I'm Not Terrified

Most Americans are not terrified... We're just seriously annoyed...

This most recent "terror plot"... I don't believe there was going to be a terror attack on those airplanes. I believe that phony incidents like this are now necessary for the cultivation of the culture of fear that is enabling the evisceration of the bill of rights to be allowed to continue unfettered by the would-be righteous indignation of the American people... And likewise for the people of Great Britain... Remember we are pretty much the only two nations involved in the offensive on this great "war on terror." And coincidentally, the "rogue nations" that we are fighting this "war" against are the only seven nations left in the world that do not have central banks controlled by England and/or America.

We've been told that "they" hate our freedoms... And in response to "their" terror attacks and the continual supposed threat of more terror attacks, our government has systematically been stripping us of these freedoms. Doesn't that mean that "they" are winning? Who are "they" anyway? And let's not just blame this on the psychos in the right-wing... Remember the Democrats voted overwhelmingly for the first Patriot Act and voted overwhelmingly in support of re-authorizing the Patriot Act...

Don't think this "foiled plot" could be phony?

* Terrorist Attack on US Soil is Imminent Importance: High, October 2004
‚* Fake Terror
‚* Phony Mossad/Al-Qaeda caper
* Here's the PR spin for this latest phony attack.

The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin. "It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America," he said. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren't completely safe."

Wait a second... Who here is demanding that our civil liberties sacrificed for a sense of security? Who here is demanding that they be completely safe? That is totally unrealistic... Who here is asking to live in a cage? I mean that would be just about the only way to be perfectly safe, right? To live in a cage? With no freedom? No liberty? Well, that is the road we are heading down. And it is not really true freedom... It's freedom from. But the nature of American freedom is freedom to. The government's role is to provide freedom from outside forces compromising our inalienable rights (life, liberty, happiness) in order to protect our freedom to excercise those inalienable rights. Its role is not to infringe upon our inalienable rights in order to protect them... That's a paradox. If they take away our liberty in order to protect our lives--our lives cease to be our own.

If an Islamo-fascist feels the need to knock me off because he hates my freedom, well, that would really suck. But I'd rather surrender my life than my liberty--because I'm a proud American and that's what I stand for. And I maintain that most of the fear being drummed up about Islamo-fascist terrorists is a hoax.

It used to be quintessentially American to say "Give me Liberty or give me Death." But that is now morphing into "Give up your Liberty or you're all going to Die!!!" And that, my friends, is not American... It is bullshit. And I, for one, refused to be terrified.

p.s.

More evidence against the "foiled terror plot" is that it is physically impossible to mix liquid explosives onboard an aircraft. Unless of course they let you bring your titration pipettes on board... So it simply could not have happened the way they said it did. Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible? Granted "The Register" has about as much journalistic integrity as the New York Post, but chemistry is chemistry...

Manufacturing Desire

In a recent Microsoft booklet aimed at computer manufacturers pushing them to go for more creative and appealing design of actual computers:

"We want people to fall in love with their PCs, not to simply use them to be productive and successful. We want PCs to be objects of pure desire."

People using your products in the manner in which they were intended is not enough? Your products must now be objects of pure desire?!?! The very idea of that is the wrongest ever. Also, in an ad for a luxury car that is broadcast on the wall of the subway tunnel (wrong enough in and of itself), the question is posed: "is it possible to engineer desire?" am I wrong or should desire and love be reserved for things that have intrinsic value...

This makes me fume when I see it. Of course it's possible to engineer desire!! The prevailing trend in America is to go into large amounts of debt to drive cars that are too big for ones needs, to live in houses that contain hundreds upon hundreds of unused square feet, to buy piles and piles of useless consumer products and techno-gadgetry that distracts people from participating in their communities and in reforming their corrupt government... Yes, people should have the freedom of choice to tune out their communities and submerge themselves in material extravagance if they want to... But people seem to be doing this en masse. And the desire to do so is manufactured by those with something to sell. The results of that desire are detrimental to our communities and our culture.

If desire for these items has not been purposefully engineered and manufactured, well... I don't know where it came from. It's certainly not an inmate human desire to be gluttonous and wrapped up in material extravagance or to want to stare at an LCD panel all day and all night... The attempt by marketing strategists to manufacture desire for non-essential products is deplorable. If marketing your product requires psychology of this level, either your product ain't worth it or you're trying to oversell. In either case you are diffusing people's attention from things that matter (kids, community, government, etc), to things that don't.