Quote:
Originally posted by PornoDoggy@Nov 19 2002, 04:35 PM
And JR, my man, you read any recent American history? It wasn't very long ago that the FBI compiled a file on anyone they considered suspicious. They developed their suspicions by such means as copying "peace" petitions and adding the names of everyone who signed them. They took photos of people who participated in civil rights and anti-war demonstrations and added them to the files. They tracked people into the 70s because they had belonged to an organization, often as teenagers, in the 1940s or 50s considered a Communist front. And if that's not enough, consider the anti-civil rights committees and commissions that several states maintained, and the damage they did to people.
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i dont think that history is as relevent as today's events. Everything needs to be looking at its proper context. it is always different times, different issues, different events, different political/social/cultural climate and everything was in an entirely different context.
You forget that you are referring to a time when the country was on the brink of a civil war. where civil disobedience and mass protests against the government were commonplace. When a massive cultural revolution was taking place with no clear direction... just rebellion against everything. when a president was assassinated in the turmoil. When Malcom X was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. When Martin Luther King was assassinated. Castro was setting up Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. When we were in the height of the Cold War and it was "two minutes to midnight"
but you guys are ignoring something again. ok.. the FBI did this and that. AND? how did it effect peoples lives today? beyond your own suspicions, paranoia and rhetoric that the end is near, that "Big Brother" is here, it was forgotton about, policies were changed and reversed. Thats how the system works when people at large dont agree with what their government is doing.
assumptions, predictions and fears are always far more impressive and awesome than the reality that follows
i am not afraid of my own government. i feel that is bizarre and rediculous. I am confident in the system. The government today is elected by the people. Apparently, their actions are supported by the majority of the people, because i dont see too many people in the streets demanding their resignation.
i dont feel that the government is out to get JR. I dont feel that the government is really going to waste its time trying to see what JR is doing. I dont care if they try because as a law abiding citizen, i have nothing to fear or hide [*note* this is where you insert your own delusional rants about Randy Weaver or someone to show why i should be afraid]
and in the end PD... where are we? after all the suspicions and paranioa of the 60's which is similar to the same rhetoric today... where are we? Are we living in a police state? are we being "kept down by the man"... did all the paraniod predictions of where were headed as a country materialize?
no.
what about the FBI files? the files on all these "suspect" people? where are they today? where is this system of keeping track of every single suspect person today?
it would seem to me that a system was created that people and politicians at some point dissagreed with and it was dismantled when it was popular to do so. thats how government works. thats part of the greater system of checks and balances that causes our government to represent the will of the people.