Tragedy Spells Opportunity for the State

In Tom Clancy's 1986 WWIII novel Red Storm Rising, the Soviet Union's leadership finds itself in desperate need of a pretext to justify the invasion of West Germany in order to neutralize NATO.  To this end, the Politburo creates a fiendish maskirovka or deception for the purpose of rousing the support of their people while simultaneously galvanizing public opinion against West Germany.  The deception consists of a bomb planted in the Kremlin which kills a number of visiting schoolchildren.  Soviet state television deliberately plays up the images of the dead children and in short order the Soviet citizens are screaming for war.

I was reminded of this story following the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.  After the photograph of the firefighter carrying the bloodied body of tiny Baylee Almon had tugged at my heart strings for the 5th or 6th time, the thought occurred to me that perhaps someone might be using her image for the purpose of inflaming and polarizing public opinion.  But the question remained:  against whom would that outrage be directed?

The target, of course, was anyone who had spoken out against the Clinton administration's statist expansion of gun control laws, attempts to nationalize health care, and other government excesses.  In a classic example of guilt-by-association, Timothy McVeigh, who was later convicted and executed for his role in the bombing, was held up as an archetype of anyone who expressed dissatisfaction with the increasingly heavy-handed, parasitic behavior of their federal government.  Two weeks later, then President Clinton famously remarked in a commencement address at Michigan State University, "There is nothing patriotic about hating your government, or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."


As writer Will Grigg pointed out, certain government officials and their enablers in the press went so far as to assign meteorological significance to the voices of dissent by accusing them of creating a "climate of fear" and an "atmosphere of hate."  The officials' goal, which was largely accomplished, was to silence critics of government policy by equating dissent--of any sort--with extremist and violent activism.  It was also a craven and shameless effort to capitalize on the tragedy of an act of madness for the purpose of expanding government power to an even greater degree.  Tragically, it's a method that works.

Blogger Milo Nickels sums up the tried and true formula as follows:

• Step 1 - wait for tragedy to occur, or actually create the tragedy.
• Step 2 - spread propaganda through the media, so everyone believes your story about the tragedy
• Step 3 - pass laws, or institute policies, that take away people's freedoms.
• Step 4 - justify the increased Tyranny by citing the propaganda in step 2.

Which brings us to the events of the past few days.

  
The police hadn't even finished stringing up the yellow tape at the crime scene of the mass shooting in Tucson before power-hungry statists were predictably seeking a way to spin the bloodshed in such a way as to gain advantage over their political opposition.  The left was quick to try to link the shooter's politics to the right and vice versa.  A great deal of sound and fury has raged over the past few days as each side has desperately sought to hang Jared Loughner like an albatross around the other's neck.  And while this exercise in futility continues, the real exploitation is taking place under our noses.    

Contrary to the artificial left/right paradigm under which so many Americans currently labor, the true opposing sides in this struggle are the state vs. the people.  And the state is currently exploiting this latest event in order to glorify itself and to expand its powers even further.

Proof of this dynamic can be shown in a number of ways.  For instance, the shooting rampage killed 6 and wounded 14, but where has the media focused its attention?  We know of the Congresswoman who was wounded; we know of her staffer and of the federal judge who was killed;  we even know about the nine year old girl who was born on 9/11.  But what do we know of the others who were killed and wounded?  The honest answer is: next to nothing.  Why is that?

Surely their lives mattered, but since they cannot be linked, either directly or indirectly, to the state and its purposes, it's curious that they remain largely nameless and faceless to us.  Further proof of this bias can be found in the charges that have been filed against the alleged shooter.  The full might of the federal government has been brought to bear and it has filed charges attempted assassination in the case of the Congresswoman and federal murder charges in the case of her aide and the judge who were killed.  The other victims of the shooting are apparently considered less sanctified beings and the state of Arizona's prosecution of Mr. Loughner will have to suffice.

Even the language of federal officials has portrayed one man's act of insanity as a grave threat to the entire federal leviathan.  In the words of House majority leader John Boehner: “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve.  Such acts of violence have no place in our society.”  FBI Director Robert Muller described the shootings as, "an attack on our institutions and our way of life."  In the meantime, blogger Jim Wallis ratcheted up the hyperbole factor by calling the shootings, "an attack on the soul of the nation."  Where is that same sense of outrage when innocent people die at the hands of those in the employ of the federal government?

As journalist Bill Anderson so aptly puts it, Wallis, among others, is one "who sees literally everything in political symbolism. So, the rule of thumb is that if he cannot find a way to put an incident into his worship of the State, it simply doesn’t happen."  

But the state's biggest tell that it believes it is holding a winning hand in this tragedy is found the various bits of legislation being proposed that are intended to build yet another layer of legal separation between the federal government and the citizens it claims to represent.  One set of laws for the rulers, and another for the people.  It's a textbook example of what aristocracy looks like.

Rep. Robert Brady of Pennsylvania is seeking to introduce highly ambiguous legislation that would stifle even peaceful free speech by outlawing "language or symbols" that could be perceived as threatening to federal officials or lawmakers.

Image courtesy of deathby1000papercuts.com

Not to be outdone, Rep. Peter King of New York is floating a proposed law that would prohibit possession of a firearm within 1000 feet of any "high profile" government official.

Other leaders like Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) suggested the Federal Communications Commission was “not working anymore,” adding she would look at ways to better police language (thought) on the airwaves.

Add to these proposed laws the various gun control proposals now being forwarded by various special interests and professional alarmists who've long been waiting for a bloody shirt to wave, and it should be abundantly clear that tragedy spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y to many among the ruling class.  None of these proposed remedies would have stopped Jared Loughner from carrying out his gruesome task.  But it should be clear to all but the most deliberately obtuse thinkers that his attack merely provided the justification for the imposition of solutions that have long been searching for a problem.

So what exactly is the end game that these political opportunists have in mind?  No one can say for certain.  But it appears that greater restrictions on our ability to speak freely, further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms and expanded government power to further insulate itself against the citizenry it purportedly represents all play a role in the desired end result.  How that could be portrayed as a positive development for the cause of liberty requires a curious combination of Orwellian double-think and slavish devotion to the state.  Don't fall for it.