Who Is Listening to You?

By KokonutGrove

As a student of American history and politics, in my lifetime I’ve witnessed a dangerous erosion of civil and personal liberties.  Such an erosion is the hallmark of fascism. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s when my father was stationed in Berlin, he often discussed the totalitarian police state the East Germans created as a means of keeping its people in line. He often remarked about the ease with which plain clothes and uniformed police officers moved through and among the population because the people accepted it as part of keeping them safe from terrorists (sound familiar?), or in their words, outside aggression from “capitalist pigs.”

One thing he discussed at great length was how the East German government back then instilled within its population the notion of how keeping the borders safe was both for the common good and part of national pride…