Five years ago today, something terrible happened. Without warning, thousands of innocents were killed by a terrorist attack, which changed the world… for the worse.
Even though I’m not American, I remember feeling shocked and horrified that day. Things like that simply didn’t happen in a civilized world… or did they? And all those deaths. It was something dreadful, and anyone who says that America “deserved it” - whether it’s other terrorists, fundamentalist Muslim leaders, or Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson - is a moronic, disgusting human being.
Yet, to a group of people, it was the best thing that could have happened.
What’s changed since 2001?
People remain paranoid about terrorist attacks. People believe that terrorists may strike at any moment - much like the climate of nuclear fear in the 1950s.
America is more nationalist than ever, up to a “my country, right or wrong” point; anyone who says the United States may have acted wrongly is a “pinko commie liberal traitor”, or something like that.
The world economy is worse than it was in many decades. In the 90s everything grew, in the 2000s everything shrank. Things are still so bad that many people believe that employers do employees a favor by employing them, instead of it being a fair trade which benefits both sides, as any employment should be.
America is more religious and fundamentalist than ever. Many attempts against science have been made by religious groups, for religious purposes. Stem cell research and abortions are fundamentally “evil”, but a brain dead woman must be kept alive at all costs. Separation between church and state is increasingly becoming a myth, and the Constitution is constantly spat on by lying politicians who insist that “America was founded on Christian principles”. And no, it wasn’t.
By assuming a state of “perpetual war” against a concept such as “terror”, instead of a tangible enemy, a war which has already lasted longer than the US’s involvement in WWII, the government has successfully obtained “carte blanche” to do just about anything it wants. After all, in times of war, it’s “traitorous” and “unpatriotic” to criticize the government or the president. They say so, and people believe it. The president actually becomes above the law. Gee, why not be at war at all times, then? Which, of course, is exactly the case today.
The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. Illegal wiretapping. Arrests and imprisonment without trial. Secret prisons. Torture. Need I go on about the huge loss of freedom? And yet they say they’re fighting for it…
A couple of wars have been started, and at least one of them was based on lies, greed for oil, and the “be in a permanent state of war” absolute power that I mentioned above. A lot of people were fooled by those lies, and whoever wasn’t was, again, branded “a traitor” and “unpatriotic”. Or “a liberal”, or “an appeaser”, or…
Before, he was an unpopular president who had “won” an election in uncertain terms, and had his “victory” handed out to him by a court. But George W. Bush, in a couple of hours, became a “hero” and a “savior”, the “defender of the land of the free”. And won the next election, which would never have happened if Americans were judging him for the state of the economy, the conditions of living, and so on. Hmm, I bet he was really sad when 9/11 happened…
The rest of the world isn’t much better. By not standing up to the United States’ policies, both the EU and the UN lost most of their credibility. Almost everyone outside the US knew that the stated reasons for the Iraq war were obvious lies, and yet nobody had the courage to do a thing about it.
In short, the world is now much worse than it was.
Blame the terrorists first? Sure. Note that I haven’t mentioned any of the theories that say that the Bush administration knew about 9/11 and let it happen, or actually did it. It’s certainly possible - they’re the ones who benefitted by it the most - but I don’t know enough to make any accusations about it. So I won’t.
What I know is that they’re responsible for what happened afterwards. The climate of terror, the loss of civil liberties, the wars, the religious fundamentalism, the international bullying, the “either you’re with us or against us - and therefore a traitor” attitude… I blame Bush and everyone around him for that.
I don’t know about you, but if I had lost someone in 9/11, I’d despise anyone who used my pain for his own gains. Even if he was the president.
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Well, what can I say? You got everything right. Only problem is, you’re not stuck in this messed-up country. I wish more people like you, thoughtful and intelligent, did live here, and could vote here.
And most people do not realise how fucking overrated the 9/11 attacks were. How many people died? 1200? Big deal! It’s sad, but compared to other causes of death, it’s ridicoulous. More people die of alcohol, in car accidents, smoking, being misdiagnosed by doctors or shot dead accidentally by others. Half a million people die every day but does anybody loose sleep over that? Why not a “war on car accidents”, a “war on crappy doctors” or “a war on starving people”. I don’t even wanna know how many people could have been feed and treated with all that money that was spend on the “war on terror”.
Go to http://www.loosechange911.com/ and click on “Click here to watch Loose Change - 2nd Edition” in the middle of the page to find out the truth about who is responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
I agree with both comments very much. I wish there were more people willing to actually think, test, and question to find what the truth is and really take the time to sit back and see things as they really are. I’m so tired of hearing about terrorism this terrorism that. If I didn’t realize how ridiculous this is I probably would never come out of my home. I also agree with Hermann Klinke. I live in the US and when it first happened and they came back with all the numbers of the people that died I looked around and wondered why this event should stand out from all the other times Americans have died in the past. This in a way almost degrades the loss of so many others to the general public.
There are so many other things we should have waged a war on…. how about ignorance?
Wow that’s very well written.
Thankfully I don’t live in the US…
Well written and definitely some good points made. There are some in the states who stand in opposition to the aggression and oppression which has become the trademarks of the US Government, but yes we are in the extreme minority.
Sadly the changes from 9-11 are not changes in type but in degree only. This is why Manny’s suggestion that people vote simply won’t work. Voting increases the power of government by lending it the illusion of legitimacy. Voting is simply saying that you give over your mind and your responsibility for not only your life, but for that over everyone else. Though you should be free to be irresponsible with your own life, you do not have the right to give over control and responsibility for the lives of everyone else, therefore voting is actually an act of aggression against your neighbors, friends, family, and the countless innocent others who have never posed any threat to you.
One does not defeat the Klan by joining it and supporting it, why on earth would we assume that we could defeat the abuse of power by contributing to it?? I suspect that the answer lay in the BS that we are fed from our youth on about how “demoncracy is freedom” and “voting is a privilege” and the like. Orwell saw these as doublespeak, but we seem unable or unwilling to be bothered with principle or responsibility for our own life, so we mindlessly go on voting for the lesser of the evils (yeah… right..) pretending that we are doing what is right, because we are told it is right to vote.
As the humorous bumper sticker says : If voting could make a difference it would be illegal!
A fine article on the harmful nature of voting: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/hitler.htm
So yes let’s all oppose the tyranny that is the US government today, but let’s do it honestly and with integrity, not insincerely and hypocritically offering criticism while still supporting it by voting..
Actually, I don’t think that those of us US citizens who are against the war are in the minority.
I don’t care how many people the media says are for the war, I’m pretty certain that the VAST majority of people are against it.
As for Democracy, I’m also pretty sure that we are not one anymore.
Last election I remember hearing the same thing from everybody about our choices.
“LESSER OF TWO EVILS”
What good is voting if your options are limited to two rich guys who want more power?
TXStorm and Kren: so what’s the alternative? Revolution? That might have worked centuries ago, but now you’d be instantly labeled as “terrorists” and “traitors”, and arrested or killed to a man.
Democrats may be incompetent and even cowardly, but they’re no more so than most European politicians. Sure, they’re in it for the money, and whenever they do something good, it’s just so that they get re-elected, but, still, at least they don’t start wars based on lies, turn their countries into theocracies or police states, or call any opposition to their policies “unpatriotic”.
Good question. What then?
I don’t know.
A revolution isn’t going to happen because that would mean the loss of MORE innocent lives. No, it won’t work.
I don’t see any solution exept for maybe a truly honest democratic president AND administration, a modern day pipe dream.
I think that’s the question that frustrates everybody who lives here.
It may also be the reason why we’re so willing to live under the rule of the kangaroo without rage filled protests.
Kren: maybe things can’t change all at once. But if, for several consecutive elections, the “best” (or “least bad”) guy wins, maybe things will really get better, slowly.
It’s a bit like commerce. If people are informed, they’ll choose the best quality at the lowest price, and therefore businessmen have to compete, by improving their quality, lowering their prices, or both. But in some fields where there’s no competition, or where people aren’t informed (much like computers a few decades ago, when people charged exorbitantly), the customer is always screwed.
Maybe a similar thing needs to happen in politics… the “consumers” must be more informed. Then, the politicians won’t fool anyone, and they will need to get better.
Yes, it’s nice to dream…
I was thinking the same thing on my way home.
But the American government will be hard pressed to be watched by civilians. Which is sad when you think about it.
It’s like it’s gotten to the point where we have to stand by and watch the kids play in the sandbox, so they don’t hurt eachother or themselves.
“Kren: maybe things can’t change all at once. But if, for several consecutive elections, the “best” (or “least bad”) guy wins, maybe things will really get better, slowly.”
This does not follow. Think of it in math terms. So every time you are presented with a choice of negative numbers, you choose the less negative negative number. The motion is not positive but still negative. Perhaps you can argue that you are slowing the rate at which we move deeper into the negatives, but the fact remains that the movement remains and necessarily will always remain towards the increasingly negative using this scheme.
You ask what the alternative is. Let me pose an identical question to you: what is the alternative to theft? What is the alternative to murder?
Do you say, “well theft and murder are going to happen so I might as well get in on it?” Or do you choose to live by principle and have integrity?
For me there really is no alternative to living with integrity and principle, certainly glomming onto some of the chicken scratch that is doled out by the state, isn’t even a mild temptation…
BYW as an aside, revolution need not be violent, so all of the assumptions which rest upon this assumption are without merit.
That’s true TXStorm, a revolution doesn’t have to be violent.
I can’t seem to look at it as a mathematical thing more than a “get our country back” thing, but if it WAS a mathematical thing, than I think it’s more like this.
x = bad
right now we’re at say 50x
we’d like to be at 0x,
but 20x would be great in comparison.
Taking away a few of the bad things going on right now would be a great improvement.
Kren,
Yes postive movement would be good, but your suggested analogy simply does not work. Remember that we were talking about lessers of evil, not of positive influences. Therefore the negative number analogy works, but the assumption that adding in another bad influence will make things better (from 0X to 20X) simply fails miserably. In its own way it actually makes things worse because it contributes to the notion that things are getting better and will get better if we continue exactly what we have been doing which put us here in the first place. This btw is the very definition of irrationality: taking the same action over and over but expecting different results..
So yes, taking away the bad things would be an improvement, the simple fact is that voting (even for the lesser evil) will NEVER take away any bad..
If the math analogy is insufficiently clear, think of foxes and henhouses.. So you put the fox in the henhouse who eats only 20 chickens a day rather than 50 chickens a day… When does your flock grow? It doesn’t.
TXStorm: I understand your point. But, going back to the commerce analogy, there are some cases where there is real competition, and others where there’s price fixing.
For instance, I don’t know how it is in the USA, but here in Portugal all the gasoline companies agree on a price (which rises and rises), and they compete in other aspects, to maximize profit. It works for them, and the consumer is basically screwed.
On the other hand, there are fields like computers, where not only they are getting better and better, but they’re also increasingly cheaper. Here, there is true competition. It’s much easier to be able to build computers than to import oil from the Middle East, so there’s just too many sellers for any kind of price fixing to work. Therefore, profits are more reasonable, and the consumer gets a much better deal.
Now, of course, there’s “price fixing” in politics. But what if someone deviates from it, someday? Look at the US - with that idiotic lying warmonger as president, it may seem that things are only getting worse, but if you look at, say, the last 10 presidents, things have sometimes improved.
Bush won the elections and he was by far the worst candidate, but, if people were more informed and educated, he’d have lost. Then the Republicans would have had to present, in 2004, a candidate who was better than President Gore, or they’d lose. Same thing in 2008. See what I mean?
An educated public would improve things.
Of course, an educated public would also mean the end of the two-party system, but that’s another story.
OK, I’m basically dreaming… the public won’t get “reasonably educated and informed” in my lifetime. Even here in Europe, where you can’t win elections simply by praising God every 5 minutes, there’s still too much populism, and people don’t know anything about politics, they just vote for the guy with better charisma.
Still, Bush nonwithstanding, I think the world is slowly improving. And, hell, after Bush, the US can only improve…
Wow.. The best advice I can offer is to acquire some knowledge of history. I really don’t mean this as an insult, but rather as a reaction to the patently absurd comments such as over the last 10 presidents things are getting better. I would point out that in all aspects in fact things have been getting worse.
Is the economy better? Nope.. Is there more freedom? Um.. let’s see.. oh yeah.. NO! Are there a ridiculous number of ridiculous new laws? Yep.. Have the presidents become more political and more able to manipulate the public? Clearly.. Have the presidents gotten more intelligent? More honest (or honest at all)? Have the taken moral stances? No.. no.. no..
Governemnt is necessarily an instance of “price fixing” in your analogy. It cannot exist any other way. Power is conslidated into the hands of a few through means which are illegitimate in all respects to govern over those who did not agree to that governing..
Bush did not win the first election jftr..
The only point I would agree with, and that only very cautiously since I said the same thing after Clinton.. is that it can only improve.. Imagine that.. now there is a president who makes Clinton look like a frelling saint!
BTW for a more rigorous explanation as to why voting fails see:
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/hitler.htm
Or read:
http://members.aol.com/vlntryst/dissenting.html
or
http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Anarchism-New-Preface/dp/0520215737
Each of these makes the case for liberty as opposed to voting as well as explains the ineffectiveness of voting. The last of these, the book by Prof. Wolff should really be titled “In defense of demoncracy” for it is by far the absolutely best set of arguments for demoncracy that have been presented anywhere. That said, as the title may give away, those arguments fail miserably… so without any basis for believingin voting… what is left?
Yes that would work in an idealistic world. But one impeachment one major scandal and you will be knocked back a hundred years. Revolution is no different now that it was 500 years ago you were executed and called a traitor then and now you get something close to it. Gandhi had it right the best victory has to be peaceful. We need intelligent unification. But the old English parliament was right, instead of individual parties the politicians moved into new factions for every decision whether they agreed or not. They were all individuals not just ying and yang.
[quote post="145"]I really don’t mean this as an insult, but rather as a reaction to the patently absurd comments such as over the last 10 presidents things are getting better. I would point out that in all aspects in fact things have been getting worse. [/quote]
In the 50s, there was McCarthyism.
In the 60s, the Vietnam war. However, there were also civil war movements which changed things for the better… a lot.
In the 80s, the Cold War got REALLY scary. A lot of people at the time were sure that nuclear war was inevitable. Still, except for that, things were mostly OK.
In the 90s? Monica Lewinsky.
If it wasn’t for Bush and the religious right / neoconservatives, I’d say things are getting better.
Pedro,
You are making a fallacious argument. By cherry picking a few events rather than examing the whole you have no basis for your claims about the whole.
Notice the type of questions I asked? They all address the whole. They also address the actual trend which is clearly negative with regard to liberty and justice. The subjects of the US, and sadly becaue of the aggression of the US government the people of the world, enjoy less freedom today than 50 years ago. We all suffer under more laws, more “security measures,” have far less privacy, face harsher prison terms and conditions, have fewer real opportunities, and have far less say in our own lives than at any point in history. Even the illusion of protection by the Constituation has fased away into the distance past. How again is this better? How does the fact that we know that the pres of the US got a humjob in the oval office make this any better than any point in the past?
Sorry but when you take the whole there simply is no case to be made that things are getting better in the realm of politics/government.
TXStorm: but most of that happened because of Bush, after 9/11.
100 years ago, women couldn’t vote. 50 years ago, you’d have your career ruined just because a neighbor accused you of being a communist.
Sorry, but (except for the Bush years), things have been improving - not just in the US, but throughout the world.
The age of enlightenment and we fuck it all up aye.
Pedro,
You are still using the same invalid argument form. You are universalizing from an instance, and at the same time missing all of the counter-examples offered, as well as the explanation of the invalid argument form you are employing.
Has the size of government decreased at any point during the time you are looking at? No.
Has freedom increased in any fashion whatsoever? No.
Has the criminal system been reformed for the better? No. (In fact now you can find yourself in prison for even mentioning jury nullification, despite the fact that the founders relied upon jury nullification as the final check on government power.)
Clinton ordered the massacres of peoples all over the US, as well as abroad (albeit not on the scale of Bush II, but then as I have shown it is getting worse not better).
I am willing to bet that you have heard of Waco, Texas.. What of Ruby Ridge? What of Brother 52?
By all objective standards, again not merely cherry picking but examining everything, the fact is that liberty has dramatically decreased, and has been decreasing for decades (in fact one can trace it to FDR very easily, and with only slightly more effort to Lincoln).
Notice that you’ve not provided any argument which addresses the big picture, or any reason to believe that freedom or justice has actually increased at any point.
BTW You can have your career ruined because you speak out against US foreign policy as well.. or because you are accused of being a terrorist.. but this is not new. Then too you can have your career ruined by sexual harassment charges (without any evidence being provided) You can have your career ruined by being labeled a sex offender because one drunken night you take a leak in a park…
Sorry but the cherry picking and invalid argument form simply don’t lead to a true conclusion..
TXStorm: OK, I can see that we’ll never agree on this one.
You seem to have a goal, which is to prove that voting doesn’t work and we shouldn’t do it anymore; therefore, as proof, you want submit that things have been steadily growing worse. Any examples I give to the contrary are “cherry picking”.
I ask you, though: do you really think you were less free in, say, 1999, than you would have been in 1955?
Actually Pedro you are quite confused. The ineffectiveness of voting is an objective fact which needs no further proof, but then I have not adopted this as a goal regardless. I would not vote because of the moral implications regardless of the effectiveness, and I have offered up several sources for a more detailed explanation of non-voting. This issue has not been addressed in any manner in way of response.
That is completely separate from the repeated refutations of this rose colored glasses based claim that we are continuously getting more free.
The example you give ARE cherry picking and trivial at best, as has been explained. Never have you addressed trends or large scale issues. Furthermore the argument form has been shown to be logically invalid, yet you still cling to it because you want to beleive the conclusion regardless of the facts.
Look again to the exchanges. For each of your small examples I have and can provide at least two counter-examples of equal or greater importance. Then also you have the large scale measures, such as the number of laws on the books, the types of laws in place, the number of innocents behind bars, the overall number of folks in prison, etc. None of these have you addressed, in fact you’ve explicitly avoided these.
Now why is it important to look at the big picture? Because your claim is not about the cherries you are picking, but rather is about the whole. So in order to make the claim about the whole you need to look to the whole. Now if you want to say that in some small ways in some very limited examples a few are better off now than at once specific point in the past, I will agree because that is a trivial and uninformative claim. Some few small changes for the better for a select few does not add up to an overall improvement for everyone.
I am less free today than I was in 1999. I was less free in 1999 than I was in 1995. I was less free in 1995 than I was in 1988.
The number of laws on the books has never decreased. This is a certain indicator of the level of freedom a people enjoy. Furthermore the types of laws are increasingly becoming focused upon purely peaceful acts, so called “thought crimes” and areas which are purely personal and private. Can you address these sort of issues and explain how more laws and less freedom means that we are better off and more free?
Are you aware that in most US cities you can no longer even smoke? (Mind you I abhor smoking, but respect freedom) Again in most cities you are prohibited from drinking an alcoholic beverage on your stoop… Our language is curtailed in almost all venues (”protecting the children” “terrorism” “hate speech” etc)
The barriers to entry in to business are increasing. States are passing laws to prohibit home schoolin so as to force children into government schools.
Increasingly even repairs around your own house are forbidden unless you get a government certified representative to come out to do the work. This includes installing a light switch, or repairing that leaky faucet.
All of these are indicative of the ever decreasing amount of freedom in the US.
Let me pose another question to you, if you will be so kind to answer it and the others still left hanging..
Can you name one thing that we can do in the US which is not regulated in some fashion?
[quote post="145"]The number of laws on the books has never decreased. This is a certain indicator of the level of freedom a people enjoy. Furthermore the types of laws are increasingly becoming focused upon purely peaceful acts, so called “thought crimes” and areas which are purely personal and private. Can you address these sort of issues and explain how more laws and less freedom means that we are better off and more free?
Are you aware that in most US cities you can no longer even smoke? (Mind you I abhor smoking, but respect freedom) Again in most cities you are prohibited from drinking an alcoholic beverage on your stoop… Our language is curtailed in almost all venues (”protecting the children” “terrorism” “hate speech” etc)
[/quote]
I’d blame most of those on the Bush administration. No, I won’t say that Clinton was perfect - his administration is guilty of garbage like the DMCA, too. But “you can’t criticize the government or you’re a traitor / terrorist” is a Bush thing.
As to the rest… I don’t think we’ll agree on it, and we’re getting offtopic anyway. You say my examples are “cherry picking”, but I don’t think anything is as big a change for the worse as women being able to vote, and blacks no longer being restricted to the back of the bus, were changes for the better. It’s simply a matter of perspective.
And I still think that the Bush administration and its attacks on freedom are a “turnaround”. Things were slowly improving. Why, someday the US may be as free as most of Europe currently is… which is ironical, since it was colonized by people who were trying to escape from tyranny in Europe.
Pedro,
Again as a matter of objective and verifiable fact, the number of laws have increased dramatically LONG before Bush came to office. Certainly we cannot honestly hold him accountable for the actions of his father, and others prior.
When I was in graduate school one of the areas I worked on was liberty and the erosion of freedom from the beginnings of the state. Yes there have been less than a handful of positive moves FOR A FEW, such as the two you name, but AGAIN on the WHOLE the move has been consistently away from Liberty as the founders knew it must be (Jefferson was famous for pointing this out.)
The smoking bans preceeded Bush II also, the drinking bans have existed even longer. The language barriers for the most part also existed..
So as I have repeatedly noted, it is simply a matter of public record and objective fact that the US has been moving away from freedom at a very fast pace. In the 60’s a reporter was quoted as pointing out the difference between liberals and conservatives as being “liberals want to socialize at 100 miles an hour, conservatives at only 50″ Does that sound like improvement??
Anyway, it is your blog so I’ll not trouble you with any more annoying facts..
I applaud your personal optimism, though I fear it does you personally more harm and any who believe these false assertions, in the long run for it makes people less objective and more likely to fall for more of the same false promises.
Ah its good enough at least we pretty much get to do whatever we want. Try living in a Stalinist system you would be sent to the lublika just for thinking one of those comments. Then your family would be sent to the gulag. Things have most definitely been getting better. You have stopped with slaves you have stop the indigenous genocide. And you are allowed to not give your president support. After gwb is gone the veil of peace and freedom will be pulled over your eyes and you will think its getting better. You’ll only be lulled into a false sense of security. But hey we are human what do you expect.
that is so sad that many peaple had died since nin eleven :(.