Are you on the list?

There is quite a bit in my book about lists. FBI watch lists. Terrorist Screening Center TSDB list. The “No Fly” sub-set list. The Southern Poverty Law Center list(s). Organization membership lists. Anticipated “domestic terrorist” lists.

In fact, in Appendix 4 to my book, I provide instructions and the forms to inquire to the FBI a copy of your file, if any.

And yet here we are, you and me. About to embark on another journey, together. Some of you have been through one or more voyages on the high seas with me, already. You may have been one of my plaintiffs. You may have been at a meeting at which I spoke and provided one of my “scorecards” of the various pending lawsuits.

Now we embark on perhaps the most difficult challenge we will encounter in our activist lives: the effort to stop “domestic terrorist” legislation.

And to do that, I’ll be making a list. And so will the credit card company. And possibly the email company. Potentially the website company. Your phone. My computer. Even our telephone calls because you’re probably a cell to my land line.

On the one hand, by purchasing printed copies of my book from a US-based printer (yes, I even double-checked by chat that the physical presses are in Ohio and - of all places - Las Vegas), I kept control over an entire segment of buyers. Those sales will either be in person or by USPS in sealed envelopes or (even if paid for through my website by credit card) hand addressed by me (or Kevin) and put in the mail.

But there will be print-on-demand versions through the main distributors of Amazon, B&N, iTunes, and more in about a month. And then those guys - some of whom simply turned over financial and other information to the federal government ahead of subpoenas in the January 6 criminal prosecutions - will also have that information.

The same tools that let me reach you and, arguably, a global audience for this masterwork of analysis and argument, are the same tools with which we are pursued.

Someone remind me: did Joseph Heller offer a solution? We may need to look back in order to go forward.