Trayvon in Tulsa?

[Callisto32]

14. Imagine a criminal gang DID rule the day...

Imagine, they would own everything (the land, the water, the fish in the water, the deer on the land), and if you didn't pay your tibute, they would take "your" land/house/business. If you do pay, they will "protect" you, but in reality, this mostly just means they'll leave you alone (until its time to pay or get your shit stolen/yourself put in a cage, that is) and send someone out to make a record of what happened AFTER the trouble is already over.

Imagine that the gang would put into place a lot of useless, onerous, vague, nigh indecipherable rules, so many rules that no human being could ever even READ them, let alone comprehend them. They would claim that these rules are NECESSARY, after all, without them it would be CHAOS or ANARCHY or...something, (don't forget, not so long ago "Oh my, we can't have people of different religions in the same geographic location, it would be CHAOS!" was a considered a legitimate viewpoint.

Imagine that these rules would be not only accepted, but often clamored for by the ruled, because the vast majority of the subjects living in the territory of this gang would have to spend a set number of years in an institution where parents and the vital role they play in the growth and development of their children are replaced by agents of the gang, and every day all the kids get up and they swear fealty to the gang's colors, and they learn crazy things. Crazy things like the idea that taking the money that people worked to earn is not theft, but not allowing someone to take the things they did not work for is theft.

Imagine there is a huge list of things that the gang says you can't have/use, for myriad reasons. Sure, some of those reasons have been empirically proven to be bullshit (that chemical has no medical use, right, I guess none of the gang members have glaucoma), but that doesn't stop them, because being in the gang means never having to admit you were wrong, since truth and right are decided by what a certain contingent of the gang have decided to decree such. Imagine that these rules are often written and decreed by people that have absolutely no idea about the reality of the topic, but that won't stop them.

Imagine......oh wait....nevermind.