When cobras look like garden snakes

I want you to imagine a world, a formerly relatively civil world where bad things dont happen to good people, very rarely anyway,  and are almost never done to them by good people. People who seem good anyway, and arent known to be violent, murdering, deviant types. The kind you may not like, but dont scare you and you can trust to be civil on some level. Law and Order rules. 

That is the hallmark of how we live and why we are glad we dont live in Third World or Communist countries where that isnt actually the case and we can have confidence that it wont happen to us where we live.

Lets say you are a Canadian, say, like me. Lets say you make a trip or two a year to visit your relatives in the States, as I did for about 20 years. Lets say you did that, and never had any concerns. Even as a crazy kid in Newtown shot up a school, which in fact happened in real time as I travelled on one of those days to my relatives and I heard the entire thing play out on the radio for 5 hours as I drove. 

Even as a bunch of lunatic extremist terrorists bombed twin towers, tried to take out the Pentagon and the White House, and you had to pick up your wife from the subway that day because she worked for Bank Of America, and they were possibly a target of these crazed radicals. None of that fazed you. Why is it that none of that fazed you?

Because, you look at situations like that and think that could happen anywhere, in your country, your town, your grocery store, and its done by crazies, or radicals, and there is nothing you can do about that sort of thing. Anyway, its so rare, you cant let it effect your daily life. The things you need to do, the places you need to go to live your life. So, you accept the risk that they will happen, not likely to you, and thats okay. if you are a schoolteacher in Newtown, or a stock broker in the twin towers, or on a plane that they hijack, so be it. Thats life.

The recent bombing in Nashville is a perfect example of that. A crazy man with some mental problems and a crazy idea blew up a city street. Three years ago, a crazy young man drove down the main street in this town, drove on the sidewalk and mowed down 10 or 12 people because he had some crazy idea it would make him famous and important. None of that would ever stop me from doing anything. Shit like that happens, and it always will. I accept that risk.

Now lets say that world has changed. I dont travel to places like China, Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, North Korea or any place where I dont trust the government to be stable and reasonable. Maybe I am naive to think that my own government or other Western governments have always been stable, and that is a debate for another time. I will say that I have travelled to and from the United States for my entire life, hundreds of times, and I never felt unsafe or at risk. Ive been in Harlem, the projects in Chicago, the most violent part of Miami, and East LA when I got off the highway at the wrong exit. I still had the idea that I could identify who to be careful with, and that there was some police presence and protection around. Same with Canada. There are areas in my own town I wont go, or if I do, my guard is way up, but still, I am aware of being in those areas and I trust no one I shouldnt while I am there. Those situations are very, very rare.

What if the United States became a place like that? The entire United States. In my view, it did become that way as soon as Donald Trump was elected President in 2016. I said then, and many thought I was overeacting and foolish to think that there was no safe place in that entire country as long as he was in charge, said what he was prone to say, and there was a  large enough portion of the citizens who would do whatever he said. Even ones who were otherwise never prone to doing things like that. Say, like storming the Capitol and killing police officers, with the intent of killing senators, even hanging them. Or walking down a Wisconsin town with semi automatic weapons threatening to shoot peaceful protesters. 

Now lets say I am in New York, which is where I crossed when I went to the States, and that day, there is a dispute over tariffs. Someone like Donald Trump, or one of his lunatic minions like Peter Navarro say something like Canadians are stealing jobs from Americans by selling their lumber or steel or milk too low. Which both of them said. And on that day, I am travelling. I stop for gas. I get some food. I have to make some other stop. My license plate clearly indicates I am Canadian, and now I am a target. Only, I dont know I am a target, and I dont know who is targetting me, or what they will look like. They dont look like bad guys, on the surface anyway. How do you have confidence travelling in a place like that? Is that a risk you want to take? I didnt and I dont. Which is why I havent since he has been president. I crossed once. And from the border to my destination, I made no stops. I got enough gas to get me there on the Canadian side, and I went nowhere while I was there. Even then, I was uneasy being in an area where crazies are being provoked by the King Crazy of all time.

How do you live, exist, move around and navigate a world or society when there is no telling who is the enemy and who is the civil citizen? You dont. You get the fuck out of dodge and then you stay away from it if possible. 

I dont like snakes. Hate them. With a passion. I once saw a garden snake in my backyard in Montreal and I just about freaked out. It was actually harmless, my neighbor picked it up, it did nothing, and he put it back in the field. However, from that day forward, I was always touchy about moving freely in my backyard. I got over that, but still, it had been planted in my mind that there could be a colony of snakes anywhere in my backyard. 

Now, I get that garden snakes are harmless. I do. I really do get that. Years later I was in Northern Michigan for a camping vacation, and we visited an old copper mine, outside of which was an old pit crawling with snakes. Garden snakes. I felt uneasy, but I wasnt scared. I know garden snakes dont pose any real threat to me. 

Cobras, however, do. They are poisonous, deadly snakes that can kill you. They arent garden snakes. They are serious, deadly killers. Again though, it is highly unlikely I will ever encounter a Cobra anywhere that I live or travel. 

Now, what if Cobras were able to transform themselves into chameleons, where they look like garden snakes, act like them on a daily basis, but as night falls, they start acting like Cobras again. They still look like garden snakes, so you let your guard down, and if they are provoked to strike, that garden snake who is actually a Cobra will do what it is born to do. Kill and strike violently. And you wont see it coming until its way too late. 

Donald Trumps America has turned into exactly what he is. A dangerous snake who sells you the idea that his way is the only way. And when he doesnt get his way, and his followers believe he should get his way, then they will act like dangerous snakes, when in reality, they were just loudmouth, garden snakes before who lost their way and would slither back out to the field. That is the America he created the day he was elected. We saw the end result of that, what I said all along was possible back then. Angry mobs of crazies, egged and urged on by a maniacal pathological leader to become deadly snakes. They can and will be in any town, any area, anywhere on the land we used to call the land of the free. It isnt free anymore. To roam freely and safely in the knowledge that what you see is what is there. 

When cobras look like garden snakes, the world isnt a safe or reliable place. I wish Joe Biden the best, but I highly doubt that these snakes will now be happy to go back to being harmless garden snakes. They have had a taste of the cobra life, and in fact, are even angrier now that their leader has been captured and beheaded. I dont know what it will take to reverse that, but I will have to see a sign that life has returned to normal. From where I sit, it looks like borderline Civil War, where there is no telling who is what. At least back in the day of Civil War, it was North against South, and everyone knew who was on what side. 

These are much different times. 

When I was younger, I was foolish and misguided to be afraid of a garden snake. As I grew up, I was smart enough to be right about knowing when to avoid areas where cobras are allowed to roam free in disguise and not kept in cages where they belong. But how can you cage them when they dont look like cobras? You cant. 

As the old saying goes, closing the barn door after the horses are out and running free is useless, much like closing the cage door when the cobras have been free and roaming for 4 years. That is the reality we saw play out last week in Washington. And we will continue to see play out all over a country who didnt hunt and kill them while they were allowed to gather and become stronger. Because the ring leader in charge of making that happen was actually the King Snake protecting them. Making sure they were there to be his army when he needed to mobilize them. You can kill the leader, but that doesnt take out the army that idolize him.