There’s usually some kind of boogeyman…that justifies the building of a very extreme…policing apparatus. – Matthew Guariglia
It’s not unusual these days for a news item to fall into more than one category, so I have to figure out which is best; in such cases I typically link recent examples of the other applicable categories, or at least include them among the tags. But sometimes the article does such a good job of analyzing the connections between the various categories, I feel it’s better to simply call my readers’ attention to the article and urge y’all to read it in its entirety. This Reason article from a week ago today is a good example:
…On issues such as library books, abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state. This phenomenon started in the states, and none have pursued it with more intensity than Florida and Texas, where governors and legislatures have competed to show that they’re fighting the hardest against what they call “woke”…[but] now…using criminal law, mass surveillance, [snitch] lines, and the threat of police violence to wage the culture war…is [becoming]…a danger to every American who wants to live, work, and travel without being monitored and menaced by the state…
…the…Trump…[regime]’s campaign against universities on such issues as anti-Israel protests, transgender athletes, and critical race theory were all preceded by Florida, wh[ich]…PEN America…[has] dubbed…the “blueprint state” for the White House’s run of education-related executive orders…The sheer number of bills churned out over the past few years by Florida and Texas is notable, especially in light of how petty the targets can be—drag queens, librarians, whoever might be using a certain bathroom stall…Also notable [is] those laws’ dismal track record in court. Federal judges, even those appointed by Trump…have repeatedly struck down culture-war bills…represent[ing] a boundless paternalism…indistinguishable from the…identitarian politics that [proponents of such laws claim to oppose, such as bans on]…cultivated meat…[one] Texas [politician ludicrously defended as]…”plain cowboy logic“…in the bizarre, zero-sum logic of politicians like DeSantis and [Nebraska Governor Jim] Pillen, the freedom to eat bacon harvested from a pig that was alive and sensate before it was slaughtered is contingent on consumers never being given a choice to try an alternative…
…What makes the creation of new criminal statutes especially worrisome is law enforcement’s sweeping power to search and investigate targets…[via] vast, nationwide databases of personal information…facial recognition, cellphone surveillance, license plate tracking, sophisticated social media monitoring, and more…the huge surveillance architecture and data-sharing networks being created now won’t go back in the box when the current…[regime] is over, nor will they consider whether their targets used to have the right kind of politics…
There’s much, much more, bridging tags including Eavesdropping, Guinea Pigs, I Spy, The Last Shall Be First, Panopticon, Pyrrhic Victory, Thou Shalt Not, Thought Control, Universal Criminality, The Vultures Descend, Welcome to the Future, and many others. So go read it!
