The Police State Isn’t Coming, It’s Already Here

“It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable”.

– Eric Hoffer

Not that I care very much for John Rutherford of the Whitehead Institute, a notorious right-wing think tank but as the old adage goes – even a broken clock is right twice a day. In his latest piece entitled ” ‘Boston Strong’: Marching in Lockstep with the Police State. Rutherford, who backed that ugly tramp Paula Jones in her lawsuit against the horndog in chief Bill Clinton cuts through the flag-swaddled dreck to call a spade a spade. Boston was placed under MARTIAL LAW last Friday, a day that will prove to be as dark as any in this nation’s history when all is said and done with. The Rubicon was officially crossed on April 19, 2013 and the only thing that is more disturbing than the massive show of paramilitary power in Beantown is the degree that it has been accepted, just another feature of “The New Normal”. 

I will now excerpt from Whitehead’s piece  –

 

Whatever the threat to so-called security—whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

As journalist Andrew O’Hehir observes in Salon:

In America after 9/11, we made a deal with the devil, or with Dick Cheney, which is much the same thing. We agreed to give up most of our enumerated rights and civil liberties (except for the sacrosanct Second Amendment, of course) in exchange for a lot of hyper-patriotic tough talk, the promise of “security” and the freedom to go on sitting on our asses and consuming whatever the hell we wanted to. Don’t look the other way and tell me that you signed a petition or voted for John Kerry or whatever. The fact is that whatever dignified private opinions you and I may hold, we did not do enough to stop it, and our constitutional rights are now deemed to be partial or provisional rather than absolute, do not necessarily apply to everyone, and can be revoked by the government at any time.

Particularly disheartening is the fact that Americans, consumed with the need for vengeance, seem even less concerned about protecting the rights of others, especially if those “others” happen to be of a different skin color or nationality. The public response to the manhunt, capture and subsequent treatment of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is merely the latest example of America’s xenophobic mindset, which was also a driving force behind the roundup and detention of hundreds of Arab, South Asian and Muslim men following 9/11, internment camps that housed more than 18,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and the arrest and deportation of thousands of “radical” noncitizens during America’s first Red Scare.

To be a Muslim in America today it to be “Juden” in 1930’s era Germany, already the persecution machine is ramping up. It may not exactly be September 11,  2001 but it’ll do.

It is astonishing to witness the degree that unquestioning American lemmings so easily acquiesce to the rapidly tightening of the iron fist of state. This is what happens when a society is conditioned to live in fear. There was a time not so long ago where being forced to take off one’s shoes at an airport and being aggressively frisked by government goons would have elicited outrage. This is no longer the land in which we dwell, the sate and those who profit from it have seized on the September 11^th 2001 events to justify any and all foreign aggression and the stripping of rights here at home. No perceived offense is too small to add more paramiltary equipment and training to local police forces, already augmented by the Homeland Security Gestapo. The bad assed bogeyman Osama bin Laden may now be sleeping with the fishes but leave it to the Neocon embeds, Dick Cheney’s stay behind network and the ever complicit state media to ensure that there will be new arch villians and “monsters” to arm the police against, now it is the brothers Tsarnaev who serve as our Emanuel Goldstein. As I sit here sipping my morning cup o’ joe there are forces desperately looking for any sort of ginned up linkage between the Chechens who set off their dastardly shrapnel bomb at the Boston Marathon and overseas groups, like the Manichean devil Al Qaeda. It is very, very essential for the America that we now exist in to keep the already cowardly public in a state of constant fear. I recall a book that I once read entitled American Terminator that examined the role of Hollywood movies as an essential propaganda tool for shaping and reinforcing the basis for a mythical American exceptionalism and its desire for empire. The following passage is from that book which I strongly recommend to everybody with an interest in just how celluloid serves as a delivery device that is very useful in the indoctrination process.

Fear is essential: ‘Be afraid, be very afraid’ is the American condition.

To live in America is to be beset by fear, anxiety and insecurity, to be surrounded by potential harm, enemies and evil intent. And the wolf is always at the door. A nation of optimists is the more usual self-representation of America. Repetitively, Hollywood films conclude with a resolution, a rescue, and the winners ride off into the sunset or snuggle into a warm embrace that reassures us they will live happily ever after. The formulaic ending, however, is necessary because the plot, the narrative, is founded on and propelled by fear and anxiety, the dark essential underpinning of the American condition. For America fear is an original, natural condition, the inescapable birth rite (and birth right), the inherited condition of a fragile existence that must constantly be defended. Without fear there is no America; constant recourse to fear is the motivating force that determines its actions and reactions.

That was until 9/11 and the brain freezing FEAR of potential terrorism in the USA became the ultimate talisman of the state.  Herman Goering had it absolutely correct when he famously said:

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country”

And as Whitehead puts it

As the events in Boston have made clear, it does indeed work the same in every country. The same propaganda and police state tactics that worked for Adolf Hitler 80 years ago continue to be employed with great success in a post-9/11 America.

And the public of course always buys it, quivering, sniveling, pissing in their pants and practically screaming “please….take my freedom away”. Already, the Boston lockdown has provided cover for the TSA (an un-American entity that should be shredded into a million pieces and cast to the winds so counter to the concept of freedom that it is) to revoke the recently granted permission to carry miniature pocket knives onto airplanes. Really, just how fucking stupid are Americans if they believe that something so small as this can be used to actually highjack a plane? Americans watch too much television and too many movies, a decade and a half ago if a potential hijacker would have pulled out a mini-swiss army knife he would have been laughed off the plane. But the official state conspiracy theory of September 11, 2001 has become gospel that a group of losers who were allegedly well enough trained to take over jet airplanes with nothing but a box cutter and then to utilize their simulator flight training to pull off precision military daredevil piloting that even the most crackerjack pilots in the world would have trouble with has worked. It has worked out so well that any questioning of said official conspiracy theory is treated as a great apostasy and will have one immediately shunned by those whose worldview has been shaped by such lurid dramas as “Homeland” and “24”, but I am not going to go there this morning.

My oh my how the black vans will roll…

When Martial Law Came to Boston

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.

-Roy Batty

As it has been with every other aspect of the fascism that has come to this land, a sad, permanently damaged and ultimately to be damned by the judgement of history place of fear and loathing the roll out of martial law to American soil, in Boston on Friday was wrapped in the flag.The heinous and barbaric act of sheer inhumanity that precipitated it was Monday’s bomb detonations at the Boston Marathon where a despicable act of criminality was perpetrated by scum. Nobody who plans and then carries out such a malicious act of cruelty is deserving of anything less than being made subject to the full fury of the law. Those were innocent people whose lives were forever ruined by those monstrous little Chechen bastards and their shrapnel bombs. People who were happy, trained at length for their race and for them it was to be a day of personal triumph and accomplishment and they were deprived of it, some will never run again. It was an act that defines the very essence of all that is diseased and wrong with the human condition and will forever live in infamy. That being said, the overreaction of authorities in rolling out a de facto state of martial law will prove to be far more damaging to this already reeling nation than anything that the brothers Tsarnaev did on that lamentable day of blood, horror and sorrow. 

Just as those events of September 11, 2001 set into motion a series of actions that led to two ruinous and nationally bankrupting wars, the evisceration of American civil liberties, the unleashing of an out of control and ever expanding surveillance apparatus that has no accountability, the codifying of torture, a terminally damaged political system and a myriad of other indignities so too shall Black Friday, April 19, 2013. It was on this day that the streets of Boston and the surrounding suburbs brought to mind scenes from a certain European place in the middle of the last century, armored troops marching through civilian streets and the local citizenry stripped of their rights of freedom, prisoners within their own homes. Paramilitary forces which only in Orwellian newspeak terms can be called “police” with a straight face descended in legions with their armored vehicles, shining black body armor and of course their ever more deadly military weaponry. The city was “locked down” as the 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, badly wounded in the earlier shootout that killed his older brother was hunted down like the rabid dog that he is. The citizenry cowered as the storm troopers banged on doors, without warrants of course but such trivial matters cannot be bothered with in our dystopian police state. As Bryant so famously put it to Deckard in the movie Blade Runner – “If you’re not cop you’re little people” and when the scent of blood vengeance is is in the air and the jackboots are kicking at the door there really are only two options.

The media breathlessly hyped this mega-story, you would think that it was O.J. redux or at the very least another breaking news alert about Oscar Pistorious. As the old news maxim goes – when it bleeds, it leads and the bloodier the better for the carrion ensconced in their electronic nests. But this was over the top, way over the top. The freshly severed limbs of the bombing victims had yet to be fully treated when the news cycle suddenly swung into action to cover the search for the alleged perpetrators. By the time that the FBI had released the photos of the brothers the hunt was on and indeed the media found it to be good sporting fun, and very, very lucrative to the bottom line. There were times on Friday that I thought that I was watching the sequel to “The Running Man” with the way that the internet news site headlines changed the prey was being closed in on while the audience was transfixed. The one that I found particularly chilling (and more than a bit nauseating) I believe was on CNN or some other state propaganda organ and was in a huge screaming font WHERE IS HE? as Friday afternoon turned to evening. The sports websites and blogs were even in on the action, not surprising as this was the greatest game in the country for those two or so blessed days after the suspects were set upon by the black clad militarized goon squads. As of today, not one of the cowardly bitches and bastards has called the Boston response martial law, and those who have are mocked, scorned and attacked as crazies.

Typically it didn’t take long for  the usual vermin, the authoritarian Republicans to drop their silly post-election image makeover and slither out from under their rocks to play. The porcine Long Island bigot Peter King was practically calling for all Muslims to be made to wear crescent badges sewn to their clothing and herded into ghettos. Not that it bothered the insane swine when his beloved Irish Republican Army was blowing civilians including children to bits while he proudly supported them back in the 80’s. Then of course there was the ubiquitous Lindsey Graham, once again venturing out of his closet to pontificate from the Sunday morning media masturbatory fests where narcissistic beltway celebrities playact as though they are really journalists rather than the sycophants and toadies that they are and always have been. Senator Graham, soon to be joined by the dyspeptic old fool John McCain will call for military tribunals and the expansion of Gitmo and it is inevitable that this latest outrageous act of violence will serve as the basis for a national ‘conversation’ on the use of armed drones across the fruited plain. McCain especially is a veteran media whore, the doddering and drooling buffoon has been comfortable in front of the cameras ever since he made those Commie propaganda videos to curry favor with this Vietnamese captors and his mania for revenge will soon use the Boston bombings to call for yet another war, likely Iran this time. If they have not done so already there will soon be linkages in the slimier realms for the right-wing Koched up media and blogosphere tying the bombing to Obama, likely by invoking the bogeyman Bill Ayers. Some things never change.I have already seen several stories using the bombing by the brothers Tsarnaev in order to exploit the anti-immigrant bigots that are the party base, I suspect it is only a matter of time until Rush or Glenn or Sean or Ann or any of the other turds is out there promulgating some hogwash about a linkage to gay marriage. Not to worry though, there will be plenty of company from ever feckless Democrats, quislings whose cynicism never fails to surprise when it comes to reigning in an out of control armed to the teeth national asylum.

After the killing of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar, who is being held in the state of legal limbo that now has replaced due process in this rotten land of incipient fascism it was like Christmas morning and the day after a Patriots Super Bowl win all wrapped into one. There were celebratory affairs at Red Sox and Bruins games as well as throughout the nation at sporting events, it was like another hit of that mythical narcotic post-9/11 national unity that the Neocons have long found to be far, far better than sex, a red, white and blue orgasm screamed out to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner. Obama, whose lamentable time in office has all by chiseled the Bush-Cheney abomination into stone even showed up in Beantown to make one of his fine speeches. This time unlike Sandy Hook Elementary, when another terrorist named Adam Lanza blew the guts and brains out and the limbs off of twenty small childrenchildren there WILL be action. You see, in the down the rabbit hole existential hell of the “new normal” in America any mass killing that feeds the beast and expands the police state. This is especially so if it can be used as additional justification to sell even more guns is a dead bang certainty to go over in a true bipartisan manner with the rats in the halls of our contemptible Congress. While not even watered down background checks on gun purchases with massive public support can become law a further weaponizing of the state after the Boston tragedy is certain to not only result in an immediate ratcheting down of civil liberties in the name of “safety”. The rancid buzzard that is Wayne LaPierre, fresh off of the feasting on the corpses of the Sandy Hook victims to sell more guns will likely be pushing the meme that if all of the runners and spectators at the Boston Marathon had just had more guns then none of this would have ever happened.

This is a sickening time in history to be an American, our forebears would be ashamed. There is no longer such a thing as social justice as the ultra-wealthy and well-connected burrow themselves into government to ensure that the shrinking and increasingly desperate taxpayer can be shaken down to subsidize Wall Street gambling. The founding fathers, the ones who are constantly invoked by the selectively fascist shock troops of the so-called Tea Party would be aghast that that fine Constitution that they put together has been gutted as America becomes a more palatable to the eye banana republic but the ones who would be the most ashamed would be our World War II veterans. They sacrificed all to fight fascism but it is now a rising and malevolent force that only grows stronger, like a city killing hurricane.

And the fascism was on display for all to see on Friday in the streets of Boston, how much longer until it comes to YOUR city?