We Have Become Them

Trey Smith

Since 9/11, the war on terror and the campaign for homeland security have increasingly mimicked the tactics of the enemies they sought to crush. Violence and punishment as both a media spectacle and a bone-crushing reality have become prominent and influential forces shaping American society.
~ from Violence, USA: The Warfare State and the Brutalizing of Everyday Life by Henry A. Giroux ~

What the US has done in the name of "security" since 9/11 is nothing new; it is a tack that has been repeated over and over again by the great powers throughout history. Why is it that each powerful state after another doesn't learn from the mistakes of those that preceded them?

An adversary attacks and, in order [supposedly] to protect the nation, the government proceeds to do to themselves what the adversary failed to accomplish. In the present case, we're told that the terrorists want us to be afraid and to give up our freedoms in order to feel safer, yet the people inciting the most fear and destroying our freedoms are own leaders.

Just look at one of the most insidious aspects of this push for greater "security:" our own government is spying on all of us, including millions of people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. The domestic spying apparatus that has been erected in the US over the past 10+ years is not that different from the Soviet's KGB or the Nazi's SS.

It could be pointed out that, unlike the KGB or SS, Americans aren't being rounded up en masse to be sent to the gallows or concentration camps. Of course, it could be that we simply haven't gotten that far in the process yet. It could be that this happenstance is just around the next corner or two.

Even if we don't follow this same kind of trajectory, that certainly doesn't mean that we have nothing to worry about. If we look at history, each leading power tweaks the strategy to better match the times. Instead of arresting us or gunning us down in the streets, maybe all our leaders really want is for most of us to be so intimidated by the possibility of heinous acts against us that we become a docile and malleable citizenry.

Why throw people in prison when we voluntarily imprison ourselves?