[extropy-chat] POLITICS: National security

[Gennady Ra]

The best prefix to describe the situation: peri-? Perifascist state? Is the game over?
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-- Jim Garrison - New Orleans District Attorney
 JFK Assassination Investigation Remarks


"What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is 
that we in America are in great danger of slowly eroding into a 
proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the 
one the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread 
and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from 
prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the 
inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the 
State. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built 
since 1945, the 'military-industrial complex' that Eisenhower vainly warned 
us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the 
states and the Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive 
Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an 
arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and 
balances of the Constitution.

"In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the 
Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't 
spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for 
such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't 
build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is 
creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more 
effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one 
morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to 
work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual 
who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here the process 
is more subtle, but the end results are the same. I've learned enough about 
the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer 
the dreamworld America I once believed in... I've always had a kind of 
knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political 
blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving 
and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives 
of office. Huey Long once said, 'Fascism will come to America in the name of 
anti-fascism.' I'm afraid, based on my own long experience, that fascism 
will come to America in the name of national security."

	
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