Humanity is born free, yet everywhere it is … in thrall to the military-industrial complex using threats of terrorism to manipulate the cowed multitudes.
My question is this: why, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act (as a response to the kidnapping of only two individuals and with no sign of a war) did we accept this as right and good, yet when Tony Blair and George W. Bush impose similar measures (and they are both actively fighting wars…well, the poor people in their countries are; and there have been terrorist attacks in each of their countries which have killed a significant number of regular citizens) we reject it as nothing more than a cynical fascist control technique?
For me, I have an excuse: I was little when Trudeau ruled the Earth. But even then I was anti-fascist. I don’t think there’s any question about whether or not the technique if fascist: it is. The question is why did it seem right then but not now?
Is it personality-driven? Is it the charm factor? Is it because Trudeau was so obviously more intelligent than either Blair or Bush? or, come to think of it, more intelligent than the citizenry and we damn well knew it? Blair‘s no moron, though; is it because he’s so much Bush‘s catamite that he gets zero IQ points by association (or as a penalty for bad taste)? And can you imagine Stephen “RoboTory” Harper getting away with something like that? He’d be run out of Ottawa at the head of a mob armed with insulated buckets of boiling Steeped Tea™.
Pierre Trudeau‘s speech announcing the imposition of the War Measures Act is after the jump, and very interesting reading it makes, too:
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