Security is a silly thing.

This is a topic that’s difficult to plant your feet in, to begin to opine on.  It’s of course obvious that as a culture we have mixed feelings about privacy.  None of us should like being spied on, whether we are bad guys or not.  At the same time we as a country and formally binary global society of capitalists versus communists are enthralled by our past, rife with super spies from the Cold War, spying on protesters and on JFK and MLK in the 60’s.  Tales of Watergate, of assassinations in South America, of moles and wiretaps.

So a world with less terrorism is a great sales pitch to some.  One would hope though, that it shouldn’t take much experience nor much education to see the promise and indeed, the premise as flimsy.  Terror of this contemporary definition is a reactionary thing.  Meaning if our actual intent were to curb terror threats, we’d start with our domestic, and foreign and economic policies.  Instead we blame brown people.  We don’t investigate the causes of terrorists, we terrorize in their place after we kill them.  We claim innocence and that bullies are just out to get us.

Is there much more to say here?  Perhaps examples could be citied, were that the effect or type of writing I was going for.  I feel like I’m reaching out however, trusting people to trust their instincts, to see that while there is one secure nation, there are no secure nations.  To see that even a secure nation is paranoid, deceptive, and thus nothing it says it is.

It starts with awareness, of self and of others.  Two things America and Americans sorely lack.  I wish to shift the focus towards the next discussion people should have.  Why exactly “security” is a viable excuse for any behavior.  For war, for aggressive personalities, for spying, for trademarked secrets, for nationalism, and general divisiveness.  Who is really so foolish, in any political party, sect or of any affiliation to believe they can prevent, through totalitarian policy or secret wars, acts of so-called terrorism?

Every inch given to the credence of American security, or American moral imperative, is a mile given to jingoism, to overbearing policy and justification for war, for racism, and classism.  There are far too many reasons why people commit acts of violence to prevent or address them all with a secret network of old white men.  There is also a deliberate ignorance of the effects of imperialists, and of capitalists, forcing their worldview on their own and other countries.

There is no date in the future where a country like America will suddenly be free of dissenters.  No day when they finally starve or kill, or lie to or catalogue enough people that they can freely operate and scream “We told you so!”  We behave is though any economic system or accord with another nation is the end of the discussion.  As if our goal in life should be to power grab, draw a line in the sand or on a map, and then vigorously defend by any means necessary.

There is no reason to ever stop improving economic and diplomatic relations.  There is no reason to behave as if we have found a viable method of survival for the billions of different opinions and lives on our planet.  We must constantly strive to balance wants and needs of one, with the wants and needs of others.  Planting flags, secrets, pollution, competition and national pride under pretext of necessary security, are precisely the opposite of the types of things that facilitate a better future.

How long can we pretend to be democratic, while having little to no say in our government?  The foregone conclusions of capitalism, of nationalism, are so destructive, so divisive; its a wonder we can trust or endure another soul long enough to reproduce at all.  Perhaps one day we will not have the right or environs to reproduce at all, so let’s not worry about it until then.