Warring on Ourselves 3-7-2013

    [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/10/2025] 

I have written elsewhere about our War on Crime/Drugs creating a culture in this country of one part against the other. Reading Michael Eric Dyson's Can You Hear Me Now?, I find this paragraph as generally supportive of my views:

There's no question that George W. Bush was prosecuting war on all fronts, so that cultural conflict became the war on terror by other means. What I mean, more specifically, is that all of this brouhaha occasioned by civil marriage versus gay marriages, for example, just served to ratchet up an atmosphere of paranoia which seemed to say: "You had better watch out because the terrorist lurks outside is also the kind of cultural terrorist that looms large domestically. Those who support a gay or lesbian living next door to them are the same people telling this country to be critical of the Bush administration; they want to reject your evangelical Christianity or conservative Judaism. They're now assaulting you." So I think there was a concerted ideological effort to create an environment of paranoia around cultural values and to link that cultural fear to political fear. That kind of ideological illusion is brilliant, but I think it's ultimately perverted.

Chapter 15: Homosexuality and Homophobia

I think therein lies an explanation for much of President Obama's behavior during his first term. The radical conservatives (AKA right-wing wing nuts) had pushed their agenda of hate so long, they expected to be paid in an equal amount of viciousness. Obama creates in them such a frenzy that they lose contact with reality. Unfortunately, they remain stuck in the craw of the body politic like a giant hairball. I think this problem began long before George W. Bush. 

A friend wrote me recently about how in her area, ammunition flew off the shelves out of fear of confiscation by the federal government. She actually wrote me:

We have a feeling soon only criminal will be armed - including the government. Are we experiencing fascism?

That such a liberal-minded, educated person should be pushed to such a position eradicates how overwrought has become civic life outside of prison. You people have gone crazy. Maybe I should rethink my commutation petition.

sch 

[7/10/2025:The roots of Trumpism go deep. sch.]