A double shot from Wendy McElroy today. We start with the punchline:
As long time cohort J. Neil Schulman wrote to me in an email, If sending messages on Twitter to protesters from a motel room can be the basis for a federal raid on your home and a federal Grand Jury investigation, wrap it up for liberty in the United States -- we're done.
That just about sums it up, doesn't it? Master hardly even bothers to pretend any more.
That said, this article is interesting for its observation about how we have come to this point. Again, from McElroy:
The significant sentence is "this time something different happened." The response of police and others in authority has been changing for some time now; recently, there seems to be a tipping point in the willingness of authorities to use brutality and utterly disregard civil rights. In fact, will[ingness] may not be the best word. The attitude is more perfunctory as though Heicklen were meat being processed by people jaded in their jobs. The only time he experienced brutality was when he caused a problem, an annoyance; that is, he complained too vigorously at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. If he had maintained silence, I expect they would have let him just alone sit in a cell. They would have been content to process him like a good, quiet piece of meat. Equally, had Heicklen acted up with the police by talking back or even by wagging a finger at them, I expect they would have tased him, beaten him down, etc. instead of just hoisting him into the ambulance like the piece of meat he was to them.
She's spot on, as usual. And the most disgusting thing about all of this is that we accept it. We accept it so completely that it hardly even merits mention, much less a proper headline and speedy correction. Many feel that things have already gone past the point of no return, and that we're all just waiting to see who gets pushed into the wrong corner first. Master's behavior certainly increasingly seems to leave no room for any sort of peaceful resolution, because being peaceable is no longer enough--you must comply or die.
Actually, some feel there are other options. Options grounded in history. Options both from within Leviathan and from without. Options nobody wants to take, but which sure sound better than "comply or die".
From the look of Master's war upon the peaceable, which actually seems to be accelerating, we just may find out.
Comments
Nope--ACCEPTING it comes hard. Just laying down and allowing it to happen-even harder.
I saw the video, and the thugs in suits doing their imitation "Dirt Harry" thing.
They are "sell outs" to the country. Part of the problem, and part of the "Yes We Can" crowd that one day will wake up and say "Why Did We"...
The state is acting as if it is suicidal. Just trying to push the people into putting it out of *our* misery.
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