The Security Leviathan

The American path in state-building is heavily skewed towards security and control.

Following decades of unprecedented expansion in security, detention, and surveillance, the United States government’s competence in militancy and punishment is now so dominant that it threatens to eclipse its other activities and ambitions.

We are close to a point when, regardless of who is elected, the government will function like a hammer and every problem will look like a nail.

As a result, at this critical juncture, opposition to the Trump administration will have to decide whether to offer a strategic vision for the direction of the American state, or cast their movement as an objection to just one person, a particular agency, or a certain issue viewed in isolation and presented as aberrational.

Undeniably, delineating problems in narrow terms facilitates election victories, allowing opponents to attract as many Trump voters as possible by repudiating as little as possible.

And yet at a certain point, lodging only discrete, marginal objections distorts what is true. …

Continue reading this article by Kathleen Frydl, “The Security Leviathan,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security-leviathan/