This has been bugging me for a while, so let me just put it down in a post. We all know who the terrorists are: Al Qaeda, right? But are they the only terrorists? No, I’m not talking about other underground movements, or right-wing militias, though there are terrorists there as well. I’m talking about primary terrorism vs. secondary terrorism.
Primary terrorism is the well-known kind, where you use violence and/or the threat of violence, in order to advance your political and economic agenda, like Al Qaeda. Secondary terrorism is more insidious, where you use the fear of terrorism in order to advance your political and economic agenda. But both are genuinely terroristic, fanning the flames of fear in order to cloud people’s judgment and get them to act contrary to their own best interests.
We have far too many people—in positions of power—who are secondary terrorists, and who are exploiting terrorism in order to deprive us of our fundamental liberties. You hear it all the time: “We mustn’t give in to the terrorists!” Well, I say Amen!, and let’s start with those secondary terrorists who are telling us we have to abjectly submit to having our Fourth Amendment rights routinely violated, who tell us we can’t take our kids on board an airplane without blasting them with radiation or having a stranger grope their genitals, who insist that they can do whatever they want, and if we ask what they’re doing, it’s a “State Secret” that can’t be disclosed—because of the terrorists.
We need to call out the secondary terrorists and label them for what they are and put a stop to their terroristic activities. We’ll never win against terrorism if we keep rewarding terrorists by donating money to their campaigns and voting for them and giving them political power. As Lincoln put it, America was “conceived in liberty,” but if we don’t stand up and fight for that liberty, it will vanish into wistful memory. And don’t think it’s all just Fox News either. Terrorism is as terrorism does. The left needs just as much cleanup as the right (though admittedly the left does have a head start and a few good voices). It’s not a left or right issue, it’s a liberty versus terrorism issue. Choose your sides wisely.
That is behind many of the truthers claims: the ease with which rights were abandoned through the homeland security act after 9/11 smacked of an opportunity created to shut down parts of a democratic rule.
More reasonable however is the idea that it just was an opportunity used to implement such laws.
More astonishing is how easily the populace was willing to abandon freedoms to gain rather doubtful security.
Agree with you. Unfortunately, I believe all mid- and high-level politicians are bought and paid for, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference who we vote for.
Color me cynical and melancholy.
Whether you see it from the stand point of a political war or a cultural war, it appears that majorities on both sides are so dedicated to “winning” that they act in contradictory ways and abandon seeing ideas to their intellectual conclusions. In the event that they can understand an idea in its intellectual completeness, they retain still the ability to “unsee” it for whatever the purposes of the moment are.
Its as if Doublethink makes reality, for such persons. As convenient as the trick might be, its a fine way for a person to effectively lose their the ability to recognize reality, harness it, and consequentially, enjoy it freely.
Who else here has noticed that its often the individuals most concerned with shaping the political and social landscape that are given over to this “mental discipline”?
Anyway, “Secondary Terrorism” is good food for thought. Thanks for this effort.