24-11-2010, 08:11 PM
Yes, that's the point I was trying to make in the thread at CGCS (where I am Magmak1) on that topic: http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/f...pic=127499 I just posted an old paraphrase of Milton Mayer's that I had posted in my blog many years ago.
'What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret, to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…. I do not speak of your “little men”, your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to… They kept us busy with continuous changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the “national enemies”, within and without, that we had no time to think about those dreadful things that were growing little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it –please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted” that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no patriotic citizen could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.'
paraphrased from Milton Mayer
It seems also, via the PATRIOT ACT and the DHS (Der Heimat Security), we have now been branded domestic terrorists by dint of our associations, memberships, words, advocacy and refusal to submit.
'What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret, to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…. I do not speak of your “little men”, your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to… They kept us busy with continuous changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the “national enemies”, within and without, that we had no time to think about those dreadful things that were growing little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it –please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted” that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no patriotic citizen could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.'
paraphrased from Milton Mayer
It seems also, via the PATRIOT ACT and the DHS (Der Heimat Security), we have now been branded domestic terrorists by dint of our associations, memberships, words, advocacy and refusal to submit.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"