A New York Post article dated Feb 9, 2022 and another article in Law Enforcement Today talk about a DHS Bulletin describing the current heightened state of alert regarding threats to the nation.
There was a similar article yesterday in Breitbart. I’m not linking to that one. Some of these articles engaged in hyperbole suggesting that the DHS said If you question the Government you might be a terrorist. At least one article referred to Secretary Mayorkas press conference where he may have misstated or overstated the DHS Bulletin.
Titles like:
“We are all terror threats? DHS says “mistrust of US government” means you may be a terrorist“
While not incorrect, may lead a casual reader to incorrect conclusions.
The DHS Bulletin is uh, concerning, in one regard. I think it is worthy of noting the line that seems to have generated the attention.
“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”
To anyone raised in the 1960’s or 1970’s that line would raise eyebrows.
In those decades it was commonplace for the younger generation to apply the thinking, Question Everything, Don’t trust the MAN (meaning government), Trust no-one over 30.
These were turbulent decades. Mounting evidence that the American People had been lied to about many things peaked with the Watergate Scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation.
For many, the revelations were heart breaking. Up to that time, it was sort of accepted as truth that our government was operating in the best interests of the people.
If someone in authority told a citizen to keep quiet about something in the interest of National Security, the citizen would do as asked. There was faith on the part of that citizen that they didn’t know all the facts, and that the Authorities knew the bigger picture and were in a position to invoke National Security interest. The citizen gladly did their patriotic duty.
After revelations about Agent Orange, Nixon’s resignation, revelations about DDT, scandals about vaccinations that went horribly wrong, government medical experimentation in Tuskegee, the unsafe effects of above and below ground nuclear weapons testing, and a long litany of scandals regarding Government Approved projects, our faith in government was, in my opinion broken.
As it turned out, those people asking questions, those who didn’t trust “The Man,” actually had a point.
These were the conspiracy “nut jobs” of the time. They had local meetings, and mimeographed, (if you don’t know that term, look it up. Acetone fumes in an enclosed space could get you high as a kite,) newsletters they passed out. The Information Age as we know it today didn’t exist. Agents from the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DIA were always infiltrating these conspiracy groups, just to keep an eye on them and learn what they knew.
You see us “Boomers” have heard statements like this before. What followed these statements often involved intimidation, threats, and arrests.
Senator Joe McCarthys famous line, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party,” still echoed from 1954. The Hollywood black lists were still in full force in the ’60s and ’70s.
Involvement with some groups could get you labeled a “possible subversive” and that label could impact your employment options for years. It didn’t have to be true, all you needed was the label in a file that would show up on a background check. The FBI had files on anyone remotely associated with so called subversive organizations.
I once lived with a roommate who’d been involved with some three letter organization. For two solid years all of my mail was delivered opened and hastily stuffed back into the envelope.
It wasn’t until much later in my life that I found out I’d been carefully watched during those years as a possible security threat. This information came to me as part of an in-depth security check I’d agreed to for a particular employment situation.
That was the day, I wondered if I’d finally “Sold Out”, and was becoming “The Man”.
At the time I was well over 30 so I figured it was high time. The Job was a good one, the money was great, and I wasn’t building weapons.
Over the last 5 to 10 years I’ve concluded that in an ironic way, I’ve been building weapons for most of my career. The exception was during the time I worked for an actual defense contractor. The irony of that is also not lost on me.
The weapons I built weren’t conceived as weapons. They were mechanisms that were built with the altruistic goal of freeing information. I thought if information flowed freely that it couldn’t be controlled. The despots, elitists, and powerful couldn’t hide their misdeeds from the public as they’d done in the past.
I never imagined the way that such information flow and devices could be weaponized. I never imagined that anyone would want to monitor the communications of an entire nation. Although there was the example of the old USSR doing it. That should have been a “Spoiler Alert”.
I was laboring under the illusion that the American Government would never do it. I wanted to trust in the government once more. Then came the allegation that the Obama Administration was in fact monitoring cellphone communications and archiving virtually all of them, with the help of the NSA.
Shortly after, we found that your cellphone even without GPS, was trackable and that our Government had built software that could locate your phone in a given area, building a record of your daily movements, then putting those movements on a map.
Did the government need to know where you stopped for coffee every morning on the way to work? This was ostensibly to assist in fighting terrorism and dated back to the Patriot Act, signed into law by Bush. The very people and entities I was hoping to stop, took our good intentions, innocence, and idealism, and fashioned horrible weapons. Weapons not to be used in time of war against a common enemy, but weapons to be used against their own citizens.
Oppenheimer was right. We should not question if we can do a thing, but rather should we do a thing.
It’s been said that a modern cellphone with GPS is the NSA, CIA, and FBI’s, wet dream. Everyone carrying around a tracking device that can be tuned into easily and efficiently with a few strokes on a keyboard providing an individual’s location within a few meters is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares on its own. Add to that corporations willingness to censor contrary points of view, backed by calls from government officials to sanction such censorship is terrifying.
One could read…
“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”
… as a call for the Government to begin active censorship of all unapproved narrative. Coming as it does from the DHS, this chills me to the bone.
In that light, I ask when does the DHS rename itself “This Ministry of Truth”?
As a “Boomer,” admittedly I’m on the tail end of that designation, I’ve been astounded by the breathtaking compliance and lack of questioning on the part of the American People over the past two years.
If as the hyperbolic headlines suggest, those who question the government may be considered terrorists.
I ask, what the hell happened? How did the lessons of McCarthyism get forgotten? How did the lessons of the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s get memory holed? How is it possible, with information flowing freely and unrestricted, that we’re at this point?
Does this mean that now, in my 6th decade, I’m suddenly a seditionist, a terrorist, a criminal?
What would be my crimes?
Asking questions?
Thinking for myself?
Having a lifelong aversion to a government that I justifiably never fully trusted?
Speaking out against actions, I think unjust?
Calling out politicians or others that I think should answer the people, but who do not?
If these are crimes, then this blog site contains abundant evidence of my guilt. Should I put my affairs in order in anticipation of the knock on my door and eventual “Suicide” from a shot to the back of my head?
I doubt I’m worth a bullet to these people. After all I don’t have Joe Rogan’s following. No, they’ll break the door down at 4 am and seize all my electronics, they’ll try to silence me and others like me by denying us access to the information network.
The question is, would that silence us, or just radicalize us further?
I wonder how much an old manual typewriter and hand cranked mimeograph machine cost these days. Can you even buy Acetone anymore? I’d bet without checking, Acetone is on the list of controlled substances.
No matter, those of us of a certain age still remember our organic chemistry. Who knows? Maybe someone even remembers the recipe.
Truth and Freedom ring like a bell. A truth, spoken or read, resonates in individuals that encounter it.
That resonance spreads and builds to questions. Those questions demand answers and cannot be denied forever.
This seems to be the one thing that totalitarian states always forget.
Truth sets the innocent free, and damns the guilty.
Let’s hope that the DHS bulletin simply contains a poorly worded statement.
In the event that our government is moving in a totalitarian direction, it’s time for us all to speak out, demanding that our concerns are heard and acted upon.