Written by John Escher   

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California seems to oppose Bushmasters while favoring Drones, but why not rid the world of both?

Once drones have come out of Pandora’s Box, they can’t get back in, the argument goes, so don’t even think of getting rid of them. But when did the drones come out? Buzz-bombs made their appearance in the skies over London, England in early World War II.

Why then, if they are so irrepressible, have there not been a significant number of drones anywhere in the world between World War II and now when seventy different countries have them?

Could it be that diplomats and cold war achitects such as George B. Kennan, Jr. were much smarter than anybody who inhabits the corridors of power in the time we live?

Somebody made the decision not to use drones. Award a posthumous Nobel Prize to him or her?

Unless one lives or visits in Pakistan or Yemen or any of the other places where we currently use our eighty per cent approved drones so redolent of what we used to find beneath the Christmas tree, we’re apt not to be aware of the steady noise that a drone makes all day long as it circles and waits.

Of course—given the level of discussion at the just concluded confirmation hearing of John Brennan as head of the CIA, this question of noise, if brought up, would present an easy challenge for our engineers.

Put a muffler on every drone.

The popularity of the movie called THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS won’t compare to that of THE SILENCE OF THE DRONES.

The silence of drones, is in fact, their scariest possible aspect.

As explained to me by my father, who was stationed in England, one would hear a steady buzz or “drone” suddenly interrupted by sputtering as the remote device began to run out of fuel. The buzz then might resume, followed next by a peace that passeth all understanding and a huge boom in some district or outlying village of the city. One hoped that this explosion was not on top of oneself.

Impotent fools of all ages, whether German or American, love nothing better than to scare people, and the randomness or uncertainty associated with drones does a good job.

Everybody in a country where drones are being used is presumed to know that American bombs are very smart and very safe and would never harm a hair in the nape of a harmless person.

Except for here and there and hundreds and thousands of times.

The great intelligence of Americans, don’t you know, tells them exactly who a bad person is, and we can assure you, as Americans, that it’s not you.

Scaring people is what we’re about whether it’s the world or the United States.

In trying to choose from among all the recent historical moments where some prominent person has succeeded in frightening someone else, the first incident has to be the private meeting where George W. Bush first welcomed Barack Obama to The White House.

Think of a lonely raft in the Mississippi where a dumber Jim and a dumber Huck don’t help each other to find more humanity but do succeed in frightening each other out of their wits.

Before that, however, there was the Bush administration’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocols. People may have belatedly come to the correct conclusion that George W. Bush was a dunce, but right then a deeper judgment became imprinted in the collective American DNA—all this environmental stuff if allowed to continue will harm the American business climate.

Fear and more fear! We’re eager to scare both ourselves and the rest of the world, and this is supposed to pave the way to our success.

The world has not been the same since 9/11, we’re told, so permanently substitute “dog eat dog” for “democracy.”