The responses to my last post (360 as of Monday night) were certainly
startling to me, especially, I have to say, the one that located my
nearest detention facility between Laguna Seca and Fort Ord on the
Monterey Peninsula. I immediately went to Google maps and started
scanning the area looking for a center large enough to hold 20,000
people. and the best I could come up with was a gated golf course
community (one way in, one way out) that sits on the hillside between
the raceway and the fairgrounds. Or Tehama, Clint Eastwood's country
club. Which doesn't mean that I am not taking this martial law thing
seriously. So--back to you responders. I have two questions and a topic
of discussion.
Question one: Do you know where your local detention facility is, and
what it is currently being used for? Have you seen it? Do you know
anyone who is or was employed in building it? And do you know how it is
set up inside?
Question two: If, indeed, Blackwater, Titan and other military
outsourcing companies are being used to train mercenaries whose
ultimate job will be to subdue the American population (in other
countries, these paramilitary organizations might be known as
"rightwing death squads"), do you know anyone who belongs to one, has
been trained to join one, or has left one? If so, what do they say
about the purposes and intentions of these groups, and how do they feel
about them? In other words, what do they say would be their
justification for, let's say, rounding up you and your friends and
family?
Many of you made a logical case for the idea that we are in the midst
of the development of a military state, a fascist state, and certainly
the editorial in yesterday's New York Times about the unprecedented
firing of seven diligent federal prosecutors, such as Carol Lam (who
busted Duke Cunningham) is worrisome in this context. The new US
attorneys put in office by the Bush administration are there to take
orders, so a case could be made that here we have another brick being
set in place. It might be that the Bush administration is just doing a
little ass-covering--seeing the handwriting on the wall, they are
trying to make sure they themselves are not going to be prosecuted, but
maybe something more sinister is going on.
Nevertheless, I have to say that I still don't understand what the
goal is. Merely a Republican/corporate stranglehold on the three
branches of government? Absolute suppression of dissent? If we recall
Stalin, for example, we remember that it was extremely dangerous to
criticize Stalin out loud. But criticism of the Bush administration is
already out of control, entirely routine. To what end would the nation
be destroyed? It's easy to say "fascist state", but the fascist states
we know of were geographically on the small side, and didn't last
long. How many right-wing death squads does it take to shoot out a
lightbulb? to subdue Manhattan, the Bronx, AND Brooklyn? Not to mention
Chicago and Los Angeles and the redwood forests and the gulfstream
waters, the ribbon of highways, and the endless skyways in between. Why
would they detain 20,000 in Monerey Peninsula and what would the ideal
US look like in the mind of Dick Cheney?
There are lots of intelligent people who still believe that Bush and
Cheney originally meant well--their goal after 9/11 was protective, and
their antipathy to Hussein was idealistic and practical. If that is the
case, then what sort of US do they want now? Do they really think they
have something to gain (since they are already rich and more or less
old) by doing away with even the semblance of America as we knew it?
Discuss.