QuoteThat makes sense but what are people here to do who had no power to stop the power mongers in wash DC? We still have to protect ourselves from the threat of both groups now !!
Like i said, the American government is so far ahead of the "radical" factions opposed to it in as far as economic capacity, military ability, and access to high-technology. The intelligence and security wings of the government are very aware of the actions of these people if we take into account phone-tapping, vehicle tracking, credit card and bank records (who's taking out money, how much and where are they spending it) as well as cyber surveillance these domestic terror threats are left to face-to-face interaction and taking very precarious steps to prevent suspicion and counter-terrorist action against them. this more or less removes their insurgent potency. take this as an example
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/ the government is tracking any perceived threat which is a very broad group of our society. In my opinion the US government has a pretty good hold on those real threats to national security and handle them before things before they get out of hand. How many people are arrested for domestic terror charges without the knowledge of the general populace?
As far as international threats we are led to believe that these Al Qaeda groups and the like are off hiding in caves and secret bunkers and are no where to be found when in reality a paramilitary training camp is kind of hard to hide from high altitude recon planes, now their low tech does work to their advantage as it's difficult to track hidden letters in mountains of Afghanistan and to discern a prayer group from an insurgent cell. But I imagine that if their war with America is more concerned with their own national identity, rather than conquer us i think they immediately want cultural sovereignty rather than a KFC on every corner and Halliburton oil refineries in the deserts. The American populace is threatened more by our own ignorant consumerism and lack of cohesive identity. So much of American culture is appropriated from those immigrants who helped shape the nation, a good example is that in the process of self discovery we always turn towards Eastern spirituality or other foreign or historical modalities rather than going through the actual process of self creation for ourselves.
As a nation we are safe and secure, the tragedy of 9/11 stands as an exception. if we imagine ourselves as the people in charge of national security just how many perceived threats and rumours pass our desk every day? and the strategy of the 9/11 attack sounded absurd at the time a coordinated hijacking of multiple airplanes and flying through one of the most heavily regulated and trafficked airspace and crashing into buildings. We would have to decide which threats to allocate resources to combat and that one probably just sounded to improbable. but after the fact we are now super concerned about a repeat of that tragedy, but now that we understand the lengths people will go to we know what to look for.
We are an information society we are very far removed from immediate experience. You and I are having a conversation and exchanging information gathered from other sources from different parts of the nation all thanks to the super connective structure of the internet. America is no longer a production economy as we have outsourced all those jobs, we as a society find ourselves for the most part living our lives through our technology our cars, computers, televisions and brand identity we have lost touch with basic humanity. So I would suggest instead of concerning ourselves with the fabricated drama of terrorists and radical dissidents we focus on authentic rediscovery of the human experience. If we get to know ourselves as individuals we can then form a properly cohesive collective for the new millennium and the new global schema. The powerlessness of the people is an illusion supported by the massive monolithic appearance of the government institution but the reality of it is that we as individuals are sovereigns in our own skin and should not fear the controlling grasp of government nor the threat of anti-American sentiment in the world, as both are only temporary, governments fall or adapt to the changing geopolitical climate and revolutionary (subversive, insurgent, terrorist) groups by their nature either dissolve, fail in the attempt at revolution, or take the place of the "evil" they oppose. The Iranian Revolution seemed at the time to be a return to the old high point of the Islamic golden age but instead has collapsed into a government no better than the Western supported Shah the Ayatollah's overthrew. It's my opinion that this period of "Islamic radicalism" is merely a death throe of 19th century nationalist thought, much like the hyper-patriotic security state that the US has become. But change is
inevitable and all we can do is be prepared for it and hold onto the only constant in our lives and that is our integral, inherent sense of self.
sorry for the rambling philosophy
