Today's news shows a recognizable shock moment in the annals of a closing society. A very ordinary-looking American student....Ordinary-looking? What difference does that make? Shouldn't we feel better when what looks like an over-intense police response is applied to the sort of person that we usually suspect gets all the privileges?
It is an iconic turning point...It's not enough to be just iconic or just a turning point anymore. It's a turning point among turning points. Few turning points reach icon status. But this -- this is that turning point.
... and it will be remembered as the moment at which America either fought back or yielded.Actually, it won't. (I can see into the future at least as well as Wolf.)
This violence against a student is different from violence against protesters in the anti-war movement of 30 years ago because of the power the president has now to imprison innocent U.S. citizens for months in isolation.What was the war in 1977? I am getting all mixed up now. So, let's see. Police employed by the University of Florida apply force to a student who physically fights them, and it has something to do with the President's use of detention in the war on terror. Oh, the Wolf mind is aswirl with notions.
...That taser was directed at the body of a young man, but it is we ourselves, and our Constitution, who received the full force of the shock.Actually, we didn't and it didn't. And Meyer will have the opportunity to sue the police, relying on the Constitution. So the Constitution is still there. And it's not obvious that he'll win.
There is a chapter in my new book, The End of America, entitled "Recast Criticism as 'Espionage' and Dissent as 'Treason,'" that conveys why this moment is the horrific harbinger it is.So the tasing of Andrew Meyer is a harbinger -- a horrific harbinger -- it predicts something in the future, and your book -- written before the tasing -- itself predicted this prediction? Wolf's fortune-telling powers astound.
I argue that....Blah blah blah... buy my book.
...strategists using historical models to close down an open society start by using force on 'undesirables,' 'aliens,' 'enemies of the state,' and those considered by mainstream civil society to be untouchable; in other times they were, of course, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals.Bush is Hitler. If you haven't caught on by now, Andrew Meyer will finally make you see.
Then, once society has been acculturated to that use of force, the 'blurring of the line' begins and the parameters of criminalized speech are extended -- the definition of 'terrorist' expanded -- and the use of force begins to be deployed in HIGHLY VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY SHOCKING WAYS against people that others see and identify with as ordinary citizens.Oh, yeah. That's happened. That's why they -- who? -- "strategists"? -- or, well, at least the university police -- are moving in on the very ordinary-looking people now.
Long rave about Nazis cut.
We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions...Does any rational person think Meyer was tased for "asking questions"?
... we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy -- the 'Oh gosh how awful!' kind of time. It is time to take to the streets. It is time to confront those committing crimes against the Constitution.It's time to stop using the word "time" in every sentence.
The window has now dropped several precipitous inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without great and sorrowful upheaval.Yeah, I have a window like that. Try some WD-40.
... I was scared when I wrote The End of America....Scared and out of my mind.
IN THE COMMENTS: Meade provides the lyrics:
Campus police and Bushhitler coming
We're finally on our own
This summer we felt the horrific harbinger
One tased in Florida
Gotta get down to it
Shutting our microphones down
Shoulda been done long ago
What if you knew him and
found him tased on the ground?
How can you run
when you know it's an iconic turning point?
:.
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