay this middle-aged "trophis" down for the last time, I won’t have any regrets for myself. On the day I die, I’ll be able to say I’ve done all I could. I tried, even though most of what I did turned out to be misguided and ineffective. And even though I’d try something different-and a lot less "nice"--if I could do it over again, I won’t regret leaving the world the politicians just created. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to live in it.

But my grandbabies will be born as slaves. And oh God, I regret that. And I regret not being around to protect them.

© 1997 Deborah Marie Pulaski and Claire Wolfe. Permission to reprint for non-commercial purposes freely granted, as long as the article is reprinted in full and is accompanied by this copyright statement.
Update by djf:
Curious about Ms. Pulaski's fate, I emailed and asked. She passed away in November of 1997. I Make this pledge:

If I have to shed every drop of my blood, her final fear will not come true!

[Cultural Jihad]

In addition, immediately after September 11, many political prisoners all across the country, ranging from religious anti-war activists like Father Philip Berrigan to former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli to active Muslim inmates, were thrown into "administrative segregation" (i.e., locked down and isolated from the general prison population). Many of them were cut off from contact even with their attorneys for weeks.

The absence of public outcry against these mass roundups and lockdowns has been appalling. It is as if the government need only pronounce the magic word "terrorist," and all objections melt away. Yet the whole point of Martin Niemoeller's famous quotation is that the only way to stop a police state is to spring to the defense of its very first victims, no matter how unpopular they may be.

We are prone to think of these mass round-ups as something without precedent and an aberration within a free society provoked by extraordinary circumstances. Unfortunately they are not, and the precedents are infamous.

Two that come to mind are the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 (named after then Attorney General Palmer), when federal agents staged simultaneous raids across the country to arrest thousands of aliens considered by the government to be dangerous anarchists and communists. Hundreds were summarily deported. Even more chilling was the throwing of 110,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps during World War 2. Not a single Japanese-American was ever charged with any act of disloyalty.

Both the Palmer Raids and the mass internment of Japanese-Americans were done by executive order and without legislative authority. What is unprecedented in the current situation is that the government now proposes to enact that authority.

...

Times of great danger are also moments when millions of people come into political life, begin to question what they are told, and are called upon to consider real choices. Getting voices of dissent and exposure out there into society is not so easy to do right now. To even have such a national discourse requires that we now fight for the space and the freedom to inform, debate, and protest. But we fail to do this at our own peril.

Most heartening have been the actions of thousands of people across the country who have spoken out in protest against the war and against the ugly climate of xenophobia and repression. Tens of thousands have marched against the bombing, ordinary people have gone to the defense of their Muslim neighbors, and organizations of lawyers and civil libertarians have exposed and denounced the new police-state measures.

The need now is to bring together all those who oppose these new policies, regardless of their views on many other issues. It is crucial to work together in support of the right to dissent and in defense of those who exercise that right in the coming period. People have to be mobilized to speak out, to take up this fight, and to build the resistance to all forms of repression.

Libertarian Party press release

[Cultural Jihad]

Why Do They Hate Us?

Americans are asking, "Why do they hate us?" They hate what they see right here in this chamber....

--President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress

Americans are asking, why do they hate the United States? This is a very important question that people need to be discussing everywhere. But President Bush's answer is downright ridiculous. His claim is that people hate the U.S. because of its democratic form of government.

Now think about that for a minute. Can anyone really imagine that what makes people willing to kill themselves by flying planes into buildings is that we get to vote for George Bush or Al Gore (before the Supreme Court makes the actual decision)? Can we really imagine that there are people in Third World countries, gritting their teeth and hurling curses at America because sometimes the Senate is run by Trent Lott and sometimes by Tom Daschle? Not likely.

The answer seems to be more rooted in the enormous imbalance of wealth in the world, and the determination of the U.S. government to keep it that way by supporting every vicious local tyrant in the world willing to do the U.S.'s bidding--and then stabbing some of them in the back. Whoever was responsible for the attacks of September 11, it is clear that the current crisis is the inevitable and terrible outcome of these twisted alliances and the deep injustices resulting from U.S. domination in the Middle East.

Rather than seeking "justice," the government's aim seems more directed at recasting power relationships in South Asia and the Middle East and to maintain and increase U.S. domination of these vital oil-producing areas.

Yet what is offered to everyone is a devil's bargain: "If you will just give up all your civil liberties and join with us in a campaign to eradicate the anti-American infidels, we will protect you from the fallout from our actions in the world." This then becomes an avenue and justification for standing with the world's greatest power against untold millions of oppressed and exploited people of the world.

Personally, as a revolutionary internationalist I think the people of the world need to hear a different message from us. They need to hear that we know what this government is doing and why it is so hated by millions of people around the world. All those who seriously want justice need to reach out to the people of the world, to stand together against the crimes of this system, and to strengthen our resistance against every act of war and repression.

But regardless of how anyone analyses these questions, what has been brought home so tragically in the events of September 11 is that America can no longer find safety in some kind of "gated community" at the world level. Clearly there are people so angry with what the U.S. has done to their countries that they will stop at nothing to strike back. And what is needed now is great national debate, free of censorship and demagoguery by the administration, on who has caused this and how we should respond.

---

AntiWar.com? LP.org? ClaireWolfeRants.gov?

[Lurker]

You need help.

L

[Cultural Jihad]

You need help.

No. Help is needed for the deluded members of Refuse And Resist, AntiWar, and the L.P.

[Cultural Jihad]

What are you talking about?? I am a great supporter of Claire Wolfe. Just try to take my bong away, statist!

[Hemlock]

What are you talking about?? I am a great supporter of Claire Wolfe. Just try to take my bong away, statist!

Don't you mean your Wild Turkey?

[Cultural Jihad]

God's Own Drunk

Richard "Lord" Buckley, 1906-1960

I'd like to do a little creative wig bubble for you called "God's Own Drunk."

I want the boys to,... of course,... with their Prince Bernard, and Sir James,
and the Lady Doris and Prince Valentine.

You know, a creative orchestra, my lords, my ladies, is a rare and delightful thing.
Right? Look! Do you see any music?

I gotta do a thing for you called, "The Cop Out," one time. It's a beautiful thing.
And a thing called "The Bad-Rapping of the Marquis de Sade."
A very interesting affair.

But for the moment I'd like to do for you "God's Own Drunk."

Said, eh, just like I say before. I, I'm a non-drinkin' man.
Never drank for some reason or other. Didn't like it.
But like I said, too, I promised to take care of my brother-in-law's still
while he went in to vote.

Went up there and it was just where the map said it was.
And I'm a gonna tell you something - it was no little old five or ten cent still.
It was laid there just like a golden mountain opel,
with a kind of a honey dew cry comin' from it.

I ain't a drinkin' man, like I 'splained to you,
but that big old yellow moon was a hangin' up there,
and God's lanterns was a hangin' in the sky,
and that curiosity got the best of me, and I took a slash.

And I got a crazy, revolutionary feelin' in my body.
That yellow whiskey went down my throat like honey dew vine water.
Humph, it tasted mighty good!

I felt a revolution goin' through my body
like there was great neon signs a goin' up an' sayin',

"There's a Great Life a Comin'!"

Feelin' it talkin' to me, and I took another slash,
and I got another jolt, and I took another slash,
and I started to sing.

I started to sing.

And that big old yellow moon a hangin' out there
and God's sweet lanterns a hangin' in the sky,
and I's a singin'.

Never could sing a note before in my life,
but I's a singin' as fine and as pretty as you'd ever want to hear.

And I took another slash.

And then I took a big full....

That big old yellow moon a hangin' out there.
God's lanterns a hangin' in the sky,
and suddenly I got a tremendous revolution of emotion in my body
like I was fallin' in love with everything in God's sweet world
that moved, lived, didn't live, animate, inanimate, black,
blue, green, pink, mountains, fountains.

I was in love with life, 'cause I was drunk!!

I wasn't fallin' down, slippin', slidin' drunk.

I was GOD'S OWN DRUNK!

A fearless man!

And that's when I first saw the bear.

Big old Kodiak-lookin' fella, about sixteen foot tall.

I walked right on up to that bear, 'cause I was God's Own Drunk
and I loved everything in this world.
Walked right up tight to him about four-and-a-half feet
and I looked right up in his eyes
and I want to tell you somethin' brothers and sisters -
my eyes was redder than his was! Hung him up.

And he's a sniffin', he's a sniffin'. He's tryin' to smell some fear.
He can't do it, 'cause I'm God's Own Drunk and I'm a fearless man.

He expects me to do two things, flip or fly.
I don't do either. Hangs him up.

I told him, I said, "Mr. Bear, I'm God's Own Drunk
and I love every hair on your twenty-seven acre body.
I'm a fearless man!"

Said, "I want you to go... I know you got bear friends over the hill there.
Harry Bear, and Tim Bear, and Jelly Bear, and Tony Bear, and Teddy Bear,
and Field Bear, Hazel Bear, John Bear, Pete Bear, and Rare Bear!
Go over and tell all of them that I'm God's Own Drunk tonight
and I love everything in God's green creation.
I love them like brothers but if they give me any trouble
I'm gonna run every God-damn one of 'em off the hill!"

I moved up. Don't you know he moved back two feet.

I reached up and took the bear by the hand.
I said, "Mr. Bear, we're both beasts when it comes right down to it."

He's a lookin' down at me.

I said, "I want you to come with me. You're gonna be my buddy. Buddy Bear."

Took him right by his big, old, shaggy man-island sized hand,
led him on over, sat him down by the still.

Well, he's a sniffin'. He's a sniffin'.
He knows there's honey dew around there,
some kind of honey bear honey dew of some kind.
He's a sniffin'

I know what he's a sniffin' at.

I took a slash or two myself to taste 'er out and I filled him a bottle.

Did you ever see them bears, the sillouette of them bears at the circus,
suckin' up that sasparilla? Ahhh, it's a fine lookin' sight!

And he downed another bottle. And he downed another bottle.
And I put two more in him and pretty soon he started to sniff and snort.
Tapped his foot.

And he got up and started to do The Bear Dance.
Two sniffs, three snorts, a half a turn and one grunt.

And I'm trying' to do it, but I couldn't do it
'cause it was just like a jitterbug dance,
it was so simple it evaded me.

But we was a dancin' and yellin'!

And God's sweet moon a hangin' in the sky,
and God's sweet lanterns out there
and there's jubilation and love on that hill.

And finally my love, it up and got so strong it overwhelmed my soul,
and I laid back in the sweet green hill
with that big, old Buddy Bear's paw right in mine
and I went to sleep.

And I slept for four hours and dreamt me some tremulous dreams.

And when I woke up that old, yellow, moon was a hangin' in the sky,
and God's sweet lanterns is out there
and my buddy the bear was a missin'.

And you know something else, brothers and sisters?

So was the still!

[Eagle Eye]

Do you understand the difference between allegience to America and to the mutation of the government?

Some of us are loyal to the ideal and the promise of America. Sometimes the government tries to stop what the Foudners started.

It seems, however, that like clinton, you cannot separate the controlling government from the ideals.

[Twodees]

Yes'm. Until Miz Susan bumped this posting of the article back up, the ninnies who usually attack it missed doing so. I see that it attracted the attention of one of FR's super goobers this time. The boy took a fit and posted five replies to me over it. ahaha ;-)

[Hemlock]

Cute, Mr. Jihad. Apparently, you looked at my profile. Yes, I make alcohol, but so what? Only a moron would equate the making and/or drinking of alcohol with chemical abuse. Alcohol, when consumed in moderation, has been proven to be very beneficial to the heart and nervous system. It also makes a pretty good fuel in a pinch, an excellent antiseptic, and good solvent. It removes stains, cleans the gums, removes oil, lights my backpacking stove, kills bacteria in the stomach, and if made properly, tastes great. FYI, the person who wrote that poem was ignorant. Alcohol is white when it comes off the still. If it's yellow, you had better not drink it.

[Hemlock]

"I ain't a drinkin' man, like I 'splained to you, but that big old yellow moon was a hangin' up there, and God's lanterns was a hangin' in the sky, and that curiosity got the best of me, and I took a slash.

And I got a crazy, revolutionary feelin' in my body. That yellow whiskey went down my throat like honey dew vine water. Humph, it tasted mighty good!

Like I said, it ain't yeller when it comes off the still. It's gotta age in wood a spell 'fore it turns yeller, ya knot-head. That thar poem was scrawled by a city slicker or a self-righteous prohibitionist, like yerself, who ain't never had a day of fun in his cotton-pickin' life. Or wasn't able to handle fun responsibly or intelligently. Or was mentally or physically abused by such a rascal and now has to project his own fears and insecurities onto others. Is that you, Mr. Jihad? Is it?

The Ghost of Mark Twain.

[Cultural Jihad]

LOL! Good catch. You'll have to bring it up with Lord Buckley who spoke the words.