Wiki dictionary defines wannabe (plural wannabes) as:
 

The government is barraging us with wannabe propaganda and training grounds. Lately we are seeing the presidential cry, in cahoots with the television industry, for all Americans to answer the “call to service”. The government wants you used to seeing it everywhere and in every part of your life. Government everywhere… you just can't live your life without it.

Mostly this is touted as volunteering (as in unpaid labor) to "give something back" to America, and it ranges from picking up trash along the highways to assisting in the vaccination parlors, and of course, in a big way, to the so called Law Enforcement industry. Yep. Industry.

The most blatant of the "services" for the LEO industry are the various C.O.P (Citizens on Patrol) types, where through proper training you too can wear an almost uniform and ride around with a real cop in a real cop car, and maybe he’ll even let you play with the siren and blow his whistle. Wow.

That’s if you pass the course.

Once in uniform (usually a yellow vest with no badge, but you get a clipboard and pencil so you look like you can write citations), you get to walk around and talk to people. My wife and I were harassed at the local Sam's store parking lot by some antique geezer banging his pen on our windshield as we were trying to get out of the car... something about the inspection sticker being expired, and he was going to get his cop (parked a few feet away and looking in the other direction... I think he was embarrassed) to give us a ticket just as soon as we pulled into the street and he was suggesting we get the car towed to the local dealership for the inspection in order to avoid the ticket. Well, Gung-ho…and the horse you rode in on ol' buddy! He was lucky. The sticker was not expired... he was so old and fired up with his power trip that he couldn't see straight.

This geezer was a perfect example of the uniformed wannabe. Never been in charge of anything in their lives. Nobody ever listened to them. They’re bullies at heart, having never before been big or mean enough to boss around others.

Or the exact opposite in some cases. Retired supervisors from industry or the military that are no longer the head of some chain of command. Sometimes they can't take it. Eats 'em alive. I think middle managers would be the most common. Either way, it’s people that have just been dying for a chance to flex their muscles and make somebody else sorry for all their own failures and of course, tremendous lack of self-esteem.

Once obtained, it must be a real chest sweller for 'em… this newly given non-authority over as many of the supposed lower life forms (by their reckoning) as they can get “their cop” to rough-up. Maybe hit 'em with a Taser for not obeying his unlawful orders. He'll show 'em. Yeah.

I think the worst case of this I ever saw was the pics of the Georgia Guard volunteers that were searching everybody who went through the stadium gates at some baseball game. Of course, this was after 911, the event that changed everything (but actually didn‘t). The pics showed this scruffy, nasty looking middle-aged man - I guess I can call him a man - with a cigarette dangling from his lips with a half-inch of ash barely hanging on, while he was pawing over this little ten-year-old girl, making sure she didn't have anything to hide. I think he saw and felt all there was; bureaucratic pedophile. And the DAD... the little girl's DAD, just looking on at all this in the background. What a DAD.

But with uniformed wannabes, it’s all about the officialness and glory they receive for looking like they actually have done something of great notice and importance with their lives. It’s like there's a big pool of 'em somewhere, since there seems to be no shortage of these people volunteering to keep their fellow men and women under the heel of the local Gestapo.

I understand the British have actually turned loose a "garbage brigade" on the trashcans of the UK. The GB gets big yellow raincoat-looking things to serve as their "badges". I've read articles of 3:00 am raids on trashcans in certain neighborhoods. Waking everybody, beating on their doors, and telling the owners they've put the wrong recyclables in the wrong cans. This must have been as big an ego trip for those wannabes as it was for the cop at Kent State (that's right, cops, not the military), pulling the trigger on his cop-furnished .357 mag. Colt Trooper while aiming at the kiddos crossing the quad. But I digress.

Some wannabes don't have to be uniformed or trained, but are primed and ready to integrate with the Gestapo when the opportunity presents itself. These guys in particular are the ones waiting for you, Mr. Citizen, to screw up, so they can call in and report you for something... anything will do.

The mainstream media (MSM) keep running ads on TV, spreading the fear. Watch your neighbors for suspicious behavior, etc. And look out for strangers... I believe Mr. Neil Diamond was the victim of one of these little events a month or so ago when he went for a walk in some town where he was throwing a concert later in the day. He walked into a neighborhood where somebody didn't recognize him and they called the LEOs to rescue them from the evil stranger walking on their turf. You can't even walk around in this country any longer.

I'm sure there are better examples, but one of the latest I'd heard of was about a couple trespassing on this guy's lawn... he was inside his own home, standing nude in his kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee, and these two saw him and then called the fuzz. Arrested. Going to trial for showing his genitals to the public or some such nonsense. These two wouldn't have seen him if they hadn't been trespassing in the first place, would be my guess. I can't remember if they SWAT-teamed him or not. Wouldn't doubt it though.

However, I do NOT put Crime Prevention neighborhoods on this par, because they have organized and put up signs to warn you of their intentions, should you mess up in their neighborhood.

Then, from not-so-jolly old England we have the Play Rangers. Yep that’s right, Play Rangers.

These guys will be the new Park watchers, so to speak. Over here in the uSA we have Park Rangers, and they are supposed to keep us safe from bears and the like in our National Forests, etc. These new British style Park Rangers will be there to keep the little kiddos in the play parks safe from molestation by adults by keeping all adults (except themselves of course) away from the kiddos. This includes the parents. Yep. Can’t even go to the park and play with your own kids. Terrific. By the time this one migrates over here (as we know, most of the nonsense laws enacted in Britain sooner or later wind up over here) it will have included SWAT with their cute little un-professional Glocks roaming around with the wannabe Play Rangers to protect them, and of course the guys and gals on the roof with the Model 700 Remington 7mag rifles to protect the SWAT escort on the ground and don't forget the APC in the parking lot. You know, the one with the twin fifty, flamethrower and sound cannon for good measure.

Countless other examples exist of everyday occurrences of the non-uniformed wannabes flexing their muscles. The one about the photo developers and child porn comes to mind almost immediately. (Just curious, but has anybody ever actually heard of child porn until the Feds came out and told us it was everywhere and in epidemic proportions? I hadn't.) Ever take a pic of your kid like grandma did to you on a bearskin rug, or in the bathtub when you were barely old enough to crawl? If you are going to take pics of your own kiddos like that now, take them with a digital camera, and don't ever put 'em on the Internet to send to relatives. People - and that's plural - have been arrested for this behavior in the past few years. The non-uniformed wannabes have made the decision that your family photos, the ones grandma deemed cute and cuddly, are child porn. By the way, here's some food for thought... what happens to the negatives? The LEOs take the developed pics from the wannabe developer for evidence, of course, but what, pray tell, happens to the negatives... and did the developer manage to make any extra copies? "Fox the finder…" goes the old adage.

In summation, wannabes can be the death of us all, depending upon how widespread the epidemic of wannabes. The Gestapo had the Nazi Youth, with Nazi Youth wannabes reporting their own parents not to mention neighbors, for any and all breaches of Nazi rules and protocols… and especially for slander against the Nazi leadership. Eventually, for the reward of food, housing, or a job within the Reich, the wannabe mindset eventually became law, but not without great cost to individual freedoms and in the end the loss of the entire country. The Third Reich could not have risen in the first place if not the existence of its minions... the wannabe Nazis.

The New Romans, Part V: Demonization will be posted shortly. Until that time I bid you a fond farewell and "Adios Amigos, see you soon as Pancho" used to say.