Is The U.S Descending Into Fascism?
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
If I were American I'd make a point of reading the diaries of Victor Klemperer - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-Bear-Witne ... 64-0253707
A book that details the slow but sure stripping away of individual freedoms and dignity by a fascist state.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... al-control
How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses
Believe me, you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. And yet, it's exactly what is happening
Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to "turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks." He said he felt humiliated: "It made me feel like less of a man."
In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices' decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven't been introduced into a prison population.
Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner".
Believe me: you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.
The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.
One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium – where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as this are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.
I have watched male police and TSA members standing by side by side salaciously observing women as they have been "patted down" in airports. I have experienced the weirdly phrased, sexually perverse intrusiveness of the state during an airport "pat-down", which is always phrased in the words of a steamy paperback ("do you have any sensitive areas? … I will use the back of my hands under your breasts …"). One of my Facebook commentators suggested, I think plausibly, that more women are about to be found liable for arrest for petty reasons (scarily enough, the TSA is advertising for more female officers).
I interviewed the equivalent of TSA workers in Britain and found that the genital groping that is obligatory in the US is illegal in Britain. I believe that the genital groping policy in America, too, is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state – at any moment.
The most terrifying phrase of all in the decision is justice Kennedy's striking use of the term "detainees" for "United States citizens under arrest". Some members of Occupy who were arrested in Los Angeles also reported having been referred to by police as such. Justice Kennedy's new use of what looks like a deliberate activation of that phrase is illuminating.
Ten years of association have given "detainee" the synonymous meaning in America as those to whom no rights apply – especially in prison. It has been long in use in America, habituating us to link it with a condition in which random Muslims far away may be stripped by the American state of any rights. Now the term – with its associations of "those to whom anything may be done" – is being deployed systematically in the direction of … any old American citizen.
Where are we headed? Why? These recent laws criminalizing protest, and giving local police – who, recall, are now infused with DHS money, military hardware and personnel – powers to terrify and traumatise people who have not gone through due process or trial, are being set up to work in concert with a see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. A facility is being set up in Utah by the NSA to monitor everything all the time: James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine that the new facility in Bluffdale, Utah, is being built, where the NSA will look at billions of emails, texts and phone calls. Similar legislation is being pushed forward in the UK.
With that Big Brother eye in place, working alongside these strip-search laws, – between the all-seeing data-mining technology and the terrifying police powers to sexually abuse and humiliate you at will – no one will need a formal coup to have a cowed and compliant citizenry. If you say anything controversial online or on the phone, will you face arrest and sexual humiliation?
Remember, you don't need to have done anything wrong to be arrested in America any longer. You can be arrested for walking your dog without a leash. The man who was forced to spread his buttocks was stopped for a driving infraction. I was told by an NYPD sergeant that "safety" issues allow the NYPD to make arrests at will. So nothing prevents thousands of Occupy protesters – if there will be any left after these laws start to bite – from being rounded up and stripped naked under intimidating conditions.
Why is this happening? I used to think the push was just led by those who profited from endless war and surveillance – but now I see the struggle as larger. As one internet advocate said to me: "There is a race against time: they realise the internet is a tool of empowerment that will work against their interests, and they need to race to turn it into a tool of control."
As Chris Hedges wrote in his riveting account of the NDAA: "There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011."
This enormous new sector of the economy has a multi-billion-dollar vested interest in setting up a system to survey, physically intimidate and prey upon the rest of American society.
Now they can do so by threatening to demean you sexually – a potent tool in the hands of any bully.
A book that details the slow but sure stripping away of individual freedoms and dignity by a fascist state.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... al-control
How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses
Believe me, you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. And yet, it's exactly what is happening
Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to "turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks." He said he felt humiliated: "It made me feel like less of a man."
In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices' decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven't been introduced into a prison population.
Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner".
Believe me: you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.
The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.
One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium – where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as this are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.
I have watched male police and TSA members standing by side by side salaciously observing women as they have been "patted down" in airports. I have experienced the weirdly phrased, sexually perverse intrusiveness of the state during an airport "pat-down", which is always phrased in the words of a steamy paperback ("do you have any sensitive areas? … I will use the back of my hands under your breasts …"). One of my Facebook commentators suggested, I think plausibly, that more women are about to be found liable for arrest for petty reasons (scarily enough, the TSA is advertising for more female officers).
I interviewed the equivalent of TSA workers in Britain and found that the genital groping that is obligatory in the US is illegal in Britain. I believe that the genital groping policy in America, too, is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state – at any moment.
The most terrifying phrase of all in the decision is justice Kennedy's striking use of the term "detainees" for "United States citizens under arrest". Some members of Occupy who were arrested in Los Angeles also reported having been referred to by police as such. Justice Kennedy's new use of what looks like a deliberate activation of that phrase is illuminating.
Ten years of association have given "detainee" the synonymous meaning in America as those to whom no rights apply – especially in prison. It has been long in use in America, habituating us to link it with a condition in which random Muslims far away may be stripped by the American state of any rights. Now the term – with its associations of "those to whom anything may be done" – is being deployed systematically in the direction of … any old American citizen.
Where are we headed? Why? These recent laws criminalizing protest, and giving local police – who, recall, are now infused with DHS money, military hardware and personnel – powers to terrify and traumatise people who have not gone through due process or trial, are being set up to work in concert with a see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. A facility is being set up in Utah by the NSA to monitor everything all the time: James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine that the new facility in Bluffdale, Utah, is being built, where the NSA will look at billions of emails, texts and phone calls. Similar legislation is being pushed forward in the UK.
With that Big Brother eye in place, working alongside these strip-search laws, – between the all-seeing data-mining technology and the terrifying police powers to sexually abuse and humiliate you at will – no one will need a formal coup to have a cowed and compliant citizenry. If you say anything controversial online or on the phone, will you face arrest and sexual humiliation?
Remember, you don't need to have done anything wrong to be arrested in America any longer. You can be arrested for walking your dog without a leash. The man who was forced to spread his buttocks was stopped for a driving infraction. I was told by an NYPD sergeant that "safety" issues allow the NYPD to make arrests at will. So nothing prevents thousands of Occupy protesters – if there will be any left after these laws start to bite – from being rounded up and stripped naked under intimidating conditions.
Why is this happening? I used to think the push was just led by those who profited from endless war and surveillance – but now I see the struggle as larger. As one internet advocate said to me: "There is a race against time: they realise the internet is a tool of empowerment that will work against their interests, and they need to race to turn it into a tool of control."
As Chris Hedges wrote in his riveting account of the NDAA: "There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011."
This enormous new sector of the economy has a multi-billion-dollar vested interest in setting up a system to survey, physically intimidate and prey upon the rest of American society.
Now they can do so by threatening to demean you sexually – a potent tool in the hands of any bully.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-fbcy1tRoA
Published April 02, 2012
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has ruled that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights.
By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who complained that strip searches in two county jails violated his civil rights.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion for the court's conservative justices that when people are going to be put into the general jail population, "courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security."
In a dissenting opinion joined by the court's liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer said strip searches improperly "subject those arrested for minor offenses to serious invasions of their personal privacy."
Albert Florence was forced to undress and submit to strip searches following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine, though the fine actually had been paid. Even if the warrant had been valid, failure to pay a fine is not a crime in New Jersey.
But Kennedy focused on the fact that Florence was held with other inmates in the general population. In concurring opinions, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said the decision left open the possibility of an exception to the rule and might not apply to someone held apart from other inmates.
The first strip search of Florence took place in the Burlington County Jail in southern New Jersey. Six days later, Florence had not received a hearing and remained in custody. Transferred to another county jail in Newark, he was strip-searched again.
The next day, a judge dismissed all charges. Florence's lawsuit soon followed.
He may still pursue other claims, including that he never should have been arrested.
Florence's problems arose in March 2005, as he was heading to dinner at his mother-in-law's house with his pregnant wife and 4-year-old child. His wife, April, was driving when a state trooper stopped the family SUV on a New Jersey highway.
Florence identified himself as the vehicle's owner and the trooper, checking records, found an outstanding warrant for an unpaid fine. Florence, who is African-American, had been stopped several times before, and he carried a letter to the effect that the fine, for fleeing a traffic stop several years earlier, had been paid.
His protest was in vain, however, and the trooper handcuffed him and hauled him off to jail. At the time, the State Police were operating under a court order, spawned by allegations of past racial discrimination, that provided federal monitors to assess state police stops of minority drivers. But the propriety of the stop is not at issue, and Florence is not alleging racial discrimination.
In 1979, the Supreme Court upheld a blanket policy of conducting body cavity searches of prisoners who had had contact with visitors on the basis that the interaction with outsiders created the possibility that some prisoners got hold of something they shouldn't have.
For the next 30 or so years, appeals courts applying the high court ruling held uniformly that strip searches without suspicion violated the Constitution.
But since 2008 -- and in the first appellate rulings on the issue since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- appeals courts in Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Francisco decided that authorities' need to maintain security justified a wide-ranging search policy, no matter the reason for someone's detention.
The high court upheld the ruling from the Philadelphia court, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case is Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 10-945.
Looks like major appellate courts across America agree with the Supreme Court ruling.
Does this mean the majority of US citizens agree with this practice?
or were they just asleep on their watch again.
I'm thinking the later.
This is outrageous.
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
you should be afraid ... :(
I haven't read the decision closely enough to have a good opinion on it yet, but my initial understanding is that the decision is based on concerns for safety in jails. Arrestees are subject to pre-trial detention, during which they are held as part of the jail's "general population." It is standard procedure to search individuals for weapons before incarceration. This serves to protect the detainee, the other detainees around him, and the general security of the institution. Again, I need to read the opinion again, but I'm pretty sure that it's not as broad as described in the article, and that a policy of actually strip searching every person arrested no matter the circumstance could be still be effectively challenged.
One thing the article should have mentioned is the fact that DRONES are going to be flying above us in the next few years. We are loosing our liberties now more than ever and yet people still just go about their daily lives like it's no big deal. I my self am leaving this country the first chance I get. Because I believe we have come to far to turn back. The politicians and Bureaucrats have fucking destroyed this country and it's getting worse day by day. And all the takers are just going to keep giving them more power. And the sad part is they are voting for their own demise and don't even care or realize it
and thats exactly the point im trying to make. Kids are being indoctranated and are being dumbed down for a reason. Not to mention isnt that the reason "Liberty" and "Freedom"
why most wars if not all are fought ?
If you lean hard-right, America is descending into socialism.
If you are middle of the road, you look up the definitions of both terms and then shake your head in disbelief that someone would claim either term.
riotgrl, I think you'll find this link fascinating and useful for your class. My high school girl friend was in Ron Jones' class in which The Wave experiment took place and I sat in on it a few times. Caused quite a stir back then! In 2010 high school friend, Philip Neel, made a documentary about The Wave. Here's the links (click on 2010 Documentary for info on Phil's movie):
http://www.thewave.tk/
Well how about Fucked upism ? Is that better ?
It may not be all out Totalitarianism but it sure has some of it's characteristics does it not ?
Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[2] Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance,
I think what IS occurring in the United States (and globally, to be more precise) is that the power structure that currently exists behind the scenes of the political order -- and here I am referring to the people that organize Bilderberg, who run the CFR, who are the proponents of the UN, the EU, the NAU, etc. -- is in "crunch" mode, and is so overly concerned with forcing global and national (here in the USA) change in the direction of their agenda that their own leaders and ground level policies are becoming woefully discrepant with their own alleged secretive aims.
Here are two good examples of disconnected leaders:
Hillary Clinton's "insane" laugh at Bilderberg question
David Rockefeller Doesn't Even Know Who Ron Paul Is
So here we see two glaring examples of disconnect with HIGH level leaders who are woefully out of touch with the people they lead for.
In the first Hillary Clinton, instead of giving any sort of candid and rational explanation of her alleged dealings with Bilderberg, simply gives an infuriating maniacal laugh to the question. All this does is enrage those who are already skeptical & suspicious. Continuing with this line of non-rational-response to rational questions will only serve to further the divide between the elite and the 99%.
In the second example, David Rockefeller, whom you would assume would be on the pulse of ANYTHING that was in a large way confronting the establishment, displays his utter and complete ignorance on the subject of Ron Paul, indicating that he (this is back in 2008 i believe) was profoundly detached from the political backlash against the Federal Reserve System (you see his eyes wince up at the mention of it, like -- "oof! do what!?! who is this guy!?!").
These types of disconnect from the public mindset and inability to relate only serve to damage their assumingly well-intended cause of "World Federalism", "Global Governance" and universal brotherhood and human rights.
A major POLICY example of disconnect, indicating the DIRE urgency of the establishment to get its global ducks in a row for it's would be "new world order" is Obama's recent 180 FLIP on Indefinite Military Detention. Obviously the aim behind this policy was to allow the "good guys" to defeat the "bad guys" while cutting through lots of red tape in the middle. The net result of this policy in the eyes of the ever-increasingly skeptical public however, is that most people now think Obama is a lying hypocrite who will say anything to get popular support and then go behind their backs and do the bidding of the establishment. It also paints him as somewhat of a Totalitarian Fascist hell bent on illegally detaining US Citizens (or killing them) -- an image that only serves to detract from their ACTUAL cause of global justice and equity.
I guess, Byrnzie, is that what I am getting at is this:
We aren't headed towards a Fascist State. Naomi Wolf comes off to me as an overtly-partisan ideologue who lets her animosity towards Republican "Hawks" blind her to the more obvious answer, which is that both Republicans and Democrats are simply "two men wearing the same hat", playing for the same team, and working as puppets for the Elite Masterminds in the form of a Hegelian Dialectical Process to drive the United States towards a synthesized goal of World Federalized Government at the expense of "some sovereignty".
THIS is what is really going on, Byrnzie:
Walter Cronkite Accepts Norman Cousins "Global Governance" Award
at around the 4:50 mark
transcript of speech in above video
and here: -Rhodes Scholar
-Trilateral Commission Member for 30 years
-Harvard, Yale, AND Oxford Graduate
-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, appointed by John F. Kennedy
-senior adviser to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations
- two time Ambassador
I guess what I'm saying is that your commentary on "descending in to Fascism" is only truly understandable in the above context, which is the TRUE WILL of the most "enlightened" of our leaders. They are NOT pushing us towards Fascism, BUT ... THE NON-DEMOCRATIC BACK-CHANNEL TACTICS they use to get us towards Global Federalism are dishonest, often misguided, and cause so much backlash that it is truly One Step Forward - Two Steps Back, more often than not.
You can attribute almost the entirety of the debacle of our involvement in the Middle East right now (Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, etc.) to the above well-intentioned (often misguided) TOP LEVEL aims of the establishment.
It only FEELS like fascism, because given that the uninformed will of the common man is often in opposition to the well-intentioned aims of the Elite Rulers, they must operate through Fascist-LIKE methodologies to accomplish their aims.
IMHO, they would be MUCH better suited at this point to COME FORWARD IN EARNEST AND OPEN DIALOGUE WITH THE PUBLIC regarding their ambitions. But I guess they just feel we "are not ready to hear the truth" yet.
So NO. Not descending in to Fascism in the slightest.
It is just that "THE END RUN AROUND SOVEREIGNTY" *** FEELS LIKE *** FASCISM.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Anything approaching totalitarianism: not in the least.
I've spent a lot of time and money sitting in university libraries studying 20th century European history. Trust me, America is nothing like a truly totalitarian state.
AND..................enter conspiracy theories.
First off, I would like to start with, no we are not fascist.
neither would happen overnight though.
Are we fascist right now...no...are we socialist right now...no
do things like NDAA make it possible in the future to have authoritarian rule...yes. Although at some point one would hope the American people who aren't extreme like those you referenced would join together and simply say no, you cannot do that anymore...who knows...we are starting to lose sight of the principles the country fought a revolution over...but I guess that happened almost immediately after the last shot was fired...
did I type like Brett Favre talks...yes
rhetoric distorts the meanings of all those things...I just want my government afraid of us, the people, not the other way around...so whatever we are now, we are definitely moving further away from the principles of liberty, the bill of rights, and closer to wanting safety and security at any cost. It will get worse once we become the United State of America...and I think that will happen in my life time...but I am trying not to think about it today, as there are plenty of good fights left to fight...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
someones got a boner for the USA!
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Fast forward to the end of the video where Hillary Clinton gives him a video-recorded personal "thank you" for all his efforts to move forward with "Global Governance".
??? still not clicking in your head ???
If I opened it now would you not understand?
"Global governance" is a euphamism. It doesn't actually mean that anyone is setting up a global government. It just refers to international cooperation in setting up institutions to deal with shared global issues.
i never said it DID mean that. YOU were the one that implied that.
My post was straight forward and deliberately avoided any negative conspiratorial language. In fact, if you read the entire post, you would see that I repeatedly reiterated that I believed the motives underlying the actions of the Global Elite were both positive, pro-democratic (in a superficial sense atleast, since i believe they truly desire some sort of Scientific Meritocracy) and aimed at the greater good for the greatest number. I just think they tend to be self-righteously, and they believe that the general public is so stupid that they have no need to justify themselves to us. It is unfortunate, because if they would engage in honest dialogue with the public, I think they would find nearly universal support from the people. Who doesn't want a better, more peaceful, more just world? It's just their methodology is outdated. Maybe it worked (and was necessary) when the masses were relatively ignorant and beholden to superstition, but the modern populace is fairly well educated and capable of thinking on a level at-least somewhat comparable to the elite. The only difference is they make every effort to keep themselves informed on the "real realities" of global geopolitics, and yet conversely they do everything possible to keep from us their true aims and ambitions. They feed us the most utter bullshit on nightly news shows, and consistently bait all their news articles with deliberately overtly-partisan remarks, and "fringe" issues (abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, etc) used to divide us, confuse us, and keep us distracted from the real nitty gritty.
Instead, if they would just open up and engage in honest dialogue, i think they would find a readily accepting public. Nobody, and i mean NOBODY believes the current system is working. Who DOESN'T want real change? Why not engage in honest dialogue on your Global Federalist ideals, instead of lying and cheating your way towards them?
The point of my post was not just to be a fringe conspiracy nut.
it was to point out that the REASON THINGS FEEL TOTALITARIAN\FASCIST is because the well-intentioned will of the elite is being acted upon in largely non-democratic ways, mostly because of the perceived (by the elite) resistance of the general public to such ideas.
just my humble opinion.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I have used that documentary before with my AP Psych class. Can't believe you know people who were in that experiment!
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Sure, if you believe you need to wage war to protect your "Liberty" and "Freedom".
That's what every president from Wilson (We're making the world safe for democracy....because we have to believe their is a more noble, more moral reason for war not just to take/protect our economic assets) on has told us so of course most Americans believe that's why we go to war. If you're interested, contrast Zinn's chapter on WWII and Larry Schweikart's view on WWII. Talk about a difference of opinion!
Kids are being indoctrinated about the certain beliefs because parents, society, etc. says you are a bad American if you question the decision's of our leaders. Ugh! I hate that there are certain states that are passing laws limiting teachers from pointing out the obvious fallacies of our founding fathers. Isn't that what critical thinking is about? I tell my kids that I don't care what your opinion is as long as you understand why you believe what you believe, because you've done research, not just because someone else told you to think that. School should be about creating critical thinkers who question everything not just accept what is told to them by their parents, by society, by the textbook or by the teacher. Sorry - rant over
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Right, and that's not (in my opinion) the reason we have been going to war. Bless you for pushing critical thinking!
I'll have to read Zinn's WWII stuff... I've only read some of his work on Vietnam
Asking the rest of the world, which gets a more objective view as outsiders will deem more accurate answers. They know what's going on, but Americans are too immersed to even know what's really going on.
If you ask me, capitalism will be the U.S.'s absolute downfall, actually, it will be the world's downfall inevitably.
Yeah... It's fucking disgusting.
+1 :P