Think Facility's Not Reading Your Mail?

I have occasionally played around with paranoia as a subject for humor, but this one ain't very funny at all.

Barba de Chiva, who blogs at Phronesisiacal, wrote a post back in 2005 about being routinely stopped by the Border Patrol in Laredo, where he lives. The BP agents have actually mentioned knowing about the blog to him during these stops, although they seem to have said or done nothing overtly menacing about it.

Now, last night, an anonymous BP agent dropped a comment on the two-year-old post that, in its way, is as chilling a thing as you're likely to read:

Myself, I have spoken to you on several occasions, as you drive North to Encinal. In the red VW; as a passenger in a silver VW; in a small black convertible; an old Ford; and, and older tan Chevy, as well. I have a fantastic memory and recall to boot...

No shit.

Note how the aggrieved officer reads things into Barba de Chiva's post that were not originally there, in particular the perceived accusation that the BP agents are "knuckle-draggers." Chiva calls them "suspicious," "officious," and (sarcastically) "stalwart defenders of our nation's borders," but nowhere does he imply that they're stupid. That's their reading. Barba is a professor of English; the officer's purpose in his self-aggrandizing recitation of his own educational C.V. appears to be an attempt to legitimize his power, to justify his authority; in fact the effect is just menacing.