I decided to start this blog because of my growing alarm at what is happening in the United States. The expansion of the National Security State during the so-called "war on terror" has meant increased government surveillance, secrecy, and ham-handed police-state tactics perpetrated on law-abiding citizens. This is a country where law-enforcement agencies spy on Americans without warrants, where public places are increasingly monitored by closed-circuit cameras, and where it's become almost impossible to get from point A to point B without passing through a checkpoint. Buying a plane ticket now constitutes probable cause for suspicion of terrorism, and we are all guilty until proven innocent, subject to virtual strip searches and/or invasive pat-downs at airports. And that's not even the half of it--extraordinary renditions, indefinite detentions, the USA PATRIOT Act, wars without Congressional authorization. Meanwhile the FBI, CIA, DHS, TSA--all of the alphabet-soup agencies--do not hesitate to fear-monger about terrorism in order to create a siege mentality and complacency among the general public.
I'm planning to use this blog to highlight examples of the National Security State in action. I will be focusing primarily on the United States, where I live. I have no partisan agenda, and I won't be giving any political party a pass. Just for the purposes of context: I am not an anti-government ideologue, a Tea Partier, or a libertarian. Paying my taxes doesn't make me feel oppressed, and I wholeheartedly support a government that invests in infrastructure and provides effective social services to those in need--in fact, I consider this a pressing moral responsibility. I am also not an anti-Obama fanatic. But the incremental gutting of civil liberties perpetrated by Barack Obama and Congress (as well as their predecessors, of course) is something I can't ignore or excuse. While the offenses certainly didn't start with this administration, it seems they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
One more thing: I am not a patriotic person, and I do not fetishize the Founding Fathers or the Revolutionary era. I do not believe in American exceptionalism, which is a lazy, small-minded, and corrosive ideology. But I do believe we had a few very good ideas in our early days, ideas that we tend to forget when we're frightened and manipulated by political rhetoric. This interminable "war on terror"--the constant threat of an apparently imminent attack--has been a very useful concept for the paternalistic power elite, with their militarism and their threat levels and their hypervigilance and their mantra of security, security, security. Meanwhile, what I call the "anything to keep us safe" crowd has, for the most part, acquiesced, and thus the National Security State has become the new normal.
I've named this blog Panopticon Letters after Jeremy Bentham's famous design for a prison in which inmates live under the all-seeing but unseen eye of an "inspector." While I'm not the first to use Bentham's design as a metaphor for the Surveillance State, I couldn't resist adopting it here.
Thank you for reading.
I'm planning to use this blog to highlight examples of the National Security State in action. I will be focusing primarily on the United States, where I live. I have no partisan agenda, and I won't be giving any political party a pass. Just for the purposes of context: I am not an anti-government ideologue, a Tea Partier, or a libertarian. Paying my taxes doesn't make me feel oppressed, and I wholeheartedly support a government that invests in infrastructure and provides effective social services to those in need--in fact, I consider this a pressing moral responsibility. I am also not an anti-Obama fanatic. But the incremental gutting of civil liberties perpetrated by Barack Obama and Congress (as well as their predecessors, of course) is something I can't ignore or excuse. While the offenses certainly didn't start with this administration, it seems they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
One more thing: I am not a patriotic person, and I do not fetishize the Founding Fathers or the Revolutionary era. I do not believe in American exceptionalism, which is a lazy, small-minded, and corrosive ideology. But I do believe we had a few very good ideas in our early days, ideas that we tend to forget when we're frightened and manipulated by political rhetoric. This interminable "war on terror"--the constant threat of an apparently imminent attack--has been a very useful concept for the paternalistic power elite, with their militarism and their threat levels and their hypervigilance and their mantra of security, security, security. Meanwhile, what I call the "anything to keep us safe" crowd has, for the most part, acquiesced, and thus the National Security State has become the new normal.
I've named this blog Panopticon Letters after Jeremy Bentham's famous design for a prison in which inmates live under the all-seeing but unseen eye of an "inspector." While I'm not the first to use Bentham's design as a metaphor for the Surveillance State, I couldn't resist adopting it here.
Thank you for reading.
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