Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 4)

 [Continued from Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 3). sch 3/26/23.]

I prefer an America that is bolder and more confident about itself. I have not seen America truly confident in itself since I was a kid. Reagan triumphed, as had Nixon - by pitting white against black. That divisiveness reached a high art under Karl Rove. Now we have the Tea Party.

I will also note the complete absence of two words often complained of forty years ago: secular humanism. We have seen the total eclipse of secular humanism by the religious right. In the same time, we have seen more Draconian laws and more Americans in prison.

Yes, I see a causal connection. One thing learned from actual war is that it is easier to motivate a soldier by dehumanizing the enemy. Our politicians have done this to us. Remember Reagan referring to welfare queens? That dehumanized African-Americans for white voters. Our favorite domestic propaganda trick is to declare war on some social issue. Americans cannot think of limited war, and therefore the effect is to be endless until the social problem unconditionally surrenders. Yes, I am quite aware that the Democrats started this with the War on Poverty. What I no longer understand is why the conservatives decry the War on Poverty as an impossibility, but not our War on Drugs? I can say both "wars" have equally impossible to defeat opponents - poverty and vice. Evil is not so easy to defeat as George W. Bush thought.

I knew 15 years ago that the War on /Drugs was a fraud. I knew no one would pay attention because I was still doing criminal defense work. Another tactic of our Age of Unreason is to attack the messenger and drown out the message. Sitting in a federal detention facility, I see even more that smells of a fraud on the public. I still expect to be ignored, but by writing this I remove myself of any further complicity in defrauding the public.

However, by ignoring me, I find support for my theory our society is frozen. Those who have manipulated society into two camps rejecting one another, cannot now say it was all a mistake without losing position and power. The truly dangerous addition in American life is the addiction to political power. I see government being asked to be even more of a cop than it is now.

Would you let yourself be treated as the American governments treat the poor and those not white? Be honest with yourself, if not the world, poverty and/or dark skin dehumanizes people for you.

The rise of politically conservative Christianity tracks the politics of dehumanization. It is gross hypocrisy for Christians to turn away from the poor, to find no brotherhood with darker-skinned Americans. They jostle aside The Golden Rule in their efforts to jump-start the Apocalypse. I suppose Christ's return will make life easier for them - they will no longer need to imitate Him. He can tell us how to behave - as if He has not already done so.

This has been the week a Florida pastor threatened to burn a Quran (Koran). I thought it a dumb publicity stunt. My Scrabble partners disagreed with me that it created any more dangers for our troops. Their consensus was that we worried too much about the feelings of others. I thought that burning an ally's religious book was not the best to deal with an ally. I thought our political class had made clear that we fight terrorists and not Islam. Amongst the citizenry, that distinction may not be so well understood. I say the same dehumanization process used against Islamic terrorists has been long used on us. Who are we not afraid to look upon as deserving an equal moral treatment?

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[To be continued in Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 5). sch 3/26/23.]