It's not about the physical torture, you see. That is something that everyday Americans are not allowed to see on their TVs. Force-feeding is a really disturbing thing to witness, according to Human Rights Watch:
Force-feeding – which involves pushing a feeding tube down a patient’s nose – can be very painful and is inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading. Medical ethics and human rights norms generally prohibit the force feeding of detainees who are competent and capable of rational judgment as to the consequences of refusing food. A relative of two men being force-fed with nasal tubes by ICE told the AP the men are having persistent nose bleeds and vomiting several times a day.Even Human Rights Watch is so squeamish that it initially refers to imprisoned migrants as "patients."
Meanwhile, the controversy that is truly roiling the media-political complex is the cruel semantics of the Trumpian wall-talk, and how they can overcome it. The obvious profitable solution to the current impasse between Democrats and Republicans over Trump's demand for a wall is simply to use the word "smart" when describing how to punish, track, harass, terrorize, torture, cage and deport brown-skinned people fleeing for their lives from some of the same countries the US has destabilized over decades of regime change and economic plunder. What adult in the room doesn't love technology?
His threats of an emergency declaration to force the military to construct a physical barrier notwithstanding, even Donald Trump is now reportedly eager to jump on the Smart Xenophobe bandwagon in order to save face after his various concrete and steel wall proposals all crumbled into dust last week with the temporary reopening of the government. As The Hill reports:
Tech companies are increasingly bullish on building a "smart wall," which would incorporate new technologies to beef up security on the southern border.Trump ruefully had to admit that walls and moats are medieval, whereas Reaper drones and cameras are modern and efficient and smart. This is especially true since the state of Israel is ready, willing and able to share its own long expertise in controlling the undesirable humans imprisoned in its open-air Palestinian gulag from breaching that border. One such company, Elbit Systems, is eager to line the entire Arizona-Mexico border not with Trump's dumb retrograde wall, but with a virtual barrier of smart modern towers decked out with radar and cameras.
Many firms see a potential windfall with both Democrats and Republicans floating the idea of tech improvements as an alternative to President Trump's call for a steel barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Democrats have said they would back as much as $5.7 billion for a smart wall. Trump himself discussed the idea when announcing the deal to end the recent government shutdown.
Montana Senator Jon Tester wants to award a contract to a Montana company for a long, snaking, smart underground wall of fiberoptic cable that would alert the border patrol every time somebody takes a step or even draws a trembling breath. This is not at all the same kind of corrupt bribery scheme as Trump conniving and colluding to build a luxury tower in Moscow. For one thing, it's smart legalized corruption.
The main catch to all this smartness and modernity, according to civil libertarians, is that US citizens will also unavoidably be caught up in the surveillance and the terror. No technology can differentiate upstanding American human citizens in border states from non-US humans, because nationality and race are not biological constructs.
"Legal" residents of border states, therefore, might not like government drones constantly buzzing above their heads or watching facial recognition technology stations being installed in their backyards, even if it is for the profitable national security of unfettered multinational capitalists.
Smart experts insist it is only what people can actually see that can hurt and scare them and therefore endanger the security and profits of the multinational tech companies. Maybe once the experts can figure out how to make drones and surveillance towers as invisible as their torture chambers they'll have better luck winning over American hearts and minds.
2 comments:
Isn't it obvious that Trump's solution is the better, cheaper, more beautiful way to go? Let's suppose in the weeks ahead Congress comes up with no solution acceptable to Trump. Then Trump can follow through with his beautiful threat to take $5.7 billion from the bloated Pentagon budget to lay down a beautiful steel and concrete ribbon from sea to shining sea. Where is Ansel Adams when you need him?
Thereafter, Congress should encourage Trump to think of the Pentagon budget as his kitty to fund pet projects. Swords into Ribbons (h/t Isaiah 2:4).
However, if Trump accepts the congressional technology solution, the price tag will be far, far more than $5.7 billion (cost overruns, 24/7/365 high-skill operation and maintenance, new gadgets endlessly replacing old gadgets, etc.). Contracts with big arms manufacturers invariably end up like US wars: open-ended and endless. We must forgive Congress for attempting a different route to Isaiah 2:4: "Swords into the Best Smartass Technology." They mean well.
Oh, Gen ("War is a Racket") Smedley Butler, would that you were again here to name corporate names and do the calculations. Wall is a Racket.
"Wall is a racket.” — Jay-O., bulls-eye!
Presented with necessity, ’tis perhaps no wonder that I keep turning to the Mothers of Invention leader:
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
~ Frank Zappa
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