(YellowTimes.org) Informing as part of anopen society? Indeed, under Mr. Bush's proposed Terrorism Informationand Prevention System (TIPS for short) - a kind of national,atomic-mutation of Neighborhood Watch - an estimated four percent ofAmericans will join a long and glorious tradition of state-securityinformants.
The tradition of citizen informants has rootsgoing back at least to the French Revolution. During the terror,citizens were encouraged to inform on neighbors and even children toinform on their parents. More than a few harmless people went to theguillotine just on the basis of a hateful neighbor denouncingthem.
Of course, there was Stalin's immense bloodbathover two continents. Informants played an important part in his heavyindustry of organized murder. And one recognizes other suggestivesimilarities to what's happening in America. When Stalin was ready toannounce another purge, he often spoke indirectly of "wreckers,"wreckers of the Revolution. Just this suggestion from his lips wasenough to get the thugs and psychopaths busy about theirwork.
Has anyone noticed the paler-but-still-similarsense of the term "terrorists"? With the heavily-biased press inAmerica, we have all been conditioned to have an immediate mentalimage of a terrorist: He's a swarthy fellow with a difficult Arabicor Persian name and a strange religion. Remember, if there is onething America is good at, one thing at which it has no equal on theplanet, it is marketing. And America has intensively marketed thisimage for years.
The informing tradition was carried on insocieties as diverse as Nazi Germany, the East German Stasi, PolPot's Cambodia, and the horrific youth brigades of China's CulturalRevolution.
My right-wing readers, yes I do have some,sometimes question how I can possibly ever associate America withugly things like fascism. Well, the TIPS program and the Patriot Act,both deliberately bland names for insidious, dangerous things, is theword made flesh, so to speak.
I have in the past humorously observed theprevalence of insanity in America. I admit to using that term in arather loosely-defined sense, but America is the land of BlackHelicopters, alien abductions, Aryan churches, rattlesnake worship,speaking in tongues, and Texas.
You cannot live in America without discoveringthere also are a lot of angry people there. You see them on thestreets, you meet them in stores, you experience them as neighbors.In your face. Mind your own business. Foul language. Indeed, I canattest to a fair sampling of such language in e-mail from my moreperverse readers. Odd, don't you think, to send a person you've nevermet a disgustingly foul letter only because you don't agree with hiscolumn? And although I receive mail from many countries, the onlysource for this kind of stuff, I'm sorry to say, isAmerica.
I believe Social Darwinism, whose roots now deeplyvein American society, is largely responsible for this. We shouldnever forget that Social Darwinism was the underlying philosophy ofAdolf Hitler, and, while America's version is not quite so poisonous,there are similarities. It is a philosophy that breeds an atmosphereof contempt for others, especially the less fortunate. A sense of"I'm alright, Jack!" It raises the shabby idea of winners and losersto an exalted status. This breeds a lot of human misery in the midstof a very prosperous society.
Of course, the tender ministrations of America'sfundamentalist Christians only add to a pressure-cooker climate. Ifyou're not of the correct profession, something must be wrong withyou. And for sure, if you're anything unusual, any kind ofnon-conformist or person born with the wrong genes, then your lifemay well qualify as an abomination. "Oh, how we love the sinner buthate the sin," making it extremely difficult for the recipients ofsuch bounteous love to distinguish which of the two is being hated atany given moment and always forgetting the Good Lord's claim to theexclusive right of judgment.
Despite all the rhetoric about good neighbors inAmerica, you are pretty much on your own when something goes wrong.The anarchy of urban decay, brutal police, racism, rotten publicschools, large numbers of functional illiterates, unethical andpredatory business practices, a lack of decent health care for many,a pervasive invasion of individual privacy for the advantages ofcorporate marketing, love-it-or-leave-it attitudes, guns and theinfluence of the military's culture of death everywhere - thesethings generate resentment, division, loneliness, and anger. Lots ofanger.
A friend, recently returning to America from along stint in Europe, provided an excellent, illustrative anecdote ofinstitutionalized insanity in America when an airport security manheld his laptop computer upside down and started shaking it. Myfriend naturally enough asked what he was doing, and the securityman's reply was, "You never heard of anthrax?"
Now I ask, in view of these readily-observedcharacteristics of American society, does anyone in his right mindbelieve that it is a good idea to promote institutionalizedinforming? Why, something like one-half to one percent of thepopulation suffers from schizophrenia. Another equal slice suffersfrom various forms of depression. About three-quarters of a percentis behind bars. Many times that are ex-convicts. Huge numbers ofAmericans are addicted to booze or drugs. Taking into account theamount of Americans who are fundamentalist Christians, around ten totwenty percent believe the end of the world is imminent, or thatpeople walk around with the "Mark of the Beast" on theirforeheads.
And any of them may just be of a mind to inform onyou.
Date: Wednesday, July 17, 2002
[John Chuckman is former chief economist fora large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelongstudent of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty,the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. He is a member ofno political party and takes exception to what has been calledAmerica's "culture of complaint" with its habit of reducing everyimportant issue to an unproductive argument between twosimplistically defined groups. John regards it as a badge of honor tohave left the United States as a poor young man from the South Sideof Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder ofsomething like three million Vietnamese in their own land becausethey happened to embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives inCanada, which he is fond of calling "the peaceablekingdom."]
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