A Note to the Reader:

..........Everybody recognizes those lucky times when something both completely unexpected and unquestionably good suddenly comes up—and, for me, this is one of those times.

..........You undoubtedly remember Randall M. Tillotson, the contest-winner whose words you read back in "Food for Thought Eleven, Part 4-B" under this headline:

"FOOD FOR THOUGHT 11-A"
CONTEST IS WON HANDS DOWN
BY
RANDALL M. TILLOTSON!!

..........Well, the good thing that's happened this time around is that Randall Tillotson has unexpectedly returned—with another piece of writing. I've decided that it deserves a special place in our current discussion and have designated (or sub-designated) it as "Food for Thought 11 (Part Four-D-A)."

..........I've decided also that it should keep its own title—taken from the subject line of the email that brought Randall's essay my way—because, however sobering it clearly may be, it is also obviously relevant to our on-going subject of the "Gatekeepers" and of the enormous, dark, and unspeakable danger that the gatekeepers' activities—whether arising out of blindness or out of hideous deceit—are leading us toward.

..........Admittedly, I'm not an impartial observer in regard to what you're about to read, but I take Randall's praise willingly, not because my ego swells, but because his praise suggests the real importance of what we're doing here, on this web site, with these accumulating pieces of analysis.

..........I'm about to brag, but for a justifiable reason. After I emailed Randall with my idea that we put his piece up on the site, he emailed me back, and here is part of what he said:

....................First, thanks for the kind words, I wasn't really expecting to get
....................this put on the site, but if you think it might help, be my guest.
....................I'll work on the changes recommended and forward it to you.
....................The McKinney link and impeachment link are a great idea.
....................Once again, I think it is important that you are naming names
....................and naming crimes—especially of the Gatekeepers. Your
....................arguments feel like I'm reading the script from a Perry Mason
....................courtroom scene, with you as the Chief Prosecutor in your
....................finest moment and beating Mason in this one. Maybe some-
....................one is saying what you're saying, but I haven't seen it online
....................anywhere, and, trust me, I read the news online for a min-
....................imum of two hours every morning, every day. I just got Kevin
....................Barrett's book, Truth Jihad, the prepublication copy, and my
....................guess is that he will be telling it like you are, but still nobody
....................is cutting to the quick online as you are, in my mind. I just
....................haven't seen it.

..........I'm humbled by the praise. I also, of course, am flattered to think that what Randall says may be true, that only I of the many online am doing this particular thing—but I also hope, if it is true, that it won't be so for much longer.

..........If you're at all like me, you're going to find yourself powerfully moved by the essay below. I only hope that we, all of us—Randall Tillotson, myself, you who follow this site and, I hope, tell others about it—that we can all, together, do some good in and for a world that needs it very, very desperately.

......................................................................—Eric Larsen
......................................................................—December 12, 2006
..........

..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·
SOME THOUGHTS ON
TREASON, GUILT,
AND
MURDER

From: Randall M. Tillotson
To: Eric Larsen
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2006 8:52 AM
Subject: Some thoughts on treason, guilt, and murder

..........I read F for T 11-4-D last week, and again, it's right on target. Like the F for T 11-4-C, it names the guilty, nails their crimes to the post for all to read and charges the rightly accused with the only crime that fits, treason. Oh, what a highly charged word—treason. The most foul of all deeds. That is what makes these essays so important. Not talking simply about lies of commission or omission, but defining these evil, pernicious actions for what they are: Treason—the greatest treachery that a single citizen can commit against the many. While Barrie Zwicker lifted the curtain on Chomsky for us, he couldn't say the "T" word because he's a foreigner. It has to spoken by a citizen, and you did it.

..........The number of American citizens dead in Iraq will now equal, or has now equaled, the dead of September 11, and these traitors, these willfully lying traitors, are responsible for these deaths in Iraq and we all know it, but no one calls them traitors, except you. But let me define that word one step further. They are murderers by aiding and abetting the perpetrators. If a man drives a getaway car in a bank robbery where someone gets killed, doesn't he, too, go to the gallows for murder, even if he didn't pull the trigger? Didn't they hang those conspirators, men and women, who helped Wilkes Booth escape?

..........When I think of the word "quisling," it has, for me, a more personal meaning. My aunt emigrated to the U.S. from Norway after the war. She used to tell me how much they all hated the Germans for their occupation, and she mentioned old treasonous Vidkin. She recalled one incident that occurred with her sister Ruth that I never forgot. She was walking down the sidewalk and dropped a package. A German enlisted man was near the item and started to pick it up for her. She barked at him, "No! Don't you touch it. I'll pick it up!!" That's the spirit to have, defiant to the end. And aren't we occupied, really? Do any members of the Legislative Branch act on our behalf? Did any one of them filibuster any of the vile, evil, unconstitutional legislation that has now created a police state no different than, say, Argentina in the '70s and '80s? If it's not a prison until you try the door, I'd say that we're about to find out whether that door will open or not. If we're going to impeach Bush and Co., like Cynthia McKinney, the Congresswoman from Georgia, has proposed, then we must also impeach the entire Congress as well. Think of that liar John "I-want-to-impeach-Bush" Conyers. "Help me to impeach Bush," said his email. How quickly Janus spun his face around after the election, and the other face started talking, reversing every word, every promise, every lie to get him elected. I'm grateful that he never got a dime from me. How can he leave his house every day and face the public? Has the man no shame? What threat could the party leader have said that caused this reversal? Where is the man's moral character, his honor? He obviously has none.

..........Lately, I've been thinking of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered in New York City in the '50s. Kitty Genovese, who was walking down the street bothering nobody, and a monster stabbed her repeatedly in a random attack. During the assault, she screamed, begging for help, but help never came. Not even a phone call was made. The perpetrator fled and hid and waited. No siren. Not one person came to her aid—total indifference. Seizing the opportunity, he came back and finished his slaughter, obtaining his deadly orgasm. What a way to exit this cooling cinder—stabbed to death by a total stranger and left in the gutter. For a few moments, as the life force hissed out of her punctured body, what thoughts must have been in her fading mind? Then there was nothing but silence at the end and only silence for us all, as Wolfe would say.¹ Later, when the tenants of the surrounding apartment buildings were asked why they couldn't have at least made a phone call, their answer shocked and enraged the entire country, "I didn't want to get involved." I didn't want to get involved? I didn't want to get involved?!!! Oh, how I hated New Yorkers then, and it lasted for years and years.
Kitty Genovese, I never forgot your name.

..........Then I think of the woman to whom I sent the DVD and email, trying to warn her of the great danger just over the horizon, but she, too, doesn't want to get involved. She helped to kill Kitty Genovese. The murderer of Lyndon Johnson's "little yellow dwarfs with penknives" who believes that 9/11 was "just incompetence"—he killed Kitty Genovese. One day I told my wife what James Lovelock had written; that climate change is irreversible, that by the end of this century only a few breeding pairs of humans will survive in the arctic. She got right in my face and screamed, "I don't want to know!! OK? I do not want to know!" She, too, killed Kitty Genovese. There's a price to pay for seeing and voicing the "unspeakable," and in my case that cost was divorce. Congress is doing nothing at all about climate change, nothing. We are going to heat up and all of us will roast to death. Congress is doing nothing to save life, bring justice to the murdered, or bear allegiance to their sacred oath. They are foreign occupiers of our sacred space. Where are the Jefferson Smiths? Are we to be nothing more than the man from the country who stands before the door to the Law but is never allowed to enter? Are we going to die on the stoop? "This door was meant for only you. I am now going to close it." Will those be the last words we hear, and the fading sound of a slamming door?

..........But then there is that time span, that time in bed between when the guilty are waiting to sink into the other world, expecting then to enter into that morning where the body clock silently rings the bell—except that the crimes return, again. And no matter how well the dying guilty ones may try to forget and ignore their treachery, unwanted visitors can still slip under their doors.

....................[So] when night in her rusty dungeon hath imprisoned
....................our eyesight, and that we are shut separately in our
....................chambers from resort, the devil keepeth his audit in
....................our sin-guilty consciences; no sense but surrenders
....................to our memory a true bill of parcels of his detestable
....................impieties. The table of our heart is turned to an index
....................of iniquities, and all our thoughts are nothing but texts
....................to condemn us (Thomas Nashe, 1594). (source)

..........That's what "Food for Thought" is, an audit that is publicly posted in the commons. They will know that we know, and they'll have to deal with their sin-guilty consciences alone. For now, that may be the best we can get, but it's at least something.
............................................................—Randall M. Tillotson
..........
..........

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¹.........."Was it not well to leave all things as he had found them, in silence, at the end? Might it not be that in this great dream of time in which we live and are the moving figures, there is no greater certitude than this: that, having met, spoken, known each other for a moment, as somewhere on this earth we were hurled onward through the darkness between two points of time, it is well to be content with this, to leave each other as we met, letting each one go alone to his appointed destination, sure of this only, needing only this-that there will be silence for us all and silence only, nothing but silence, at the end?" ( From Death to Morning, New York, 1963. From the story "Dark in the Forest, Strange as Time," p. 113). EL .