Quote:
Originally Posted by island911
Seriously BE, I cannot believe that you would use this as an opportunity to give Obama a (relative) pass.
His 'change' should have been dismantling the stupidity of TSA. . . not doubling down on the stupidity of regular intrusive searches.
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Except that Obama, as an astute political survivor (he is in the White House after all), knows damn well that if he dismantled the TSA or so much as cut its budget by
ten dollars the Republicans would absolutely smash him to pieces with help of an easily fear-mongered American public and Fox News hysterics. (The other networks and the New York Times would follow suit for ratings and increased ad revenue.)
Within a day or two of the attacks Republicans quickly realized that 9/11 was a massive political gift. (Much the same way that Pearl Harbor was to FDR. It finally got public support for getting us all the way into WWII and out of the Great Depression.) Yes, 9/11 was a national tragedy, but to the political operatives on the right they saw their chance to really sock it to the American people and also greatly strengthen their grip on the levers of national power. So we got bigger government that is now much more intrusive thanks to the USA Patriot Act, and any contrary voices were immediately shouted down with cries of being "unpatriotic." I am sure that Ted Nugent can today threaten the Democrat president through his right to free speech but if he had questioned the political response to 9/11 he could have been punished for giving "aid and comfort" to the terrorists. Remember what happened to Bill Maher when he imagined out-loud that it took guts, crazy or not, to fly a 767 into the WTC? The national narrative was not reason, the national narrative was fear and thus control. If you question us you will regret it for a long time. Reason is the enemy.
Thus we gave aid and comfort to the terrorists. We responded the way the top guys over there in the caves and training camps knew we would. We freaked out. We cried in fear and our government responded by clamping down on
us. Yeah, we bombed the **** out of Tora Bora a few months later and then suddenly stopped and the real bad guys snuck out the back way into Pakistan.
Anyway, Obama didn't get a pass from me, I just know that the TSA and its intrusive powers are here to stay. Just as it took a Republican like Nixon to end Vietnam (scurrying away on helicopters from the roof of the Saigon embassy) it would take a Republican to alter
even slightly the new, post 9/11 security state--the security
regime--we now live under and he'd have to do it quietly.
"Maybe now we can finally do some of the things we've wanted to do for the last ten years." That was Senator Trent Lott upon the passage of the USA Patriot Act. Do what things? Restrict individual freedoms? Suspend habeas corpus? If they can take away some alleged terrorist's rights then they can take away anyone's rights. We hope they go after only those citizens we hate but secretly hope, that if we parrot their words, they don't come after us.
Another TSA observation. The Bush administration killed efforts to allow the TSA to unionize the way other government employees have in the past. Instead they gave them power. In lieu of union benefits and job protections we'll let you harass and manhandle people, especially the people you don't like. If people complain you can detain them, make them miss their flights, ruin their vacations, scuttle their business deals, whatever. You can feel-up pretty women. You can rough-up anyone you see fit to. Just don't try to unionize or you'll be sorry.
Discuss.