Libertarian Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted that after 1967 Israel would become a secret-police state because of the logical dynamics of ruling in colonial fashion over conquered territory and Arabs.
I posit that some of the same dynamics are at work in America among those police who regard the population as a hostile population that needs to be controlled. Daily encounters in the drug war reinforce an “us vs. them” attitude among some police. Employing ex-military personnel who were occupiers in foreign countries imports this attitude further. Being equipped with advanced military weaponry exacerbates the tendency still further. A long-running war on drugs is a war on people that has to encourage a colonial, superior and patronizing attitude among not only police but also government officials. A generalized attitude against disorder of any kind, even non-violent protests, takes hold.
The fact that a major counter-current movement came to be known, without conscious adoption, as the Occupy movement suggests a quest to retake that which its proponents deem to have been taken from them, that is, to retake that which has been occupied by others. The Occupy movement, diffuse and not sharply defined as it is, arose in part as a reaction to a form of occupation by other prominent forces, including police and government.
Aren’t Americans occupied and cowed by the TSA, among other government agencies? Doesn’t the NSA regard America and Americans as a conquered land subject to whatever surveillance it might wish to conduct upon anyone at any time with only the most superficial attention to rights? Aren’t Americans increasingly afraid to speak out and say something that might rub people in power the wrong way? And aren’t their opportunities to confront elected officials in person severely circumscribed? Isn’t that a sign of an occupation? Don’t the actuality and the threat of being branded a felonious criminal for some infraction or other hang over the heads of great numbers of Americans? Isn’t that a sign of an odious occupation?
Sure, Americans can come and go as they please, eat what they want, work as they see fit, travel where they want, dress as they please and say what they want to. But all of these are already circumscribed to some extent, controlled and limited behind the scenes. One’s money movements and movements across borders are monitored and subjected to significant barriers. More and more barriers are going up. More and more choices are being made for people behind their backs. An invisible occupation is proceeding.
2:43 pm on June 9, 2015
