re: #119 The Ghost of a Flea

By the way…a notable variant of this pattern is that states loves to send their own civilians into danger and then use the consequences as pretext to state terror.

For the cost of a few dead settler families you can seize the entire Kenyan highlands from its owners as you consign them to concentration camps. Some dead missionaries in exchange for the Hawaiian Islands is a pretty good damn deal. The sweaty umbrage over “innocents” turned casualties as motivation for state violence has always been cynical.

The current variant—that the occasional dead child or pretty white woman is an outrage that mandates policing outsiders and weirdos with excessive aggression that incarcerates and kills a lot of people that didn’t do anything wrong except not comply fast enough—is exactly the same ploy.

Consider how often and how available the notion is that prison rape is justice…people love terror tactics as long as they’re convinced they’re only directed at deviants.