Chairmanmeow

I've just returned from Spain today, having left ORD on New Year's Eve. I was able to avoid the NOS because the TSA already had someone in their clutches, an older women standing on the "secure" side of the cancer box, waiting to be assaulted. As I was gathering my belongings, this women was being escorted by a phalanx of TSA thugs to an interrogation room. Other then quietly stating that she didn't understand what the problem was, she put up no resistance.

A couple days ago I was in the central plaza in Madrid (Puerto del Sol), where a large group of people were marching around with placards. They also had a table set up, where I picked up an English language flier. Apparently, they meet every night to demand justice for General Franco's victims. There are still thousands of people who have "disappeared", and are still not accounted for by the Spanish government, even almost 40 years later.

At ORD, I couldn't get away from the security checkpoint fast enough. It was pretty frightening watching the arbitrary abuse of power people are now subjected to. In Madrid I began to realize the terror the Spanish people must have felt, being surrounded by Franco's police.

This is clearly the direction we are headed to in the U.S. TSA checkpoints are popping up at bus stations, train stations and roadside checkpoints. They have made no secret of the fact that they want to expand the scope of the TSA to even include private property such as hotels and malls. It is not hard at all to envision a near future where the TSA will be stopping people at random on the street to check our papers and question our activities. If they don't like our answers, we will probably disappear for interrogation. May God help us all.

AINITFUNNY

in the early 1970's As a typical dumb young mother in my early 30's, I never had much interest in "politics" and didn't see any way "politics" might affect me. DH was stationed in Italy with us, his family and we decided to take a drive and go vacation in General Franco's backyard. We got there and were camping when we young folks decided we would sneak off and go skinny dipping at 1am after the kids were asleep. DH and I got to just before the beach and were shocked when we saw a pair of Franco's machine gun armed soldiers patrolling the beach of the campground and immediately decided we'd find something else to do instead.

There is actually more to the story. One BIG reason we did not want to tangle with the officials is that we had heard on the radio just before we got to Spain that a last case of small pox had been just discovered in Spain. They were all panic stricken and overwrought on the radio broadcast. Unfortunately, TWO of my three kids had just then (way after we left home) broken out with Chickenpox from their sister who had had it a few weeks before. We did not want to tangle with ignorant, overreacting Spanish border officials whom we were sure would not know the difference between chickenpox and smallpox, so we snuck through the border after dark with the kids all covered up, sleeping in the back of the van. We chose a campsite way away from any other campers and kept to ourselves and didn't need any soldiers looking at our kids right then.

CubsFanJohn

I am going to be honest here (I am 20) and say I am afraid with the way our Government is acting and how the people are putting up a lack of resistance that is going to happen and that is something I fear it is time to shut up and actually do something bold.

PhlyingRPh

You are twenty. You were a child when this nonsense first started. Thankfully, sentiments like yours are more apparent today then they were even five years ago. For a good while, the number of people on this very forum that blindly appreciated security at any cost, or at least at the expense of brown people was rather high. Of course, they had no idea that they would eventually be targeted too, but at the time they were only too happy to watch people rounded up in the wee hours, removed from trains, detained in secret locations and shipped off never to be heard from again. They felt safe when american soldiers ran amok in american airports pointing their rifles at any brown skinned individual, be they man, woman or child. Thankfully, good sense has finally seeped into some peoples brains but frankly its too little too late.

By not standing up against the military and security establishment and their propensity to strip the people of their rights and at the same time harm others around the world, there is no one else to blame for the current state of affairs. Things might have been different if people had listened to the lone voices they instead chose to call terrorists and fifth columnists in late 2001. Standing up to the onslaught of politically and religiously inspired propaganda at that time instead of waving silly flags and listening to jingoistic and racist country music ballads would have been the thing to do. Now all people can do, ten years later, is grouse about the freedoms they have lost.

danang

The Politics of Fear

http://www.opendemocracy.net/andy-yee/politics-of-fear

BearX220

I'm 50. I grew up in the 1960s, when leaders were regularly shot dead, Washington burned, civil rights marchers were beaten and killed, political conventions degenerated into riots, and the country nearly flew apart. I saw all of it, mostly on black-and-white TV, but I was acutely aware of the gravity of the era, young as I was. Yet the threats to basic American liberties were not as profound as they are today, and back then the public was fully involved in doing something about it.

That participatory karma, that faith in the system, persisted through the Watergate hearings and the end of Nixon... then exhaustion seemed to set in.

Today we have a seeming majority endorsing totalitarianism/fascism lite over participatory democracy, and the best opponents can do is write an angry blog post or two. Keyboard cowboys.

"Time to shut up and do something bold" -- like what? A national work strike? A flying boycott, like the Montgomery bus boycott? Strategic targeting of one airline, to put it out of business? Mass non-violent sit-ins, MLK/Gandhi-style, at airport checkpoints? None of that is happening, or even close. The energy that propelled us through the 1960s is gone now. Nobody really cares anymore. People are beaten, scared and fatalistic. It's an ideal environment for fascism to take root. The jackboot contingent sees their chance. Which is why within ten years you'll be anally probed before getting into a minor league baseball game.

No serious protests will accompany America's slipping gently away into that good night. The older folks have given up and the younger ones are stoned on digital goodies barfing out of their smartphones. Elegant blog posts mean nothing when the tanks are in the streets.

I think we're cooked and done.

PatrickHenry1775

This is an interesting thread, although I suspect it may soon be moved to Omni. Recent events seem to bear out a fear that TSA is the camel's nose under the tent, an initial agency that is the forerunner of a totalitarian United States of Amerika. That would be a shame, because our experiment in a representative constitutional republic worked for around 200 years.

What is most aggravating to me, a former assistant prosecuting attorney, is the disregard of constitutional rights of Americans. The national government for decades has failed in performing core duties that the Constitution requires of it. Our borders have essentially been wide open since the early 1980s. Republicans want cheap labor, Democrats want recipients of government largesse and then votes. Our failure to address the 1983 bombing of the Marines barracks in Beirut emboldened the Islamowackos. Allowing the murders of Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro and USN Robert Stethem in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 to go unavanged appears to have further emboldened the Islamowackos. Back in the early 1800s, President Thomas Jefferson used military force to roust the Barbary Pirates. How things changed!

In the face of this inaction, TSA's increasingly bold violations of the constitutional rights of Americans, and attemped expansion of its violations from airports to trains and urban mass transit systems, is even more frightening. The national government appears to be using attempted plots by Islamowackos from foreign countries to impose draconian restrictions on Americans. This parallels Nazi Germany and the burning of the Reichstag.

I am glad to see concern on the part of CubsFanJohn, a member of the generation following mine. Hopefully enough Americans will resist this expansion of overbearing security directed at Americans, rather than the perps, and prevent the United States from morphing into Amerika.

nachtnebel

I disagree wholeheartedly. Take a look at what is happening in Mexico. That is not a drug war, it is an insurrection and a highly successful one. (Hilary Clinton let this slip out in a statement last month.) Huge swathes of that country are run independantly from the federal government in Mexico City. The drug trade does fuel the power of those who have taken over in those areas. All made possible because of an incredibly corrupt and despised federal govt. there.

Now take a look at what is happening to almost every highly centralized industrial country. Their balance books are in shambles, their banks are insolvent, and they can no longer borrow with any hope of paying back and also with no hope of even making the interest payments once inflation starts.

In our own country, 46 states have budget gaps that they cannot close, many with budget gaps that require gutting of many critical functions, 10 states that cannot pay retires within a few years, and a lot more states that run out of retiree money a few years later.

Our federal government survives only by printing money the rest of the world accepts. This is coming to an end, as our status as the world currency is ending fast. Many oil producing countries no longer accept payment in US dollars. When no one accepts US dollars or only at a hugely discounted rates, our standard of living will collapse. There will be no money for the empire, no money for the army of spies at HSA, no money for the wet dreams of the TSA, no money for them to dispense out to buy the acquiescence of the people and of the states. Ultimately, no incentive for anyone to have any loyalty to the federal government at all, in terms of finances.

In short, what we are looking at over the next 20 years is a probable decentralization due to the unsupportable expense and waste of the central govt's. This could be a good thing in the united States because there is a long history of self-government at the local level and at the state level. The unnecessary functions of the federal government could collapse and yet life would continue in the states.

GadgetFreak

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I think it is important to note three things.

1). Perspective is important and is quite frankly lost in some of these posts

2). The OP is pretty much of an enormous reach in comparing Franco to the TSA.

3). And finally I can't pass on this thread without pointing out that "generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead".

BearX220

I think we simply have two different definitions of "cooked and done." As the federal structure implodes, they will stop spending on infrastructure, education, etc., etc. they will cut defense and even entitlements, but the last thing they will cut is the national security apparatus. A patchwork of state-level security solutions cannot compensate. Imagine needing a passport to travel from California to Nevada.

goalie

Bolding mine: ^ (think the young'uns will get it without using Google )

nachtnebel

I don't disagree, but at some point, even that will fall. There simply won't be money enough to spend on non problems.

divemistressofthedark

Ha! Wonder what Garrett Morris is up to these days...

Without meaning this as confrontationally as it may sound, I wonder how much of this is blaming the victim. Our government has done a damn fine job of (irresponsibly, IMO) scaring the bejeebers out of the public given the faintest opportunity - the introduction of the Orwellian-monikered DHS, the ridiculous color coded threat levels (which are always - always - at orange or red), the continual "sky is falling" rhetoric on 20 zillion cable stations all day every day. Muslims as the enemy, to the point where even building a mosque is unthinkable in many communities, damn the fact the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Continual scare stories about whatever global pandemic is going to kill us all next. "Child predator" hourly updates. Everything, including the air and water, will give you some unspeakable disease that will disfigure you horribly before you become a wizened husk.

Can you even imagine a high-ranking U.S. politician giving FDR's first Inaugural? It's unthinkable. Saying something to discourage fear in the population might mean less payola from the security industrial complex. (L3, Rapiscan, this means you.)

Instilling panic in the population makes it easier to control. I'll agree I think more should be done, but I don't think it's out of some inherent weak will on the part of the public (or that young people are somehow simpler-minded than their elders. Here's Orwell again: "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.")

I think people are so frightened they don't know what to do, and they're inclined to trust government out of a paucity of other options. (Also, what can you do? Both political parties are owned by corporations, so you can't look to figures at the heads of them for help. You can't run for office yourself, because it costs millions. If you try to picket some corporation, the government it owns will stop you.

Personally, I've given up flying. I'm lucky in that my job doesn't depend on it. I also talk a lot about my boycott to people who would like me to come and visit them...long story, but I used to fly a roundtrip once a month or so.

I've also written letters to all my electeds, every U.S. airline, several hotel chains and the USTA. I realize I'm not 'normal' - but I'm finding it encouraging how many new articles I find every day on the state of things, how many people in the course of my everyday life are now willing to listen to me talk about the irradiation of the public...I guess I just don't think all is lost. And I think those of us who know better are obligated to talk about this as much as we can, because we may be capable of critical thought where others might not be just yet.)