The Postmortal (5 page)

I don’t know if you’ve been watching Allan Atkins on TV lately, but he’s becoming increasingly unhinged. I’m not political one way or another—though I think a lot of what he says is perfectly reasonable—but he delivered a diatribe yesterday that was pretty nuts. Here’s the transcript:

“I don’t know what country this is anymore. How can this administration justify doing what it is doing? How? How is it possible? You tell me where it says in the Constitution that this cure is forbidden. You can’t tell me, because it is not in the Constitution. It is
not
. If the class action lawsuit against the government over this ever gets kicked up to the Supreme Court—and it will, I can assure you—we’re going to see the true face of this Court and of the administration that put many of its judges there. Because any judge worth his salt would look at this ban and see a
crime
. An outright crime against a country and its citizens. And the only judge that would ban it would be a fascist, activist judge who wishes to impose his or her individual beliefs upon us all.

“See, this ban is liberal thinking at its absolute worst. They don’t want to give you the freedom to make your own choices. They want you to
suffer
. They are antihuman. It’s not enough for them to merely hate America. No, now they hate the very idea of humanity.
Humans are bad
. ‘Oh, you can’t live forever! You’ll emit too much carbon! You’ll throw away too much garbage! An owl will die!’ It’s insane. It’s this mentality that we, as human beings, are some ugly blight upon this world, that we do not deserve to live here with all the other innocent little animals—animals that
kill
and
rape
each other, just so you know. They believe that every action we take, every building we erect, every road we lay down is somehow a massive affront to their pristine vision of what the earth should look like. They are allergic to progress. This is a sickness. An absolute
sickness
. And now it is literally taking newfound years off our lives forever.

“I am a conservative, and that means that, unlike liberals, I deal with
reality
: with the way humans really behave and the way this world truly is. And that’s what makes this war . . . this, this war on the cure, such a complete and utter crock. It has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with some utopian-liberal fever dream that is neither economically nor socially attainable.

“To you liberals out there listening—and I know you are, because our ratings’ demographic breakouts make it plain as day—I have a question for you. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, would you keep the cure from him? If Thomas Edison were alive today, would you keep the cure from him as well? Would you willingly let some of our greatest statesmen and inventors perish from the globe? Do you think you’re helping the world if you do that? Or is there some special little Hollywood guest list of people you think deserve it? Not Mr. and Mrs. America, of course. They’re far too
dumb
, and too busy polluting the world, to make your cut.

“Never mind the positive impacts of the cure, like the end of senior citizenship and all the Social Security and Medicare costs that go with it. Liberals don’t have any time for that. They’re too busy dwelling on all the horrible things we naughty humans will be doing with it. So you can’t have this cure. Not even in this country,
where it was invented
. Can you believe that? Can you believe the gall? Liberals always say they love science. This is science! This is science! This cure is ours. We shouldn’t be banning it; we should be
subsidizing
it. But we’re letting other countries take this cure and run with it. Do we hand out our gold and oil reserves to other countries? No.

“That is why I say to you friends out there listening now: Buy a gun. Maybe you believe in taking the cure. Maybe you do not. But tell me if you want to live in a country where the government will let you die like this. Buy a gun. I know they’re hard to come by now. I’ve bought plenty myself in recent months. I know my friends at Smith & Wesson—proud sponsors of the show, mind you—are trying to keep up with the demand. But if you have to drive to another state to do it, do it. Buy a gun. Buy as many as you can and learn to be skilled with them. Because the government is robbing you of your life, your liberty, and your happiness. You tell me what they’re going to rob you of next. And you tell me what we should do if the Russians decide to visit our shores with an army of twenty million ageless soldiers, because you know they’d like nothing more. Buy a gun. Buy a damn gun! If you love America and what it stands for,
buy a gun
. Because right now I don’t know if the country I live in is fit to be called the United States of America. And I’m willing to fight to get it back.

“Are you?”