COMIC: America's Youth, Growing up Accustomed to the Police State

[El Pinko]

This is SO on target.

[NightWatcher]

1. "you dont think you have to take your shoes off at the airport because of terror, do you?"

a comedian said this, but it illustrates your principle. They are just wanting to get us used to doing stupid shit without questioning the man.

[Somawas]

4. Airports: The Womb of American Fascism

nt

[bdamomma]

32. and sadly we do not question their motives.

[MadHound]

2. Please don't dump the blame for all this on schools, that isn't fair or right

Do some schools share the blame for this sort of indoctrination? Sure, but it isn't all of the schools, probably not even a majority of them.

This sort of acceptance of the police state has been building in the US for at least the past quarter century if not more, and I would say that the media, politicians and other institutions are much more responsible for the acceptance of this police state than the schools are.

[El Pinko]

3. I don't think Derf is blaming the schools. That's just one of the glaring symptoms of the problem.

Even adults are guilty of becoming too submissive.

How sad is it that so many people are willing to undergo the humiliation of random drug tests just so that they can get a crappy-paying job at the Home Depot?

I've had "progressives" tell me online that they have no problem with COMPANIES invading employees' privacy this way, even with no suspicion of drug use.

Personally, I'd be extremely insulted if my employer demanded I do this. I don't use drugs, and don't think I should be tested if I do my job well.


Crap, even the police can't drug-test you or search your car without probable cause, but we let employers do it to us just so we can wear an orange smock and make $8 an hour?

[Mojorabbit]

6. I see a good portion of this board

cheering on every nanny state law that comes down the pike which in the end gives the police more and more reasons to stop you while you are in your car.

[arendt]

8. just fyi, "nanny state" is rightwing jargon. or are you a libertarian? n/t

[EOTE]

10. So you think that a 'nanny state' can't exist? Or that we aren't heading there?

There are many liberals who are very concerned about this as well. I don't want others telling me what I can and can't do, especially if it doesn't effect anyone other than myself. That's what I consider to be a nanny state. I think that spans ideologies.

[arendt]

18. I think we're headed to a police state, not a nanny state. Fearing the wrong thing is dangerous. n/t

[Mojorabbit]

13. It is not right wing jargon

There are so many laws on the books that it is impossible to go through a day without technically breaking one. Every law that makes it easier for the police to stop a person or search a person is one more step towards a police state. In the end it does not make us safer but it does erode our freedom.

[Terry in Austin]

17. 'Tis too!!

"Police state" and "nanny state" are very different narratives. They don't equate.

Individualists and libertarians often define themselves by griping about "too many laws." Factually, there probably are too many laws. But then, it's also impossible to go through a day without encountering a street or highway, but you seldom hear narratives about "too many highways." Factually, there are probably too many of those, as well. But they're something that the state lets us cheerfully take for granted.

[arendt]

19. Go read "The Vampire State". It most definitely is RW jargon. Author quotes many conservs. n/t

[Fumesucker]

20. So.. Are you in favor of ever more restrictive laws?

And ever increasing police surveillance?

Or do you think it is possible to take "safety" too far?

[arendt]

21. Strawman much? Back at you: Are you in favor of abolishing Social Security?

Come on, have a conversation instead of spouting "conversation stopping cliches".

arendt

[Fumesucker]

23. You don't think "nanny state" is a reasonable term

I on the other hand, think it's an excellent term for what is going on in our country..

The one with the highest incarceration rate on the planet.

[arendt]

30. How can you point to jails as nanny state? Jails are police state...

You have a serious problem with basic definitions in the English language.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

31. "Nanny state"

Refers to that government which wants to control the most minute details of our lives, as a nanny would the children she is entrusted to watch.

Details such as whether we prefer alcohol or marijuana as a recreational drug for instance.

You can have both nanny state and police state at the same time, they are not mutually exclusive.

[arendt]

35. If I understand you, you are saying nanny is left totalitarian and police is right totalitarian...

the only problem is that there is absolutely no genuine and powerful constituency inside the US pushing a left totalitarian nanny state. The US, as I keep reminding people at DU, has one extreme right party (GOP) and one conservative-center party (Dems). The left is simply not capable of driving an ideological agenda in America anymore, if it ever was.

The only ones PUSHING the nanny state are the hard right ideologues, like Limbaugh, who use this canard to stir up hatred against progressives. Nanny state is just an epithet, like Politically Correct - projection of the rightwing flaws onto their opponents. You seem to have progressives confused with "helicopter moms", whom I despise, BTW.

Since you claim that its possible, name me some laws passed in the last ten years that you find to be nanny state, but not police state. Do you find "abstinence only" sex ed to be nanny state? How about "free speech zones"? How about some of the states "mandatory health insurance" laws? I'm just trying to figure out your categories, which seem to me to be very entangled.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

36. How about this Hillary quote?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200709200005

Clinton "said she could envision a day when 'you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview -- like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,'

The left doesn't have much (any?) power in the US, I agree.. But go to places like the UK where there is a fairly powerful left and nanny statism is not all that uncommon. Look at the public surveillance system set up in the UK for instance, which has now been admitted doesn't even do all that much to deter crime.

[arendt]

38. IMHO, both HRC and BO are corporate lackeys, so don't put them up as progressives...

And again, I find surveillance cameras to be police state, not nanny state. The idea of camera surveillance was first made horrifying by Orwell in 1984. You continue to use the terms nanny and police interchangably. I disagree.

arendt

[Mojorabbit]

22. Sorry

I grew up with the term and I am in my 50's and I did not learn it from any right winger. I don't think everything in the world needs to be regulated to the nth degree. I am an adult and would like to make my own decisions. I grew up in a much less restricted atmosphere and I liked it. And yes, I think a nanny state leads to a police state.

[arendt]

29. "I think a nanny state leads to a police state." - Then why do you call yourself a Democrat?

I am also in my 50s, and the first time I heard the term was in the 1980s, when the rightwing counter-revolution started breaking into the mainstream media. Maybe the word was invented by the John Birchers, but I NEVER heard it during the 60s.

Also, beginning with Nixon, it has been the strategy of the GOP to use jiu-jitsu to kill progressivism. Let me explain. Nixon cynically signed a law (forget its exact name) about equal opportunity in contracting, whose wording he had perverted from the original. He said it would make the unions and the blacks fight. Then we had a rash of "fox in the hen house" administrators whose assignment was to simultaneously wreck the delivery of services and lay the foundation for the police state with the kind of "nanny state" laws that you dislike.

Its not the liberals who have constructed the nanny state out of ideological fervor. It is the conservatives who have constructed it out of cynical manipulation.

You seem to have missed this entire history.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

33. The two terms are not mutually exclusive..

Liberals and conservatives alike are fond of using force to make people "do what is best for them". They only really differ in what they think is best for the individual.

[Mojorabbit]

34. I totally disagree

They may have run with an old statement and made it their own but it was a common statement in my father's generation at least among his contemporaries that I knew. No they were not right wingers nor John Birchers.
If you read this board and the people who cheer on every stupid law and cheer on more and more restrictions because it would make their insurance bill smaller then you would see just what I am talking about.
There are plenty of people here who are more than willing to give up their freedoms for an illusion of safety even when it comes to the smallest of personal decisions.
Both sides of the political aisle have played this game and played it well.
I have not missed any of the history.

[arendt]

37. If I believed the "people who cheer on every stupid law" on DU, I would be certifiable...

just go to GD-P for verification of that.

I do not disagree that many Americans are willing to trade their freedom for illusory safety. But, I'm not one of them. I also think that many of the most clownish PC/nanny personalities are tolerated/promoted by the corporations to discredit the left. The only time lefties get airtime is when they do something bad. Case in point, the whole "recreate 68" Cointelpro operation being backdoor touted by Limbaugh.

I just think that the term "nanny state" is part of the general attempt to de-legitimize any non-military/ police role for government and to assist the rise of corporate feudalism. If we cannot regulate corporations, we do not have a democracy; we have corporate warlords grabbing what they please.

I find the whole PC/nanny state fight, up to and including HRC/BO splitting the party about first woman/black, to have been very productive for the rightwing in this country. It distracts people from fighting corporations. It divides the left wing. Tell me, are labor unions fighting for enforcement of safety laws arguing for a nanny state? How about environmentalists arguing to enforce air and water pollution laws on power plants and other industrial sites?

The problem with the term "nanny state" is that is not precise at all. It is merely a word used to start fights. If the word were precise, we could agree upon what belongs in that category and what doesn't. We could agree on when a law is police state, but not nanny state; and when its both. Absent such a precise definition, its like pornography - I'll know it when I see it.

arendt

[Indenturedebtor]

9. Adults are the only ones to blame

What are the kids supposed to do? Riot in the schools? We could change the policies, but these are nothing new. I'm at the edge of the millenial generation and I grew up with metal detectors, cops in the parking lot, see through backpacks, piss tests for sports teams, random locker searches etc. Now the metal detectors were a very good thing as much as I wanted some other kid with a gun to protect me from the evildoers with guns...

Anyways it's our fault and the fault of my parents generation to let this shit slide in adult society. Kids kinda need a strong hand... I was a freakin animal growing up. Seriously an animal. I dunno. I do think it's different for kids and adults. :shrug:

[Echo In Light]

11. I would've graduated in 87 had I not dropped out

I think that era was some of the last where schools, at least here in the northern midwest, were free from the trappings you alluded to. Hell, we'd smoke pcp in school back then. I remember the principal and v.p. standing outside once, peeking around a corner at a bunch of us getting high, and all they did was told us to get back to class.

I do take a different approach from yours though, as I never outgrew my anti-authoritarian leanings ... if anything that quality only became more well honed and refined as I've gotten older. Within the current social climate, it seems quite apropos.

[Mojorabbit]

14. I graduated in the 70's

we had bomb scares and the lot but never needed metal detectors nor piss tests. The world did not end.

[Indenturedebtor]

16. Yeah but you probably didn't have the school shootings

Or the gangs etc. My school was damn near a warzone. Though they could have done away with the piss tests. Just discouraging kids from playing sports is all that does.

[otherlander]

5. zero tolerance = zero brains

[Echo In Light]

7. K&R America has become a right wingers wet fucking dream

[blindpig]

12. We have become a nation of pussies

'Saftey at all cost', order at all cost, consumption at all cost, be the cost our freedom, self respect and/or sanity. And let's not even consider cost to others than ourselves, whose counting that? Infantile, and that's just how the Man likes it.

[alphafemale]

15. Yeah. It's a difficult era to raise kids.

You've got to try to preserve their independent thoughts and soul. But they do have to at least pretend to be compliant little borgs for 6 or 7 hours a day. My daughter was much better at that than my son.

But my son only has 6 more days.

And he is REALLY non-compliant to the point where he'd rather work that day than march with his class at a graduation ceremony.

School has been an ordeal for him though.

[Fumesucker]

25. I never went to my graduation ...

School was an ordeal, the only thing I felt was relief that I no longer had to go.

Funny thing is, I love to learn and have been doing so my entire life.

I just don't regiment for squat.

[alphafemale]

26. Hey, you!

:hug:

[Fumesucker]

27. That was kind

Thank you, but I left school about 40 years ago.. I'm long since over all of that crap.

[alphafemale]

28. You're never too old for a hug. nt

[Zorra]

24. It's very possible that we would have burned our high school down if they

tried to pull that shit back in the day.