: Is Florida's Mandatory Evacuation a Boiled Frog Step Towards Police State Actions?

Is Florida's Mandatory Evacuation a Boiled Frog Step Towards Police State Actions?

by Rob Kall

Is Jeb Bush's Mandatory evacuation of millions of Floridians another way to get Americans used to Fascism? I spent a year living in Florida. We had some nasty, blow the mailbox off the wall hurricanes. Store shelves were cleared of bottled water, tape to protect windows, flashlights and batteries. But the governor back then and the local police didn't decree mandatory evacuations. They strongly recommended that people evacuate but they never said people had to leave, except, perhaps, for a handful of people at maximum risk.

Then there's the cancellation of all flights in the area, reminiscent of the days following the 9/11 attacks. Of course there's the practical choice of the airlines to protect their inventory and because people are not flying in to Florida. But there's also the repetition of the high level of irregularity. One could argue that the hurricane is the cause. And maybe I'm just paranoid, but there is also the possibility that these drastic measures are warm-ups to desensitize people to the steps fascists take later. Also, these drastic emergency measures contribute very nicely to the right wings "keep them scared and frightened, feeling threatened" strategy of maintaining the focus on danger, terror and safety.

Maybe it's because I just read Elie Wiesel's classic book, Night, which tells of Wiesel's life under the Nazis, from living in a small village to seeing his mother and sister taken off to the ovens of Auschwitz to his rescue from a concentration camp, after watching his father die.

So, when I see the news that Jeb Bush has ordered the Mandatory Evacuation of millions of Floridians, I think of the tens of millions of Jews and Poles who were loaded on cattle cars. I think of the boiled frog, that allows itself to be cooked to death as the temperature is gradually turned up.

There are so many ways that the Bush administration has taken on the aura, followed the pattern and path of Hitler and the Nazis. Here are a few articles we've published that cover this:

When Democracy Failed By Thom Hartmann

It's Time to Face the "Not-See" Menace by Steve Bhaerman

Republicans and Racism in Tennessee by Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence

Villainy as a Pretext for Being Presidential Thom Hartmann

Finally Fascist by Alan Snyder

And the Fear Shall Set You Free; Bush's use of fear and the big lie stands on the shoulders of Goebels and other fascists by Frank Pitz

Lest We Forget Laurie Manis

And these are just a sampling of articles published on OpEdNews.com. There are so many more. It's no coincidence. You can see it in the eyes of many of the supporters of Bush. You could see the hate in Zell Miller, that if he were in a position where he could, that he might kill liberals. I think there are a lot of people who are so polarized, so brainwashed by their fundamentalist churches or their right wing talk radio, that it would take very little for Americans to take up arms against Americans, for right wing supporters of Bush to respond to calls to kill.

In my little exercise in paranoid conspiracy theory, an emergency would be declared. It might start in a small blue state, or it might be national. Most TV networks would be commanded to stop broadcasting, or commandeered and taken over. Fox news would become the "official" news source in the time of "emergency." Twenty four hour Curfews would be ordered and all citizens would be required to have special IDs or passes to go out at all. Only people with "priority IDs" that would only be issued to the party loyalists would be allowed to purchase gasoline.

A new sedition act would be passed, in the name of the "emergency" of course. It would allow the police to arrest political dissidents who were "eroding the national unity and strength" or "attacking the stature and nobility of the Commander in Chief." I'd be one of the early ones to be picked up, and you, since you're reading my seditious writing, would also be at risk. If I didn't make it to Canada, I would end up in Guantanamo or one of the hundreds of prison camps the government has ready to activate, in the case of an "emergency."

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it seems that the right wing and it's corporatocracy is gradually changing laws and policies so our rights, freedoms and democracy itself are all being encroached upon and perhaps in dire danger. The MANDATORY evacuation orders should be challenged. Letting them pass will make it easier to boil the frog of democracy. We are letting our precious nation's constitutionally endowed freedoms slip through our hands. We must do all we an to save them.

Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is editor of www.OpEdNews.Com living in Bucks County , PA. You can find over 150 additional articles by Rob Kall at this Archive

letters from readers:

subject: IthoughtIWasCrazy

Dear Rob:

I was thinking the SAME thing! Especially when they reported that the people who went to the shelters were LOCKED in and not allowed to leave. And then they show that idiot, Heraldo, who, according to the new law, is QUALIFIED as a FOX NEWS REPORTER to withstand a category 2 hurricane, but any non reporter or longtime Fla. resident is commiting the ultimate act of STUPIDITY.I have lived in New England, waterfront, for most of my life and have experienced many Northeast storms lasting 3+ days and we never once considered evacuating. The total disgust and condescending attitude toward residents who chose NOT TO EVACUATE was clearly conveyed from both CNN and FOX . I'd like to see one of them sit in a shelter for 5 days with their kids.

By the way, you have the best web site on the net for keeping people like me informed and like this article, as with many others I have read on your site, confirm my daily suspicions of a world gone mad. When your friends and family can't see the forest through the trees (they will as soon as the govt. cuts them all down) it's comforting to know that someone else TRULY thinks outside the box.

As a mom of 2 teenagers, GOVT. SPONSORED TERRORISM as in The Draft, Patriot Act II, and endless wars in the name of some God (that we refuse to be a part of), are what really make me AFRAID for my childrens' future.

I am frustrated, beyond belief, with what seems the majority of this country's down right REFUSAL to let go of their MAN MADE FAITH and at least make an attempt at EVOLUTION.

It's clear that Bush will win re-election because the people who plan to vote for him, not unlike my family and friends, that are blinded by the right AND the so called light, NEED 4 more years of Bushshit. They need to have their internet taken away and their houses searched without a warrant. They need their children LEFT BEHIND because they can't afford private school tuition because their paying a fortune for their elderly parents prescriptions, and finally they NEED more wars; until that dreaded day that it's their son or daughter who arrives home in a flag draped box, having fought for the freedom? of a country with the largest supply of weapons in the world. And only then, will they open up their closed minds, eyes and ears to what they have allowed this world to become. If you 'give people enough rope they'll hang themselves with it' and that is exactly what this country is doing.

Denise