Terrorism and Surveillance ((Part 5))

In a situation such as mine there tends to be more questions than answers. I have so many questions, and so few answers. We all have so many questions. And only so many answers. As such, let me use this post to question my own situation. Let me question all of the oddities about me. And in case you haven’t read the first four installments of this series, I’ll brief you quickly:

I have been living a nightmare. A nightmare that I believe very well could be the work of a surveillance state, run amok. There ARE in fact programs that target individual citizens, take away their rights without judicial process. Usually, these programs are confined to terrorists and other individuals with an extreme lean/bend toward violence. I am not such an one. Still, there is evidence that non-violent, non-offending citizens have been chosen for such programs, too. One primary example is Dr. Martin Luther King. Another is Malcolm-X.

These programs have not been confined to important black figures either. They have targeted (and therefore blacklisted) feminist organizations, certain leftist collections, and pretty much any organization and/or individuals that have posed some kind of potential major threat to the quo status. This is what led me to consider targeting as the answer to several of my current questions, my life, as it stands now. I am a teacher, or at least have been. I am influential. I am certainly outspoken. Just ask virtually ANY of my students. If they don’t love me, they hate me. And, in either case, they remember me. I am a leftist, but I am also a pacifist. I do not resort to violence easily, notwithstanding the imagination of my mouth, which, as with any other mouth, can certainly cause trouble.

And this is in spite of said mouth’s protection under the confines of the First Amendment. Still, these programs do not follow judicial process, which appears to be broken anyways. Did they “try” Edward Snowden before chasing him out of the country like a terrorist? He is and always will be a whistle-blower. That’s what he did, he blew the whistle on a major problem, the mass collection of data being run by the NSA. I am not saying that what he did is right or wrong. I am merely stating what he did. Their problem, I believe, is that he shared Top Secret information. From his perspective, and the perspective of most similar others, like Julian Assange, they are compelled by a feeling in their heart (and therefore mind) to do what they feel is right, even if doing so upsets the establishment.

Unfortunately, the establishment feels it right in their own respective hearts to do that which has been done before. This is the nature of The Winner. Those winning wish to keep on doing so, regardless of where they are in any political spectrum or wealth class. When I win, I feel the need to keep on doing the same. Unfortunately, most people are not winning. We are losing. And we don’t wish to lose forever. Consequently, part of being human should include the will (and therefore need) to balance the winners with the losers, to find a decent position for us all. This would cut down on our need for excessive force, the need for wars, and maybe even societies’ need for asymmetric societal tools.

As always, I have set forth to question my own questions but have ended up doing something else entirely. I don’t care. This SHOULD be the nature of writing. Who exactly created this rule by which all writing must keep its focus?

If it keeps the focus of the reader, then that’s good enough for me.

Enough, I hope you’re still focused.

In reality, Targeted Individual programs DO in fact exist. They usually tend to target those with an inherent propensity to change the world for the better, usually counter to our established way of living. Throughout my life, I have been such an individual. And this is my fear. It’s what has me living in a world of questions right now. It’s what has me scared to leave my vehicle alone, to go anywhere in the absence fear. As for trust, forget about it. Everyone is an intercept. And intercept-only models tend not to be very useful at describing the real world. It shouldn’t take an Actual Statistician to tell you this.

So, am I a target? Who ever really knows?

I’m trying my hardest to see my situation for what it is, regardless of its far-fetched nature. So, without further rambling, let me ask some questions, and attempt to answer them myself. My hope in doing this is that you’ll chime in with more reasonable explanations, if such explanations may even exist.

1. What is the true nature of my experience living in Allan’s basement room?

At first, I took this opportunity for cheaper living as a legitimate thing. I saw it as a win-win. I get a cheap place to live and he gets to keep paying off his house. Originally, this all made sense to me. Then, the damages, antagonism, and violations to my privacy. I know for a fact that he was slowly destroying my things, in a manner consistent with virtually every Targeted Individual’s description of their plight. The damages HAVE to look like wear-and-tear, they HAVE to be complicated for the police to use as evidence. Had he smashed the screen of my television, they’d have something. Had he merely left a scratch along the backside of the same, then that’s another story. A hard story to live, and prove. By the time I left, in a panic, he had damaged so much of my stuff that I have no doubts about that being the reality of the situation. This is not the question; those damages are real.

The question is WHY would someone do something like that? At first, I took him as a psycho with an extreme fear of rejection. And I certainly rejected him. I found him excessively neurotic, highly focused on what I thought of him. He also made a point, at all times, of making me feel bad for everything that I was. He spoke of his life as being the right way of living. “You eat a lot of sugary cereals,” from a refrigerator full of sugary sodas. He provided financial advice like he had worked on Wall-Street. I studied Stochastic Processes to a doctoral level, and so saw this advice as hubris. Pure and unadulterated hubris. I figured that he was just a Narcissist. Because this is what Narcissists do. They see their way of living as THE way of living. Within a few weeks of my living with him, he said something so anti-trans that I avoided having my trans friends over:

“They’re locking up all those nasty perverts, now.”

I was shocked. His rather ugly girlfriend (probably also a Community Based Agent) agreed, like this was all so gospel. Sometimes, two wrongs does make a right. At least when it comes to belief. This is the nature of entertainment news media, which is to say almost all media these days. They spout junk as their constituents nod, religiously. And, yes, it is religion. And, no, not the good kind, whereby a kind stranger hands you a meal, or a place to sleep for the night. It’s the kind that sends witches to the pyre. In my heart, this doesn’t even feel close to right. I grew up Pentecostal, went to church all the time. Attended the AWANA program as a child. I surrounded myself with good-natured people, if only to counter the bad-natured people around me.

Am I a Christian now? In some ways, yes. In most other ways, no. Still, I know what it means to be a good Christian. I can recognize when religions goes awry, when it’s being used more as a tool than as a way to make the world a better place. Here I am, getting off topic again, as always. ADHD.

So, why would someone, anyone, treat the belongings of another in such a harmful way? Why would they EVER take joy in such a thing?

Personally, I respect both privacy, and papers, too much to conduct myself in any kind of similar way. After I gave notice of my intent to move out, things got far worse. I could tell that he was attempting to solicit me for incriminating information. I could see that he was moving the lids of my cooking food. In drinking water from the communal water jug in the fridge, I could tell that he was likely putting bleach or some other heinous chemicals in the water. I became as thirsty as I have ever been. Then, I drank some tap water, and it all went away. There is no telling what a psycho will do to you when they feel rejected. Still, and eventually, I realized that there MUST be more to the story.

The damages, all highly-deniable, continued to follow me across the country. People were road-raging with me for no reason at all. I had dealt with road-rage before, back when I used to give in to such a thing. I don’t drive like that anymore, so it shouldn’t have been this way. I could tell that no matter how far off the beaten path I went, there was always a car somewhere close to me. It was like I was being followed. This, and so much more, led me to realize that I could in fact be a target. I continued to find damages to my car windows, both inside and out. All quite similar to what Allan had done. I found new cuts and snags to things inside of the car, and not through hyper-vigilance.

While PSYCHO is a decent description of this scene, it doesn’t go far enough in describing why I am still dealing with damages. It makes a lot more sense to view this all as targeting, whether it be criminal and/or governmental.

Sometimes, there’s not really a difference.

If you have any idea why or how any of this makes sense, then please chime in, in the comments. I’d love to hear some alternative theories, even if you believe it’s aliens. It’ll be nice to know that someone else considered this all so adroitly. Well, here I am some almost three pages into this write-up and I’ve answered only a single question. Oops, and moving on.

2. How do these new damages make any sense, if not the result of targeting?

Before attempting to answer this question, let me detail for you the ways in which my car has changed since leaving Colorado.

The fluids under my hood have changed. And this is not merely due to paranoia. I got an oil change before I left Colorado, and they note, now, that my fluids shouldn’t be what they are. In one case, the reservoir went from damn-near full to bordering on low, without any leaks from that corresponding system. My coolant is now over-full, in spite of this not being the case before. Something isn’t right, and I know it so. My clear coat is coming off in sheets, about half the size of a sheet of paper. As mentioned before, my clothes continue to take minor and high-deniable damage, in spite of their being well inside the vehicle. That hard plastic sheet under the passenger side of my car appears to have been ripped off. I did nothing for this to be the case. I have not been caught up, on anything, recently, and so it shouldn’t be that way.

My guitar case, that thing that Allan seemed to love destroying the most, perhaps due to my love for music, and his inability to truly appreciate music, has continued to take on damages. I lived in my car for years before, while finishing my PhD, and the case never took on anything similar. I have changed nothing about my approach. If anything, there should be even less damages. Perhaps nothing of nothing, zero times zero. My airbag light has come on, out of nowhere, one day when I returned from a hike. On another, I got into my car to find that my brakes were much worse than the last time I got into it. I hadn’t driven. That shouldn’t be the case.

The windows? Man, I could do a whole post about the windows. Before leaving Colorado, Allan had left light but utterly numerous scratches along the windows on the side most shielded from view, from whence I parked. They looked like shit then, and look even shittier now. It’s like some animal with large slash intentional claws set forth a snack-attempt on the car’s contents. Wait, these scratches are on the INSIDE of the car. As such, I know that Allan had been inside of my car. Well, Allan or some other agent, to use the term generally. I attempted to clear these scratches with baking soda, and lots of elbow grease, but soon they returned. They had spent days gone, and I was glad to see them go. Then, similar scratches in similar locations. But not the same. They’re meant to look the same, but they are not. I am a mathematician and so can see angles better than most. The angles are not the same. They SHOULD be the same.

So, I can assume that someone, states away, has a key to my car, and uses it to enter the vehicle for the sake of intimidation, harassment, and annoyance. The other windows, largely sans scratch, now have new, similar scratches. My rear window now has deeper, more intentional-looking scratches. This all stinks so much. I am meant to see this stuff and fear for my life. I am meant to remain confined to the car, like Bin Laden to a cave. At this point, I’d prefer the cave, especially if it fits my car. At least then I could see my enemies coming, be they government or otherwise. And, just this morning, my clear coat is once again coming off in large chunks, full sheets. This could have something to do with my car being 18-years old, and therefore being old enough to go to war, but I am apt, in light of everything else, to assume differently. This is all so unfortunate, and differently. I have never lived anything like this, fear.

Now, let me get to some of the more bizarre things I have observed since leaving Longmont, since stepping away from psycho, hoping to find peace.

3. How am I to explain some of the more bizarre events of my recent life?

I used to hear back from far more employers than I do now. Perhaps this Targeted Individual stuff is scaring them away. Still, same was the case before I started writing this all down, and blogging about it. Then there’s the same cars about me all the time, some of which give hand signals before other cars show up. It’s all so weird. One day, when I was traveling down a desolate road, I saw a woman shield her face, as if to say: there’s a reason for you not to know who I am. When she got to the location of my car, she spun about quickly as if, once again, to say the same. Community Based Agent? Agoraphobe? Both weird and odd, yes. There’s also my having heard someone say, “He’s coming back,” as I rode up to the car from a mountain biking trail. Given the remote nature of this trail, I had no trouble hearing the warning, presumably intended for a second person going through my car.

Then, there’s the borrowed critter cam that only captures images of me, in spite of it being set to take photos of ANYTHING on a timer. It should be capturing anyone’s approaching the car, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t take any photos that would help me. Perhaps I am dealing with a specifically faulty camera; maybe I’m dealing with a level of sophistication that only the government can provide. There’s also the footage that should be there but isn’t. Like I said, things were damaged inside of my car when I parked it at my storage unit. Nothing. The footage shows nothing. The same goes for another location too. I notice new damages, factually speaking, and yet the footage is missing, sans there. I am sans evidence, man.

Chevy’s. Chevy’s everywhere. Everywhere I go, I see the same make. I have read that Chevy has contracts with certain governmental agencies. I know for a fact that they do. Regardless, how does one stand to see the same make all the time. Yes, this COULD be Confirmation Bias, but still, it’s strange. And, no, I’m not parking my car at a Chevy dealership.

As an aside, and perhaps for a bit of laughter, let me draw your attention to that Tim and Eric skit where Zach Galifianakis pinches his nose and says

“I got caught shoplifting at the Chevy dealership.”

His response to those kids is priceless, so please make sure to laugh.

In general, life can be quite weird, inherently strange in some places. This, however, doesn’t explain why so much of what I’m talking about, questioning, fits like a glove to the situation and realities of being “gangstalked” by the government. Recall, the phrase “Conspiracy Theory” was created to discredit alternative viewpoints, especially the weirdest ones. I have friends that believe in Big Foot, so many of them. I know people who believe in aliens, lizard people too. My verdict is still open on these things. As for Targeted Individuals, I know that they exist. I believe that I might actually be one.

Either way, I’m asking you to help me. Help me to see this all, in concert, as anything else. I have recently done quite a bit of research on any and all mental health issues relating to my current plight. I am too old to take on schizophrenia’s devastating face, too logical for many other ailments, and still too cohesive for the remainder. So, what gives? If I am not experiencing a mental health melt-down, and I very much feel like I am not, then what can this all be? Most people I tell these things too seem to think I am at least partially nuts. Well, I am not nuts.

At least not any nuttier than I always have been. Yes, I am weird, even eccentric at times. But my imagination has its limits. Almost infinite, but they do stop somewhere. And, based on my readings, targets are often chosen for being homeless, alienated, and smart. Well, shit. I am all of three of these things. I guess I never stood a chance.

I would like to assume that the government, my own government, is not torturing people, creating some of the atrocities we experiencing every day. The Romans put people in the ring with beasts, just to see what would happen. I hope this is not a similar darkness. I pray that things like school shootings, mass murders, and the like aren’t merely the result of individuals being targeted. I am not saying that I am going to do anything violent, or rash. Quite the contrary. This situation has led me to writing, which is a good thing. It has led to my questioning what truly matters to me. I’m even using no drugs, watching no pornography. I guess, based on that last sentence, I’m being more honest too. I still love playing music, especially when others walk by. If I could step away from the car, leave it out of sight, I would love the outdoors, hiking and biking, again.

I used to be able to do so much.

But, for now, I am left to worry. I’m maybe even a bit left of healthy.

Please help.

Please describe this differently,

If you can.