[Peace-discuss] On militarism and lockdown

[Brussel Morton K.]

From http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16175-lockdown-usa-lessons-from-the-boston-marathon-manhunt

…"The lockdown mode exalts military authority and thrives in a society that "can no longer even expect our public institutions to do anything meaningful to address meaningful problems."[34] One indication of the militarization of American society is the high social status now accorded to the military itself and the transformation of soldiers into objects of national reverence. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri point out,
What is most remarkable is not the growth in the number of soldiers in the United States but rather their social stature... Military personnel in uniform are given priority boarding on commercial airlines, and it is not uncommon for strangers to stop and thank them for their service. In the United States, rising esteem for the military in uniform corresponds to the growing militarization of the society as a whole. All of this despite repeated revelations of the illegality and immorality of the military's own incarceration systems, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, whose systematic practices border on if not actually constitute torture.[35]

At the same time, military values no longer operate within the exclusive realm and marginalized space of the armed forces or those governing structures dedicated to defense. On the contrary, the ideas, values and profits emerging from the war sector flood civilian society to create what Charles Derber and Yale Magrass call a militarized society, which, as they put it, develops a culture and institutions which program civilians for violence at home as well as abroad. War celebrates the heroism of soldiers who use the same style weapons and ammunition used by the mass shooters at Newtown, Los Angeles or Columbine. A warrior society values its armed forces as heroic protectors of freedom, sending a message that the use of guns [and the organized production of violence are] morally essential.[36]

Military values in America have become one of the few sources of civic pride. In part, this explains the public's silence in the face of not only the eradication and suppression of civil liberties, public values and democratic institutions by the expanding financial elite and military-industrial-complex but also the transformations of a number of institutions into militarized spheres more concerned about imposing a punitive authority rather than creating the conditions for the production of an engaged and critical citizenry. Lockdown politics signals the rise of an anti-politics, the rise of a new authoritarianism - an era of liminal drift in which democracy does not merely get thinned out but begins to collapse into dangerous forms of militarization that are increasingly normalized. Since when are SWAT teams viewed as the highest expression of national honor? …


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