Events such as momentous political
assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf, Oklahoma City, and
9/11
have suggested that government-corporate manipulation of the public for
broader political ends is not difficult to achieve. Control over an
event and the select use of stimuli elicits certain desired responses.
This is particularly the case in a society that exercises almost
unquestioning allegiance toward what Erich Fromm termed “
anonymous
authority.” The Boston Marathon bombing event suggests the end result
of this blind faith; how such finely tuned stagecraft can mobilize a
mass mentality to the degree that it misinterprets the implementation of
martial law as a genuine representation of a public will.
***Read full article here***
Boston residents failed the test that day, but it's questionable whether residents of a similarly-sized city in the South, Mid-west or West of the U.S. would've responded much or *any* differently when the oath-violating thugs went door-to-door.
ReplyDeleteNot that I would have acted any differently if I was in the same situation, but the fact that residents never fired and civilly sued top officials after the fact underscores Paul Craig Robert's remark on a Stephen Lendman episode that the message put out by the people behind those actions was: "the Revolution [of 1775] is over."
Not that anyone should've defended their home against illegal warrantless searches with deadly force (if met with deadly force), but that was their natural and constitutional right, and at the very least, every resident had the right to demand to see a warrant and protest their arrest under duress if they were seized.
In any case, duress did justify their response to just go along with the thugs, but let's hope there will be some who will draw a line the next time.