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It was Libyan terrorists, I now know, who sabotaged the keyboard on my old Osborne computer late last week, and the American government will suffer as a consequence of this mad-dog act.
With the computer down, I couldn't get my taxes done on time, and so now the Internal Revenue Service will have to postpone its annual laughter break, so important to employee morale and productivity, which the agency always takes when my return comes in and the examiner sees the pittance that a free-lance writer tries to raise a family on.
Those high-tech saboteurs were probably linked to the Tripoli gang that highjacked a postal service truck. You didn't read about it in the newspapers, and neither did I. But there's no other explanation. The postal service never loses anything, and my agent told me two weeks ago that a check for $5,500 was in the mail.
The evidence points to Basque separatists in yet another assault. Somebody stole the alternator out of my 1967 Chevy pickup as it was parked in the alley behind my house last fall. Most sheepherders are Basques, and anyone smarter than a sheepherder would have stolen the alternator from my neighbor's pickup, which is ten years newer.
Throughout Salida, remote and isolated as it may seeem at first, there is a pervasive fear of terror.
This is a small town with narrow streets and wide sidewalks. But most people here are so afraid of being attacked by Sandanistas that, rather than risk the exposure of walking the three blocks from downtown to the post office, they quiver in the relative safety of their automobiles. So fearful are they that they circle the block again and again, until a close-in parking spot opens.
International terrorists, without firing a shot, have managed to snarl traffic here for half an hour every morning.
I've heard it's even worse in Denver. Not only is all wheel-borne commerce hopelessly delayed, but the fumes from all those idling vehicles are poisoning the air. The terrorists must be worn out, congratulating each other on their success at making American citizens suffer.
The last time that I had to journey from Salida to civilization, I noticed many other signs of terroristic activity.
A year ago, for instance, the bus fare was a reasonable $10. Now it's $23.
This can't be because industry per-mile costs have risen. For only $29, just $6 more than it costs to take the bus from Salida to Denver, you can fly from Denver to Albuquerque, which is more than twice as far.
No, this huge increase must reflect the costs of additional security now required at Trailways terminals in this age of terror, as well as the growing risks of travel these days.
Which must be substantial. All along U.S. 285, from
Trout Creek Pass to the Santa Fe interchange, there is mute
but compelling evidence of terrorist violence: guardrails
and deer carcasses at the edge of the highway, yawning pits
where there used to be shoulders, rockslides and mudslides
and monstrous bomb craters (some people, trying to cover up
the truth, call them chuckholes
) in the lanes.
You don't have to look far to see how we're suffering from terrorist onslaughts. The Irish Republican Army, or some army anyway, put those carcinogens in Adams County water. Maybe the derailed ski lift at Keystone can be blamed on the Black September group. Assorted Peruvian and Colombian liberation movements must have taken the credit when a car blew up in Aspen last fall.
When I began to realize just how much terroristic activity has been occurring around here, I began to worry. President Reagan might thing that, instead of suffering from terrorism, we are harboring terrorists. And then he'd do to us what he did to Tripoli.
But President Reagan is really more tolerant than he lets on.
For instance, there was some lunatic traveling the world recently, claiming that we Americans should ship more of our wealth to remote Arab nations, in order to guarantee world stability.
That sounds like extortion to me -- Pay us, or
there'll be trouble
-- and extertion is certainly an
act of terrorism.
But then I found out that this mouthpiece for extortionists was not from the PLO or even worse, the LaRouche headquarters.
It was none other than Vice-President George Bush, and President Reagan hasn't done a thing to his house or city.
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