04 Jan The thwarted Christmas Day bombing – feedback

Responding to our post on the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing, Cameron Bode points to another section of Glenn Greenwald’s trenchant analysis of US response to the failed Christmas airplane bombing:

Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which David Brooks focused yesterday is the one I’ve thought most important. What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result. Policies can always be changed. What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States….

Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws. Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism: the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection.

More at Bode’s own blog.