The New 15 minutes of Fame

In which the National Security Bogeyman is properly skewered.

Update: In response to my tongue in cheek remark that “When you make fun of this, people, you are undermining our resolve in the unending war on terror and showing that you HATE AMERICA!” a friend of mine writes:

Methinks you overstate the case in stating that making fun of the statement shows that any of us “HATE AMERICA.” Rather, I would suggest that it simply shows that we despise the overwhelming majority of American politicians, at least we do when we think about them at all. 🙂

I reply: Indeed. However, the rhetoric of our Ruling Classes has been, for some time, that to despise their ideas is to hate America. The trick is accomplished by confusing patriotism (a good thing since it basically is another word for love) with nationalism (a deeply evil thing since it is another word for pride). The state loves nationalism since nationalists have the dickens of a time distinguishing one’s country from the Will of the State. And so, we see concern for obese children framed not as the natural love of children, but as the unnatural love of supplying canon fodder to the State. This might fly in an unnatural pagan state like Sparta, but in a Christian civilization, the notion that our care for children is ordered, not to the dignity of children as human beings in the image of God, but to the glory of the State and the need for future drones whose final end is to service the State–well, that is as radical a perversion as anything Orwell, Rod Serling or Stalin ever envisioned.

It is the root of this sort of thinking: