The United States of America: The Police State, Suicide by Fear

By Craig: The other night my wife and I went to a movie at the local Regal Cinema. I don't go to the movies too often these days. First of all, the tickets and concessions are ridiculously overpriced. Secondly, there are not too many movies that I deem worth seeing. After my experience the other night, I seriously doubt I will be going to too many more, at least at the theatre that we typically go too. Before the movie even started, the manager, or someone acting in that capacity stood up in front of everyone in the theatre with a policeman at her side. She then began a short lecture about cell phones. She threatened everyone in the theatre that if a cell phone was taken out and used they would be removed from the premises. Okay, look...I am just like the next guy. I find it irritating when someone is talking loud on a phone in a place like a theatre or a restaurant, but unless this person is being real obnoxious, or loud I don't really have a problem with it. This is the 21st century. It has become a part of our society. What I do find more disturbing is the fact that I need to be threatened with police force. Later on in the evening near the end of the show. People were reacting to a scene in the movie that caused them  jump and say a few choice words about the experience. The young cop, who I don't believe ever left the theatre, and stood at parade rest like a Marine Corps sentry shouted at the top of his lungs:
"You people need to be quiet!!"

     Okay buddy, you have a gun, you have a badge, and you have an ego the size of Mt. Everest, but do you really have to threaten me? What is wrong with the culture we live in today? Cops in movie theatre's, Cops in schools, Cops asking me why I am walking down the road instead of driving? (I was walking on the shoulder of the road during one of my runs.) We live in a society dominated by fear. To be sure, there are bad guys out there that need to be dealt with. But do I have to prove that I am not a bad guy? Or am I just being paranoid? It seems that everywhere you go these days someone is checking your identification, doing a background check, or wanting to get you to sign up for some bonus card, or rewards card so that our government can secretly check your purchase history. I no longer fly on airplanes. Not that I am afraid of flying. I just don't want to be patted down, and violated by some Nazi looking security force. I read somewhere that nearly 25% of the American workforce has something to do with security. What happened to our manufacturing industry? Isn't that what made this country prosper in a bygone age?
Abraham Lincoln once said: "If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be it's author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Is the United States of America committing suicide by fear?"

     I readily agree that the 9-11 attacks were a game changer. This, along with the Columbine massacre a few years earlier set the tone for the next decade of U.S. policy, both foreign and domestic. now we have maniacs going into movie theatre's and schools and blowing people away just for the hell of it. However, as terrible as these events were, are they any worse than Pearl Harbor or the Triangle Shirwaist Factory fire of 1911 where scores of child laborer's died? Did we willingly give up our liberties for security back then? Sure, one of them led to the second world war, and the other led to much needed labor reforms, but did they lead to despotism? I don't think so. So why are the people in this country today reacting to the passion of the moment? Wouldn't it be more prudent to try and figure out the source of the problem? This insidious disease that pervades the fabric of 21st century America...and Europe for that matter (I wouldn't want to leave out my friends from Europe who read this blog!).

"I do not believe that the kind of society I describe in 1984 necessarily will arrive, but I believe...that something resembling it COULD arrive."
George Orwell