Gas Pains

Paris

Posted by Tom Gaertner on Nov. 17, 2015

Paris, WOS Bar, Pierre Louvrier, Righteous and Hopeful, Packer Nation

Having traveled to Paris, France a couple of times in the past three and a half years this particular Tosan spent a few days in a funk following the cowardly attacks upon innocent Parisians last Friday.  News footage and photographs routinely displayed neighborhoods and places Jill and I have walked, visited and lingered.  It is incomprehensible to me that in The City of Lights - so open and so free - that such carnage could occur.

That funk turned to dismay (and admittedly a flash of annoyance) in the last couple of days as the political strategy of exploitation gained sway over these events. 

I should have seen this coming. 

I know better. 

H.L. Menken said it best - The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Sometimes I think that the civilian populace of this nation has devolved to a population of sheep.  Yup, sheep.  Sheep that are threatened by the imaginary spectral menace of refugees fleeing war-torn states with little but what they can carry with them.  Did you know that the sum total number of Syrian refugees to be resettled in Wisconsin in 2014 was two?  The shepherds tell you to be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

Let me clue you-in.  If someone wants to come to this nation, come here quickly and without 2 to 3 years of security screenings, cultural indoctrination, medical hoops and the additional background checks a refugee or asylum-seeker has to complete you simply arrive here as a businessman, student or a tourist.  BOOM!  Here.  No muss no fuss.  The refugee route isn’t the fast track.  Don't tell anybody though. 

For you sheep out there you might actually consider being afraid of the disaffected young adult male - already living here - with a high speed internet connection and will gradually self-radicalize.  This is the genuine wolf.   Sheep should be afraid.  Be genuinely afraid. Sheep can only hope their shepherds heed this. 

I’ve been to New York City before and after the events of 9/11.  And Jill and I will return to Paris and we pray that additional carnage does not follow before our return.  A thinking and free people are too proud and brave to accept some trivial politician talking them into becoming wooly and inattentive grazers. 

And I am heartened by this article that was published today by The Mothership.  Gary D’Amato's take on Pierre Louvrier and his watering hole – WOS Bar - the only Packer Bar in all of France.  Read D'Amato's article – it’s a hoot.  We've been there too!

I was genuinely moved by this - Louvrier said he has purposefully gone out at night to walk the streets in his neighborhood over the last few days to make a point: He is not afraid.

Parisians are not sheep.  And from this I garner much hope.  And I'm feeling better about things as a consequence.

To Monsieur Louvrier - La santé!