Political Junk

Avert your eyes if you think politics is boring.

I'm on an email list for archives, and most of the messages are fairly pedestrian. There was a note made a few days ago referring to the following story. I won't comment on the story itself - there's some back & forth here trying to determine if the thing is a hoax. I'll accept for now that the story is a fact, awaiting any further information should it arise.

Regardless, this posting brought everyone out of the woodwork. The tinfoil-hat brigades came out in force, arguing that we are a step away from Fascism, police state, cats & dogs living in sin together (Not that there's anything wrong with that). Normally I let these things go, but my illness and plain old irritation finally caught up with me.

So I sent the following email, which I thought the rest of you might like to see. If you wouldn't like to see it, it serves you right for reading this.

[BEGIN]

I had intended to skip the annual political folderol, but I'm still a bit sick and it's making me both cranky & ornery. Usually (for the rookies' information) I only pop up during these conversations to ask people to kindly return to their own corners and cease & desist.

The fact that I'm jumping into this one should indicate how disturbed some of this is making me. Bear in mind I've got a Benadryl hangover, so I may be more incoherent than usual. Note also that I have gone to the trouble to set up a separate email account just for this. Feel free to respond - I expect to let this account die a simple death shortly, so all spam & hatemail will probably wither away anyway.

Now, to the point. I am completely comfortable with everyone having their own opinion. I'm glad of it, and I encourage conversations such as these. I don't honestly think this is the right place for it, but most of the time I can ignore it. I think this time, however, people have lost a lot of perspective. For the record, I am a committed conservative. I believe in smaller government, people doing things for themselves, a strong defense, and most of the other conservative positions. That's my problem, not anyone else's, but this way you'll know where I'm coming from.

To this point, easily 99% of the conversation has offered the liberal position. Fair enough - again, everyone has a right to their opinion. But the level of invective, and frankly paranoia, is extremely disturbing to me. This concern that we're on a slippery slope to some kind of police state is not only an extreme assumption, but it denigrates both the United States and those people who have actually lived under true police states.

Several of my friends grew up under Soviet rule. If you wish to know what a police state is like, ask my friends who lived as Jews in Soviet Russia. I assure you the KGB and its FSU descendants are true stormtroopers; anything we in the US have come up with can't begin to act as they did. I know a few victims of the Nazi concentration camps - if you truly want to know what it was like to suffer under your government, ask them. [ed. Buddy's name redacted] is actually one of the few people I trust on this one - he has told me numerous times about his stint in Saudi Arabia. Where women cannot drive, where non-musilms are persecuted, where the press truly is not free.

All of this talk, as someone mentioned, of a "chilling atmosphere" is disingenuous at best, and unsupportable logically. To the best of my knowledge, this recent case of ILL is the first use of the Patriotic Act using library records.

One case. In FOUR YEARS.

Near as I can tell from the secondhand stories, they went to question the student and then did nothing further. No arrest. No late night disappearance. No confiscation of property. Basic police investigative work - question a person of interest, move on when there's nothing of use. I would hope the agents delivered an apology for troubling the student, and presumably that will be the end of the matter. Am I comfortable with the government checking library records? Actually, I am, assuming they have a reason for investigating. I know everyone has different levels of what's reasonable, but unlike other posters I have some faith in our system, our police forces, and our citizenry that we're not about to descend into fascism.

We have survived challenges to our society before. Someone pointed out to me recently that Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War twice. We survived that. Roosevelt interned many thousands of US citizens during WWII; we survived that as well. I would note, not so incidentally, that both of those presidents are deservedly honored by the political left. George Bush may not be at the level of either of those, but why assume that he's trying to create a police state? If you dislike the president, that's fine. Work as hard as you can to defeat his party & his ideas through the usual methods - vote against his party, call your congressperson, etc.

But please. Please. Please don't tell me he's a combination of Machiavelli, Adolf Hitler, J. Edgar Hoover, and, of course, Howdy Doody. Aside from being logically inconsistent ("he's an unbelievably clever and scheming idiot") it lacks perspective on the United States and the half of the country that did vote for him. We're supposed to be among the more educated people in the country, and historically more aware than almost anyone else. History is our business, and history (among other things) tell us that perspective is necessary.

The belief that each change in our nation is automatically going to lead to fascism fails to grasp the essential nature of the United States - we are built with enough checks & balances to have the best chance of remaining a democratic nation. The millions seeking to come here from elsewhere understand that - ask a recent immigrant which is the safest, freest country in the world and I believe most of them will answer the US. As the keepers and users of history, we should keep that in mind when we start to fret about a single event. No one on this list has reported visits by
black-cloaked government thugs, and none of us are likely to.

Here endeth the rant, and perhaps all of us should get back to work.