The Cranky Media Guy

Homeland Security Helmet | Invention Lab — Powered by RadioShack®

Yes, that’s me and I won! I am singlehandedly protecting America from the scourge of terrorism. Go ahead and cower in fear, I’ve got your back, Mr. and Mrs. USA.

Seriously, I got an email this evening from the company running the contest for Radio Shack, notifying me that I am one of the Grand Winners. My prize? A $250 gift certificate to Radio Shack. GPS, here I come!

I’ve been saying for years now that these “non-lethal” weapons you keep reading and seeing news stories about are NOT for deployment against people who wear funny-looking costumes in some other country where everybody rides to work on a camel but for protesters right here in the good ol’ US. of A.

I started thinking like that a few years back when I saw a commercial for the U.S. Army which talked about our soldiers as “peacekeepers” and showed them riding around in a tank-like conveyance. Funny thing: the streets the tank-looking thing was moving along looked more like an American ghetto than some place full of furriners. A little bell went off in my head. Lo and behold, I just read the following:

Ray Gun for Taming America

..and for the fascist future, too.

Play Security Checkpoint.

Read the comments on this product.

Hey, China!  Yeah sure, your underage workers make shoes for Wal-Mart and poisoned Thomas the Tank Engine toys for the children of America, but OUR eight-year-olds are putting in their time in high-tech settings.  Our march backwards to 19th Century Dickensian England is MUCH more advanced than yours.  Nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah (”neener neener neener” for our West Coast readers).

Eight-year-old tests chips for Actel, owns an oscilloscope

Remember when sci-fi stuff was cool?  Remember when we naively thought that the future would be all about making life better for humanity?

Welcome to Reality®, Dude.  Apparently what the high-tech stuff of the near future really is, is “pain weapons” designed to break up riots.  I guess we’re not supposed to think about this, but it seems that the Big Brains among us see a future in which there are riots so large that the military, not the police, has to break them up.

“But, Cranky Media Guy,” you say, “the military says these pain weapons are intended for use in places like Iraq, not Detroit.”

To you I respond, “Uh, since when do you see the military using non-lethal weapons?  Don’t they normally just shoot people with the intent of killing them?  After all, dead enemies are gone forever, while stunned enemies just plot how to get you another day.

Sorry, I’m not buying the notion that these will not be deployed domestically, which makes me wonder what the Powers That Be think is going to cause American society to devolve into large-scale rioting.  I just hope we don’t all find out the answer to that question.

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon.