"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

Fear is defined as an emotion or anxiety caused by anticipating perceived danger. I would argue that we are most afraid when confronting that which we cannot anticipate or even comprehend. Fear of what we know exists, what we have proven to be true, or rather what is approved to be widely accepted, can be contained and ultimately overcome. Fear of what we don’t know is crippling. What if one day you were to wake up and find that what you knew to be true was a lie? What if this realization didn’t hit you in one great epiphany, or come to you in the form of a nightmare, but rather creeped its way into your mind through building inconsistencies and moments of infinitesimal doubt? Reaction to fear is normally summarised in a simple choice - fight, or flight. I admire human capacity to deal with fear and to react both with or without humanity when staring at fear’s ugly, mirrored face. This simple, comforting rationality of the reaction to fear is just that - simple, comforting and incomplete. There is a third reaction to fear - dismissal. Unseen reality is a terror so great that the immediate human reaction is to dismiss - that could never happen. You’re crazy. This is ridiculous. Our government would never do that.

I urge you to question for a moment why a part of your mind instantly dismisses accusations against the government before you’ve even finished the sentence. Do we belittle conspiracy because we can’t believe it, or won’t? Maybe you’ll roll your eyes and read on just to humour a misguided author, or perhaps by some miracle you will continue reading with an open mind. Either way, the implication that our government does not stand by the people, for the people is terrifying beyond immediate comprehension. Terrifying, and true.

When does precaution become intrusion? Take something in plain sight, such as the Patriot Act of 2001, which allows law enforcement to search an individual’s home or business without the occupant’s consent or knowledge. Despite being in direct opposition with the Fourth Amendment, it passed in the House 357 to 66, in the Senate 98 to 1. It’s understandable - the events of 9/11 shook the foundation of the United States and scared its citizens and politicians into immediate response. The people of our nation launched themselves into defense perhaps without full knowledge of who the real terrorists were that day. Unrestricted surveillance ordained by the Patriot Act was a controversial solution to an act of terror with intent to find other possible terror plots and those involved in the attacks. Under the Bush administration, reporters were informed that the NSA would be conducting a large-scale collection of phone records for this very reason. This seems reasonable. Comprehensible. It was revealed in 2013 that FISA had granted the FBI a three month period from April to July to collect data on all Verizon customers’ phone records, regardless of if they were suspected in terrorist activities or not. The collections were sanctioned under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and only reformed after the collections were complete two years later.

When does protection become prevention? From 1956 to 1971, the FBI conducted a series of projects with the intent to surveil, infiltrate and discredit political organizations under  COINTELPRO, or the Counter Intelligence Program. A statement released defined their intentions as, “providing national security, preventing violence, maintaining existing social and political order.” The original target of COINTELPRO was the Communist Party as well as hate groups such as the KKK. Reasonable. Comprehensible. However, the operations were covert for a reason, oftentimes illegal, and reached far beyond a new political party and white supremacist group. In fact, the greater known targets of COINTELPRO were the Black Panthers, anti-Vietnam war organizers, American Civil Rights leaders, members and organizations of the feminist movement, leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement and the American Indian Movement. Spanning four presidential administrations, COINTELPRO instructed FBI field operatives to create a negative public image of target groups, create dissension between different political groups, restrict access to public resources and restrict the ability to organize protests. These objectives are in direct conflict with the First Amendment’s freedom of the people to peacefully assemble. These objectives were achieved through multiple actions. Under surveillance, President Roosevelt requested the FBI under COINTELPRO put in its files names of citizens sending telegrams to the White house opposing his “national defense” policy and who; the Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap congressional staff members, three executive officials, lobbyists and a Washington D.C. law firm. The FBI would forge correspondence between leaders of various political movements in an effort to create dissension between the groups and discredit the “Rainbow Coalition” - an effort on the part of many political groups during the 60s and 70s to prevent crime and gang violence between them. It’s inception is credited to Fred Hampton - a target of COINTELPRO to be “neutralized.” Fred Hampton was a member of the NAACP and later joined the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. Moving quickly through the ranks, Hampton’s numerous achievements included brokering a non-aggression pact between many of Chicago’s most powerful street gangs, working with the BPP’s Free Breakfast Program and founding the Rainbow Coalition through negotiations with the Puerto Rican Young Lords group. In 1968, William O’Neal was recruited as a counterintelligence operative to gain information on Hampton, and also rose quickly through the ranks of the BPP. His initial report to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover claimed that most of Hampton’s actions were “feeding breakfast to kids.” Hoover replied that O’Neal’s prospects were related to providing information that Hampton and the BPP  was a “violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means.” In 1969, Hampton was set to become the committee’s Chief of Staff. In the same year, he and another BPP member were killed during a illegal raid conducted by the Illinois State Attorney’s office in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and FBI. Fred Hampton’s death was ruled by the coroner’s office as a “justifiable homicide.”

When does control become domination? From 1953 to 1973, the CIA invested in a project called MK-Ultra which conducted hundreds of experiments on human subjects to assess the potential of mind-altering drugs such as LSD, methamphetamine and ecstasy for mind control and psychological torture. Experimentation with LSD began duner the direction of Sidney Gottlieb - an agency chemist who believed the drug’s mind-altering properties could be controlled for torture. Funding for the project initially began at universities such as Stanford and Columbia, and eventually experiment sites branched out to over one hundred facilities including mental institutions, hospitals and prisons. Initially, there were willing participants in Project MK-Ultra, especially young students who would go on to further influence the influx of drug use and drug culture during the 1960s. Participants included Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead, the Unabomber and Boston mob head Whitey Bulger. Many subject, however, were not willing participants and some were not even aware made aware that they were members of the program at all. Inmates at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary were given LSD in the late 1950s and early 1960s, causing many of them to experience memory loss, violent outbursts and even attempted suicide both during their incarceration and after release. Due to the mind-altering effects specifically of LSD, unwilling and unknowing subjects faced these intense physical repercussions and mental damage largely in part because they did not understand, nor were they given any answers to why they were suddenly going out of their minds. Operation Midnight Climax was a MK-Ultra project based in parts of California and New York City, where prostitutes employed by the government would seduce men to “brothels” - CIA safe houses - and would drug the men with LSD. Agents would surveil the men for the remainder of the night behind two-way mirrors or with recording devices installed in individual rooms of the brothel. Mind control is a term that can easily be used flippantly in conversation, but there really is nothing more disturbing than realizing that your mind is not your own.

What is so disconcerting about the government’s projects and programs is the initial logic behind each one - they all begin on somewhat reasonable footing, but eventually spiral out of control in a furious effort to exercise and gain complete control. The Patriot Act was mean to prevent further terror attacks by finding any information on al-Qaeda and other organizations in the country, but eventually sought to intrude on the privacy of its citizens without reason. COINTELPRO was mean to safeguard the country from dangerous and radical organizations, but eventually tried to destroy movements that acted against their own prejudices. MK-Ultra, though controversial, began as a program that used willing participants, but eventually lured and forced unsuspecting citizens into combat with their own minds. Today, the United States people are so terrified of the Trump administration and the divide it has and will bring to the country - what most are unwilling to see is that the greatest divide lies between what is actually happening, and what we allow ourselves to believe. We are unwilling to be afraid. I will admit to you that I am terrified of the country I live in. I am terrified because I am being watched. I am terrified because my government’s leaders are being led themselves by strings I cannot see. I am terrified because freedom of the press does not require an obligation to the truth. I am terrified because I cannot trust what I hear, what I see and what I am told is true. I am terrified that I will become collateral damage in a crime scene of economic intentions. I am terrified for my country and of its monsters who slither and hide like snakes in the garden - monsters who lie low and strike when they know you aren’t watching. 

Reader, I am terrified.
You should be too.