After the events of September 11, 2001, a response was unleashed wherein two wars were launched–one against a country that had no evident involvement in the terrorist attacks–that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and are still going on.
So steeped in fear, uncertainty and paranoia was the climate of that time that the Bush administration was able to rush through a huge piece of disturbingly Orwellian legislation called The Patriot Act. Legislators were told that, for the sake of emergency national security needs, it must be made into law immediately, whether or not they had time to read it.
They signed it, and a decade resembling Huxley’s Brave New World began. Not only were we told we needed to invade Iraq and Afghanistan to root out “the terrorists,” we also needed to do it with as much expensive military equipment as possible. A new, hook-nosed villain arose to replace the previous scapegoats, Nazis and communists: the Arab-Muslim or “Islamo-fascist.”
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In the wake of the recent shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, it is important to remember history like this. Such history has a huge bearing on how to react to such an event, how the response is perceived, and what realities will flow from its analysis and possible exploitation. At the very least, the political left may have broad justification to cry double standard when it comes to notions of national security and the criteria by which groups of people (or other “interests”) are deemed threats to democracy.
Consider: If Giffords had been, say, Manhattan mosque opponent Rep. Peter King of New York, and the person who had shot him had been an Arab Muslim, we would likely be in a state of near-martial law today. Every branch of the armed forces would be at Def Con 3, and the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorist alert level would be at “Red” or “Severe.” Every cop in every town would have instant nudge-wink license to pull over or harass anyone who looked vaguely Arab or Muslim and detain them indefinitely without regard to their legal or civil rights.
To overlay this analogy onto the present situation, imagine a world in which everyone resembling the shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner—every clean-cut white male with perhaps a few too many American flags or NRA bumper stickers on his truck or biblical quotes on his blog—is immediately a terrorism suspect. Seriously, imagine it; what was done to Muslims for a decade here was exactly that. But it’s not the same when you actually think that it could be you getting pulled over and harassed, or detained without a warrant or even criminal charges, or denied a lawyer.
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Some may regard Gifford’s shooting as a call to action, a signal to take a closer look at “domestic terrorism.” Domestic terrorism, best exemplified by far-right wingnuts like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, has spread alarmingly thanks to vitriolic political discourse and suggestions of violence by zealous public personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, whose website featured an illustration of Giffords’ home district in Arizona overlaid with sniper scope crosshairs.
Maybe it is time for some serious examination of the proliferation of “news” whose steering mechanism has veered far from the facts and is precariously hugging the ditch of misinformation and even dangerously inflammatory propaganda. How much difference is there between a Fox News rant hailing someone’s right to bring an assault rifle to an Obama rally and an Al-Jazeera broadcast that spreads the news of a fatwa that’s been declared against Danish cartoonists? At what point does the messenger begin to share in the culpability for violent acts?
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In all likelihood, Loughner is schizophrenic, psychotic or otherwise seriously mentally compromised, but if anything, that makes the overarching implications of this event even more disturbing. As someone who has worked with schizophrenics, I can say that they are people who absorb “messages” very effectively and will tend to obsess over them far more than even the most passionate political junkies among us who are operating with full faculties.
The nation would do well to scrutinize the fourth estate more rigorously when it comes to their presentation of “facts,” and to seriously consider the effects of television programmers’ social or political agendas, which may shape themselves into subtle, insidious “messages.”
Many argue that no matter what people do or say on television, rational people will still behave rationally, and that it’s ridiculous to insinuate that media can be responsible for instigating real-life tragedies. This may be true, but every year media is embedded further and further into our lives, with 24-hour news and commentary on television, radio and Internet that we can now access from our homes, cars or phones or even just absorb through broadcasts in public places.
If it’s true that such a bombardment of ideas, thoughts and images is harmless, then why are there laws that prevent major media outlets from running non-stop gore fests or streaming violent pornography on demand? My sense is that it’s because such a thorough blanketing of the public consciousness with any recurring idea is potentially dangerous and might affect the behavior of real people, most of all those who are especially impressionable.
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Media and schizophrenia aside, one serious question needs to be posed immediately concerning the standard by which the country’s anti-terrorist authorities are spurred into action. In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued an assessment stating that “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.” Is it time we pulled those FBI moles out of their current undercover posts in typically nonviolent cauldrons of thought like environmental or anti-war demonstrations and Berkeley book group meetings and started detailing larger numbers of of them to infiltrate the evidently more dangerous and unpredictable elements of the far right, including the Tea Party?
After all, despite its flag-waving rhetoric, the Tea Party movement’s many morally questionable affiliates have historically included not only social fringe elements like white supremacists but also extremely well-financed, fallaciously named entities like “Americans for Prosperity,” whose sources of funding are at least as legitimately suspect as a downtown Manhattan mosque’s.
