Monday, April 19, 2010

Be Very Afraid...

A lot is being said and written today about the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Professional panic-mongers and witch-hunters are once again screaming about "right-wing extremists" and warning that OKC could happen again. Yet the impression I get is that this noise has less (if anything) to do with the 168 dead and 600 injured in Oklahoma City 15 years ago, and more with the efforts of the government to deflect criticism by painting those who disagree with it as lunatics and potential terrorists.

Anthony Gregory of LRC puts it into perspective:
Seventeen years ago in 1993, the federal government did in fact murder dozens of Americans who were no threat to anyone. The same government has in fact violated the rights of American citizens, rounded people into concentration camps, silenced and infiltrated politically peaceful groups, conspired against the people in numerous ways, drugged, poisoned and withheld medicine from Americans without their knowing, lied repeatedly about war and serious law enforcement matters, jailed people without due process, imposed martial law on segments of the domestic population, seized guns from law-abiding gunowners, broken down American doors and held scared children at gunpoint, planned the creation of extralegal judicial institutions to process American citizens, targeted political enemies with the IRS and other police agencies, forced Americans to labor and even kill and die under threat of imprisonment, overseen the largest prison system in the world, shoveled trillions of borrowed dollars to corrupt financial institutions and killed millions of civilians abroad – all in the lifetime of many who are still alive. The U.S. police state has in fact been growing since 9/11 and even before – and Obama has done nothing to stem its growth. On the contrary, he has continued the mix of economic fascism, imperialism, surveillance and lawless detention policy that characterized the Bush years.

Indeed, the most dangerous rightwing extremist in my lifetime was George W. Bush. Obama is following in his footsteps. That so many Americans are more frightened of rightwingers out of power than in power – more bothered by conservatives who hate Washington than those who control or want to control it – and more offended by anti-government rhetoric than the Democratic president continuing the policies they claimed to hate under Republican rule – shows how little they have learned from Waco and all that has happened since.


Read the rest of the essay at LewRockwell.com.

5 comments:

Suvorov said...

Sure, it's all about those right-wing lunatics. It took MSM about as few minutes to declare the last lunatic who opened fire in D.C. a 9/11 truther as it did them to declare Tim Osman, excuse me, Osama bin Laden and Al CIAda, excuse me, Al Qaida responsible for the attack, without any proper investigation. In fact, FBI still doesn't list bin Laden as a suspect in regards to 9/11. When confronted, the FBI director replied that FBI didn't have any evidence incriminating him. Oklahoma City bombing is essentially the same story, just as the underwear bomber and many others.

ajokic said...

It is not all about right-wing lunatics. Not that they aren't lunatics, but both Waco and OC happened under Clinton. And the best explanation of the OC is Vidal's that it is a cover up of (or elimination from any public discourse about) Waco murders. See here:

http://www.isebrand.com/Gore_Vidal_McVeigh_2001.htm

CubuCoko said...

Dejo, got your comment, but I think it deserves a separate post. Stay tuned.

Dejo said...

Will the post appear anytime soon?

CubuCoko said...

As a matter of fact, this week.