Caught up in the spectacle of the forthcoming 2016 presidential elections, Americans (never very good when it comes to long-term memory) have not only largely forgotten last year's hullabaloo over militarized police, police shootings of unarmed citizens, asset forfeiture schemes, and government surveillance but are also generally foggy about everything that has happened since.
Then again, so much is happening on a daily basis that it's understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the "events," manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality while the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.
In fact, when we're being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it's difficult to stay focused on one thing--namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law--and the powers-that-be understand this.
Consider if you will the regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions in the past year alone that have kept us tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government's steady encroachments on our freedoms:
Americans were riveted when the Republican presidential contenders went head-to-head for the second time in a three-hour debate; scientists announced the discovery of what they believed to be a new pre-human species, Homo naledi, that existed 2.8 million years ago; and President Obama and Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg tweeted their support for a Texas student arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school.
That was preceded by an immigration crisis in Europe and three Americans being hailed as heroes for thwarting a train attack in France; the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse; shootings at a military recruiting center in Tennessee and a movie theater in Louisiana; the Boy Scouts' decision to end its ban on gay adult leaders; and the victory over Japan of the U.S. in the Women's World Cup soccer finals.
Before that, there was a shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church; the trial and sentencing of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; the U.S. Supreme Court's affirmation of same-sex marriage, Obamacare, lethal injection drugs and government censorship of Confederate flag license plates; and an Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia that left more than 200 injured and eight dead.
Also included in the mix of distressing news coverage was the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody; the ongoing saga of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account; the crash of a German jetliner in the French Alps; a measles outbreak in Disneyland; a terror attack at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo; the disappearance of an AirAsia flight over the Java Sea; an Ebola outbreak; and the reported beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by ISIS.
That doesn't even begin to touch on the spate of entertainment news that tends to win the battle for Americans' attention: Bruce Jenner's transgender transformation to Caitlyn Jenner; Kim Kardashian's "break the internet" nude derriere photo; sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby; cancellation of the comedy The Interview in movie theaters after alleged terror hack threats; the wedding of George Clooney to Amal Alamuddin; the wedding of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; the ALS ice bucket challenge; and the birth of a baby girl to Prince William and Kate.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these sleight-of-hand distractions, diversions and news spectacles are how the corporate elite controls a population by entrapping them in the "crisis of the NOW," either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.
But what exactly has the government (aided and abetted by the mainstream media) been doing while we've been so cooperatively fixated on whatever current sensation happens to be monopolizing the so-called "news" shows?
If properly disclosed, consistently reported on and properly digested by the citizenry, the sheer volume of the government's activities, which undermine the Constitution and in many instances are outright illegal, would inevitably give rise to a sea change in how business is conducted in our seats of power.
Surely Americans would be concerned about the Obama administration's plans to use behavioral science tactics to "nudge" citizens to comply with the government's public policy and program initiatives? There would be no end to the uproar if Americans understood the ramifications of the government's plan to train non-medical personnel--teachers, counselors and other lay people--in "mental first aid" in order to train them to screen, identify and report individuals suspected of suffering from mental illness. The problem, of course, arises when these very same mental health screeners misdiagnose opinions or behavior involving lawful First Amendment activities as a mental illness, resulting in involuntary detentions in psychiatric wards for the unfortunate victims.
Parents would be livid if they had any inkling about the school-to-prison pipeline, namely, how the public schools are being transformed from institutions of learning to prison-like factories, complete with armed police and surveillance cameras, aimed at churning out compliant test-takers rather than independent-minded citizens. And once those same young people reach college, they will be indoctrinated into believing that they have a "right" to be free from acts and expressions of intolerance with which they might disagree.
Concerned citizens should be up in arms over the government's end-run tactics to avoid abiding by the rule of law, whether by outsourcing illegal surveillance activities to defense contractors, outsourcing inhumane torture to foreign countries, causing American citizens to disappear into secret interrogation facilities, or establishing policies that would allow the military to indefinitely detain any citizen--including journalists--considered a belligerent or enemy.
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