We hear talk unendingly about “National Security” but I for one have never heard a coherent definition of just what is meant by the term. No definition, that is, beyond the entirely fatuous and unbelievably vague assertion that it is whatever those in power want it to be. Anything that is counter to the will and the wishes of those who hold us in thrall is to them a threat to National Security. But that is no definition at all. Were the idea of National Security ever to be given cogent expression, those who pretend to be our leaders would lose the arbitrary power to control us at will.
The National Security is a chimera used as a way of cowing the citizenry. No one can actually give the term meaningful expression. Most frequently it is used to keep secret the myriad ways in which the government and its minions are gradually pressing ordinary citizens further and further under their proverbial thumb. How can ordinary (that is, those not part of the National Security apparatus) ever call into question anything the apparatus may do without fear of retaliation by any of numberless means?
The whole idea of National Security, although conceivably reasonable in some situations, is purely and simply a means of control of the general population by the corporate and militarist state. The mechanisms by which what one might call πλούσιος πολλοί keep the rest of us, οι πολλοί subservient are several. (Don’t call me out on the Greek, I’m just amusing myself with these terms.) The oldest is simply through the Constitution, reverence for which is truly religious. The government of the United States was never intended to work to the advantage of most of the population. Originally only rich landed white men were intended. Nominally this has been modified to include others, but the rights of these others are severely circumscribed. The hallowed system of checks and balances actually serves to keep progress and change at bay. Latterly the rise of the corporate state has helped to fill in the gaps wherein Constitutional remedies actually functioned. Finally, a new branch of government, what Tom Englehardt calls the National Security State, has arisen seemingly from nothing to become the most powerful of all. The NSS comprises the NSA and the military, with the collusion of Congress, the Judiciary, and POTUS, as an entity answering to no one but themselves. I refer the reader to the writings of Daniel Lazare, Chris Hedges, and Tom Englehardt for fuller exposition of these phenomena. References will be added in a day or two, but I’m under the weather today.
Whatever, the fact remains that no one can clearly define what National Security actually is, except to say that it has become the only thing that counts. Through it are justified war, torture, murder, assassination, slavery, both economic and physical, dissolution of human rights and much more, not the least of which is transfer of wealth from poor schmucks like us to the usurpers.
Leave a Reply