Posted by panch from ? (204.120.48.100) on Tuesday, March 26, 2002 at 12:57PM :
In the forties, fifties and sixties it was Communism we were all supposed to
be afraid of. Then as now, these fears were manufactured and amplified and
blown up out of all proportion to reality in order to keep us focused on our
safety and security...like the con man who distracts you with some geegaw
while he picks your pocket...and getting our pockets picked was exactly what
that was all about.
It's being set up again...the same con game. In place of Communists roaming
the earth...trying to "get us and our way of life", it is now some shadowy
"Terrist" thing. We are being told again that "they" are out
there...all around us, and even hiding among us...perhaps that neighbor you
don't like anyway, or that brother-in-law who never returned the lawn mower.
And we are told it will be a long and possibly unending battle, but one we
MUST fight if we are to keep our standard of living...that we must spare NO
expense, deny NO new weapons system guaranteed to make a Grumman Corporation
or a Kaiser Electronics rich and famous.
The definition of a Terrorist will come in time to mean anyone, any 14 year
old boy or girl, who finally has enough of the same Colonial and Imperialist
abuse people of color have been suffering for generations now so we could
have this "enviable" lifestyle. Just as every peasant in South America who
rose up in frustrated fury to demand some decent treatment from a foreign
corporation propping up the dictatorships that robbed him of his labor and
just rewards, was called a Communist...a part of a "global" network...a world
wide threat moving ever closer to our shores...coming to steal from us what
they coveted and destroy us in the process, so vile and cruel and without
human feelings were they.
And we bought it then and seem to be willing to be scared out of our wits
again. Keep your eyes on the Federal Court, on Clean Air and Water
standards, on logging and the cattle industry and farm subsidies and Energy
Policy...for these are all being attacked and re-written and re-directed
while you are looking for the Terrorist under your beds as you were looking
for the Communist 50 years ago.
To get us looking the other way while a few corporations rob the public
treasury is what these diversions are all about. These guys could care less
about a fetus or a criminal let loose too soon or the well being of any
number of Americans...it is for profit and power, and we, the people, will be
the ones to pay for it again. We will see a spike upward of drug use, not
just among seedy students, but across the board in every home and school in
the nation. We will become even more paranoid and mean spirited...more
racist and depressed and therefore more addicted than ever to mindless
pursuits that together with gallons and rivers of beer and "fine" wines will
dull us into more of the stupor we are aldeady in...and we will have to smile
harder at Christmas and work overtime to be sentimental and have more and
more reasons to find "closure" as more people flip out from the pressure and
the poverty and the uncertainty.
And, just as before, laws are being changed and added, and the legal system
is being modified to accomodate this "emergency" that will become a permanent
state of affairs and one day you may not have the legal rights to challenge a
system that will deicde that you, or your son or daughetr are one of "them".
The German's went along allowing the Nazi's in power to "streamline" the
legal system to root out the "agitators", those not "patriotic", the
Bolsheviks...and began to lay the groundwork to later get rid of the Jews,
the writers, the intellectuals, the artists, the publishers and journalists
and everyone else they later decided was a "threat" to national security and
not a "good" German. It was these same Good German's who later couldn't
smell burning flesh coming from the crematoria on the hill...until it was
their own.
-- panch
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