Thread by @caitoz

Consent-Manufacturing For Patriot Act II Continues

The way to stop far-right extremism would be to reverse the crushing neoliberal policies which led to Trump. Instead Biden's already pushing new domestic terror laws and reducing people's stimulus checks.
caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/01/15/con…

President-elect Biden promised unambiguously that if voters gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate by electing Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia earlier this month, checks of $2,000 would "go out the door immediately".
forbes.com/sites/jackbrew…

Warnock blatantly campaigned on the promise of $2000 checks if elected, literally using pictures of checks with "$2000" written on them to do so.

https://twitter.com/ReverendWarnock/status/1345082524402393088

This was not an unclear promise by any stretch of the imagination, yet when Biden unveiled the “American Rescue Plan” on Thursday, the number 1400 was written where the number 2000 should have been.
kiro7.com/news/trending/…

The argument is that when Dems were promising checks of $2000 what they really meant was that Americans would receive $1400 on top of the $600 checks they'd received earlier, and everyone should have just known this (perhaps via some sort of psychic precognition or sorcery).

It's just so emblematic of US austerity policies, which are so normalized they don't even use that word.

So as of this writing the internet is full of angry Americans actually typing the words "$1400 is not $2000", which is totally bananas. People should not have to say that the number 1400 is not the same as the number 2000.

But they apparently do need to make such clarifications, because scumbags like Adam Schiff are looking them right in the eye, sharing information that says "$1,400 checks" on it, and telling them that it says "$2000 relief checks".

2 + 2 = 5.

So again, it's pretty clear that America isn't going to attempt to reverse the conditions which created Trump and everything everyone's been worried about since the Capitol riot. Obama led to Trump, and the strategy going forward is to just keep tightening the neoliberal screws.

And, of course, to advance new "domestic terrorism" laws.

As we discussed previously, Biden has often boasted of being the original author of the Patriot Act years before it was rapidly rolled out amid the blind obsequiousness of the aftermath of 9/11.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-boot-is-…

Now in the aftermath of the Capitol riot we are seeing a push to roll out new authoritarian laws around terrorism, this time taking aim at "domestic terror", which were also in preparation prior to the event used to manufacture support for them.

https://twitter.com/billscher/status/1349724870960148480

In a new article for Washington Monthly titled "It’s Time for a Domestic Terrorism Law", Bill Scher argues against left-wing critics of the coming laws saying such "knee-jerk reactions" against potential authoritarian abuses fail to address the growing problem.

CIA asset Ken Dilanian has also been trotted out to make the case that Americans have too many rights for their own good, co-authoring an article titled "Worried about free speech, FBI never issued intelligence bulletin about possible Capitol violence".

https://twitter.com/DecampDave/status/1349401337625194496

"Some experts say the lack of a domestic terrorism statute constrains the FBI from treating far-right and far-left groups the same as Americans who are radicalized to violence by Al Qaeda or ISIS ideology," wrote the CIA asset.

The only way to believe more Patriot Acts will benefit the US is to believe that the US will only have wise and beneficent leaders going forward, and the only way to believe the US will only have wise and beneficent leaders going forward is to be completely shit-eating stupid.

The trajectory has already been set, and that trajectory is the one that has already given rise to Trump. Continuing along the same trajectory can only give rise to something far uglier, and that something far uglier will have whatever new authoritarian powers are added by Biden.

They're not worried about "domestic terror", they're worried about any movement which threatens to topple the status quo. They want to make sure they can adequately spy, infiltrate, agitate and incarcerate into impotence any movement which provides a threat to America's rulers.

The movements which most threaten this are not rightists, who are or less aligned with the interests of the oligarchic empire, but the left.

This is who they'll end up targeting going forward, and whatever Biden & Co roll out to fight "domestic terrorism" will help them do so.