DHS
Head to America: Shut Up, Be Terrified, and Do
What You’re Told
Secretary John Kelly wants you to know that the
problem is you, not them.
By Scott Shackford
April
21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Reason"
-
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Secretary John Kelly has heard all of that
criticism from Americans who are upset at the
way his employees treat them and other people,
and he has a response for all of you ingrates:
Shut up.
If you've ever dealt with surly
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
staff who treat you as though you work for them
and not the other way around, such behavior goes
all the way to the top. In a wide-ranging speech
designed to reinforce President Donald Trump's
attitude that America is under siege, Kelly
spoke told an audience at George Washington
University and pretty much told them that
without the aggressive approaches of the DHS
we'd all be murdered by drug cartels and
terrorist groups. So can it with the criticism.
The whole speech is
watchable here at C-Span for the
so-inclined. His speech was essentially a
combination of every single post-9/11 security
state speech combined with every single '80s and
'90s drug warrior panic speech. The media
responses are highlighting his defensiveness to
criticism. Via
The Hill:
Personnel are "often ridiculed and
insulted by public officials, and frequently
convicted in the court of public opinion on
unfounded allegations testified to by street
lawyers and spokespersons," Kelly said.
"If lawmakers do not like the laws
they've passed and we are charged to enforce
— then they should have the courage and
skill to change the laws. Otherwise they
should shut up and support the men and women
on the front lines," Kelly said, to a burst
of applause in the auditorium.
These comments came toward the end of his
prepared speech, so it's useful to provide some
context with the other things he talked about.
He described the way Americans are treated by
TSA when we travel as "a little bit of an
inconvenience." He was not being sarcastic. He
still
believes that marijuana is a "gateway drug"
and said so. He added that DHS will continue to
force federal law on marijuana as long as it's
against federal law, regardless of whatever the
states may want. So keep that in mind if you're
thinking of bringing some on a flight to
anywhere. He also, incidentally, made a big deal
that DHS employees swear an oath to defend the
Constitution, which is notable inasmuch as there
is no sign that the DHS has any respect for the
Fourth Amendment whatsoever when it comes to
searching Americans
anywhere near the nation's borders.
Even further, a good chunk of his speech was
full of fearmongering about drug cartels and
recent increases in drug-related deaths to
emphasize the rhetoric that our nation is under
attack. He says at one point more people are
dying from drugs than died during World War I,
but his idea of dealing with increasing drug
deaths is a "comprehensive plan to reduce drug
demand." The problem is us, not them,
you see. They have to figure out how to stop
us from wanting to use drugs.
Kelly has a very typical cognitive dissonance
issue we see a lot with law-and-order types. He
insists that his people are enforcing the law,
true enough. But his comments also make it very,
very clear that he supports the drug war, though
he does acknowledge at some point that America
"can't arrest our way" out of the drug problem.
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But who are the biggest opponents to changes
in drug laws to maybe stop arresting people?
Time and time again it's law enforcement
lobbyists, whether we're talking about
police, prosecutors, or prison representatives,
who oppose any and all attempts to scale back
their authorities to arrest and imprison people.
The same folks who say "We're just enforcing the
law" will fight tooth-and-nail any effort to
crank back those laws. There's a tremendous
amount of grant money and funding involved in
"enforcing the law." They have strong incentives
not to permit changes.
Similarly, Kelly therefore has every
incentive to exaggerate the threats America
faces, because his budgets depend on it, and
President Trump is looking to spend, spend,
spend on DHS and border security. In his speech
he tries to suggest that DHS's budget has been
cut to the bone. Though DHS's discretionary
budget was cut during the sequester in 2008, DHS
budgets and spending have been inching upward
year after year (Check out
this chart and read the text below to see
which DHS agencies have been seeing the biggest
boosts).
Kelly and his agents have every reason in the
world to scare Americans into total compliance,
every reason to insist that the drug war and
terrorism is a constant threat, and every reason
to suspect every traveler coming into the
country could be a threat, and every reason to
treat us as though we citizens are merely
subjects of government authority. This also
means that many of the domestic terror threats
he mentions having prevented in his speech were
frequently the result of
undercover FBI stings that frequently are
encouraging people to act out so that they can
bust them, and it's not clear (and will never be
clear) how many of these men would have actually
done anything had undercover agents not been
helping them along.
And the security theater driving the TSA's
searches has long been exposed as ineffective,
insulting, and incomprehensible. Their failures
in catching actual threats compared to the inane
overreactions they have to perfectly harmless
objects are well known, and the result has been
to actually dumb down procedures and make
searches
even more invasive rather than more
effective.
Hey, Kelly, want to know why people hate you
and your employees? Watch this video from
ReasonTV. This is what you're telling Americans
and lawmakers they should support:
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
