Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams. America is entering a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are being subjected to the latest in government spy technology.
These threats to our freedoms are not to be underestimated. Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language they are couched in – the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.
This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. A perfect example of this masterful use of the politics of fear to cow the populace is the government’s War on Drugs. Reputedly a response to crime and poverty in inner cities and suburbia, it has been the driving force behind the militarization of the police, at all levels, over the past 40 years. While it has failed to decrease drug use, it has exacerbated social problems by expanding America’s rapidly growing prison system and allowing police carte blanche access to our homes and personal property.
2 comments:
History repeating it's self. The have nots wanting what others worked for.
Or, the haves making sure the have nots never do.
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