GROUND ZERO, New York City, Jan. 31--There is an XXXL-sized Beast of Terror.   He lives inside 65 percent of U.S. citizens.   And he's eating his way through their Shields of Vigilance, one bite at a time.
       Fat people aren't as Vigilant as thin people.
       It's an energy thing.

       Fat cells beg to sit.  They cry to relax on the couch and stuff potato chips in the oral ingestion cavity.   Fat cells squish about the brain, numbing its desire to race up stairs and instead drive the mind to find elevators and escalators to hoist the excess flesh upward.  

        Fat cells cannot pass a bakery without lusting an éclair, or noticing the "all-you-can-eat" menus that flash like booby traps, calling the once-thin to pack ponderous pounds on top of ponderous pounds.
        Eating in excess is a Terrorist plot of nefarious nature, a kind of long-range strategy to cast the Complacency pall on American citizens so they don't, excuse me, can't, rise to the occasion and fight the Beast of Terror because they are far too big and lugubrious to act.
        Terrorism's goal is Complacency.   Through Fear and Intimidation, the Beast of Terror seeks to drive the human spirit into a sense of utter defeat, a pervasive sense of futility over being powerless to fight back.   No more hideous a "weapon of mass destruction" is that of the fat cell.  Once it incites itself to grow within an American citizen, it bullies its way through the body consuming one lean cell after another until all five-billion are bloated, elastic balloons that seek to sate their hunger not fight some shadowy threat to the security of their nation, their state, community, neighborhood, home or their Children's Children's Children.

        The "get America fat, dumb and happy" Terrorist campaign has been underway for more than two decades.   Just twenty years ago the number of overweight Americas was half of what it is today, around 36 percent.    Today, just two decades later, the number has doubled.
       There's being "fat," and then there's being "obese."   Obesity is up to 33 percent of the American population--people so fat they can't put a standard car seat belt around their Ben & Jerry's tummy, or tie their shoes without grunting and groaning like a Sumo wrestler about to enter the battle-of-the-flesh ring.
        Even American icon Al Roker, Today  show weatherman, surrendered to his obesity in a final act of desperation.   He underwent surgery to have his stomach capacity reduced.  He was one of 63,100 Americans last year who tried to cut the Beast of Fat Terror from his gut, but, like so many who try, will probably fail.   It seems most who undergo the operation end up getting fat again.

         Not all fat people want to be skinny.   The lady who tried to force Honda to provide her with seat-belt extenders for her Odyssey and failed in the process, claims she's not handicapped by her excessive adipose tissue.  "I'm not handicapped by my body," Elizabeth Fisher, 42, a 350-pound computer programmer from Baton Rouge, La, said recently in a Time magazine story on How To Sell XXXL, "I'm handicapped by stuff that's too small."
        Accepting fatness and obesity is the trend in America.  Fighting it seems to be out-of-style.
        America's noteworthy marketing industry has joined forces with Terrorism on the issue of promoting American lethargy--the end point of obesity--and started to feed the massive population of overweight Americans products to promote the continued explosion of their bodies.
        Car manufacturers are widening seats to accommodate the huge buttock of the buyers.  Food distributors promote on TV ads for super He Man meals.   Furniture designers have launched building larger beds, and chair manufacturers now construct them to hold up to 500 pounds.  Fashion clothiers such as Lane Bryant, who specialize in the oversized, offer revealing styles that don't try to hide the fat, but display it so the world can see that "fat isn't bad."   Half of U.S. women wear size 14 or larger.   In 1985 the average dress size was 8.   Fat dolls are being manufactured.   The "full-figured" replica of size-14 fashion model Emme has sold 12,000 of them since October.    The Terrorists are encouraging the children to "get fat and stay fat."

       Disneyland is bowing to the fat surge.   Trained employees sensitive to obese customers usher them to wheelchair entrances so they won't get stuck in narrow turnstiles.   "Disney World may not be perfect, but it's as close to heaven as a fat person can get," says Wanda Sykes, 33, a health-care administrator from Atlanta who weighs in at 285 pounds.
        A corpulent person, however graciously presented, has a problem.   Whether aware of it or not, the Beast of Terror has taken charge.  I know.  It has me.
        In my Vietnam days, I weighed in at 166 pounds.   I was six-four, as I am now.   And, if I turned sideways, I was almost invisible.   My nicknames were "slim" and "spider legs."   I lusted to be big, but my metabolism in those days chewed up all the fats I ate and spat them out, as one might eject sour milk or a bite of rancid meat.
       Today, I look like a paunchy retired linebacker from the ill-fated Raiders.  I'm big all over, thick and the gravity of my flesh, while reasonably spread over my body, drives my energy to achieve toward that pint of Ben & Jerry's, or that delicious bagel slathered in butter and heaped with grape jelly.

        I move like an oil tanker, careful always to avoid being near women pushing strollers with little children for fear if I were to trip I would pancake the child.   My knees ache under the weight of moving my torso about.  My scales frighten me, for the only go to 300 pounds.
       Over the past three decades I've amassed over 110 pounds, weighing in today at 276.   I have trouble crawling behind the wheel of my Taurus, designed I think for midgets and people who swallowed tapeworms.
       Nobody can convince me that being overweight is good, or that doesn't rob one of many virtues--health being the first in line, followed by self worth, and finally and most importantly, additional energy to fight the Beast of Terror.
       Oh yes, I diet.  I binge diet.  I crash down ten or twenty pounds, but only to gorge myself when I reach my goal with all the foods I love--Beast of Terror foods, rich, greasy, carbo-laden foods that billow the fat cells back to their huge size and suck my energy so I am more concerned with what I am going to eat and when I'm going to take a grizzly bear nap than how I'm going to trip up the Beast of Terror.
       I find myself weighed down in the quagmire of Complacency as a result.   Food!  Food!  Food!
       I think about the Beast of Terror shoveling in my mouth all the wrong kinds of foods.  His goal is to lull me into a state of dullness, where I expend my energies trying to hide my belly bulge, or to buy bigger belts, and how to squat down carefully to pick up a coin I dropped rather than bend over and risk splitting my trousers.

      No one can tell me this constant energy expended to move my fatness about doesn't rob me of my Vigilance, sap me of my Courage, Conviction and Right Action to chase and tackle the Beast of Terror.   No.  I want to sit in an armchair and have the Beast run to me, fall into my arms so I can tie him up with the least effort.
      I know the Beast of Terror isn't fat.   He is lean and mean, wiry, with red devil eyes and sharp fangs that drip with his drool as he laughs at America's fatness.   He can waltz into town, taunt the citizens and run around in circles safely.  He knows no one can catch him because they're too busy being distracted by bagels and Ben & Jerry's and worrying about seat-belt extenders and the size of their bed, and where to buy the "full-figured doll" so they can teach their children that being "fat" is okay.
      Around the world, the people we are trying to save from despotic leaders we call Terrorists must be laughing at us.  "How can they, those American fat-asses, claim to want to save us when they are so busy stuffing their faces and getting fat?   Maybe they just want to conquer us and eat us!"
       Oh, yes.  Fat is Terrorism.   Fat is sating the Beast of Terror.   Fat is feeding into Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.   It is the ultimate surrender a society makes in its resignation, its social capitulation to Complacency.

       The great weapon of mass destruction, I believe, isn't nuclear bombs or bio-chemical warfare--it's carbohydrates.   And, we shove them endlessly in our mouths, eating Terrorism rather than banishing it.        Maybe we should wage war on the Complacency of the fat cell before we attack Iraq.  
       If we don't, Terrorism won't have to worry about Terrorizing us, we'll do it all by ourselves.

Jan. 30--Conversation With God On War With Iraq