Who didn't see this power grab coming? I saw it with the USA PATRIOT ACT

[Nanjing to Seoul]

Last edited Mon Jul 8, 2013, 12:15 PM - Edit history (1)

Remember after 9/11. We were all told to be vigilant, remember?

Our government had full support and were told to protect us from another terrorist attack. Does everyone remember?

So they passed and enacted the USA ENABLING (I mean USA PATRIOT) ACT and in the process, militarized the apparatus. But let's look at the results.

1: Truck drivers are now subjected to even more draconian and nit-picking laws over their freight. Any truck driver going through Banning, CA knows this. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are truck drivers?

2: Our Government spent money upon money on security apparatus. The police are now used mostly to harass and arrest people for misunderstandings, misconceptions and minor violations of law. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are Americans tweeting on twitter?

3: Our Government passed laws designed to street line criminal offenses. The police now arrest first and let the courts sort it out. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are students disrupting schools?

4: We are moving towards troops on the border. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are Mexicans and Canadians?

5: Our Government destroyed the 4th amendment with airport screenings. One person with a bomb in his shoe and now we all need to take off our shoes. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are people visiting their families on holidays?

6: Our Government destroyed the 6th amendment by working for military tribunals and indefinite detentions of people in Gitmo. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists have faced public justice?

7: Our government destroyed the 8th amendment by using drones to carry out death sentences for crimes against American citizens. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are made with these extralegal killings?

8: Our government destroyed the 1st amendment redress of grievances by this declared war on whistle blowers. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists exposed governmental wrong doing?

Now we have a wiretapping program our government does. We were told the USA PATRIOT Act was designed to protect us from terrorists. How many terrorists are Americans sending texts to each other, or using twitter, or posting on DU?

And you are all surprised by this? George Carlin said it best: "Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. You see all, sooner or later. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government does not give a fuck about them! The government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply does not give a fuck about you! It's interested in its own power. That's the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible."

This NSA domestic spying is designed to keep people in check (Americans), designed to make people accept the new regimentation they want to impose (caste system) and designed to make the PIC and MIC wealthier (more equipment, more private prisons). You are surprised our list of Civil Privileges are getting smaller and smaller.

Give it time. Apples of Democracy are not eaten in one gulp. It is nibbled slowly over years until the apple is gone and all that's left is the worthless core of fascism.

Welcome to our new America. Choose your leaders. . .they will continue bad policies and work to undermine your privileges, only to brainwash people into accepting everything. . .no "rights," no "unions," draconian prison sentences for crimes, and monitoring at all times.

I was told once that, here in China, the plain clothes cops were more dangerous than the uniformed cops. Apparently, the spy you can't see because they are data mining and giving the authorities to use against people who dare to ask why.

Roy Coen, McCarthy, Hoover and Nixon are now laughing in their graves.

We are now the United States of Police, Surveillance and Prisons. Please check your pre 9/11 notions of civil liberties at the door and accept that things will only get worse.

[mindwalker_i]

1. The American people begged for it

with open ass-cheeks. After 911, I remember watching video after video of people exclaiming how they didn't feel safe, and begging the government to protect them. Critical thinking about what the consequences of such obsience was willfully avoided.

What's worse, people are, by and large, happy with their decisions. The results of a poll were recently posted showing that most Americans were just fine with NSA spying if it protected them from terrorism. That is has little or nothing to do with terrorism seems not to be under consideration for most people.

Americans don't want democracy if it requires them to think for themselves.

[L0oniX]

14. Panicked lemmings.

[felix_numinous]

28. The American people were in shock.

Excuse me , but the pre written patriot act was RUSHED through on Oct 2001, after a news announcement of a "poll" showing
"A majority of Americans are willing to sacrifice some civil liberties in the war on terror." I remember because that is exactly when I snapped all the way out of my stupor. It was a very creepy feeling, and I KNEW it was a lie-- besides the zombie pundits, few if any Americans were in any shape yet to debate civil liberties.

The well planned out psi ops/ propaganda program went into high gear after that.

[rhett o rick]

2. I voted for Barack Obama to dismantle the Patriot Act and end domestic spying.

And I got indefinite detention written into law.

And not much hope on the horizon. I doubt that either Ms. Clinton or Chris Christie will come to our rescue.

[uponit7771]

3. ...and he can do that without congress!? Come on, these a winger\FUDr memes and they're overt

[hobbit709]

5. He signed the bill without a quibble.

[uponit7771]

17. Your point? tia

[hobbit709]

20. You stated he cant do anything without Congress.

He can stand for principle, at least make a signing statement, veto it or something.
Quiet acquiescence makes you part of the problem.

[uponit7771]

22. I never stated that Obama can do NOTHING without congress, strawman noted.

...I stated he can't do THAT (gitmo etc) without congress.

The winger meme is to act like the congress isn't standing in the way

[lark]

15. Wake up and smell the coffee.

This is America as it is today, whether you or I like it or not. Being an ostrich doesn't help, just plays into their memes. If you can't recognize the threat that government has become to us, maybe it's time to pay closer attention. Maybe today they aren't coming for Democrats (except in NC), but the same thing can be done anywhere because of governemnt being allowed to spy on everyone with no restrictions whatsoever.

[uponit7771]

18. I don't like it so it's another thing on the list to change. I don't hate America's government and I

...have a HEALTHY distrust of it

[HardTimes99]

4. Technical note: I think your item #1 should read 'Truck drivers

are now subjected . . . " for the remainder of the paragraph to make sense.

Maybe a light edit would help?

[The Second Stone]

6. I think that a great number of us saw the usage of 9/11 as

a power grab the same way the Nazis used the Reichstag Fire. We did not complain enough. And now we are slaves to fear. We pay more income taxes than the richest corporations, we have no health care and as the Boston Marathon bombing proved, we are in more danger now than before. The people protected are behind their barricades in Washington D.C. and they are barricaded from us.

[EdwardSmith74]

7. Way too recent. Nixon tried (and won), Reagan and Bush 41 tried (and won)...

The shrub just took it to the inevetable conclusion of the PAC agenda, and that was really just Cheney (the real president) doing the dirty work. Rummy, Wolfie (the licked comb), Rice, and the rest of the lot were all in on it. We have no privacy now. It's exactly opposite of what the founding fathers intended. We're worse than any Communist state that's ever existed, and emperialistic to boot. Sorry, but I need to go look for black helicopters intent on bombing my house.

[Waiting For Everyman]

8. True. But the ONE thing that NOBODY saw coming

and which changed EVERYTHING is... that technology has enabled the total personal surveillance of everyone on earth which was never possible before.

The convergence of these crazy laws, and technological advances, is what has made this a game changer. It took the size and scope of the Surveillance State to a whole new dimension. This has happened largely after the Security State's Patriot Act powers, which allowed it to create a national security blackout of information on the fact that this explosion of capability has happened and is already in place.

The things NSA is doing now were never possible before. And all the whistleblowers and journaliists who have tried to tell us what is going on, have been shut up. You see how some people react to even this stroke of luck, that Snowden managed to break through the blackout with a first glimmer of what's going on. They don't care, they want to hang the guy.

The problem is that this population has been well and truly propagandized. A chunk of it no longer cares about their rights. And the sad fact is, that they will enable the rest of us losing our rights too. But they don't care about that either.

One thing the Security State knows, is how to make advantages for themselves out of the worst impulses in human naturre. They cultivate the worst in human beings and capitalize on it. We now have several generations of strikingly amoral and ruthless people on this planet. It is ugly, and it is extremely dangerous.

The good news is, that a machine will always be vulnerable to a renegade. (I had an occasion to debate that in a long conversation with one of the WW2 era's major Spook-elite, and it was very interesting. He admitted losing the point.) And that is precisely why the State goes after those people. And that is precisely why those of us who value our rights must support them any way we can.

[nineteen50]

9. I believe it began with the Supreme Court Coup in 2000.

[saidsimplesimon]

13. 1950, imho, the MIC has worked for decades to achieve this outcome.

[Harmony Blue]

10. That lays it all out there

shocking.

[premium]

11. I have said from the very beginning of this abomination of a bill

that we, as a nation, would come to regret this massive loss of rights, and the chickens have come home to roost.
I don't quite think it's too late to turn this around, but the time is fast approaching that the loss of our individual and collective rights will be irreversible.

We truly need to elect true progressive reps. who are strong supporters of our civil rights and undo this mess and we need to do it soon, remember, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, "Elections have consequences"!

So, in 2014, let's get out there and vote, vote, vote.

[eShirl]

21. Honestly? I think we have as much chance of turning this around as we do Global Climate Change.

[premium]

23. And that kind of pessimism gets us nowhere,

so what, do we just quit? Roll over and meekly accept our fate? Become the sheeple that the 1%er's want us to become?
Maybe you will, but I refuse to.
I've always been a glass 1/2 full kind of person, not a glass 1/2 empty person.

I will never quit fighting for our rights, even when all seems lost, I'll still be out there fighting.

[eShirl]

24. Not claiming to have any answers, just coming to a realization.

I fully understand and respect your position.

[premium]

25. Ok, that's a fair point.

Sorry if I seemed a little harsh, I just won't give up, I was brought up to never give up as long as I can draw a breath.



I have confidence, maybe misplaced, that sooner or later, there's going to be a major development/incident/event, that will be the catalyst for a revolution, peaceful revolution preferred, but a revolution nonetheless.
I'm the eternal optimist.

[L0oniX]

12. "Choose your leaders" ??? You can't vote Goldman Sachs out of office. n/t

[kentuck]

16. It has evolved.

And it is evolving still.

[truth2power]

19. Umm...It's not about terrorism...

I don't have a definitive answer as to what their game is, although I think you've touched on some of it:

"This NSA domestic spying is designed to keep people in check (Americans), designed to make people accept the new regimentation they want to impose (caste system) and designed to make the PIC and MIC wealthier (more equipment, more private prisons). You are surprised our list of Civil Privileges are getting smaller and smaller."

And whatever their game, you can be sure that Pres. Obama has signed on to it. He's not playing 15 dimensional chess

We are on our own.

[A Simple Game]

27. If I recall correctly the Patriot act wasn't even written with terrorists in mind.

It was originally written for the drug war. Or I should say the original excuse for it was to be the drug war. It was as mentioned designed to control vast numbers of people, namely the America people.

[Le Taz Hot]

26. Actually, we talked about it

incessantly right here on DU while it was happening. At that time it was pretty much unanimous that it was not only wrong but that it was going to open EXACLTY the doors that it has currently opened. We mobilized with communications to our Representatives then watched, nauseatingly, while the members of BOTH PARTIES went right along with The Patriot Act, both I & II. Why? Politics. No one wanted to be seen as "soft on terra." It was for political reasons that we have the assault on our 4th Amendment rights. WE'RE paying because our elected "representatives" wanted to save their own political asses. Just one more piece of evidence in a long line of completely ignoring the will of the people and never once considering what is good for the country.

The thing that amazes me? Seeing so many here do a 180 just because we have a "Democratic" president.