Inoculation
Mar. 25th, 2007 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinZbigniew Brzezinski writes about the psychological damage wrought by the "war on terror". I do think that some of his stress on the historical uniqueness of the situation is a little overdone and self-serving:
Nevertheless, he's pretty much right on. The threat the US was facing during the Cold War was vastly greater, there was paranoia about Communist infiltrators in our midst, yet we ultimately didn't have the level of security theater or advocacy for checks on civic freedom that we have had for the past few years.
He has the same sort of meta-worry that I do, that we aren't thinking enough about how to maintain a free society in the event of another major domestic terrorist attack. Too often I hear, as justification for this or that draconian or aggressive measure, the claim that if somebody, say, managed to set off a nuke in Manhattan, the United States simply couldn't function as a free democracy any more; by some sort of reflex action, our country would naturally and automatically transform itself into a paranoid police state. I worry that this kind of talk is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Where in the Constitution does it say we'd have to become a paranoid police state? Where in statute or case law? There would be no good, rational reason for it. It isn't as if paranoid police states are good at protecting their citizens. Most historians seem to regard the closest American historical equivalents—the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, the World War I sedition laws, Roosevelt's detainment of Japanese-Americans—as mistakes. Even if some despicable people managed to nuke Manhattan or gas Congress to death, the adoption of tyranny is something we would have to choose to do, and the long-term damage would be greater than that wrought by an attack. Thinking of the process as automatic is a way of preparing ourselves to choose to do it. We don't have to.
Abraham Lincoln talked about the importance of disenthralling ourselves, escaping from the pull of dangerous ideas. This is one of them. We must inoculate ourselves, and then we shall keep from further damaging our country.
nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours.*cough*HUAC*cough*Nixon*cough*Vietnam... and his shock that campus organizations have gotten into anti-Arab stereotyping indicates that he didn't spend much time around the Campus Republicans in southeastern Virginia during the Reagan years.
Nevertheless, he's pretty much right on. The threat the US was facing during the Cold War was vastly greater, there was paranoia about Communist infiltrators in our midst, yet we ultimately didn't have the level of security theater or advocacy for checks on civic freedom that we have had for the past few years.
He has the same sort of meta-worry that I do, that we aren't thinking enough about how to maintain a free society in the event of another major domestic terrorist attack. Too often I hear, as justification for this or that draconian or aggressive measure, the claim that if somebody, say, managed to set off a nuke in Manhattan, the United States simply couldn't function as a free democracy any more; by some sort of reflex action, our country would naturally and automatically transform itself into a paranoid police state. I worry that this kind of talk is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Where in the Constitution does it say we'd have to become a paranoid police state? Where in statute or case law? There would be no good, rational reason for it. It isn't as if paranoid police states are good at protecting their citizens. Most historians seem to regard the closest American historical equivalents—the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, the World War I sedition laws, Roosevelt's detainment of Japanese-Americans—as mistakes. Even if some despicable people managed to nuke Manhattan or gas Congress to death, the adoption of tyranny is something we would have to choose to do, and the long-term damage would be greater than that wrought by an attack. Thinking of the process as automatic is a way of preparing ourselves to choose to do it. We don't have to.
Abraham Lincoln talked about the importance of disenthralling ourselves, escaping from the pull of dangerous ideas. This is one of them. We must inoculate ourselves, and then we shall keep from further damaging our country.
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IIWTP
Date: 2007-03-25 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 07:51 pm (UTC)This suggests that if they ever so much as light a bag of dog poop on fire on an Amtrak train, we'll have Blackwater militia on every corner, going through handbags and confiscating iPods at will.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 10:33 pm (UTC)In 1986, I remember hearing a panel debate in London about the controversies over sanctions against the South African government, and the prevailing opinion was that nothing in South Africa had any chance of changing in a substantive way for a very, very long time--or if it did, it would only descend into a universal bloodbath.
By 1987 or '88, the Cold War was unwinding; South Africa dismantled the apartheid regime in 1993. Since then, things haven't been perfect either there or with US/Russian relations, but neither is the way it was--and when the change came, everything seemed to turn on a dime. Much of the difference was just that at some point people became capable of imagining that things could be different.
Darkest before the Dawn
Date: 2007-04-07 03:30 pm (UTC)I could even add: I asked 15 people in West and East Germany in 1985 and 1986 when the Wall would ever come down. NONE of them said: It could happen in the next five years.
There's a movement theorist named Bill Moyer (not the PBS guy, tho they are both ex-ministers) who notes that after people have mobilized and it seems that the power structure just will not listen, you're about to win.
Guess what? I put on a teach-in against a proposed, unnecessary power plant on Jan. 6th (just me- alone, starting it), and a few days ago a local planning board denied use rights to the power company. In between, many people showing up at teach-ins, hearings, numerous letters to the editor, blog entries, articles.
And a few seconds before they voted? Everyone at the community center was sure that we were going to lose. A stunned silence and cheers erupted at 12:35 AM as were realized that the unanimous vote.......was in OUR favor.
So, yes, let's not kiss off those civil liberties too quickly.
Though I gotta be honest: the combo of the climate report and the mortgage meltdown predictions have me quite a bit down today.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 09:22 pm (UTC)The Americans believe in a Great Wall made of ink and pieces of history books which will keep the barbarians away from the empire as long as the wall is kept in a good condition. That's the idealism I do not understand.
But barbarians eventually defeat all walls and then the Americans believe that without the wall, the people would be both losing and lost. That's the pessimism I do not understand. In the end, people defeat barbarians, walls at best keep them away.