Crime: looking different

The recent shooting/murder of a young Brazilian man in the London tube in the aftermath of terror attack hysteria has me thinking about the power of fear and what people might be willing to do or not do because of it.

I found myself walking through a number of home improvement and discount stores today -- i was trying to find Japenese beetle traps, since these nasty bugs have invaded big time this Summer. Alas, everyone was sold out.

But what I found myself pondering was about the thoughts and reactions of the people in these stores, particularly in the unmentionable discount store, to the whole "terror" scenario. People are conditioned. I mean we are all conditioned, but some worse than others. I conclude that because of their conditioning folks will react according to the way big brother suggests they react. After a while that reaction becomes simply automatic.

In the case of "terror" I became convinced that presented with the option, say, of nuking Iraq,as a plausible solution to the "problem" of terror, most would problably say right on. Maybe this would not be so, and a fair number might have basic civilized human qualities such as logic and compassion kick in versus primal self preservation, if someone sensible had power and access to their sensory input, TV, whatever.But that is a very big hurdle to overcome today.

The cabal have done an excellent job propelling the populace well along the way toward domesday thinking; anything, I mean just about anything that can be made to seem a threat is automatically expendable. The quicker the better. Bush wasn't kidding. He doesn't do nuance. And neither anymore, I fear, do most people. The most difficult and subtle of questions is reduced to a simple yes or no. "You're either with us or with the terroists". How powerful. How ignorant. How simple. So what if a few innocents get capped? Just the price to pay.

Meanwhile, the sense of what it means to be civilized gets killed in the bargain.

If there is a hell

As the great kabuki cranks up to a clearer deliniation between the forces of Bush and the forces of decency (much of the rest of the so-called civilezed world), one hears the leaks from sources eager to continue to shape the Rovian message; a message very possibly necessary to the survival of not just Rove but Bush himself. Will criminal indictments be brought forth by Fitzgerald's grand jury? How many? How wide? Or will it all be shoved under the rug? The charade that is Bush, the neo-cons, the Iraq debacle? All of it.

And is anyone listening? Will the "media" be allowed to follow a story more protean than Michael Jackson? Will their masters allow it?

I do not want to prejudge the myopia and ability for self delusion of the Bush faithful -- oh, yes I do, but I shall forbear. However,I will be very interested to watch how much this tidal wave of scandal triggered by Rove-Plame-gate affects the basic calculus among those who worship at the altar of fear, ethnocentrism, and jingoism constructed and embellished by the this administration, including but not limited to: Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Perle, the neocons in general, Rove, Gonzales, PNAC and all the hoary retreads who inhabit the bowels of the administration.

Watergate did have an impact for a time, skepticism of government. But the koolaid that's been passed out is so much stronger these days. And those deluded are so viscerally joined to the deluders that one cannot confidently say the scales will fall from their eyes, even if a media sector begins to function less like Frankenstein's Igor. You remember: "Yes, master".