Everyone gets the sense these are dark times in America.
Although I am noted for my habitual pessimism (comes with the job it seems), I am not the only person who sees it. According to a recent poll by Axios-Ipsos, I’m one of the 4 in 5 Americans that thinks the United States is falling apart. Why?
I think I can explain the phenomenon by recourse to two pictures. The first was taken Jan. 12, 2021 in front of the U.S. Capitol. The second was taken June 12, 1989 in a busy market near Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
There are several key differences in the images, of course. One is the agent of a repressive communist regime and the other a citizen-soldier of a notionally free state. One carries an automatic rifle and one does not.
The pictures, however, have more in common than you may believe. They both depict soldiers keeping a watchful eye over civilians in their respective national capitals, both are there in response to uprisings against the government, both break up an otherwise mundane scene with the presence or implied presence of military force. If anything, the first picture could be described as even more haunting given that, due to the outbreak of a pandemic, his face is completely covered by a mask and sunglasses.
My point is not to say that the U.S. government are like Chairman Deng’s shocktroopers; my point is to bring attention to an emerging pattern of militarism that we in the U.S. are becoming numb to. In much of Europe, the presence of police and military officers with flak jackets and submachine guns has been routine for years; in totalitarian states it is, of course, par for the course, but in America this is something new.
It is also not so much the thing in itself, but what it symbolizes. After all, basically all presidential inaugurations are swarming with armed security. It’s just that, after the riot on Capitol Hill, millions of Americans woke up to having their beliefs labelled “domestic terrorism,” perhaps part of the Axis of Evil that former CIA Director John Brennan has described as the “unholy alliance” of “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
Ah yes, even you, Ayn Rand-reading neckbeards with Ron Paul profile pictures. You too have joined the ranks of Mordor.
In all seriousness though, it is a sobering sight to see a new government which ostensibly hates half the population call up tens of thousands of guardsmen to lock down the capital, creating a militarized zone demarcated by concrete barriers, razor wire and armored vehicles that the Secret Service unironically referred to as the “Green Zone.”
These elements: militarization of the public square, demonization of the opposition, a move to clamp down on freedoms and increase government surveillance. These are the tell-tale marks of a police state in the making.
And for those who don’t see it that way, the image is flipped (and I think reasonably so). Some people see the increasing militarism, the increasing impositions against liberty, and they think these extremists, the gang Brennan’s so concerned about, necessitate a response in kind. They see the QAnon Shaman who doth bestride Nancy Pelosi’s throne like a Colossus and think: there’s the new Osama Bin Laden.
Maybe they’re right, who is to say? All I know is that I don’t see a country headed in the direction of peace, social harmony and prosperity. I see one headed towards violence, discord and want. Those soldiers carrying machine guns outside the Louvre? They’re still there. When will they leave? Probably never. Those Bobbies in stab-proof vests outside Parliament? When will they go strolling down London Bridge without those? Probably never. I’m sensing a pattern here.
I’m not trying to argue who is right and who is wrong, or whether or not Joe Biden is a dictator or something. My concerns are wider, more philosophical. My concern is this: will a society that has come to accept the intrusions of imperialism on its own soil (armed soldiers, repressive laws and hostile surveillance) ever be free of them again?
Photo Credit / Military Times and Associated Press
