Winter Patriot Community Blog

So it has ended. The “liquid bombers” have been put away for good, never to be heard from again. Case closed. The world has been saved from evil magical deeds that even Lord Voldemort could not have conjured. We can all sleep in our beds at night and fly in our airplanes by day, slightly inconvenienced by having to jettison our bottle of suntan lotion if it’s more than 4.5 ounces, while a few swarthy-looking rag-heads spend the rest of their lives rotting in hell to satisfy the entirely fictional narrative of fear and mistrust.

The “liquid bombers” fiction is one that tests the limits of even the most patient among us in what can be called, to use a popular coinage, the “reality-based world” (though the problem may come down to the fact that there are fewer and fewer reality-based people). Chemistry for Dummies is sufficient to demolish the insane notion that a few readily available potions, such as hydrogen peroxide, disguised as clear soft drinks and combined with a few double-A batteries could have blown an airliner to pieces. Anyone who has minimal knowledge of chemistry and who has bothered to inquire into the actual logistics of the matter (such as Winter Patriot) has shown conclusively, and explained in terms even a layman can understand, how the dastardly deed was physically impossible.

But a British jury? They were evidently unmoved by Muggle reality, or else their deliberations were untainted by such mundane considerations as how the three convicted A-rabs could have posed a threat to human life by pulling off a plot that was possible only in Severus Snape’s potions class. Perhaps years of living in J.K. Rowling’s homeland filled them with a palpable animus toward swarthy, dark-haired wizards bearing potions.

And 99.9% percent of the rest of us? We could care less any more than the jury did to bother ourselves with such trivial details. They looked scary! They made “martyrdom videos”! They had airline schedules on their laptop! (Fabricated computer evidence: the pre-crime gold standard of the 21st Century.)

Let’s all hyperventilate! Threat Level Orange!! (Oh, sorry Tom Ridge, didn’t mean to embarrass you into telling the truth again.)

And speaking of truth … inevitably … inescapably … the “liquid bombers” frame-up resonates with the echoes of 9/11 -- and questioning the (magical) “reality” of the tale gets one the charge of “conspiracy theorist” and a one-way ticket to Palookaville. Try pointing out that these three convicted patsies hadn’t even purchased airline tickets, or that they would have needed to perform carefully controlled chemistry experiments over a period of hours in an airplane lavatory, somehow evading detection and avoiding prematurely setting off their fizzcrackers all the while, and you can be sure of being drowned out in a frenzied chorus of “conspiracy theory!” or else ever more fevered fantasies of death and destruction: Thousands killed! Airplanes falling out of the sky and into the Atlantic! Bombs timed to go off at the exact same moment!! (Try figuring the how, let alone the why, of that one.)

It’s all about the fear. Fear is the napalm weapon used against … us … to keep us in a state of obedience and infantilized dependence on … the state. Do you wonder why I hate all politicians, “leaders,” and kindly old wizards like Dumbledore?

I'm with Snape. I'd like to pour a beaker of veritaserum down a few people's throats right about now.