SEPTEMBER 11, 2018What I Don’t Like About Post-9/11 America <https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/11/what-i-dont-like-about-post-9-11-america/> by JOHN W. WHITEHEAD <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/johnwhite1124/>“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
―Edward Abbey https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/11/what-i-dont-like-about-post-9-11-america/ Life in a post-9/11 America increasingly feels like an endless free fall down a rabbit hole into a terrifying, dystopian alternative reality in which the citizenry has no rights, the government is no friend to freedom, and everything we ever knew and loved about the values and principles that once made this country great has been turned on its head. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade the citizenry to march in lockstep with a police state. Osama Bin Laden right warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed <http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview/>. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.” These past 17 years have proven Bin Laden right in his prediction. What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act <http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm> in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/09/11/welcome-to-the-post-edward-snowden-era/> has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded. This is not freedom. This is a jail cell. Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded. Our losses are mounting with every passing day. *snip>* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. If you'd like to donate to News From Underground, please visit http://markcrispinmiller.com/donate - we appreciate your ongoing support. Ways to unsubscribe, 1) send a blank email to [email protected]. PLEASE NOTE: you must unsubscribe using the SAME email with which you subscribed; 2) go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com
