A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (34 page)

Zimbardo's Myth

Finally, consider that obedience to authority is not exclusively taught in militaristic contexts. Many parents attempt to foster trait compliance in their children. Commenting on Professor Milgram's experiment, Phillip Zimbardo–the mastermind of the Stanford Prison Experiment–noted that American society engenders obedience in its youth, at home and in school. Zimbardo argues that "obedience to authority requires each of us to first participate in the myth-making process of creating authority figures who then must legitimize their authority through the evidence of our submission to them."
⁶⁴⁴

Zimbardo's "myth" is alive and well today. For example, a police officer may follow his commander out of deference to authority according to his training, or a citizen may follow an officer's order according to his or her moral teachings. In other words, we are raised to be obedient. Nowhere is this rigid adherence to rules and compliance better illustrated than in the schools with their zero tolerance policies, surveillance cameras, and other instruments of compliance.

CHAPTER 27

V for Vendetta

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine–the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression
.

And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease
.

There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives
.

So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if y ou see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot
.

-V FOR VENDETTA

T
he year is 2020 and the world is plagued by environmental plight. Great Britain is ruled by a totalitarian corporate state where concentration camps have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of various undesirables are common, while other enemies of the state are made to "disappear." And, of course, the television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. Most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.

is a bold, charismatic freedom fighter who seeks revenge against the government officials who tortured him and disfigured his face. He urges the British people to rise up and resist the government. V tells them to meet him in one year outside the Houses of Parliament, which he promises to destroy. And as November 5 approaches, V's various resistance schemes cause chaos and the people begin waking up to the tyranny around them.

organizes the distribution of thousands of Guy Fawkes masks, resulting in multitudes, all wearing the masks, marching on Parliament to watch the destruction of Big Ben and Parliament. Unfortunately, V does not make it to the finale. He is killed and dies in the arms of Evey, a young girl he befriended and whose eyes he opens to the reality of the world around her. Accompanied by the "1812 Overture," Parliament and Big Ben explode as thousands watch, including Evey. When asked to reveal the identity of V, Evey replies, "He was all of us."

With the film
V for Vendetta
, whose imagery borrows heavily from Nazi Germany's Third Reich and George Orwell's
1984
, we come full circle. The corporate state in
V
conducts mass surveillance on its citizens, helped along by closed-circuit televisions. Also, London is under yellow-coded curfew alerts, similar to the American government's color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System.

In speaking of the graphic novel upon which the film was based, the director James McTeighe said, "It really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don't think it's such a big leap to say things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people."
⁶⁴⁷

Clearly, we have reached a point where our leaders have stopped listening to the American people. However, what will it take for the government to
start
listening to the people again?

We are–and have been for some time–the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government–from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American. We are relatively expendable in the eyes of government–faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars. Those in power aren't losing any sleep over the indignities we are being made to suffer or the possible risks to our health. All they seem to care about are power and control.

Sadly, we've been made to suffer countless abuses since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the name of national security, we've been subjected to government agents wiretapping our phones, reading our mail, monitoring our emails, and carrying out warrantless "black bag" searches of our homes. Then we had to deal with surveillance cameras mounted on street corners and in traffic lights, weather satellites co-opted for use as spy cameras from space, and thermal sensory imaging devices that can detect heat and movement through the walls of our homes. Now we find ourselves subjected to cancer-causing full-body scanners in airports, and all the government can say is that it's "a really, really small amount relative to the security benefit you're going to get."
⁶⁴⁸

"We the people" have not done the best job of holding our representatives accountable or standing up for our rights. But there must be a limit to our temerity. What will it take for Americans to finally say enough is enough? The First Amendment guarantees us the right to "assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances." Nonviolent, public resistance is often the only recourse left to those who want to effect change in the cumbersome, often corrupt, bureaucratic governmental process.

The time to act is now if we are to make any meaningful move towards regaining our freedoms.

CHAPTER 28

Have We Reached the Point of No Return?

"I have begun the struggle and I can't turn back. I have
reached the point of no return."
⁶⁴⁹
–MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Police Arresting Martin Luther King Jr. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

T
he date was January 26,1956. The white leadership had done everything possible to stem the boycott of their segregated bus system by the black citizens of Montgomery Alabama. Inevitably the city leaders resorted to what had always worked in the past: the use of police power.

It was in the afternoon, and the young minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was on his way home with two fellow church members. The acknowledged leader of the highly controversial boycott, he was put on notice to follow the traffic laws meticulously. There was no reason to make himself an easy target for arrest. But, as fate would have it, the police targeted the young minister, and he was arrested: "Get out King: you are under arrest for speeding thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five mile zone."

Thus begins Martin Luther King Jr.'s journey toward jail. The moment of truth had arrived for the young minister. Warned that he could be made to disappear by the authorities, fear began to grip King. As he writes:

As we drove off, presumably to the city jail, a feeling of panic began to come over me. I had always had the impression that the jail was in the downtown section of Montgomery. Yet after riding for a while I noticed that we were going in a different direction. The more we rode the farther we were from the center of town. In a few minutes we turned into a dark and dingy street that I had never seen and headed under a desolate old bridge. By this time I was convinced that these men were carrying me to some faraway spot to dump me off. "But this couldn't be," I said to myself. "These men are officers of the law." Then I began to wonder whether they were driving me out to some waiting mob, planning to use the excuse later on that they had been overpowered. I found myself trembling within and without. Silently, I asked God to give me the strength to endure whatever came.
⁶⁵⁰

This was at the height of segregation in the American system. It was a time when, if blacks got out of line, at a minimum they faced jail time. Only a month earlier, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, had refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. This violation of the segregation law brought a swift arrest.