[hedgehog] Watching White Boys Scream About Civil Liberties
So in 2004 and 2005, it came to my attention that young Muslim men were disappearing.
They weren't having their phone records gathered in a giant NSA database. They weren't having their emails read. They were DISAPPEARING. Many of them it seems were deported, some were merely detained, but nobody gave a shit. After all, its not like the civil liberties of PEOPLE WHO MATTERED were being curtailed, right?
I tried to report on this story and failed, because nobody would talk on the record. I had a lot of terrified and truncated and obscure conversations with people who were related to someone or who had heard something about or who knew something about this, but I was a reporter and that was all they would admit to.
And some of them were black and brown and poor. (Did you know there even WERE Mexican Muslims? I didn't before this project!) So they were used to having their civil liberties curtailed anyway. Because of the war on drugs. Remember the war on drugs? That thing where we've been spying on US citizens since the 80s?
Oh, but not the ones who MATTER, right?
So many people who supported the War on Drugs and the War on Terror did it on the assumption that trading away OTHER PEOPLE'S liberty was an acceptable price for THEIR safety. And they did it for decades. But that was the deal, right. OTHER PEOPLE's liberty. Not theirs. Theirs was sacrosanct.
And if many, not all, but SO MANY of the upset people are white, straight cisgendered upper middle class males born in the US of Judeo-Christian heritage, well draw your own conclusions baby.
But IMHO, really what the screaming people are afraid of is losing their privilege.
If you are the right sort of people, then the cops detain OTHER people (for your safety). TSA hassles OTHER people. They deport OTHER people. Hell they even drop bombs on OTHER people. The next such person who carries on about Killing US Citizens better hope I can't get into range to vomit on them. Like it was okay when we were killing NON-US citizens ... but of course that is part of it, isn't it? All of a sudden, it could be you. Your passport won't save you. Your race or economic status. Whatever you thought was saving you all this time? That fig leaf is gone. You too are in this society with everything that entails.
So, yes, I am of the eyeroll. But then I've had an FBI file since the Clinton Administration anyway.
They weren't having their phone records gathered in a giant NSA database. They weren't having their emails read. They were DISAPPEARING. Many of them it seems were deported, some were merely detained, but nobody gave a shit. After all, its not like the civil liberties of PEOPLE WHO MATTERED were being curtailed, right?
I tried to report on this story and failed, because nobody would talk on the record. I had a lot of terrified and truncated and obscure conversations with people who were related to someone or who had heard something about or who knew something about this, but I was a reporter and that was all they would admit to.
And some of them were black and brown and poor. (Did you know there even WERE Mexican Muslims? I didn't before this project!) So they were used to having their civil liberties curtailed anyway. Because of the war on drugs. Remember the war on drugs? That thing where we've been spying on US citizens since the 80s?
Oh, but not the ones who MATTER, right?
So many people who supported the War on Drugs and the War on Terror did it on the assumption that trading away OTHER PEOPLE'S liberty was an acceptable price for THEIR safety. And they did it for decades. But that was the deal, right. OTHER PEOPLE's liberty. Not theirs. Theirs was sacrosanct.
And if many, not all, but SO MANY of the upset people are white, straight cisgendered upper middle class males born in the US of Judeo-Christian heritage, well draw your own conclusions baby.
But IMHO, really what the screaming people are afraid of is losing their privilege.
If you are the right sort of people, then the cops detain OTHER people (for your safety). TSA hassles OTHER people. They deport OTHER people. Hell they even drop bombs on OTHER people. The next such person who carries on about Killing US Citizens better hope I can't get into range to vomit on them. Like it was okay when we were killing NON-US citizens ... but of course that is part of it, isn't it? All of a sudden, it could be you. Your passport won't save you. Your race or economic status. Whatever you thought was saving you all this time? That fig leaf is gone. You too are in this society with everything that entails.
So, yes, I am of the eyeroll. But then I've had an FBI file since the Clinton Administration anyway.