The Big Dick was right!

The justification for the Eternal War of the Empty Policy’s erosion of our civil liberties, for its gutting of habeas corpus, for its policy assassinating anyone designated as a terrorist without the benefit of a trial, for its Patriot Act and its Military Commissions Act, for its trashing of Iraq and Afghanistan is pure simplicity: Since 9/11 there has not been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Ergo, all of the above have been as successful as they were necessary.

And they are right. I know because I’ve used a similar approach in dealing with a threat to my personal wellbeing and security.

My home in suburban New Jersey is surrounded by a quarter acre of yard, and for years I lived in constant dread of the damage a herd of cattle could wreak if they wondered onto my property. My God! What grass they didn’t trash with their hooves they would be gobbled up by the greedy creatures. No shrub would be safe, flowers and perennials would be a thing of the past. By the time they were done, my yard would e reduced to a desert

The anxiety became unbearable. Many a night I would sit on the front stoop, flashlight in hand, waiting for the clatter of bovine hooves approaching my property. I lost weight and I lost sleep and regretted that my property wasn’t zoned for land minds.

Now some may ask what the chances of a herd of cattle descending on a lawn in suburban New Jersey are. And to those I say, “You fools! Aren’t you acquainted with the Big Dick’s one-percent doctrine that sates that if there is a one-percent chance an event will happen, then it must be treated as a certainty, and the facts be damned!

Salvation came when I visited my brother in Arizona. In a souvenir shop in Tombstone, among cowboy hats, Western costumes, leather goods, and Native American jewelry I found a solution to the threat I had been living under for so many years--a steer’s skull complete with horns and teeth. I snapped it up and had it shipped east. When it arrived, I placed in it a prominent spot in the garden that runs along the front of our house.

In doing so I was sending a powerful and credible message to the cattle of the world: If you step one hoof on my property, you get eaten, no exceptions and you can kiss your civil liberties goodbye.

And it has worked like a charm. Since setting the skull out not one damn steer has crossed my property line. Was the Big Dick right or was the Big Dick right?