“In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
George Orwell, 1984
It was a well-known truth under Communism that all foreign policy was for domestic consumption. The regimes in Eastern Europe talked loudly against the greedy capitalists and their constant “threats” against the “workers’ paradise.” But no matter how much effort they put in their propaganda was, we knew that it was all directed not against the West but against us, their own citizens. Every time the propaganda intensified, we knew it meant less liberty, more repressions, longer lines to buy groceries, etc. And of course, more people arrested on trumped up charges, just to keep the rest of us under fear.
“Foreign policy is interior policy, with different words,” a dissident author concluded. And was sent to jail without trial, as a “traitor.”
If anyone had any doubt that the same thing applied to our own Federal government, this last week should have dealt with that doubt. Our own Senators – and worst of all, Republican Senators – voted to officially transform what was supposed to be a “foreign” policy into a policy for the interior. Finally, officially, the War on Terror is a war “waged by the ruling group against its own subjects.” So far the official battlegrounds of the War on Terror were small – one or two medium-size nations somewhere in the Middle East, a chemical plant in Sudan, a residential compound in Pakistan. This week the war was officially expanded to its largest and most populous battleground, covering 7 percent of the world’s total land area: The United States of America. There is a new group of combatants: The 300 million American citizens who still want to keep their Life, Liberty, and Property to themselves.
This declaration of war against the population of the United States was a bi-partisan effort. (Have you noticed how the destruction of liberty is always a bi-partisan effort?) No wonder, if one pays attention to Orwell’s words: “The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects.”
Of course, it is for our own safety. That’s what the Communist rulers told us. If it wasn’t for the concentration camps and the military jails and the secret police and the breaking into homes by the secret police, we would have been defenseless victims in the hands of the capitalists. And the same applies today: If it isn’t for our government to be able indefinitely detain us without trial, we would be victims of terrorism. Uh huh.
The Patriot Act led to the creation of Homeland Security and its most grotesque arm, the TSA, manned almost entirely by sexual predators and perverts. As it is today, the TSA hasn’t stopped a single terrorist but it performs well in terrorizing children, pregnant mothers, elderly and sick people, and disabled war veterans. The Republican Senators certainly know what has come out of that bad law based on good intentions; they certainly know from that experience who will be the target of the NDAA – the same people who are the target of the TSA, not the terrorists. If you want to know who will be filling the indefinite detention camps, go to an airport and watch who is groped and harassed by the TSA. With that clear lesson from the last years, the Republican Senators voted nevertheless for another such law. What a few of us suspected – that the War on Terror was just a policy for the interior – is now official. This is nothing less than the Boston Massacre in modern setting.
