My initial post made the connection more explicit. I wrote something like, "At least Reagan had the good grace to keep his complicity using chemical weapons a secret." And then I couldn't believe I had just written that sentence.
That's how things are worse. We've done despicable things in the past, but we had shame enough to deny it, shame enough to try to edit history to hide it. Nowadays a video is released showing Apache pilots laughing while they kill unarmed civilians, and the USG from top to bottom has the temerity not only to ignore the war crime, but to attack the guy who released the video for being a traitor. And people don't riot. That's new. That's worse.
Nowadays men of conscience reveal secret plots that undermine our most basic freedoms. And rather than showing shame, contrition, rather than being apologetic, Obama "welcomes the debate" about privacy, and prosecutes the whistleblower with a ferocity unmatched in living memory. Christ, Obama had a foreign presidents plane grounded on the suspicion he might get his man.
It's worse because the brutality, the cold indifference to principle, the naked self-serving agenda, is entirely unmasked now. It's worse because people can't do anything. The myth that "public sentiment" matters at all in a democracy has finally been busted.
I see it the same way. As a country, overall, I think we're still in denial. Calling Manning or Snowden a traitor are examples of people still being in denial. "It just can't be that USG is that bad... These people stole and/or spied... I wouldn't ever do something like this... They caused so much hardship... They're bad, they need to be punished and everything will go back to normal"
The question, as you pointed out, is where are the angry ones? It could be that the numbers are still too small, or, the more likely reason in my opinion, people are just not used to being angry. They're used to calmly solving problems. Being angry is not something a civilized person does. It's only those who end up in jail. Being angry shows lack of control, it's emotional. If you're angry you're low class, you belong on Maury or Jerry Springer. Or it's something that can only be excused if under the influence of alcohol.
The other factor is fear. People are afraid of losing what they have. The system is built in such way that the smallest step out of line could cause significant hardship. Why would one go out and protest when doing so may get them arrested, which would prevent them for ever getting a high paying job?
When those in power realize that the lion is so well caged... why would they pretend the lion is powerful? In the long run their hubris is what will be their downfall, but we're nowhere near that. In the meantime we're lingering between denial and depression with very little acceptance. It takes time for people to process all this, and it takes even more when you don't have good sources of information.
We desperately need people in the mass media to stop beating around the bush and show us reality as it is. We need them to call corruption for what it is, to unravel the game so that people could process it. Until that happens most people will continue to be stuck in denial.
> And people don't riot. That's new. That's worse.
Coming from a part of the world that has seen at least one revolution and several coups d'etat in the last century, this is one of the things that has made me particularly troubled about how much Americans value their democracy and about how much they value their comfort. Back there, when the Iron Curtain fell, they needed about ten years of deportations and forced imprisonments to get things under reasonable control, and it only lasted for thirty years afterwards. That's in a country where people could literally be thrown in jail because they knew someone, couldn't possess fire weapons and couldn't assembly in public places, making any riot almost impossible to start, let alone work. Countries with one tenth of the US population mobilize more people in a teachers' strike than the Occupy movement -- with arguably more widespread concerns -- mobilized.
When the government's abuse takes the form of unfair judges and militarized police force, you can't break down the abuse by whining in the press and debating on the TV. That's the circus they hand out when the grain isn't cutting it anymore. I'm yet to see even the most modest form of civil disobedience in a sizeable quantity. A bunch of people gathering up and not paying taxes or something. FFS -- a students' strike. When I was a kid, there was a point when students grew so unhappy that they simply called a strike and refused to go to class -- nationwide. A lot of professors tried to bully them into it, many of them ended up having to take a lot of exams again, but conditions did actually improve to some degree -- and they also didn't do anything that was remotely in danger of being labeled as some form of disobedience worthy of imprisonment. Basically, everyone decided to skip the classes with the same reason.
There's also the sense of community -- or, rather, the sense of division against the government. Everyone there seems to be friends with each other, but the sense of injustice is enjoyed by everyone in private, and only shared over a couple of beers.
About twenty years ago, a team from the local equivalent of the DEA missed the apartment and smashed open the door of one of our neighbors. His wife was pregnant and both of them were terrified, but when one of the policemen tried to drag her on the floor (protocol asks for it -- but they also didn't show any ID when they smashed the door open) the dude snapped and punched one of them. Needless to say, a lot of rabble ensued and the whole block woke up. Our apartment was next door to theirs, so the first one to jump out was my father (to make matters worse, he was a Colonel).
When everyone there realized what had happened, the policemen barely got out alive. One of them got out with a dislocated jaw, another one with a broken nose, and it was literally only the timely intervention of their colleagues that prevented them from being lynched.
Three of them were eventually discharged and one of them was moved to another city. I have no doubt that, under normal circumstances, nothing would have happened; the abnormal circumstance here was that my dad was the one who threw in the first punch. Pressing charges against someone from an institution who also had enough influence over judges was simply unproductive: it wasn't as much a problem of not fucking triple-checking what door you're smashing down as a problem of messing with someone who had the biggest bureaucratic cock.
This was as dystopian as it could be. There was no impartial justice to speak of and the government had no formal policy to protect its citizens from abuse, and the reach of the government's power/control was modest to say the least. However, some safety was provided by the sense of community: when everyone could jerk the system to their own interest, some of them occasionally chose to jerk it towards the interest of their families or friends.
From what I recall, the US blamed the chemical weapon attacks on Iran and used them to justify continuing international sanctions which denied them access to the equipment and materials they needed to defend against the attacks. That's pretty damn evil.
"Independently of Glen, Ronald Ridenhour, a former member of the 11th Infantry Brigade, sent a letter in March 1969 to thirty members of Congress imploring them to investigate the circumstances surrounding the "Pinkville" incident.[36][37] Ridenhour had learned about the events at Mỹ Lai secondhand from talking to members of Charlie Company over a period of months beginning in April 1968. He became convinced that something "rather dark and bloody did indeed occur" at Mỹ Lai, and was so disturbed by the tales he heard that within three months of being discharged from the Army he penned his concerns to Congress.[36] Most recipients of Ridenhour's letter ignored it, with the exception of Congressman Mo Udall[38] and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke.[39] Udall urged the House Armed Services Committee to call on Pentagon officials to conduct an investigation"[1] (emphasis mine)
This was two months before the public heard about it, and corrective actions were already beginning.
"In November 1969, General William R. Peers was appointed to conduct a thorough investigation into the My Lai incident and its subsequent cover-up. Peers' final report, published in March 1970, was highly critical of top officers for participating in the cover-up and the Charlie Company officers for their actions at Mỹ Lai 4."
The general sense is that whether or not Mai Lai was sanctioned, once congress (e.g. the people) got wind of it they began to look into it. An Army general looked into it (and the cover up) and sought to find those responsible and punish them. It wasn't enough, and Mai Lai added more fuel to anti-war demonstrations, but it was far more than we get today.
Our congressmen sit there watching public videos of war crimes, and do nothing except prosecute (and put pressure on other governments to prosecute) the people responsible for leaking and distributing the evidence.
That's how things are worse. We've done despicable things in the past, but we had shame enough to deny it, shame enough to try to edit history to hide it. Nowadays a video is released showing Apache pilots laughing while they kill unarmed civilians, and the USG from top to bottom has the temerity not only to ignore the war crime, but to attack the guy who released the video for being a traitor. And people don't riot. That's new. That's worse.
Nowadays men of conscience reveal secret plots that undermine our most basic freedoms. And rather than showing shame, contrition, rather than being apologetic, Obama "welcomes the debate" about privacy, and prosecutes the whistleblower with a ferocity unmatched in living memory. Christ, Obama had a foreign presidents plane grounded on the suspicion he might get his man.
It's worse because the brutality, the cold indifference to principle, the naked self-serving agenda, is entirely unmasked now. It's worse because people can't do anything. The myth that "public sentiment" matters at all in a democracy has finally been busted.