After watching the most recent Republican debate one thing became chillingly clear to me – the terrorists that struck America on September 11th, 2001 have now officially won. I held out hope even when our cultural response was bigoted anger and hatred toward anyone different from us. I understood that in frustration people can become fearful and lash out. I was grateful that more were not hurt and felt that we had come to a better understanding of our diversity as a nation.
I understood the desire to guard ourselves and so while it pained me to watch the very government that is tasked with our protection steal our civil liberties en masse, but I stood by silently. Gradually new and clandestine organizations were formed under the guise of our protection like; The Homeland Security Act, The USA Patriot Act, The Total Information Awareness Office, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Terrorism Information and Prevention System.
These very organizations meant to defend us, are actually spying on us. “… reduced privacy, increased government secrecy and power and strengthened government protection of special interests. Allen Weinstein, president of the Center for Democracy in Washington, DC, has called it a “law of unintended consequences.”
I waited patiently and held hope even as I watched the HSA endanger and systematically disassemble our First and Fourth Amendment rights, and weaken more than a dozen privacy laws. The sponsors of these laws contend that the post-9/11 climate justifies these intrusions, because, according to one Republican congressman, “The President needs the freedom and flexibility to protect the Homeland.”
#GOPDebate: Republicans Take on Islam
“There are millions of radical Islamic terrorists who seek to kill us.” –Ted Cruz #GOPDebate
Posted by AJ+ on Thursday, March 10, 2016
Now after watching Republican candidate after candidate explain that millions of people across the world hate us, I now understand that I was wrong. According to nearly every recent poll Donald Trump and his message of fear, paranoia, and frustration at a broken system is leading, and leading by a landslide.
I get it. I understand the frustration. Many times I feel small and insignificant against a systematic government machine being built to protect me all the while actually constructing an Orwellian dystopia that can never end well. I feel helpless to stop it. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. I vote but nothing changes. I speak out, but little is heard. But is building a wall the answer? Is barring Muslims at the border the answer? Is carpet bombing strangers across the globe really the answer? More torture, more surveillance, more rights slipping away from our already hollow and disappearing sense of freedom.
This Republican propaganda, with Trump at the head, rebranded for a new generation, but still just as lethal as the last few times it was used. We learned about the Salem witch trials, where innocent people were violently hunted and murdered for imagined crimes. We learned about communist fears in the fifties and how McCarthy hunted down innocent people to falsely accuse them of being Un-American. We learned about the Fascism of Hitler, Mussolini or Franco, and the horrific result of fear, hate and the death that inevitably follows. In our desperation to have a Strongman, a leader, a nationalist, someone who says what we want to hear, someone who makes the promises we think we need, someone who isn’t afraid to bully the media, silence dissenters, and make racist claims without fear of repercussion, someone who celebrates ignorance and celebrates violence, for this we’re willing to abandon everything we are, and what little of ourselves we have left.
So, I have to ask whether we actually learned anything at all.
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