At war with ourselves
by Tom Sullivan
It really is Orwellian. Or else deeply funny. A people taught to fear the totalitarian world Orwell warned them about have adopted the same permanent war footing of Orwell’s Oceania. Wikipedia describes Oceania as “a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation.” Except whereas for Oceania the shape-shifting, intractable foe was always out there somewhere on foreign battlefields, here in America he is — like the Devil — lurking around every corner. We are at war with ourselves.
Police shoot unarmed citizens over perceived threats. And why not? They’re “on the front lines.” Everybody says so. The job is described as a war and the police are dressed for it. Citizens shoot each other over perceived threats because they’ve been empowered by law both to carry sidearms and to “stand their ground,” as though from an enemy frontal assault. War on drugs, war on terror, front lines, stand your ground, talk of tyranny and cattle cars? And pundits, politicians, and experts claim our inner-cities suffer from a “culture of violence“?
In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson looks at paranoia in Texas over Jade Helm 15 exercises bringing martial law, rumors of ISIS camps on the border, and a real-life attack on a “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest:
What these bewildering scenarios have in common is a perception of Texas as a battlefield in a constant war waged on all fronts. That presumption of a state of siege, fostered by politicians willing to pander to fears of mystery maps and foreign infiltration—perhaps in the White House itself—makes it harder to respond rationally, and with respect for civil liberties, when danger truly is clear and present. There are real threats, and that is what makes scaremongering so destructive. If ISIS is the answer to everything, what is the answer to ISIS?
A wild guess: 42?
The battlefield everywhere is bigger even than Texas.