Tuesday, February 11, 2003

The Accidental Blog   Take a look at the Accidental Blog, which I have added to the navigation bar on the left.  Blogging appears to have taken over our family, as this one, which I have referenced before, is written by my nephew Dan Rosan.  He discusses the Michael Lerner controversy.  I personally think the refusal of the city of New York to only grant a rally permit, but not a march permit is a much greater issue, with more ramifications for civil liberties, than the fight between Lerner and A.N.S.W.E.R. 11:29:06 PM   comment []    Mass Hysteria in the Service of War Our country is suffering from mass hysteria.  The latest terror alert has frightened people so much that they are buying duct tape to seal up rooms in their houses from chemical attack.  Will they care about Iraqi civilians, the rights of the accused, or the freedom of Muslims when their leaders get up and tell them there are hundreds of unknown sleeper cells of terrorists in their midst.   A person from our church called me tonight, since I am known as being against the war, and said that  she had taken care of her family, and that perhaps instead of marching and demonstrating, I should be figuring out ways our church could make everyone safer.  Then I learned on the news that Home Depot has virtually run out of duct tape.  What is going on??   People are extremely afraid of going to war with Iraq.  In order to drum up support for an aggressive war against a weak country 8,000 miles away, the government has had to manufacture a monster to frighten everyone to death.   They have attributed power to Saddam to bring down the entire U.S.     Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft talk of nuclear bombs going off in our cities.   I thought this garbage went out with the cold war.   When I was young, we used to have air raid drills in Austin, Texas.  The first Sunday of each month, at 10:00 am, the air raid sirens would blow.  You were supposed to know that if they came at any other time, it was a nuclear attack (or possibly a tornado).   In elementary school, they taught us in the second grade to crouch under our desks and protect ourselves from the flying glass unleashed by the shock wave.   During high school, I wrote stories about surviving atomic blasts, and read and re-read On the Beach, by Nevil Shute.   The hysteria whipped up in our country supported a massive transfer of power to large corporations and large government. Only by conforming could we be safe.   When we came of age, we rebelled against this fear-induced conformity.  What made us free was first of all, freedom from fear.  We felt the communist hysteria was a bunch of lies.  We felt our whole country was built on lies—from the lie of equality that was exposed by the civil rights movement, to the lie of respect for individuality that was destroyed by corporate conformity, to the lie of the danger of communism, which was exposed by the defeat in Vietnam.  Our country did not collapse when Saigon fell.  Getting out of Vietnam made us stronger.   Now, we appear on the verge of a new wave of mass fear, induced by our leaders to achieve political ends.  Bush cannot attack a weak and distant country that is not an immediate threat to the U.S. without first creating hysteria in the population.  He wants them to feel that they are under imminent threat of chemical and nuclear death.   Our media, having become addicted to sensationalizing all fears, act as an echo chamber, so tonight we have the spectacle of orange flags on screens, anchors talking about not being able to sleep, and Aaron Brown for god’s sake saying he feels safer in the American military base in Kuwait than he would back in America.   What does this fear do to people’s views of innocent Iraqi’s.  They no longer matter—I may die tomorrow in a terrorist attack.  What does it do to those who ask for lawyers for detainees—who wish to preserve 900 years of English common law—why its swept aside in hysteria over possible secret terror cells.   The Europeans are less fearful than us because they have lived through real wars.  We have just watched them on TV.  The Europeans have lived through the Holocaust.   We have just read about it.  Further, France, Germany, and Britain have all experienced outbreaks of terrorism that their police forced eventually brought under control.  In short, the Europeans are not susceptible to the extreme fear we seem to have, so they do not see Saddam as a threat.   The Europeans love democracy because they have seen fascism.  That is why Europe is rapidly becoming a greater haven for the protection of individual rights than is the U.S.   I think the next sign I will bring to a demonstration will say: No Fear = No War. 11:07:03 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 3/3/2003; 11:24:20 PM.