Friday, April 19, 2013

Freedom isn't free. And it isn't safe, either.

I won't win any friends for saying this, but I am ashamed of my country today. That we should be so quickly reduced to cowering in our homes, so happy to see armored trucks and SWAT Team-style para-military police squads roaming all over a town, so willing to comply meekly in the face of overwhelming force, is shocking to me. These are not the actions of a free people. This should not be response of a free state. It looks perilously close to a totalitarian police state, to me.

I see these scenes, and I think, "Kittens, we are being conditioned."

In watching the highly militarized police response to the Boston bombings and the massive manhunt for one piece of shit 19 year old boy, which has now effectively shut down an entire area, I cannot help but wonder if this is an instance of not letting a crisis go to waste, to use our dear Mr. Emanuel's famous phrase.

Only in America could this happen and we all still think we're the "Land of the Free."

Kittens, we are being conditioned.

While I fully understand the second-by-second potential for more death and bloodshed in an unstable and rapidly unfolding situation, I can't see scenes like these and not be sharply aware of the greater danger in a police force that could put together this kind of response over the escape of a single 19 year old kid, scared, on the run, his brother dead, his family far away. When did this kind of military style show of force become acceptable on the streets of our country? Did I miss something? Can someone fill me in on when, exactly, as a nation, we became so tremblingly, pee-our-pants-terrified that we sheepishly beg for this kind of massive fascistic over-the-top manhunt to find one stinking little shithead of a kid?

If they find him, will they really need all those bullets and all that protection?
Kittens, we are being conditioned.

Do tell, darling. Yes, we do "get it."
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel (Emphasis totally mine.)



Kittens, we are being conditioned.

Conditioned to the idea that the police are the military and the military are the police, and that it's all hunky dory. Conditioned to the idea that only a MASSIVE response of government power is appropriate to track down one single 19 year old boy -- for everyone's safety, of course. Conditioned to the idea that this kind of scene is not just appropriate but welcomed and necessary. Conditioned to the idea that an ever more militarized police force is just what we need to be "safe."


But it's not what we need to remain free.

This kind of power will not stay within the boundary of responding to terrorism for long, in my humble opinion. It has very nearly burst those bounds as it is. The bombings in Boston, while horrific and deeply saddening, were the work of two loner brothers, one of whom is already dead, if not by the hail of police bullets, then by the car driven over him by his fleeing brother. If we accept this down-town Baghdad style response from our government as appropriate in America ever, mark my words, we will see this kind of force used in more and more incidences, slowly broadening the acceptable use of force for transgressions against the ever more virulent state.

Rachel Lucas asks the same question, albeit not with the fascistic inference I've given it, and she raises the highly salient point that: 

"certain journalists and leftist commentators are either (1) going silent over the fact that the confirmed suspects are in fact foreign and Muslim, rather than dirty little honky redneck tax-opposing homegrown domestic terrorist teabaggers like they were hoping for, and/or (2) saying now – and only now, after it turns out not to be a cracker teabagger – that it’d be unwise to rush to conclusions or to make assumptions based on demographic factors.

There is a reason for this, kittens. Yup. You guessed it. Conditioning.

As long as the media maintain the drumbeat that the right is inherently dangerous and that it is reasonable to immediately suspect them of just about anything, while simultaneously insisting that there is simply no way to know why anyone who is not a rabid, snarling right-winger would ever DO such a thing, the government can continue to increase its power and use of force without pushback from a frightened and polarized population that is not allowed to even openly discuss the possibility that Islam is a danger to society and should be severely restricted in a free country.

So if you refuse to take reasonable measures to ensure the security of the population, you will inevitably be allowed all manner of UNreasonable measures when all hell breaks loose and the citizens cry for safety.

I think our government wants that. Badly.

And we are giving it to them. And thanking them for it.



20 comments:

  1. "As long as the media maintain the drumbeat that the right is inherently dangerous and that it is reasonable to immediately suspect them of just about anything ..."
    Let's see: when Rep. Giffords was shot in Tucson, the "radical right-wing teabagger" turned out to be a radical left-wing anarchist nut job. The Virginia Tech "radical right-wing teabagger" shooter was a leftist nut job. The Aurora, CO "radical right-wing teabagger" shooter was a leftist nut job. Hey, MSM, are you beginning to see a pattern here?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure a lot of them recognize it. Probably not at MSNBC, the short bus of journalism, though. They couldn't recognize the pattern on a checkerboard.

      Delete
  2. The sight of such heavy military presence in the city street dwarfing to the average Joe American's car and trucks that had pulled over to the side to make way struck a cold chill in my heart. There by by the Grace of God go thee and me and mine.....targeted by a tyrannical government. I completely agree with your comments, we are being conditioned. Wouldn't you like to trade in your freedom for safety (economic, physical, psychologically)? If that had happened in my town, I wouldn't be afraid. We would have been armed and ready.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And while they are conditioning us to the overt use of overwhelming military-style force, they are also carefully and continuously attacking right-wing extremism. Just wait for the time (and my guess is you won't have to wait too long) when this type of force will be brought against people who simply believe in the Constitution.

      Delete
  3. I'm always creeped out, seeing these paramilitary SWAT teams. It seems like something you'd expect in some third world banana republic. This was the worst I've seen, the force was so huge.

    I won't do well in a country conditioned to accept this kind of thing as normal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Get used to it. We are going to see more of this.

      Delete
    2. Probably, but I'm not going to get used to it. I've watched it ramping up for years and I get more and more troubled by it.

      Delete
  4. While I was driving around town for five hours today, I was listening and thinking, "Dry run. Damned dry run."

    You could almost feel Valerie Jarrett smiling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joan, you said it. In fact, while I was writing this, I was thinking of your post about how we will just stand there and watch our neighbors being arrested because it's "the law."

      Delete
  5. I had a similar feeling of not sure what when I saw the Black armored swat trucks and the swat cops in black. I grew up in Mass and I don't know that the Mass I lived in 30 years ago would have put up with being told to hunker down. I think the idea of a dry run could be a truism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They want to know how far they can push. Who will push back? Where are their enemies?

      And we are just watching our TV. Some of us are evening cheering this horrifying display of force. And NOW the kid is going to be treated as an "enemy combatant", without any constitutional protections, even though he is a citizen. Anyone beginning to see where this will end?

      I am worried, truly, about my country.

      Delete
    2. Just in case ya'll are interested: Cheaper than Dirt has 5.56 NATO green tip penetrator rounds, 300 round bulk for $400, and antipersonnel.net has flechette rounds for 12 ga. shotguns, 100 rounds for $270 and change.

      Delete
  6. Just a reminder to all you unrepentant oxygen breathers: Monday is Earth Day. Please join me in commemorating Earth Day by firing up your charcoal grills and charring a piece of dead cow, pig, or chicken (if you decide to cook cat, rat, or dog, please keep it to yourself), leaving your lights on all day, and taking a long drive in a gas guzzling SUV. For all you wealthier reprobates with airplanes or private jets, think about buzzing a college, high school, jr. high, or elementary school Earth Day celebration.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. if you decide to cook cat, rat, or dog, please keep it to yourself

      Of course if 0's at your party, everybody will know why anyway.

      Delete
    2. I ALWAYS celebrate Earth Day as Human Achievement Day. I turn on every light, run all four cars, the lawnmower, every small appliance and shoot sprinklers into the sky.

      YIPPEE!!!!!

      Delete
  7. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise, since Watertown, Newton, etc are all limousine-liberal suburbs of Boston, already pre-conditioned, so to say, to welcome government show of force.

    One of local residents, a Russian-born American IT programmer (lefty, what a surprise) have written a long post describing his and his family ordeal (not being able to come out with kids to go to a movie in Boston, as my wife planned!)and praised "coordinated efforts" of government agencies. "Many people outside US expressed surprise seeing on TV how residents applauded the police vehicles when they were leaving Watertown after 2nd terrorist was apprehended. I'll say - I would do the same: my police protects me! Terrorist act happened on Monday, by Thursday the culprit was tracked down, on Friday he was arrested. They [government] deserve our respect!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. THIS! You said it. I am appalled at my countrymen who are so eager to be "safe" at the expense of their freedoms. I have traveled a far amount of the world and one of the rock bottom core beliefs I always had about my country was that I would NEVER NEVER EVER EVER see military style "police" on the streets of my own country "protecting" me. This is what you see in communists countries.

      We are being conditioned to see the massive buildup of domestic force in our country as protection from --- what? LIFE? Shit happens and it is our response to it that determines whether we wish to remain free or abandon our freedoms for some imagined safety.

      The safest place in the world is a jail cell. Oh...until your jailer decides you are no longer necessary.

      Delete
  8. All that statist "muscle show", in my opinion, was to camouflage the fact that federal agency that's supposed to stop these kinds of threats in the first place failed spectacularly. FBI had received a tip about the older brother a year or 2 ago, "investigated" him and found nothing! In a meanwhile the guy was radicalizing rapidly and even posted videos on youtube - which, per conspiracy theorists, are monitored extensively by government!
    This story has so many huge "EPIC FAIL" signs written all over it w/regards to gov-t...don't you think they were rather quick announcing the brothers acted alone, and there is no terror cell and no masterminds? All their behavior shows the opposite.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yes, there is clearly CYA in bucket loads on this. But I think that's not because they dropped the ball, but because they WANT shit like this to go down to justify the buildup of militarized police forces, the DHS, the TSA, and the trampling of the Constitution. It's just that when it DOES go down, they have to "spring" into action so the rupes don't get the idea that they are either grossly incompetent or this is what they were hoping for.

      Delete