Frontiersman, June 2017

Ma$tering Word$, Not Deed$
Robert H. Outman, Prisoner P-79939

Semantics is the study of word meanings and usages. In California's penal system, there seems to be little conformity in semantics. Words are used as a means to an end, political correctness, and political machinations. For example, prison officials call their system the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), promoting and emphasizing the word rehabilitation. To the mind of an average person, this sounds great. The prisons are rehabilitating prisoners. However, if a curious person looks behind the curtain, he will find the words do not match the deeds. Since approximately 70% of prisoners are recidivists, rehabilitation is almost nonexistent. A return rate of anything over 50% would have to be deemed a failure. Would you buy a product or service that was advertised as "only 50% are returned"? No consumer with half a brain would spend good money on a product with such a reputation. Yet, California taxpayers fork out an astounding $14 billion a year to operate CDCR. Could it be that rehabilitation sounds much better and more productive than punishment, as a semantic device to patronize the electorate? Who would want to think his tax dollars were being used to punish old men to death? So, rehabilitation is used to explain why 70 and 80 year old men, with a multitude of health and physical problems, unfit for any meaningful employment, are in fact punished to death or, to be politically correct, rehabilitated to death.

Semantic devices are ubiquitous. Prisoners are inmates. You will not find a trusty. They are called clerks, porters, and workers. No one goes to the hole. It's Administrative Segregation, but it's still a form of punishment upon punishment or, to be politically correct, a rehabilitative program. A prison cell is your house but it's still a cell. There are no cell blocks. They are buildings now. Draconian sentences are longer than at any time in history, but the semantics are softer and more politically correct. The public is assured that CDCR is doing a good job, and is a humane place.

Then, there are the guards, or correctional officers, as they prefer. Officer is a title that denotes a professional person, a person of high standards and trust. An officer would never maliciously mistreat or abuse a prisoner. An officer would never bully elderly, defenseless human beings, or leave a pepper sprayed prisoner to die on the concrete floor of a prison cell. An officer would never force a helpless old man into a cell with a known violent prisoner who would murder the old man. An officer would never cause a prisoner to suffer needlessly. An officer would never compromise his ethics to conform with a group of bullying guards. An officer would set a standard of excellence. Such officers exist, but they are few and far between. Could it be that officer, instead of guard, is used by the union to present a professional image, and justify why CDCR correctional officers are the highest paid guards in the world, and why California is the only state that pays its guards more than it pays its school teachers?
Potemkin Villae

Refined verbiage, like a Potemkin Village, can conceal reality for only so long. The reality is that California operates the most costly prison system in the nation, yet it holds the highest record for prisoner suicides, murders, and natural deaths. When hate, indifference, and resentment are cultivated like a farmer cultivates his crops, there should be no surprise in such records and in the staggering level of recidivism. Rehabilitation is virtually nonexistent. No statistics are available as to job placement of prisoners who received rehabilitation in prison. No statistics are available as to parolee unemployment, after release.

When the media are denied access to prisons, allegedly for safety and security, one has to question if this, too, is a semantic device. Ignoring or palliating the facts does not make them less factual. The electorate has to understand that it's not what the prison officials say. It's what they do. The electorate has to question the wizard and look behind the curtain.

For additional reading, I suggest my article War of Words, on page 2 of the December 1994 issue, and Milam's Dictionary of Distinctions, Differences, and Other Odds and Ends, in The Sovereign's Library.

—editor

June 2017

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A Long Way Down from the Top
Sam Aurelius Milam III

When I was young, it seemed to me that overpopulation was our most serious problem. It also seemed to me that most people understood that. Now, several decades and several billion people later, population control seems to have become an unfashionable idea. I've even heard it condemned as a tool of some kind of a conspiracy, maybe the New World Order, or whatever the internationalist authoritarians are calling themselves nowadays. However, would such people want to control the population? It depends on what you mean by control. It's a tricky language.

A vast population would promote poverty and ignorance, making resistance to authority less likely. It would provide a large number of subjects, all eager to do anything, for any wage. U Thant's statement in 1969 (q.v.) can be interpreted as a call for internationalist authoritarianism, disguised as a concern for people. Controlling the population (numbers) might make controlling the population (behavior) more difficult. Maybe the internationalist authoritarians believe that overpopulation is good authoritarian politics.

I suggest that, with the authoritarians in control of most sources of information, we've been misled. They've used some alarming truths for their own purposes, inciting in us a fear of such things as global warming, resource depletion, and environmental pollution. Such things are indeed problems, but they're consequences. Overpopulation is the cause. Meanwhile, we've been misdirected to the false notion of sustainable growth, which is a contradiction in terms. Even a moderate rate of growth isn't sustainable forever. There are now more than 7 billion people in the world and any rate of growth at all, however small, is unsustainable.

The default methods by which the size of a population is controlled are disease, starvation, and predation. There are other methods, authoritarian or otherwise, but it isn't clear to me that we're going to use any of them. What is clear to me is that the size of our population will be controlled, one way or another. If we don't adjust the birth rate to equal the death rate, then the death rate will adjust itself to equal the birth rate. I don't know if U Thant's ten-year estimate, in 1969, was accurate but I fear that, internationalist authoritarian or not, he was otherwise correct.

Hopefully, these fears are groundless but I fear that, at some time in the recent past, our last chance to "defuse the population explosion" slipped away from us, unnoticed. I fear that the problem is "beyond our capacity to control". I fear that the default methods of population control are about to take over, and limit the size of our population for us, no matter what we do to the contrary. I fear that the population curve has become way too steep, and it's a long way down from the top.

1950 — But you do know that in the greatest wars the Earth ever had there were always more people after the war than before, no matter how many were killed. Life is not merely persistent ... life is explosive. The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life — the ragged edge of starvation.

—from Farmer in the Sky
by Robert A. Heinlein

1965 — Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

—from Dune
by Frank Herbert

1969 — I do not wish to seem overly dramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General that the members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.

—U Thant
Secretary General of the United Nations

—from http://bluepyramid.org/storey/archives/3026

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June 2017

Penalty for ~~Early~~ Withdrawal
Sam Aurelius Milam III

When I was young, my father told me about a statement that had been made to him by a director of the Federal Reserve branch bank, in San Antonio, Texas. I don't know why Poppa was talking to the director but I do remember the statement. The director said to my father, "You people out there think you're free. You're not free. You're regulated at every turn." That was sometime during the late 1950s or the early 1960s, more than 50 years ago.

Most of the time, people don't have much to say to me about the path that I've taken through my life. Occasionally, somebody will remark that my situation is my own fault, because I chose to do things the way that I did. I hesitate to suggest that such a person is a complete idiot, but it is tempting.

A man will choose to jump from the top of a burning building, but that doesn't mean that he wants to do it. If the options are limited to burning or jumping, if escaping isn't among them, then he'll jump. Somebody who believes that such a jump is voluntary might very well be a complete idiot. At the very least, such a person has a distorted understanding of the idea of choice.

In January of 1972, I joined the Naval Reserve, but that doesn't mean that I wanted to do it. The options that were available to me at the time were to refuse to cooperate with the authorities and probably go to prison, to get drafted and probably go to Vietnam, or to join something. Later, whenever I complained about my situation in the Naval Reserve, some naval "superior" would remind me that I didn't have any right to complain, because I'd joined voluntarily. Maybe such "superiors" were complete idiots. At the very least, they had a distorted understanding of the idea of choice.

There were countless other situations in which I was constrained by the authorities to choose from among the options that were available to me. In every case, those options had been limited in advance, by the authorities, in such a way as to manipulate my choice in favor of whatever the authorities wanted me to do. I'm not in my present situation because I chose to be. I'm in my present situation because I was manipulated and coerced. The only options that were ever available to me were to either submit to the police state, and be controlled, or to refuse to cooperate, and be marginalized or maybe even punished. There was never any other option.

All governments limit people's options. The so-called representative governments additionally deceive people into believing that their options aren't being limited. You people out there think your free. You're not free. You're regulated at every turn. The statement echoes down the decades. It's as true now as it was more than 50 years ago, when a director of the Federal Reserve System uttered it to my father.

Rest in Peace
Sam Aurelius Milam III

There are three categories of behavior in the United States today: prohibited behavior, required behavior, and regulated behavior. If the authorities catch a person engaging in prohibited behavior, then they'll punish him. If they catch a person failing to engage in required behavior, then they'll punish him. If they catch a person engaging in regulated behavior in violation of the regulations, then they'll punish him. If he refuses to submit to the punishment, then they'll initiate the use of force against him. If he tries to resist the use of force, then they'll escalate the use of force. They'll continue to do so until either he submits to the punishment, or he's dead.

Anybody who reads this, and who's in doubt about it, can easily test the idea. Just refuse to cooperate with the authorities. If such a person somehow manages to survive the test, then he can send me his new address, and I'll start sending the newsletter to him in prison. Otherwise, requiesce in pace.

Letters to the Editor
Dear Mr. Milam,
Thanks a lot, Sam — Another terrific issue! [May 2017] I particularly liked Sticky's piece "Another Day in Paradise". Please let Sticky know that his eye-opening articles are appreciated.

—Tom, of Redwood City, California

Greetings, Sam,

Thank you for recent Frontiersman [May 2017], & always for publishing my humble little pieces....

—a prisoner

Bear Joke
Original Source Unknown.

The three bears awoke from their hibernation.

Poppa bear went outside to do what bears do in the forest. He returned and announced, "My instincts tell me it's gonna rain."

Momma bear went outside to do what bears do in the forest. She returned and announced, "My instincts tell me it's gonna snow."

Baby bear went outside to do what bears do in the forest. He returned and announced, "My end stinks too, but it don't tell me nuthin."

June 2017

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Page 3

Frontiersman
^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive
Gainesville, Georgia 30507

All progress is change but not all change is progress

—Sam Aurelius Milam, Jr.
Another Compendium of Wit and Wisdom

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the following: SantaClara Bob; and Betty.

— editor

Websites

http://frontiersman.org.uk/

http://moonlight-flea-market.com/

http://pharos.org.uk/

http://sam-aurelius-milam-iii.org.uk/

http://sovereign-library.org.uk/

Blonde Jokes
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by Don G.
Q: Why couldn't the blonde make an emergency telephone call?
A: There wasn't a button for 11 on the telephone.
Q: What word does a blonde use to describe how it feels to be surrounded by a bunch of drooling idiots?
A: Flattered.

Blonde Bell Ringer
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by Warren, of Pocatello, Idaho.
Passing an office building late one night, a blonde saw a sign that said, "Press bell for night watchman."
She did so, and after several minutes she heard the watchman coming down the stairs.
The uniformed man proceeded to unlock first one gate, then another, shut down the alarm system, and finally made his way to the door.
"Well," he huffed, "what do you want?"
"So, like, why can't you ring the bell yourself?"

Understanding Engineers
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by Millie, of Tempe Arizona.
To an optimist, a glass is half full. To a pessimist, a glass is half empty. To an engineer, a glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Frontiersman

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Submissions — I consider letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece.

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— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor

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June 2017

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