I really need to keep writing this weekend (OMG! I just touchtyped that last sentence! And most of this sentence! This is a big deal for me. I’ve been using a keyboard, sometimes 10+ hours a day, for 25 years, and I still can’t touchtype. Anywa….) so this should be reasonably brief.

A couple of communities have taken very different approaches to the threat of crime in their community. (Before I get started, I’m comparing apples to crabapples here as the threat of crime are two different types for the communities. Regardless, I think the differences in approaches are far reaching and grander than the specifics of what they’re trying to protect themselves against.)

A town in Arkansas, plagued by a criminal culture of drugs and shootings, has allowed its law enforcement to place the town under martial law:

• Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

“Curfew” is a rather quaint term for what’s going on there. The police, with automatic assault rifles, are stopping anyone from being on the streets after curfew. Their attitude it clear:

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law,” Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson said. “Anyone out at 3 o’clock shouldn’t be out on the street, unless you’re going to the hospital.”

It seems to be the opinion of the town’s “leaders” that free citizens don’t have the liberty to be out on their own business in their town when they wish. His belief that everyone should be resting snug in their beds at night else you’re a ne’er-do-well is being imposed by force upon free citizens.

Of course, as all things are, the issue is complicated. There’s no doubt that their town is overrun by crime. Randoms shootings, drive-bys, drugs rampant. In a very significant way I feel for this town. There’s a part of me that thinks in order to deal with an out of control crime wave, the fascist fist of martial law is needed to stem the tide so that more democratic means can be allowed to have an effect. Martial law is an addressing of a symptom–crime come from failures in the social structure and no amount of fascist strength will solve the problems of social distress.

I don’t completely disagree with a limited and controled use of strength to get a situation under control, but that’s not what appears to be happening in this town (I’ve never even visited and know nothing about aside from news articles). It would seem the law of the land has an attitude that armed enforcement of curfew is not a limited and should not be a limited solution but rather a norm. When you have community leaders making statements that no one should be out on the streets late at night, you have a truly fascist attitude which seeks to control the populace and not help it to live with liberty and freedom. This town may push the criminal element to other neighboring towns, but they will not solve the underlying issues this way and will in fact end up do more harm to the very concepts of what it means to live in America.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

That sounds like an establishing shot from a movie set in East Germany or the Soviet Union, maybe a movie version of 1984.

Meanwhile, to protect their school children from what they see as a rising tide of school shootings, a Texas school district will be allowing its teacher to carry concealed handguns:

• Texas district will let teachers carry guns

“Gun free zones” are basically game preserves for anyone who has enough disdain for law as to want to shoot people and are going to ignore “gun free zone” declarations in order to do it. A look at school shootings the last couple of decades and you see pretty much two scenarios playing out: 1. A shooter enters a school and starts killing and wounding unprotected people until they decide when to stop, and then they kill themselves. Police arrive after it’s all done. 2. Someone (a student and/or teacher) runs to their car, grabs their gun, and comes back to stop the shooter thus ending the spree earlier than the shooter would have decided to. Police arrive after it’s all done. (Same goes with the recent church shootings.)

Unless a school is placed next door to a police station, it can take several minutes for police to respond to a shooting (which even in this age of cell phones, may not even be placed until a couple of minutes into the event), and then it can take longer for the police to make an organized counter “attack” on the shooter. And as we’ve seen, it doesn’t take very long for a shooter to exhaust their ammo and turn a final shot on themselves.

The idea of a “liberal media” is absurd, except when it comes to issues of successful non-police use of guns to protect innocent people, then the media is generally silent on reporting it:

• When killers meet armed resistance
• A quick index to our articles on guns, gun control and gun free zones.

(Although, as you can see, CNN.com appears to be doing a fair piece on this Texas town–kudos to them)

The important thing is that the school district is being smart about it. When rabid liberals hear the idea of letting teachers or students carry firearms on a campus, they immediately commit reductio ad absurdum and imagine a wild west shootout left and right. The district will be requiring very specific and strict guidelines for who can carry:

For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun, must be authorized to carry by the district, must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

(OK, so this isn’t brief.) These are indeed two different situations that have received two different solutions, but I would like to point out the mindset and the larger repercussions of both solutions. In the Arkansas town you have a situation where the empowerment of the people has be abdicated in favor of police control. The populace have turned over their ability to take matters in their own hand, to fight to make change in their community, over to an entirely different group of armed thugs. A more organized and better funded group of thugs, perhaps. The free citizens have given up their freedom and have chosen to live under siege. Safe, perhaps, but disempowered and cowering to a different force that’s become even more uncontrollable than the criminal element.

On the other hand, the Texas town is determined to take matters into their own hands and protect their own themselves. They have recognized the absurdity of both fascist control and posting warning signs that have all the effect of “Nuh uh, mister baddie-bad. You can’t bring your guns in here to express your sociopathic suicide rage–this is a ‘gun free zone!’” Instead of relying on the near-impossible protection of the police, they have chosen a course of action that empowers themselves and not only does not eliminate freedom but rather express and celebrates it.

It’s this exact difference in attitudes which can be extrapolated into the bigger context of our reaction to terrahism. Our government has decided to take the attitude of the Arkansas town and enact police state tactics. It has decided the best way to protect the land of the free against those who despise our freedom and liberty, is to remove freedom and liberty. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, the first act our government should have done after 9/11 was to remove laws, not make more restricting our freedoms. The best attack against fundamentalism is to increase freedom and liberty and not do their job for them.

And the tragic thing is that we the people are letting it happen. We’re peeking out the crack of our doors and closing them tight as the law drives by in the middle of the night. We imagine we’re nice and safe, but unlike the “safety” of the Arkansas town, our safety is completely illusionary. Time and time and time again it’s pointed up how worthless the TSA security is in anything except controlling the innocent. How worthless the border controls are at anything except controlling in innocent. How worthless port inspections are, shipping truck control is. We’re living under increasingly fascist state control without the benefit of the safety we’re supposedly being sold in exchange for our civil liberties.

This news item:

• Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children

I have no comment of my own that could add to the story itself. I’ll just post what some others have said:

OM:

…You know, one day everyone’s going to finally get tired of hire-a-cops, and it’ll be *them* put up against the wall before the lawyers.

Bastards.

Victor Trac:

The terrorists win again. I bet they didn’t expect to be /this/ successful when planning 9/11.

FLUP:

Yet another reason never to go to the US: after they copy the contents of my laptop and phone, they post a letter to the wrong address, lock me up and watch me die.

K2R:

> he no longer received painkillers,
> because he could not stand in line to collect them.

This sounds like one of the pervert things my Grandparent’s generation did in Germany.

“Of course you can have painkillers, just line up there! You can’t walk anymore? Well, I’m afraid, you will have to pick up you medication yourself, it’s the law.”

This is exactly the inhumanity small people in Germany showed while hiding behind buerocracy.

I cannot imagine how desperate he was, being stuck in the bad dream of Kafka the US has become, always hoping to wake up.

“Oceana” is a reference to the setting of George Orwell’s 1984, which is what the U.S./British empire has become. Where Big Brother monitors and watches and tracks everyone.

“London” is a reference to…modern day London, which has careened full throttle toward Orwell’s hellscape of 1984 by, as Cory Doctorow puts it, installing a “CCTV camera for every three blood cells.” Ironically, the late Orwell’s old neighborhood is covered with CCTV cameras.

The latest relevant news? It seems New York is going to turn New York City into a mirror of London, taking the first step of tracking all license plates that enter and leave Manhattan:

• NYPD’s ‘Operation Sentinel’ To Track EVERYTHING

Security expert “sherri” posted to her blog her adventures of flying home without identification:

• Flying Without a Wallet

See, the official policy of the TSA and DHS, is if a person refuses to show ID, they will be refused admittance to the gates, no matter whether they have a boarding pass or not. But, if a person forgets or loses their ID, oh well then after a few questions and a phone call, off you go! Sherri describes how amazingly easy it is to get through security without ID and how it can be even easier to circumvent security altogether–proving security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier’s point: “I don’t think any further proof is needed that the ID requirement has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with control.”

Sherri makes a comment that is accurate and pertinent to both the TSA “security” as well as NYC’s Operation Sentinel and any other program which strives to track, monitor, and watch people:

It’s important for private citizens to be able to travel without being tracked if they wish. I am not a criminal. I just don’t believe it’s anybody’s business where I go. I understand the need for ensuring the safety of our transportation infrastructure, and as such, searching passengers before boarding makes sense.
.
The freedom to travel anonymously also underlies our right to peacefully assemble. When a government tracks its citizens and can arbitrarily decide to limit or cut off travel, that threatens our democracy. This is especially true in our global society, where many people rely on air travel, trains and the highway just to see their families.
.
TSA’s new policy, which is to focus on finding “dangerous people” rather than objects, poses enormous challenges. It requires that the agency make sweeping judgments about travelers with very little information, and in a very short amount of time. It is simply not feasible to accomplish this accurately.
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We need to make sure our airports are safe, but at the same time, we have to be very careful not to destroy the very thing we are trying to protect: our free country.

(Emphasis mine.)

Yesterday I posted a super-bloated overlong post: The failure of conservatism. (That’s what happens when I allow myself to write unedited in stream-of-consciousness–which is every time, really.) I railed against the ideas of free market capitalism and libertarian, objectivist anarchy in the modern world. I briefly mentioned public education as part of “the commons,” a service that everyone in a society benefits from either directly or indirectly, and it gets privatized at the risk of harming society.

Well, today, “carr2d2″ on the SkepChick blog posted an article that addresses that very topic:

• Whose freedom?

She reasonably questions the libertarian belief that parents should totally determine the way, why, how, and when a child is educated. carr2d2 asks:

We were looking at the children’s education as a function of the parents’ freedom.  At what point does a parent’s right to raise their child as they see fit (or, as some argue, their freedom to not pay taxes) infringe upon that child’s right to live a healthy life, relatively untainted by abuse?  Don’t we owe it to all our kids to give them as equal a shot as is possible at success?

This topic spawned a great comment thread with wonderful observation like this snippet from AgnosticOracle:

If we look at periods and places where there was no public education the vast majority of working class people didn’t get educated. It isn’t merely a question of fairness to the child. There are externalities of education that benefit society as a whole. Carl Sagan’s father was a garment worker. Without public education there is a good chance the world would have lost out on his genius.
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It is a benefit not only to the child but to society at large to educate children well. This is especially true if you want a functioning democracy. While we may wish to give the parents the right to teach the child what they want, we shouldn’t give them the right to deny them education. For instance, a parent shouldn’t be able to choose not to teach their daughters math and science.

He, and most commentors, have it exactly right. A parent isn’t imbued with special wisdom simply because they can procreate. They certainly have a wide range of rights along with their responsibilities, but the minimal education of the people who are going to be participating in society is everyone’s concern–not just the parents. The libertarian mindset, like I implied in yesterday’s post, was perfectly reasonable when people can and did live in a such a way as to not have to interact or participate in society at large. but we, as Americans and a human race, have developed far beyond any reasonable concept of isolationism and selfish individualism.

The education of my children directly affects your and your childrens’ lives–you want to be assured that my kids have a certain basic level of education, no? In a libertarian paradise, there’s no guarantee that anyone you interact with doesn’t have a skewed and flawed education, if any. Would you want to live in that kind of wild west in an age in which our health and lives and lifestyle is so delicately balanced on a web of dynamic social interactivity?

Animal Farm revisited:

There’s a chain email that’s being passed around conservative emailers that tells a story of a foreign freedom fighter describing to his American college professor how to capture wild pigs by feeding them free corn and slowly penning them in. The email ends with a quote: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” attributed to Thomas Jefferson. One problem is that according to Jeffersonian researchers, Jefferson never said that. Republican President Gerald Ford did. Although, as a big fan of Jefferson, I wouldn’t have put it past him to have said it! Jefferson was no fan of big government, absolutely believed that the right to bear arms was so the people could change government by force should politics fail, and even believed all debts and laws and Constitutions should be eliminated every fourteen years and recreated based on the norms and needs of the new generation. The other problem with that quote…I half agree with it despite the fact I also think it’s absurd.

The root of the entire problem is that we live in an extremely complex and complicated world, but we’re creatures that abhor complexity and demand simple answers. I’m no different. For the last four years I’ve been investigating ways I could define myself in the simplest terms: libertarian, anarchist, socialist, collectivist, some combinations thereof. And the conclusion I constantly confront is there are no simple answers.

This also shows the flaw in that very simple, easy to understand metaphor of the pigs. The reason the pigs can be easily penned in and trapped is not because of the free food, but because they’re pigs and the story’s antagonists are humans. If the humans in the story didn’t use free food and gates, they’d use snares. Or guns or tranq’ or traps or any of a hundred methods because the story is comparing simple hungry pigs to clever and technological humans. The story as an analogy is completely absurd and illustrates nothing analogous to our situation or conditions.

The irony of small, powerful government:

So, let’s take a closer look at that quote since that’s the part that really applies to anything realistic: Read the rest of this entry »

(Vital Update: Check out my comment at the bottom for some very important info on this post.)

OK, remember that post I wrote not long ago: On the issue of privacy and protecting civil liberties? That got reprinted by Steganos security software site? (”Sheesh, you never freakin’ let us forget!”) Seems I have some people much smarter than me to support my claim that everyone should be using encryption in their ordinary, day-to-day lives:

• Encryption, Privacy, and You

Written by “Mark Chu-Carroll (aka MarkCC) is a PhD Computer Scientist, who works for Google as a Software Engineer,” his article very succinctly explains how in this police state of the free and fascism of the brave (my words, not his) the best defense is to make encryption ubiquitous and not hidden:

The solution to this is to make encryption much more common, so that it’s no longer so rare that it raises a flag. In the novel, Cory wimped out, and had his protagonist’s best friend be the chief programmer at the most popular ISP in the city, and had them change the ISPs code in a way that transparently made everyone’s computers encrypt all of the traffic going onto the network. In real life, it’s not so easy. Technosavvy folks can’t wave a magic wand and make people start encrypting their data.
What we can do is start encrypting our data, and when we teach people to use computers, just set them up so that they’re using encryption. Set up your parents macintosh to use FileVault. Set up your windows box to use an encrypted filesystem. Use PGP. Put passwords on your important documents. Just make the little bit of effort to use reasonable encryption on a routine basis.

Remember that this article is in response to the fact that the DHS at the U.S. borders is actively seizing laptops, cell phones, USB keys, digital cameras, to have the data copied and analyzed and stored–without warrant or even probable causes or reasonable suspicion! (In gross and crass violation of the 4th Amendment, yet until the case gets to the Supreme Court, the government’s going to keep doing it). But that’s not even close to the limit, it’s barely the beginning.

Check out this video in which Stanford Law professor and technology critic, Lawrence Lessig, describes the coming “i-Patriot Act”:

(Source: Silicon Valley Watcher article. Full video here.)

One concern about the thought of having your laptop encrypted, and seized, is that when you’re “asked” for your access password, if you refuse you’ll be arrested. Technically, that’s not a concern although in reality it may be:

While the non-suspicion-based seizing of personal data has yet to reach the Supreme Court (and that may take a while), the concept of being forced to turn over passwords to law enforcement has already been through the high courts, and the result is still confusing at best. I’m not a legal scholar by any means, but from what I can tell if the state does not know of any specific criminal files on a device, then you can rightfully refuse to provide a password under 5th Amendment protection. (Although, if they do know for a fact already that you have, say, an illegal copy of Prince’s “Let’s Get Crazy” on your computer, you may not have any protection and may be compelled to provide the password to access the file.)

In other words, if your laptop is seized at the border in a random data seizure, or even if you looked like a dirty terrahist but that’s all the “evidence” they have to take your device, you can not be compelled to provide the decryption password that would unlock your laptop. Now, can you be arrested for refusing? Technically, no. But I can bet a cop or DHS agent will easily find another five things to arrest and hold you on, even if they’re later dropped. And I can’t imagine being arrested is a fun adventure in any stretch of the imagination. So, it’s easy to see why people would be reticent to do anything that might make them stand out and cause any trouble–and that’s exactly how the state likes it! They want the people to be afraid of arrest, no matter how innocent they may be, and thus complacent with any violations of civil liberties they can think of perpetuating. All in the name of Security!

And so, that’s the point I made earlier and MarkCC makes: if data encryption were to become so common, so everyday, that 99% of those who use it have nothing more to hide than their credit card information, family photos, and chicken pot pie recipes, the DHS will be less willing to wantonly seize innocent citizen’s property at their whim, turning us all into prisoners of our own country. Will this make us less safe, not allowing the police to do whatever they like in the name of keeping us safe? I seriously doubt it. The fallacy of false positives shows that if there’s any flaw in the accuracy of those arrested and accused of crimes, (and c’mon, we all know innocent people are arrested and even convicted more than rarely) then the number of innocent people initially accused and arrested can easily be larger than those who are guilty. That’s a concept the founding fathers knew about (although more in practice as the British were arresting and convicting innocent people for any made up crime in order to maintain control and fear), and so set up our justice system to favor occasionally letting the guilty go if it meant increasing the likelihood an innocent would not be convicted.

In any case, it’s a matter of principle, so long as we want to actually live in a free country which believes in liberty:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
–Benjamin Franklin, 1755

Not long ago I posted an article, “On the issue of privacy and protecting civil liberties“. Since then I’ve heard Cory Doctorow discuss more frequently how the underlying problem with the loss of personal data and thus a real threat to our lives (and livelihoods) goes beyond the loss of collected data into the wrong hands–but the gross collection of the data in the first place! A government or private sector company can’t harm you by losing something if it doesn’t have it in the first place.

In one of the latest examples of a lost laptop compromising the identities of thousands, (see my post “Welcome to Amerika, please give us all your most private information” for more examples of governmental error and incompetence resulting in risk to thousands, even millions in some cases), a private company seeing an opportunity to make millions off the chaos and bad will the TSA has created with their ridiculous, worthless, ineffectual, and draconian airport security checkpoints, created a program that would allow people to use the infallible power of money (which the terrahists must not have) to skip the long TSA lines for an express lane.

• Laptop with data about 33,000 Clear card applicants lost at SFO

It seems a company laptop…an unencrypted company laptop (see that “On the issue…” post for info on how inexcusable it is to not have active encryption considering how easy and important it is) has gone missing putting at risk private information of tens of thousands of program applicants.

So, an ineffectual government security group (the TSA) does such a piss-poor job that it opens up a business opportunity for a security company to charge for the pleasure of not having to deal with the TSA. This company evidently has no concept of data security and puts its potential customers at risk of having their lives turned upside down. There’s irony in there somewhere I’m sure.

Just a few recent articles regarding the crazy hijinks at the TSA:

• TSA proud of confiscating non-dangerous items

Commentor Hans:

TSA: “What is that, electronics”
Traveler: “Yep, it holds batteries”
TSA: “You know what else is made of electronics? The TIMING DEVICE of a BOMB!”
Traveler: “Huh?”
TSA Supervisor: “That’s some good work, Lou.”

• TSA destroys the RepRap’s first child

(RepRap’s a “printer” that prints actual physical 3D objects)

And in keeping with this administration’s trend of hiring literally incompetent people to vital positions in government and civil service…

• Fired emergency response exec now at Homeland Security

Sonia Pitt, the MnDOT emergency response executive fired for taking an unauthorized, state-paid trip to Washington during the Interstate 35W bridge disaster, is now working for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

. . .

“All inquiries go through my attorney, same as always,” Pitt said.

Let the wacky hijinks continue!

It’s old news here, old news for most independent news sources, civil liberty organizations, and bloggers who care–but corporate news (or at least some individuals within them) are finally getting around to noticing that the Department of Homeland Security has been thumbing their nose at the 4th Amendment by searching and seizing without oversight, standards, or even probable cause and suspicion, citizens’ laptops, cell phone, mp3 players, digital camera, and any other devices which can contain gigabytes of personal information.

• Travelers’ laptops may be detained at border — Under DHS policy, no suspicion of wrongdoing needed to search devices

“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

Two days ago I stood in a line for an hour and a half, in the heat, surrounded by everyone from 50-year-old liberal arts professors to 20-year-old white kids with dreadlocks. And it was pretty cool.

We were in line to see (presumptive) Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama in a “town hall” rally to discuss the economic issues in America. There was a lot of excitement and good will among us. When an older gentleman walked up and down the waiting line with a homemade sign indicating, best as we could tell, that Obama did not support American interests and that, quote: “I am a citizen of America, not a citizen of the world,” I heard no jibes or jeers from the people–except some quiet comments that he needed to write more legibly. (There were more McCain supporting protesters by the road, but they seemed subdued and simply earned chuckles from the people around me. Hopefully a good sign of how “heated” this election won’t get. Well, one can hope.)

But of course Adventures in Waiting in Line isn’t the point of this article. But before I get to the meat of the story (if you’re uninterested by babble about non-standard socio-political ranting, skip this paragraph–I’ll get back to Obama shortly), I must first digress in the interest of full disclosure and admit what anyone who knows me or reads my blog probably already knows, I’m not a Democrat even though I’m registered to vote as one. I’m an anarcho-socialist, ideally. I say “ideally” because let’s be honest: Capitalism is the dominant hegemonic ideology and that won’t change any time soon. Not short of complete world economic collapse, massive and horrific revolutionary uprising throughout the world (something I’d rather not have happen), or massive global crisis on an unimaginable scale (which would likely lead to the first option). At least, these are the only ways I can see governments being eradicated and cooperative socialism rising up in the world as it is. None of these are pleasant concepts. The best way for socialism to succeed and eradicate global market capitalism and undermine the base that gives rise to state control, will be for the concept of wealth and scarcity to be eliminated–and that won’t happen until nanotechnology matter conversion becomes viable and effective technology. Maybe 20 years, maybe 200. So, since I’m not interested in taking up arms to overthrow the state (and it wouldn’t work anyway unless the entire world participated), I can only be an anarcho-socialist at heart (and in babble) and in the meantime either not participate in the sham democratic government we have, or work to empower the lesser of the evils. And let’s face it, McCain and the neo-cons are on the Nazi end of evil, the Democrats are just left of that. I feel I need to support this lesser evil because I’d rather live in a broken and unfair and powerless capitalist oligarchy than a destroyed and hellish fully fascist oligarchy.

(Thanks for staying around past that diversion. Back to the subject….) So I was fortunate in my unluck. I arrived two hours before the doors opened which still put me 3/4th of the way back of the line. But as it turns out, that allowed me to get just about a perfect seat. The first people into the gymnasium were forced to sit behind the podium and thus unable to actually see Obama, or off to his sides. I was able to get a seat at the top of the bleachers (nice cool wall to my back!) and at a mostly front-on angle.

Read the rest of this entry »

I posted earlier on the TSA’s thuggery, prompted by an article on BoingBoing–now another blogger I frequent discusses the power mad abuses by the TSA including his own harassment:

• Public abuse and x-rated searches now common.

In the last 16 months I’ve flown six times, but each time was from the same small midwestern airport to the same Orlando airport through nearly the same terminals. I’ve not experienced any abuse myself, thank goodness. Just the standard remove shoes, remove belt, unpack all electronics, put shoes, electronics, and bags in separate bins, get yelled at (in general, not specifically at me) to do X with your ID and Y with your bottles in clear bags, etc.

Once we had a TSA agent that was hard-ass and looked like she could have been a real problem if provoked. A couple times I actually experienced good-natured TSA agents, even one who joked and laughed (with us, not at us). However, despite the very fortunate lack of being singled out for extra search and seizure, the air of fear and loathing was palpable nearly at all times. I absolutely agree with CLS in his post that we innocent travelers in our own country are being looked at and handled as if we’re unruly children at best, and prisoners or constant Potential Terrorist Threats at worst. With maybe the exception of the joking TSA agent, I feel pretty confident that should I have not acted just as CLS describes (no eye contact, don’t speak up, don’t be noticed) any one of the TSA agents I’ve come across would have enjoyed exercising their seemingly unlimited and undefined power by being making my life very difficult–for not being a good sheep.

Now, of course I don’t know this to be the case; but, the cultivated air of expectation of this is exactly one of the ways in which innocent travelers are kept in line and TSA agents maintain their fictional appearance of martial power.

Not only will this trend toward Gestapo travel not change, but will likely only get worse, until enough people demand change. Demand it loud and persistantly, until it can’t be ignored or brushed off.

A few days ago, in the post “The right to persecute” I made a follow-up comment regarding how at a Promise Keeper’s rally nearly every speaker (and comedian even…everyone except the musicians) exclaimed to enthusiastic approval that atheists are ruining the country and must be eradicated, likewise feminists and socialists. And, being a somewhat newly minted Marxist cultural critic, I had no choice but to think about this admonition to eliminate the Socialist Threat through a religious context.

• First, a very brief grounding in Marxist criticism and why I think it’s appropriate for this examination:

There’s a difference between political Marxism and Marxist cultural criticism. (The politics is simply an outgrowth of the criticism, and that’s not what I’m concerned with at the moment.) The cultural criticism is a purely objective (ideally) historical and material examination of a cultural product or development. Sometimes something “small” like a genre of film, and in this case something more significant like religious ideology. Religion, like politics and manufacturing and cultural morés, are part of what’s called “the superstructure.”

Imagine a skyscraper, if you will, as it’s being built. All the metal girders and beams, the framework that will house everything that will go inside and define the building. Religion, government, clothing and fashion, everything that makes up a culture is part of this building’s superstructure.

But, what ultimately holds up the superstructure, what the framework and everything that is this building, extends out of the foundation, or “the base.” The base, in this metaphor, is the economics of the culture–who owns the means of production and distribution. From this base, the the paradigm of the ownership of capital, all aspects of culture spring forth. And cultural ideology is what supports and benefits those owners of capital. This is the basis of Marxist criticism: examining the material base which creates and supports the cultural products and can be purified down to these two questions: Who uses it, and what is it for?

• Now that you know where I’m coming from, let’s take a look at this marriage of religious ideology with socio-economics.

This Christian hatred of evil socialism seems to have begun at the same time “under God” was inserted into the Pledge and the country went hog wild anti-Soviet Union. Before that time, during the 20s and 30s, socialism was not vilified among the American populace–in fact, there was quite a lot of support for it. There were even Communist politicians who were just as valid and accepted as Democrats and Republicans. But once the United States came out of an era of war and slight economic upturn since The Depression, those in power, the politicians and the ever-increasing industrial capitalists, found a way in which the country’s economy could be boosted and accelerated–the development of the military industrial complex. By the constant and perpetual preparation for war, manufacturing could grow and get stronger, more and more jobs can be created, and patriotism and capitalism could become inexorably intertwined benefiting both the political power and the corporate power.

(History lesson warning!) Note that before World War II, America was in general isolationist, non-interference, and avoided foreign conflicts as much as possible (as per George Washington’s sage advice). Also note this was mainly true for the general populace, as there were those in government who were slowly expanding empire, starting with the Spanish-American war, by taking over Central and South American and Philippine countries by both force and buying the help of local revolutionary forces.

In order to justify and maintain the burgeoning military industrial complex, an enemy was necessary. The United States, which was broke, despondent, basically a “developing nation,” in the course of less than ten years exploded into being a military and industrial super power. Who else was an emerging super power? The uneasy WWII ally, the Soviet Union. A growing empire that, while originally having more than a little early support in the U.S. and especially some in western Europe, was admittedly lead by a tyrannical and murderous dictator, Stalin. (Who started his rule founded on the socialism of Marx and Engels and the idealistic struggle of Lenin, with the help of Trotsky, but then banished both Trotsky and true socialism in favor of fascist dictatorship. Yet, the myth of communism stuck as part of USSR’s identity.)

(OK, here’s where the history lesson starts to give way to explanation of the Christian marriage with capitalism….) In order to be properly adversarial, in conflict, each side has to thoroughly identify with the antithesis of the other’s assumed beliefs and ideology. Even though the people of the United States was by and large non-religious before the late 40’s, most Americans identified as Christian. Stalin on the other hand, having been trained to be a priest in his young adult life, saw religion as a threat to his omnipotent dictatorship, and sought to abolish it (not, as today’s evangelicals would have you believe: because Stalin was a staunch atheist and wanted to create a secular rule–but simply because he wanted to rule absolutely; and being well educated in theology, knew he could utilize the symbolism and trappings of religion and apply them to his own image to encourage the people’s worship of him instead).

So, our enemy is the godless USSR, and after the Soviets detonated their first H-bomb (1953) a fiery movement begins to reinforce America as a Christian nation, by inserting “Under God” in the Pledge (1954), making “In God We Trust” the national motto (1956), a cultural push in the arts and entertainment begins to create an image of Americana as church-going, God-fearing people. And it’s at this point in the mid-20th century when American prosperity, thanks initially to the industrial military complex and the beginnings of modernist capitalism, becomes ideologically married to the idea of Christian religion.

• Now, some theological posers:

Prior to the 1950s and the merging of religious identity with capitalism, what socio-economic system do you think Christianity was more supportive of? I would posit socialism. Throughout the Christian Bible we find examples of both Hebrew prophets up to and including Jesus himself and the founder of the religion, Paul, teaching the values of socialism and admonishing the selfish “individualism” and greed that is the basis of modern capitalism. The Beatitudes point to worth and value and reward not in the strident individualist money making up-by-your-bootstraps robber baron. The rich man is told he’s likely not going to be blessed by Heaven. Followers are told to give and not horde. Taught to take care of “the least among you.” The poor and the sick are the responsibility of all.

I really think it’s a work of mental acrobatics to try to make Christianity out to be pro-capitalism and anti-socialism. Ergo, the fact that the fundamental and evangelical Christian movement in America is so heavily anti-socialism is both evidence of the ideological manipulation of the superstructure by the economic base, and evidence that people tend to believe the ideology they’re raised into without examining or critically thinking about it. Christianity in America, thanks to the hegemonic dominance of late capitalism, has become a material wealth religion. Turn on pretty much any televangelist or Christian “teacher” or leader, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, and they’re preaching the message of wealth and supporting the capitalist ideology in ironic disagreement and conflict with the message evident in the Christian Bible.

And you can’t say they’re exceptions, or not “real Christians” (whatever that means), as the message of capitalism and wealth is evident down in the trenches of the every-day Christian no less. Coming back to that Promise Keeper’s rally, the message Belief + Faith = Material Wealth and Fortune, and Material Fortune = Proof of God’s Favor, ergo Capitalist Ideals = God’s Ideals was heavy throughout the weekend. In fact, the final speaker of the event was a fellow who spoke to us specifically about financial prosperity, doing business with and associating with primarily other Christian owned businesses, and gave an implied message that if your business isn’t doing well (interesting how he was speaking to thousands of men and spoke as if they all owned and operated their own small businesses) then you’re not “right with God.”

• Final thoughts

Well, I’d like to think that the conclusions are self-explanatory. Religion is a cultural product. The Russian Orthodox Christianity is virtually a different religion from American Catholicism and Protestantism, which are different religions from Medieval European Christianity (and Irish Christianity was a different religion from Roman Christianity), which are all different from 2nd century Christianity. They may all share the same faith on a few constant ideas, but otherwise the shape and form and belief and practice in these ideas are completely and entirely the result of the socio-economic base of a culture.

Religion is just one of many pieces of the superstructure which is used (here’s the big kicker) to control the masses and get them to support and benefit those in power. Whether it’s Stalinism, or The Church, or capitalist Christianity, the religion of the land is formed and manipulated to reflect the ideology that controls the 99% and gives control to the 1%.