The Eloi Award

I wrote an article for the Jan. 2000 Millenium issue of GUNS AND AMMO Magazine titled "The New Eloi."

Using H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" as a metaphor, it made the argument that "society has fragmented into three distinct groups, the provide-all/control-all state, the provided-for/controlled general populace, and the increasingly besieged self-determining/self-controlling rationalist individual. Or, in terms of Wells' prescient speculative fantasy, we could identify these as the Morlocks, the Eloi, and the Time Traveller."

Markeeta Gould is a Mansfield, OH, woman who was "jailed for failure to file a 2001 city income tax bill totaling 96 cents…[she]earned $55 that year…on Feb. 19, she was arrested in front of her children."

He reaction? Was she outraged? Has she comprehended the loss of her sovereign individual rights, and has she been galvanized to fight against the blatant tyranny of a system where such outcomes are inevitable?

“Gould said she was embarrassed to be arrested.

"‘I'm a mother and I'm a law-abiding citizen,’ she said. ‘I paid my taxes every year before and I paid my taxes every year after. With me getting arrested, I could lose my job.’"

Ms. Gould, you are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. You get The War on Guns' Eloi Award (I may make this a monthly feature).

And our Morlock of the Month Award goes to Mansfield Finance Director Sandra Converse, who claimed the Nuremberg Defense, saying she is bound by city filing policy.

"We don't know what people owe if they do not file. We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't enforce this,” Converse claims.

So, Sandra, you financial genius—how much of the people’s money would you say you’ve spent in your insane quest to recover 96 cents?

To borrow a metaphor from another work of Classic literature, Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables," at least the fanatically obsessive Javert had the good sense to throw himself off a bridge.