February 21, 2005
Froggies
A central principle of totalitarian states has to be the creeping factor. We the people really are like the frog in the pan of water that is heated gradually to the boiling point, and he doesn't move to save himself because the change is too gradual to set off an alarm.Now that election 2004 so-called is over, we are allowed to see the larger 9/11 Commission report that was held back so that it wouldn't affect the election. That in itself is backwards logic for a society that aspires to be democratic. The report should have been provided specifically to prepare the public to make an informed decision in the polling booths.
The decision to withhold the report was biased from the standpoint of people in power who stood to lose if the truth were known about how poorly the American people were protected on 9/11. The fact that such a justification for withholding the report can stand, can be virtually unquestioned by anyone in government or media communicates the message that the government is all-powerful and can decide which of the nation's laws apply to it and which don't.
We heard similar kinds of logic when government and military voices talked a lot last year about postponing or cancelling elections. The messages carried the underlying message that the sitting government has power to revoke the Constitution if it wants to, which is obviously not the message of the Constitution itself.
Now starting from a standpoint of being above question, from being so above question that any one who disagreed with a single policy was practically accused of treason, the administration has gradually given way on its suppression of the truth. At first it was stone cold opposition to the very idea that the catastrophe would be investigated at all. That would compromise national security they said. Gradually they gave way, thanks to some courageous and tenacious families of 9/11 victims, with little help from many public officials. Now finally when the report comes out, it is so long after the incident that people are dulled to the whole idea.
Now we see clearly that the administration had many warnings during its nine months in office before 9/11, and Bush and crew took virtually no action. We also see independently that the neocons (at PNAC.com) explicitly spelled out that their plan for military dominance of the US in the 21st century would probably be very difficult to implement without a "Pearl Harbor-like incident" to manufacture consent from the citizens to its military buildup.
It's right in front of our faces, but we are either too dulled or too intimidated at this point to dare point it out. Implicit in these arrogant lies to our faces is the threat that if anyone ever tried to seriously take on these torturers and mass slaughterers he or she would be crushed mercilessly.
What puts this beyond the range of American thinking is sheer terror. Americans have to realize somewhere in their minds that the group that presided over that last attack is the only thing standing between America and another attack, perhaps even more devastating than the last. Those who lie so boldly and are never called to task, who admit they believe in torture in some cases, who advocate being able to round up anyone they choose to without any process of law, who profess to be using shock and aw to fight a war on terror are not to be confronted. Ultimately they don't want to fool the people into thinking they really believe in democracy and human rights. They want you to know that they don't, and consequently they are to be feared.
And that's the way it is in the New American Century.