How Boston Exposes America’s Dark Post-9/11 Bargain

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-boston-exposes-americas-dark-post-911-bargain



To put it mildly, this has been a bad week for democracy and a worse one for public discourse. In the minutes and hours after the bombs went off in Boston last Monday, marathon runners, first responders and many ordinary citizens responded to a chaotic situation with great courage and generosity, not knowing whether they might be putting their own lives at risk. Since then, though, it’s mostly been a massive and disheartening national freakout, with pundits, politicians, major news outlets and the self-appointed sleuths of the Internet – in fact, nearly everyone besides those directly affected by the attack – heaping disgrace upon themselves.

We’ve seen the most famous TV network in the news business repeatedly botch basic facts, while one of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers misreported the number of people killed, launched a wave of hysteria over a “Saudi national” who turned out to have nothing to do with the crime, and then published a cover photo suggesting that two other guys (also innocent) might be the bombers. We’ve seen the vaunted crowd-sourcing capability of Reddit degenerate into self-reinforcing mass delusion, in which a bunch of people whose law-enforcement expertise consisted of massive doses of “CSI” convinced themselves that a missing college student was one of the bombing suspects. (He wasn’t – and with that young man’s fate still unknown, how does his family feel today?)

We’ve watched elected officials and political commentators struggle to twist every nubbin of news or rumor toward some perceived short-term tactical advantage. It was as if the only real importance of this horrific but modestly scaled terrorist attack lay in how it could prove the essential rightness of one’s existing worldview, and — of course! — how it would play in the 2014 midterms. On the right, people were sure the Boston bombings were part of a massive jihadi plot – no doubt one linked to al-Qaida and Iran and Saddam Hussein and all the other landmarks in the connect-the-dots paranoid worldview of Islamophobia. (In fact, many people are still convinced of that.) On the left we heard a lot of theories about Patriots’ Day and Waco and Oklahoma City, along with the argument that it would be better for global peace if the bombers turned out to be white Americans rather than foreign Muslims. (I sympathize with the underlying point David Sirota was making there, by the way, but the way it was phrased was deliberately inflammatory.)

How long did it take conservative pundits and politicians, after the bombing suspects were identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, immigrant brothers of Chechen heritage born in Kyrgyzstan, to seize on that fact as a reason to walk back the supposed Republican change of heart on immigration reform? Was it even five minutes? Never mind that the young men in question came here as war refugees in childhood, one was an American citizen and the other a legal resident, and we still have no idea what role their religion and national background may or may not have played in motivating the crime. It’s hard to imagine what possible immigration laws could have categorically excluded them, short of a magic anti-Muslim force field. And don’t even get me started on the irrelevant but unavoidable fact that the shameless, butt-licking lackeys of the Senate’s Republican caucus (with a few Democrats along for the ride) took advantage of the post-Boston confusion to do Wayne LaPierre’s bidding and kill a modest gun-reform bill supported by nearly the entire American public.

[Bragi]

1. Another similar take

The article below similarly points to last week as a demonstration of how Americans have come to accept - - and even like - - their shiny, bright police state.

One thing last week made clear was that if armed government forces decide to take over a city, and even inspect everyones homes, there will be zero resistance. No 2nd Amendment militias to worry about, just masses of scared, subservient people ready to do whatever the people in uniforms demand.

In Boston, our bloated surveillance state didn’t work

"The events of the past week in Boston do not vindicate the rise of the Homeland Security Thebureaucracy and certainly do not vindicate the stripping of our liberties, the shutting down of a major city, or the instantiation of a police state. But they certainly affirm the future as it was perceived by Orwell."

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/in_boston_our_bloated_surveillance_state_didnt_work

[xchrom]

2. +1

[zeemike]

7. "affirm the future as it was perceived by Orwell"

Yep...
for this and the OP.

[a2liberal]

8. +1000

Scary how willing even those on DU are to give up on Constitutional principles just to feel a little bit safer

[Fumesucker]

11. Like hell, they fucking *love* it

It feels like three or four to one against those who have civil liberties concerns here on DU, everywhere else I've seen it's even more lopsided.

[Laelth]

3. My take is somewhat different.

If anything, the bad journalism we have seen over the past few days has been quite useful. It serves as a reminder to us all that the media can not and should not always be trusted to tell the truth or to have the facts right. That kind of skepticism is useful for our republic, I think.

-Laelth

[Cosmocat]

4. Really?

Republican's are jackasses and our corporate media is pathetic.

Not sure how any of that has anything to do with Boston, it just is a simple statement of fact in America in 2013.

Frankly, this is an unnecessary effort to negatively frame the positive outcome from Boston.

The people of Boston carried the situation incredibly well, law enforcement engaged in the largest man hunt in modern history here in America with aplomb.

There is a positive moment, a point where there is some actual "maturity" from this country overall in relation to this kind of event.

I don't get the need to negatively frame 99% of the country because republicans are jackasses and our media sucks.

[grammiepammie]

6. Really?

Thank you. I do so agree with you. I am extremely proud of my city and how things were handled.

[freshwest]

10. +1

[Bragi]

12. What has "this" to do with Boston?

It's about how Bostonians demonstrated last week just how easy it is now for police to lock down a whole city. This was a first, but I'm sure it will be just as easy in other cities. Most Americans have pretty well given up even caring about civil liberties.

[Cosmocat]

16. Whatever the larger discussion on "civil" liberties

it has little to do with Boston.

What was supposed to happen, everyone refuse to let law enforcement look in their houses, to act like nothing was going on and mill overall the place while 10,000 law enforcement offices are trying to track down a jackass who blew off bombs at the Boston Marathon and put a bullet in the head of a school officer?

WTF?

[avebury]

13. The largest manhunt in US history?

Perhaps, perhaps not.

http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-biggest-manhunts-in-u-s-history.html

http://rt.com/usa/manhunt-police-dorner-lapd-765/

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/02/us_manhunts_christopher_dorner.php

http://www.hanksmedia.com/2013/02/15/u-s-largest-manhunt-comes-to-a-bloody-end/

[ananda]

5. It's true. Our media is the shame of our nation.

..

[watoos]

9. Exactly, I keep repeating this

The MSM is controlled by 6 multinational corporations. The biggest lie out there is that the media is liberal. Yes, even MSNBC and NBC.
Phil Donohue got canned for talking against invading Iraq(G.E. and Microsoft stood to benefit from a war)
Keith Olbermann, Cenk Unygar, Dylan Ratigan all strayed from the corporate message. OWS was beginning to change the narrative from the debt to jobs and income inequality but they were stifled by the MSM and law enforcement. 1984 is here.

[Purplehazed]

14. The author

is doing the same thing he is writing about.

"....political commentators struggle to twist every nubbin of news or rumor toward some perceived short-term tactical advantage. It was as if the only real importance of this horrific but modestly scaled terrorist attack lay in how it could prove the essential rightness of one’s existing worldview...."

[blackspade]

15. Well said.