Concrete under the Jungle Gym
Jason Kuznicki on Sep 2nd 2008
The pseudonymous Thoreau writes,
[R]eading the accounts from the Twin Cities, I read of a city that has been militarized unlike anything seen in the US for a very long time. Are punks breaking windows such a terror that a city must be militarized, that journalists must have their homes raided by SWAT teams, and that all who would carry a sign must risk arrest or worse? The answer, of course is obvious: The pen that makes the sign is far mightier than the stick that breaks the window, and so they fear that pen.
This is a culture of fear. The police tactics will be rationalized on the grounds that “if it saves just one officer’s life” even though the officers have many ways to defend themselves. The war being fought was pitched as a response to a hypothetical threat that might materialize in some distant day, if a dictator were to ignore his own interests and every disincentive and conduct an attack that would not increase his power one iota. The police state we face is justified largely in response to a terrorist organization that has killed many fewer Americans than the cars we drive. We accept the stationing of troops in every corner of the globe, and meddling in every conflict on the earth, because we are assured that this is necessary for our safety. We are the safest people on the face of the earth, and yet we unleash a horror upon ourselves and others because we are afraid.
At the risk of reaching too far, I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that these things are done by a country that removes swingsets from playgrounds, even if the swings are above a soft, sandy patch that is safer to land on than the hard dirt underneath the swings where I played as a kid. (Even worse, I can remember climbing on a jungle gym that was above concrete!) A culture that will spend money to get rid of fun toys because of exceedingly rare risks seems to be the sort of country that would go to any length in response to even the most remote threat. When people actually feel safer at the airport because some dumb thug took away their shampoo in response to an implausible threat, they will go along with anything.
Filed in The Barracks
Excellent sentiments!
… and I thought I was the only one who noticed fun, excitement, and liberty were being traded in for safety
Unfortunately, the safety secured is largely imagined … it would be preferable if it were at least real.
I agree, this logic makes perfect sense to me. Of course this isn’t unique to the US. Europe’s adoption of the Precautionary Principle and the escalating authoritarianism of the United Kingdom are all symptoms of a similar overdose of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Frank Herbert put it best: Fear is the mind-killer.
This is a culture of fear.
Ridiculous, unless some National Guardsman panics and starts firing like Kent St., others join in, four dead in Ohio, and some neo-hippie writes a song about it.
It happened once, and could happen again, but not in September 2008. Let’s get real, folks. For a blog that I’ve considered a last bastion of sanity, I’m starting to get the chills around here lately.
Can’t we call it a culture of fear when an 8th-grade girl is strip searched for bringing Tylenol to school? When leashes for children are a near-daily sight in any neighborhood with kids? When kids’ chemistry sets have been almost entirely neutered, for fear that someone might get hurt?
The last time I was in an airport I saw two terrified Japanese children — ages probably 3 and 5 — having every article of clothing on their body tested by the TSA, their backpacks searched, their shoes off, and being questioned separately from their parents.
Agree or disagree with the leap to foreign policy. Can’t we agree that we’ve given ourselves a pretty bad case of the chills these last few years, and that it’s only partly the fault of 9/11?
It’s not too late to worry about these things. When the National Guard is shooting people in the streets, it will be.
If I understand Tom correctly, there’s nothing to worry about until government agents start shooting innocent civilians. I think that’s letting things go much too far. The very fact that a good chunk of the city is turned into a militarized zone and mysterious “not made public” warrants served on a bunch of quiche eating protestors who haven’t even protested yet suggests we have moved another step closer to a police state. I think we want to stop the police state well before we get to the point of another Kent State. The first time it was shocking, because unprecedented. This time we may have become so accustomed to the police state that we accept it as par for the course.
If that gives Tom chills, well, the police state gives me chills.
A few years ago I had the chance to visit a large city park I had played in a lot as a child. One of my favorite things to do there was to slide down this enormous concrete slide on pieces of cardboard. We’d slide over and over again until we’d shredded the cardboard to nothing. When I visited the park, they had converted the slide to flower beds. For some reason on that beautiful summer day, there were hardly any kids playing in the whole park.
The safety culture is different from a culture of fear, though they may be related. Our safety culture comes from our practice of suing anyone we can think of when an accident occurs. Companies, schools, parks, and even individuals on their private property have to consider the possibility of being sued if something they control is “dangerous.” Just being sued at all is bad publicity and expensive to litigate, in time and money. So entities take it upon themselves to remove what they see as hazards. Like swings and slides and the lower branches of trees.
No wonder kids don’t want to do anything but play video games. At least video games synthesize excitement and challenge. The real world has precious little of that left to offer.
3 yr old girls being searched at airports is a stupid state. 8th graders getting busted for Tylenol is, as Scott notes, the safety state.
The Gestapo is a police state. It seems this blog of late is unable tell the difference, which I find unfortunate. C’mon, guys. We have Kos for that sort of stuff.
As for the warrants, it all seems quite constitutional, and prudent besides, if the below AP story is accurate:
Search warrant applications give clues to RNC protesters investigation
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) Some details are emerging about how authorities investigated an anarchist group that was planning disruptions at the Republican National Convention.
According to search warrant applications obtained by news organizations, the Ramsey County sheriff’s office and other law enforcement agencies started investigating the RNC Welcoming Committee just over a year ago.
The document says investigators determined that the group’s membership had fluctuated between 30 and 35 members who had met more than 100 times in the past year.
It says the organizers’ discussions included talk of blocking traffic; attacking police with Molotov cocktails, sharpened poles and shields; sabotaging the Xcel Energy Center and the St. Paul Downtown Airport; and even kidnapping delegates.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.)
The Gestapo is a police state. This is peanuts. IMO, of course.
The warrants look quite kosher to me, and prudent.
http://www.twincities.com/ci_10365754
Warrants are an important part of the judicial system, and I’m glad that (here at least, on this matter) they are being respected. But I’ve seen plenty of serious-looking warrants that later turned out to be just imaginative thinking or worse.