PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE

By Edwin Cooney

By all means, argue with me if you must, but I think I’ve discovered Public Enemy Number One. Don’t be jealous, because I discovered PENO before you did! Its two deadliest factors are that it’s often not even a crime! Even more, it occasionally preserves your physical wellbeing.

Three weeks ago, I wrote of my serious reservations about Florida’s concealed gun law and -- what do you know! – seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin of Sanford, Florida, the black kid who walked home with his hand in his jeans while toting only iced tea and skittles, is dead. Even more, the root of the problem ultimately goes beyond the writ or effect of that law. After all, crime, it seems, is an ever increasing danger both at home and abroad. Hence, politicians and gun dealers encourage John and Susie Q. Citizen to purchase and conceal guns. Police and other public law enforcement people aren’t nearly so enthusiastic about such weapon concealment statutes. Guns, as is their purpose, have the power to eliminate troublesome and perhaps only seemingly troublesome people.

One of the major factors that triggers “Public Enemy Number One” is illness—especially, potentially fatal illness. This cause is almost unavoidable since all of us have yet to experience what I’ll refer to here as “eternity.”

Over the past twenty or thirty years, smoking has been shown to be harmful to smokers and nonsmokers whatever the state of their health. So, slowly but surely, it has become unlawful to smoke tobacco. It can be dangerous to drive motor vehicles and even bicycles without seat belts or helmets so we make it unlawful to ride them without such safety devices. Many will insist that both antismoking and vehicle safety requirement laws are beneficial to all of us, however others will insist that they are “politically correct” just as much as they are beneficial to the public.

The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution empowers Congress (and the bad old federal government) to “lay and collect taxes” from whatever income source derived. It is said that politicians, especially those nasty liberal politicians, “tax and spend—elect and elect.” Their motive is that some make more money than others and therefore it is only fair to redistribute our national wealth.

America, the nation every American from President Barack Obama on down prays aloud that God will bless, lives in a world that doesn’t unanimously share its social, economic, political, or spiritual values. Thus some of those taxes maintain what Ike in his January 17th, 1961 farewell address called: “the military-industrial complex.” Most conservatives insist that the military-industrial complex, even with all of its weapons of mass destruction, is as sacred as is the “good book.”

Hence, above we have death, government regulations, war, and taxes as the main factors in the preeminence of Public Enemy Number One!
In case you haven’t already guessed, Public Enemy Number One is fear. By its very nature, fear limits or intimidates our capacity to respond effectively and rationally to conditions and circumstances that are real and potentially harmful to our wellbeing. Whatever my cause or my urgency, whether I’m a politician, a bureaucrat, a parent, a teacher or even a member of the clergy, I can depend on being able to control you if I can successfully make you afraid.

Fearful people may be determined, focused, and, in their defensiveness, creative. Inevitably, however, when people are afraid they’re angry. An angry person may, on occasion, be righteous (or, if you prefer, justified) in his or her anger but an angry person is seldom either a just or generous person.

Consider this: when your parent, teacher, preacher, and, most certainly, a politician wants to convince you of the righteousness of a cause, more often than not they scare you into seeing things their way. However, most of the time, when someone wants to sell you a product, they usually appeal to your desire for pleasure or gratification. While unhealthy or perverted gratification can be nearly as emotionally destructive as fear, most gratification is energizing in a positive way.

I’m convinced that the lowliest and the saddest people in the world are those who are afraid. Fear brings on vulnerability and eventually hopeless, resentful and soul destroying resentment.

The politician most readily convinces me when he or she offers peace and freedom in exchange for my vote. The preacher can most readily draw me to his or her message when the lure is love.

Make me afraid and you’ll numb my senses as I blindly take your advice and apply for a concealed gun license. Energize me and my senses are wide open to the best of all possibilities including the likelihood that most of the time those trained to enforce the law are perfectly capable of doing their jobs.

As I see it, Public Enemy Number One is a fear driven response to all conditions and circumstances. Anyone who only seeks to make you afraid is never a friend.

Bang! Bang! Bang! PENO—what do you mean you’re not dead!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY