Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net> wrote :
Students in AmeriKKKan government-run schools have never had much freedom of speech, since the courts have ruled that all administrators have to do is mumble something about the "disruption" of the (laugh) "educational process" and civil rights conveniently evaporate.
Let's see, agreeing by waving the flag is OK but disagreeing is forbidden. Just garden variety fascism. How many kids were suspended for the political speech that is wearing flags?
Still, there's something annoying when a high school student isn't allowed to publicly question the War in Afghanistan. Contrast this with the Vietnam War, before the police state had been racheted up to its current degree of tightness.
Annoying is an weak adjective to describe training our children to accept censorship. They're a bunch of goddamned authoritarian shitheads. People who think that way would be perfect little middle managers in a Hitlerian Germany or the Cold War USSR. They deserve no place here.
Asscruft now wants life sentences for anyone yelling "Anthrax" in a public place, or sprinkling talcum powder on their friends. "Zero Tolerance" moves from the classroom to the rest of society.
Is that "cruft" or "crust" or would just plain dingleberry do? Or Himmler?
In other news, we have received credible information from several usually reliable sources that some unspecified person or group might commit an unspecified terrorist act against an unspecified target in the near but unspecified future. We urge everyone to be on their highest alert, and ignore anything that sounds like screaming children being cluster bombed.
I think that the dynamic in operation here is that maintaining the fear level will : 1) allow the USA PATRIOT machinery implementation to proceed as planned 2) delay legal assaults against the USA PATRIOT act As long as the fear levels are kept high, the "you're either with AMERICA or against it" cry can be used to protect the power grab. The longer the power grab persists the more difficult it will be to dismantle in the future. I'm not quite as convinced as Tim that the country is 100% fucked but we're sure as hell past the halfway point and running at full throttle. Undermining or Suspending All Protections Against Total Reversion Into Overwhelming Tyranny Mike