In the wake of my recent post about the Finnish folk band that was hassled, harassed, and strip searched on their entry into the U.S. to perform at some music festivals: Don’t fly the unfriendly skies, you foreign intruder on the Homeland!, in which one of the musicians remarks that his treatment under U.S. Homeland Security was worse than his treatment by Soviet KGB, Classically Liberal has a story that’s even more shocking:
♦ The disgrace that America has become.
In short, (but be sure to read his post!) a Japanese visitor, riding a train to Boston where he was to meet up with his family, was admonished (to put it very lightly) for taking pictures of the scenery outside the train. Due to “National Security,” this traveler who could speak no English, was rudely removed from the train before his intended stop. To the surprise and embarrassment of the American’s who witnessed the event.
Personally I think that when you hear the phrase “in the interest of national security†you should run because chances are damn good you are talking to a Nazi of one sort of another. And only a real moron, meaning a state bureaucrat or Amtrak employee, could actually believe that tourists taking photos while riding on a train, one reason many tourists take trains in the first place, is threatening national security. Millions of Americans could be arrested for the same offense when visiting other countries.
When is being embarrassed about your government’s and “peace keeper”‘s increasingly fascist behavior, attitude, and tactics no longer enough? When will people decide it’s time to stop tsk-tsk’ing at the growing reports of police and DHS harassment? How many more billions of dollars in tourism will the U.S. lose as international travel agencies and services encourage people to not visit the U.S. and route trips avoiding U.S. soil, before we start realizing there’s a problem? How far will the dollar drop along with the world’s attitude toward the U.S. before we citizens grow sick enough about it to take our country back from the fascists who are trying to control it and us?
A caller on a radio show yesterday talked about why he moved to Canada, even back when Reagan was president, because he saw the writing on the wall. He was disgusted and saddened by the fact that in 2000 when the Supreme Court handed Bush the election despite Gore’s win, people didn’t speak up. There were no protests, no taking to the streets, even by the 51% who voted for Gore. The caller quoted the old phrase, “People get the government they deserve.” We’re rolling over while the government, who is supposed to be our employees, screws us, and we shrug and say, “Oh well. That sucks,” and continue to take it.
There’s going to come a point in which it’s too late to stop it. When our desire to not make waves, to not risk the comfy middle-class life we barely eke out, finally gives in to righteous indignation and a call to action–but we won’t be able to stop it. The power, the wealth, the technology, will be controlled by the few despotic oligarchs who direct the global-capital market and the military industrial complex, and we will be the working poor, unable to rise up, even en mass, to change it.
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