The American Fascist Sandwich: Indefinite Detention and Internment Camps
December 27th, 2011Via: Activist Post:
It’s time to dispense with semantic subtleties meant to placate and avoid offense. Diplomacy is reserved for those who are worthy. No more time to waste on pandering to, analyzing, intellectualizing or sugar-coating treachery. The State is the enemy of the people. Those responsible for instilling fear, subjugation, humiliation, imprisonment, torture and murder are our own government terrorists–the U.S. Congress, the President of the United States and their minions.
They have betrayed the American citizenry, as they have the rest of the world. They have defiled and destroyed the Constitution. They have committed treason. They are grinding the 99% into the ground with every stroke of the pen; every vote cast in the name of enriching their corporate umbilical cords and bank accounts. They do not deserve respect. They are thieves who have hijacked their positions of power. They deserve exactly what the National Defense Authorization Act will now so freely foist upon the rest of us — to be tossed into a hole to rot somewhere without benefit of charges, trial, or protection from torture and murder, for the rest of their miserable, worthless existences.
One owes no civility to barbarians. No benevolence to fascists. Capitol Hill and the White House have declared war on the American people. Their intent is crystal clear for all paying attention. Conspiracy theory ‘lunatics’ are having the last laugh as their warnings are now bearing fruit. It is no longer outrageous conjecture to believe our own government is intent on our demise.
Well, I gotta say that I couldn’t have sent out the alarm more eloquently than this writer. There is no question that most the frogs in pot still don’t feel the water near boiling, intent as they are on who is winning the football game or talent show.
Ok, that is all a well written polemic. But in reading it I was impressed with how the quality of things has apparently not changed in approximately 150 years or more since Henry Thoreau wrote his own polemic, ‘Civil Disobedience, in which he famously maintained,
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” –
So the nature of things never really changes. But intensity ebbs and flows. Currently the intensity is obviously flowing. But the nature never changes, because the underlying basis of human nature remains the same. No doubt ‘1984’ has played itself out to some degree at some point in the historical arc of almost every ‘great’ empire in history. Because, the underlying elements of human nature are always the same.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t doubt Thoreau would have honestly appreciated the semantic advantages of “Fascist Sandwich” over ‘Civil Disobedience’.
windhorse brought up the boiling frogs which made me think of a site i came across in the last couple of days:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/09/house-of-mirrors-part-i-mystical-covert-agendas/
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/18/house-of-mirrors-part-ii-living-the-fantasy/
…
From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.
But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.
In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand.
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i bring it up not for the name coincidence though, but for the good history summation i found in it and the site that led me to it:
http://www.invisiblehistory.com/house-of-mirrors-part-iv-the-twilight-lords/
(whose link i found on the blogroll on http://www.commondreams.org/)
when it comes to CIA/NSA et al history, i am always on the lookout for Roald Dahl’s name, and there it was:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-i/
http://www.invisiblehistory.com/sibel-edmonds-www-boilingfrogspost-com-presents/
…
As a committed Anglophile, Rockefeller had aided British intelligence during World War II when he rented space in New York’s Rockefeller Center at a steep discount to a number of British propaganda agencies including their secret intelligence service for the Americas, the British Security Coordination (BSC). The BSC’s chief, Sir William Stephenson (Intrepid) set up shop in New York City with the help of some of New York’s wealthiest families with one main objective in mind: Get the United States into the war in Europe on Britain’s behalf.
One key agent in the psychological war for American public opinion was young RAF pilot Roald Dahl who along with James Bond creator Ian Fleming, playwright Noel Coward and Gallup pollster David Ogilvy were given free rein to commit sabotage, political subversion and propagandize “the natives” (Americans) through whatever means possible.
Dahl’s creative fiction earned him praise from the New York Times and publishing contracts from Random House as well as entrée to Hollywood where he would collaborate with Walt and Roy Disney in their studio’s transformation into an arsenal of animation while inspiring numerous imitators. Dahl would go on to marry a movie star and become a Hollywood icon with perennial successes, most notably “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The cult of intelligence would ultimately become so seamlessly blended into every aspect of publishing, television and film, the CIA would jokingly be referred to as “the Chocolate Factory.” Along with Fleming, Ogilvy and Coward, Dahl would help to get the United States into the war with Germany and craft an enduring Anglo-centric cultural narrative in the public’s mind whose main objective was the promotion of a British agenda for the United States. That agenda would quickly shift from anti-fascist to aggressive Cold War anti-communist (read anti-Russian) as World War II ended, with Britain playing a seminal role in the creation of America’s national security state.
President Harry Truman’s March 12, 1947 proclamation laying out the rationale for the Cold War (Truman Doctrine), fundamentally altered America’s identity by embedding a permanent psychology of fear. But a hidden aspect of this conflict was the slow, grinding corruption that its unreality fostered in America’s leadership. That unreality was finally revealed in the catastrophe of Vietnam.
…
& he goes on to quote Sen. J. Wm. Fulbright a lot -which works for me: i loved his book ‘The Crippled Giant’…
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…yes, the coronation of Reagan was a milestone for all the blatant disingenuity shoveled on us but really one can say these things began with Teddy Roosevelt -or earlier -or Nixon -or Prescott Bush, or etc… but for me the coming of Roald Dahl was a bigger milestone than RR’s ascension… but then again, i think even Nixon and Kissinger predated RR in curtain-raising disingenuity… so what do i know.
boiling frogs indeed; what a heck of a long slow boil. generations.
progressives maybe aren’t as inclined toward hardcore generational indoctrination as authoritarians are?
after the wall fell the cold-war shifted from communism to terrorism, and it was never about communism.
even the dalai lama is a self admitted marxist ideally. how long before we go from terrorists to proletariat, full circle, and dispense w/ the pleasantries?
as for hardcore generational indoctrination, i think honesty and truth might be the most effective method, whether progressive or otherwise, speaking in the long-term.
@pessimistic optimist:
yes, precisely so.
labels do suck and i did grimace inwardly when i typed ‘progressives’, i admit. the distinction i meant was between parents who encourage their children to be true to themselves and think for themselves while teaching them what they as such parents believe versus those parents for whom such affirming latitude is not a given.