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July
20
2021

#UNRIG: Reject the Corporate State’s ‘Permanent Emergency’ (Lessons From 9/11)
Ben Bartee

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

-H.L. Mencken

Join in battle Robert David Steele to #UNRIG from the decadent, corrupt oligarchy currently at the helm of the neoliberal US police state.

#UNRIG has got plenty of stops ahead as we zigzag through the Heartland on our national tour. Check the schedule for the latest #UNRIG calendar updates.

The ‘Permanent Emergency’: A Despot’s Golden Goose

The US government – as well as the budding global technocracy led by the World Economic Forum it subserves – operates formulaically; its actors’ behavior is patterned and, consequently, their actions predictable. Much can be gleaned of their future activities by reviewing their past.

An iron rule of political philosophy is that power consolidation is exponentially easier for the ruling class in times of “emergency. ”

The corporate media-choreographed, PR-managed state of crisis following 9/11 birthed a “War on Terror” that enhanced the budgets and mandates of virtually every arm of the national security apparatus – growth that these agencies could not have managed without an attack on two of the most prominent high-rises in the country.

The seizure of new powers for itself was action item #1 on the state agenda from the start of the “War on Terror.” The entire federal bureaucracy – every piece of it that could stand to institutionally benefit from the power grab bonanza – immediately pounced.

On the foreign policy front, the Empire jumpstarted its military-industrial complex war machine that President/General Eisenhower warned about decades ago.

On the domestic front, the national security bureaucracy proliferated:

“At home, the federal government under the George W. Bush administration drastically expanded its surveillance powers to combat terrorism and ramped up efforts to secure its borders — creating new government agencies, federalizing airport security, and combing tens of millions of phone calls.”

Capitalizing on public panic, the Deep State slipped surreptitious new measures into Congressional legislation and executive orders to increase its capacity for warrantless wiretapping not only of foreign targets but domestically as well (in violation of both the letter and the spirit of the 4th Amendment):

“The events of 9/11 have been used as pretext* to dramatically expand the US government’s electronic surveillance and data collection powers, including the authority to gather information on Americans who have done nothing wrong.”

*The new pretext for the dragnet is the alleged emergent, existential threat of “domestic terrorist” groups in the US.

Once a self-serving government has granted itself new powers, it continuously requires an enemy to justify them  — even if that enemy is the theoretically free people that it is purported to serve.

The ‘War on Domestic Terror’: A ‘New Normal’

Much like how, in the aftermath of 9/11,  the federal government in 2002 spawned a brand-new “anti-terrorism” federal agency (The Department of Homeland Security), the Capitol Police have seized on the opportunity presented by January 6th to open new “field” offices in US states as far away from DC as Florida and Texas.

And, just like after Jan 6th, the earlier architects of the Deep State also demanded a “9/11 Commission” to look into the “national tragedy” and provide “recommendations” (read: more money and power for the alphabet surveillance state agencies).  Some such “recommendations”:

“Following 9/11, the federal government moved quickly to develop a security framework to protect our country from large-scale attacks directed from abroad, while enhancing federal, state, and local capabilities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from threats and disasters at home.”

9/11, indeed, provided the necessary cover for the transference of military hardware and tactics to domestic police forces:

“Between 1998 and 2014, the dollar value of military hardware sent to police departments skyrocketed from $9.4 million to a startling $796.8 million.”

The so-called Jan 6th “insurrection” (note the similarities to the “insurgent” terminologyused during the Iraq War to refer to the portion of the Iraqi population resisting occupation) enabled a further expansion of a police state weaponized against its own citizenry. From the Office of Nancy Pelosi, US Speaker of the House, 2021:

Even without an official “commission’s” findings on the new threat,  Congress is already mulling a $2 billion “supplemental security funding bill” for the federal Capitol Police.

In their rhetoric, of course, the legislation’s proponents cite the “violent mob of Trump supporters” that “overran the Capitol in the attack on January 6” to justify the taxpayer-funded expansion of powers aimed at the taxpayers themselves. In bitter irony, Americans are underwriting our own enslavement.

Pentagon brass – who are Constitutionally required to stay out of matters of domestic law enforcement — now “recommend” appropriate measures to the Capitol Police to combat the brand new “domestic extremist” threat:

“In a security report commissioned by Pelosi, retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré recommended the Capitol Police hire hundreds more officers and improve training and intelligence capabilities.”

History is cyclical; the parallels are evident in spades. This is the playbook that the unaccountable executioners of authoritarianism have always run on the populations they manage.

20 Years of a Weaponized Security State: A Legacy of Tattered Civil Liberties, a Bankrupted Treasury, and Wasted Lives

9/11 is worth briefly revisiting for this lesson that bears repeating: once the government invents new powers for itself, it never relinquishes them voluntarily. In the fog of war, the amorphously defined ‘terrorism” threat – the definition of which can be adjusted on the fly as needed — presents a “permanent emergency” that provides an indefinite excuse to balloon the federal bureaucracy to ever-higher heights.

None of the notable “emergency powers” invented into law in the wake of 9/11 has been relinquished – on the contrary, the corporate state’s powers internal police and spy powers have expanded year on year for two decades. Left unchallenged, the dystopian trend will continue in perpetuity.

The now-underground popular American resistance is the only entity with the power or will to push back. Join the #UNRIG fight today to become part of the movement.

 

 

 

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Contact him via his portfolio or on LinkedIn.

 

 

 

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