George Orwell warned us that the common folk will surrender their Liberty to Big Brother, freedom by freedom, and quickly forget that those rights ever existed. It does amaze me that Americans are prepared to wage war on a global scale, in order to impose their notions of "Freedom" on other nations (exemplified by the Two-Party electoral system) but they willingly surrender even the most basic freedoms in their own backyard. Witness the stunning spectacle of an entire city - Boston U.S.A., staying home, simply because Law Enforcement told them to stay home. An entire city OBEDIENT to armed authority! And this was the city famed for resistance to the unlawful taxation of Colonial masters? Boston looked like the set of a Hollywood S.F. movie - you know. those movies which discuss a totally "impossible" dystopian future. Something like Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451, a future in which citizen's regularly inform on each other...in the name of "Public Safety". A movie in which we watch a manhunt coordinated by television, with all citizens participating in a vigilante style exercise of justice, hoping to be rewarded by the gratitude of their government.
In some creepy notion of "helping" the entire city of Boston was reduced to peeking out windows, volunteering all their recent cellphone photos and reporting the slightest "suspicious" movement in their neighbourhood to local, state and federal Law Enforcement. In fact it was a "tip" and not the patrolling helicopters that led to the shootout between the Tsarnaev brothers and the Watertown Police. Which will be the next metropolis to be shut down? New York, Chicago... Los Angeles?
THE REAL CULPRIT IN BOSTON - THE PEOPLE
It is truly amazing that in a city as diverse as Boston claims to be, and which prides itself as being 'ground zero' for advanced education (Harvard, MIT, etc) everyone fell into lockstep in both hating and needing vengeance on the Tsarnaev Brothers. It's as if all morality went out the window, and Bostonians were taking their cues about crime and justice from reading BATMAN comics. "Harvard Law", indeed! Not a single academic or news editor in Beantown was willing to raise the possibility that the smothering deployment of intrusive law enforcement in their city, was unwarranted and precedent setting.
Very late in life Ray Bradbury began to muse about his contributions to the ongoing discussion about America's future. Dystopian America it will surely be, but Mr. Bradbury did not wish to place all of the blame on oppressive government and thus let the public get away with its own contribution to the madness. I totally agree. Bad electoral choices are the fruit of a nation which is opinionated but cannot think. You can look up what Bradbury had to say, but here is a taste:
In some creepy notion of "helping" the entire city of Boston was reduced to peeking out windows, volunteering all their recent cellphone photos and reporting the slightest "suspicious" movement in their neighbourhood to local, state and federal Law Enforcement. In fact it was a "tip" and not the patrolling helicopters that led to the shootout between the Tsarnaev brothers and the Watertown Police. Which will be the next metropolis to be shut down? New York, Chicago... Los Angeles?
THE REAL CULPRIT IN BOSTON - THE PEOPLE
It is truly amazing that in a city as diverse as Boston claims to be, and which prides itself as being 'ground zero' for advanced education (Harvard, MIT, etc) everyone fell into lockstep in both hating and needing vengeance on the Tsarnaev Brothers. It's as if all morality went out the window, and Bostonians were taking their cues about crime and justice from reading BATMAN comics. "Harvard Law", indeed! Not a single academic or news editor in Beantown was willing to raise the possibility that the smothering deployment of intrusive law enforcement in their city, was unwarranted and precedent setting.
Very late in life Ray Bradbury began to muse about his contributions to the ongoing discussion about America's future. Dystopian America it will surely be, but Mr. Bradbury did not wish to place all of the blame on oppressive government and thus let the public get away with its own contribution to the madness. I totally agree. Bad electoral choices are the fruit of a nation which is opinionated but cannot think. You can look up what Bradbury had to say, but here is a taste:
Television did not die. It simply shrank to palm size and became a fashion accessory. The current obsession with turning every subject, every issue, every school lesson, every exchange of information... into a visual experience, is screwing with millions of "modern" heads. Howard Fast summed up the danger more than fifty years ago: "Without words, thought becomes a process of pictures, which is on the animal level and rules out all, even the most primitive, abstract concepts." The reversion to animal-like response behavior we witnessed in Boston, will certainly spread to other American cities, and it will happen as soon as the next co-ordinated manhunt for "terrorists". You just know that in dozens of American cities, patriotic posses are laying out their gear, waiting for Government to call "Mount up!"
What is even creepier than "Black Helicopters" over Boston, is the American need to demonize the TSARNAEV BROTHERS. That calls for a separate blog article.
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