Hey, check out the interview I did with Mark Karlin of Truthout. Its headlined today at that site and related to the fact that theyve made my new book, Shadow Government, their progressive pick for their readers! Nice little honor for me... and Karlin got me to cover the territory in a ten question interview that swept me through the depredations of the national security state since 9.11. Heres just the first Q&A. Tom In his first chapter [of Shadow Government], Tom Engelhardt calls the leaders and acolytes of the shadow state holy warriors: Imagine what we call national security as, at its core, a proselytizing warrior religion. It has its holy orders. It has its sacred texts (classified). It has its dogma and its warrior priests. It has its sanctified promised land known as the homeland. Appropriately, Truthout began its Progressive Pick interview with Engelhardt by asking him about the ever-expanding covert branch of government as a religious cult. Mark Karlin: In the first chapter of your book, you describe the national security state as a secret religion. Religions require faith and belief. What are the faith and belief that are at the core of the covert shadow government? Tom Engelhardt: Were familiar enough with the obvious tenets of this religion: that there is no greater danger to this country, to Americans or to our world than terrorism; that in pursuing it, traditional constraints of every sort should no longer apply, including the very idea of privacy; that a blanket of secrecy about the acts of government in this pursuit is for the greater good; and that, to be fully protected and safe, the citizenry must be plunged into ignorance of what the national security state actually does in its name, and so on. Its a distinctly Manichaean religion in its view of the world. Its god is, more or less literally, an eye in the sky. And of course, as with many institutionalized religions, much of its energy goes into self-preservation and the maintenance or bolstering of a comfortable lifestyle for its warrior priests. truth-out.org/news/item/27133-the-shadow-surveillance-state-is-really-a-secret-religion
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 15:00:01 +0000
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