Conventional Lies: 1

On 24 the first night of its return, the President’s unmistakably slimy national security advisor, after advocating detention camps for Arab-American citizens, uttered those wonderful words, “security has its price.” He was promptly answered by the homeland security chief, with a ringing defense of civil liberties (!), together with a concern that the ACLU would sue (thus “having it both ways”) and so on. So ensued off and on over the next two hours the typical, conventional debate about an irrelevant and undecidable issue.

It’s chastening to think that, as all of us, I’ve been hearing that phrase almost my entire sentient life, year after year, totally regardless of the current state of affairs in the world–the original Patriot Act, , passed just after the 9/11 catastrophe that now is used to justify it, is irrelevant to almost everything that has happened since. . In any event the fact is that the statement–for which if we prefer “reality” we could advert to Dick Cheney, John Woo, George W. Bush, Albert Gonzalez, etc. etc.–is a lie. Actually, two lies in one. Which the standard–and certainly correct–defense of civil liberties unfortunately leaves untouched.

The first lie, which no one ever notices, is that the moral implication of the statement is utterly false: security has no price that the powerful have to pay. No one who has ever uttered that or any similar sentiment about security or national security has ever paid any price whatsoever. No one who defends “security” by subverting civil liberty ever goes to jail, or has to pay more taxes, or is forbidden to speak, or censored, or...anything. Indeed, they benefit from it! The actual content of the sentence, as with so many others of its kind is, “We fuck, and you get fucked"--whoever you are, not just “Reds”or Muslims, but potentially anyone that "we" don’t like. (Just as, for example, the actual content of “free market “ ideology, is “we get rich, and you get the shaft.”) It’s just another way for the powerful to expand their power–and concomitantly lessen everybody else’s. Like “we must make sacrifices,” meaning you must, while I get tax cuts and my children avoid military service. So whenever you hear that sentence or any of its kind, it’s a lie.

Second, it’s all bullshit anyhow. As with torture (see my “Killing Dragons, Torturing Terrorists”) there’s not an instance I can think of on record where invasive, unconstitutional, “security” measures increased actual security in some important way–prevented an attack, uncovered a spy network, etc. Look at any trial of alleged “terrorists” since 9/11–either there was no plot at all, or it was a case of entrapment, or it was tipped by informers. The necessity for warrantless actions, suspension of rights, and so forth, is just part of the power grab. These guys are propelled by the lust for domination and control; all the rest is window dressing. The world is full of real danger and real risk, but the “national security” justification is just the continuation of political warfare by other means. Just another way of devolving toward an American police state that too many Americans, for whatever reasons, accept as necessary in their heart of hearts.

P.S. --As of this writing, the bloody flag of terror waved aloft by the police-state crowd has grown visibly threadbare. We can only hope this condition continues until the the paranoid view of the rest of the world has become less entrenched in the national psyche.