The CIA has been spying on Americans. According to a report by Senator Ron Wyden the agency has been conducting a massive surveillance program against Americans, and all without court approval.
For many this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Deep down many Americans have harbored a dark suspicion against our own intelligence community, the roots of which long predate the surveillance program run by the National Security Agency targeting Americans’ online email (and even gaming) accounts, and can be traced to J. Edgar Hoover and perhaps even beyond.
And that is what has become the most terrifying; not only that this is happening but how commonplace it has become. Many Americans seem to have become deadened to the reality that we are living in a nation that more and more resembles China in our policies toward political speech. House Leader Nancy Pelosi was rightfully criticized when she warned Olympic athletes to not criticize their host country China at peril to their physical safety, as you can see below.
But here in the United States, can we really claim that things are much different? If so, it is only by a matter of degrees. And, that marginal difference seems to be closing.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to coordinate with local law enforcement to investigate parents based on a letter issued by the National School Board Association which compared parents to terrorists.
The case cited by this school board letter was a father who became enraged during a school board meeting on implementing a transgender bathroom policy. The father lost his temper, and was subsequently arrested, when school board officials claimed that transgender bathroom policies had never resulted in a sexual assault despite the man’s daughter having been raped in the girl’s restroom at a district school by a boy in a skirt.
Now it has been revealed that the Biden administration may have had a hand in writing the letter as well. Recently released emails reveal that officials with the National School Board Association may have been writing the letter in coordination with education secretary Miguel Cardona. In fact, the emails indicate that Cardona may have been the one to request that the letter be written in the first place.
Perhaps marching to the beat of this very same drum, the Justice Department has announced the creation of a brand new unit focused on fighting domestic terrorism. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen specifically cited a growing threat from those motivated by ‘anti-authority ideologies.’
To that note, on February 7th the Department of Homeland Security released its Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland in which it says “While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”
The DHS lists what it labels as fake news as the number one threat.
To explain, the document goes on to say “For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19. Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021.”
It’s odd that the racial grievances that fueled the widespread violent rioting of 2020, nor associated paramilitary organizations such as Antifa made that list, only those aligned with what has been portrayed as right-wing.
And, as the DHS warns, it may not end at targeting political activists; the kind of people who show up to protests or organize, the kind of people who were at the Capitol on January 6th, 2020 (some of whom are still in jail awaiting trial, without bail).
Where does it end?
During China’s cultural revolution, in order to help break up the family, the primary unit of societal strength, children were encouraged to inform on their parents. For anyone harboring anti-revolutionary sympathies, their fate was often death.
For many who grew up in my age group here in the US who were connected to Christian communities probably came into contact with the “Left Behind” book series. It describes a premillenialist view of revelations, basically that the book of Revelations describes a violent ending of the world that culminates with the second coming of Christ. There are plenty of theological issues with the books, but they work with some pretty well known tropes; the rapture, the mark of the beast, the AntiChrist.
I’m sure you know the basic plot by now. The rapture comes and it’s a global catastrophe. A great justification for all authoritarian measures put in place by those who hold the reigns but are still hungry for more power. For those who resist, they are frozen out of society. Accept the mark of the beast, or lose your ability to buy or sell, to hold a job, or to show your face in public.
Meanwhile social media platforms ban anyone who questions radical gender theory, and fundraising platforms confiscate funds from anti-covid vaccine mandate protests while hosting pages that fundraise to pay the bail of BLM rioters.
In the case of private businesses it’s easy for free marketeers to tritely say that people can vote with their dollar, but when government mandates have shuttered small businesses while the same officials passing these mandates are lobbied by the very firms that benefit from these measures, choices for a conservative consumer suddenly look increasingly limited.
Mostly gone are the Rockwellian days where a local shop owner might be someone who you knew and shared values with. The internet can, at its best, provide a rich bazaar of commerce where like-minded people can trade with those who share their interests and values.
But what is being traded is a reliance on geographical community with a reliance on a system controlled by a small group of people with radically different values then their own, and who are coming to believe that if you don’t share their values than you shouldn’t be a part of society at all.