A Raging State Of Paranoia

R.F. Goggin, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Remember the days in the U.S., when it was generally considered rude to spy on your neighbor? Or, when minding one’s own business used to be a kind of unspoken virtue? Well, although ‘the times they are a changing’, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans, as a people, would be better served to change along with them.

In the United States, before we are condemned by the state, we are routinely informed of the right we have to remain silent. But in case it’s become obscure somehow for an average Joe, when it comes to the ‘business’ of Homeland Security, one also has an inherent right to remain non-compliant to the state of paranoia in America that has yet to enthrall the majority of the people in the same outrageous manner it has our nation’s leaders.

Do ordinary U.S. citizens, actually need to take the advice of a public servant like ‘Janet Napolitano’ and function as an operative of their government? Must we really become estranged from or suspicious of one another as a matter of daily routine? Is this “If you see something, say something” mentality and campaign, taking shape out of Washington, all that fundamentally wise or necessary to begin with?

Well, I am definitely seeing something strange that is going on, so perhaps I had better ‘say something’.

I have a sneaking suspicion that one does not actually decide to become a ‘Libertarian’ these days, as opposed to a Republican or Democrat, but that they are left with little choice in the matter, when they see the political establishment in America gradually eroding their civil liberties for what are basically misleading, self-serving reasons of not protecting you or I, per se, but the state itself. And in most cases, isn’t it moreover just our ‘dedicated’ public officials trying to protect their own jobs? It’s clear enough to me at least, that the more the U.S. government is able to entrench this ‘keep your eyes peeled’ mindset of fear for one’s own personal safety into the public dialogue, then the less of an ‘individual’ (with all your liberties intact) an average or ordinary U.S. citizen will be. This is of course, unless you are perfectly willing to buy into a mass delusion being perpetuated by people living in a gated community of their own minds, consisting of freedom-encroaching plots and ideas.

In this day and age, in order for a Washington politician or bureaucrat to stay relevant or stable within some comfortable salary or station, they are going tell you that in this super-power in which you live, that you are simply ‘not safe.’ They are going to warn you about terrorists in our midst, whom for all intents and purposes, have already fulfilled their mission of sowing a very real sense of fear and disharmony into the American psyche. Is it really worth keeping ourselves safe at all freedom-loving cost, if we’re to all but cower against an unseen enemy on U.S. soil?

Benjamin Franklin, once said, “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” Well at the moment, there are protest movements taking place across the country doing just that. And I would be willing to bet that this founding father of whom I speak, were he watching from above, might hold nothing other than admiration toward the demonstrators and the chant which some were using, when they called into question an authority (NYPD) standing in the path of their forward progress.

“Who are you protecting!”

Should not those currently protesting across the country, by definition of a ‘nanny’ or a police state, be considered a threat to homeland security? You had better believe it, Mr. or Mrs. American citizen. Money loves money in a materialistic society, and so those who are going to get any real government protection or who will benefit most from the department of ‘homeland security’ in the end, will be those distinguishable, well off Americans with the most to gain — or to protect — through its implementation.

All that is necessary, it would seem to me, to begin to reverse this overbearing corruption of power in the most militarily secure nation in the world, is for every American to understand that it is hardly their patriotic duty to become an unpaid secret agent of the state, but instead to insist on taking responsibility for their own personal well-being — and to be content with nothing more.

R.F. Goggin – is the editor of The New World Reporter, where he is a contributing author.