(HOST) This time of year, with the political season entering the final stretch and the anniversary of September Eleventh just ahead, commentator Willem Lange can’t help but think about the meaning of security – and the cost.
(LANGE) Years ago I used to listen to the news during lunch, then drift off to sleep for a few minutes. Waking at half-past twelve, I found it difficult to get going again. Low blood pressure, I was told.
Then I discovered Rush Limbaugh was on for three hours beginning at noon. After five minutes listening to him hurl raw meat to the credulous, I was right back up to snuff. Sometimes I even grabbed two bundles of shingles and headed right up the ladder.
These days I get my stimulation from the Fox Channel, which plays in the gym where I work out. In less than five minutes the young Fox commentators can raise my pulse from about 135 to 145 – beyond the recommended range for my age.
I can’t help but notice, however – and this is true of most of the news channels – their contempt for the intelligence and attention span of American viewers, who seem more interested in strategy and personalities than anything more substantive. There are important issues crying for attention in this campaign year: the tenuous occupation of Iraq, for example; the lack of health insurance for millions of our fellow citizens. But most of us would rather gossip about the candidates than wade into dreary problems with no easy solutions.
A few weeks ago Mother and I watched a film titled Other People’s Lives. Set in East Germany before the fall of the Wall, it details the surveillance of a playwright suspected of being an "enemy of the state." His apartment is bugged. Agents in an attic space above type out précis of his conversations and activities.
The agency performing the surveillance is the infamous Stasi – short for Staatssicherheit, or State Security. Soviet bloc countries were notorious for their obsession with security, and persuaded many citizens to obey quietly and inform on neighbors they suspected of subversion. People were put on watch lists, and detained for interrogation and torture, imprisonment or exile. As in the United States in the 1950s, artists were blacklisted and cut off from friends and jobs. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Wall came down, formerly secret files were opened to the public. Like the transcripts of the McCarthy and House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, they reveal more about the questioners than the citizens investigated.
State Security. Sounds uncomfortably like Homeland Security: that vast and dysfunctional bureaucracy that can’t handle natural disasters, and can’t stop contraband at airports; yet is tightening the screws on personal freedoms. Half our nation believe Homeland Security’s fearful scenarios and support what it’s doing to "keep us safe." The other half fear we’ve created a monster that will slowly erode our freedoms until we’ve forgotten how precious they once were. This should not raise our heart rate, but, rather, send a chill down our spine.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.