| All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. -Arthur Schopenhauer Rumors about the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) camps just won’t go away. Established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter’s executive order, some think they’re a response to a natural disaster which might overwhelm local and state authorities. FEMA Conspirators, meanwhile, argue they’re a cover for the organization’s real purpose: to assume total control under the guise of emergency powers, either genuine, manufactured, or socially engineered. In fact, they claim FEMA’s already ordered millions of bullets and weaponry, along with thousands of disposable coffins, for those who either resist military arrest or go underground and refuse to confined. Show Me America and I’ll Show You a FEMA Camp But what if FEMA Camps are already in our midst and we just don’t realize it? Considering the squalid conditions of class poverty, population engineering and culling, or the racial groups disproportionately profiled and imprisoned, FEMA camps might not be that far-fetched. Indeed, in the age of where our perception and understanding is manufactured by the Establishment and Corporate Media, it might be wise to remember Plato’s warning. He not only noticed how political systems changed over time, but that citizens and their core beliefs changed with them. This included the same political systems which became unrecognizable and yet extremely more destructive than before. The flu pandemic, for instance, which already claimed hundreds of lives, has added more misery to communities devastated by mass unemployment, social neglect, economic abandonment, and intense police surveillance. In addition to “rationing” prescriptions and antibiotics to poor neighborhoods, even turning sufferers away in some cases, thousands of community health centers have closed their doors due to a lack of state and federal aid. Meanwhile, this new round of FEMA-like death camps-which some claim were either fake or tainted with injection infections-is propagated with: “Poor people don’t hire workers but corporations do. Corporations therefore needed the massive tax breaks.” A Functioning FEMA State Needs No Camps As low wages and unemployment becomes structural, everything conspires to keep a poor family that’s struggling exactly where it is. Unpaid bills, ill health, crumbling social structures, and the stress of poverty has led many into a life of alcohol, drugs, and opioid use. In fact, life expectancy just dropped and is now 1.5 years under the average of other developed countries. With health care policies that could be used to marshal resources to improve the quality of life instead dependent on corporate profit, and pharmaceutical companies knowingly developing addictive medicines that exacerbates a depressive individual’s lack of serotonin, who needs FEMA-like culling camps? Children aren’t immune from these camps either. When the United Nations set out to describe the rights of children, it included the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse, and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life. In the U.S., however, 18 percent of children are exposed to poverty. Raised in fearful environments, poor children and teens are also at greater risks, like poor academic achievement, dropping out of school, physical and drug abuse, behavioral and socio-emotional problems, physical health problems, and developmental delays. Consequently, their hunger games consists of aggressive survival behavior. Tyranny Comes in the Guise of an Enemy There’s also the FEMA-like prison-industrial complex. Not only does the U.S. have the highest incarcerated population in the world, but it’s now surpassed 2 million with another 10 million on probationary status. Given the highest percentage of those behind bars are Black, Latino, Native American, and poor, one has to question if racism and classism-prejudice against people belonging to a particular social class-is at play. In fact, and since few employers are willing to hire individuals with a record or on parole, many return to prison because of minor technical violations or failure to pay a fine and court or supervision fees. Back in prison, they work for the same prison-industrial complex. For Dreamers, FEMA Camps are actually a reality too. Leaving them in limbo, the Trump Administration is pushing a new Department of Homeland Security directive that would enforce immigrant officials to deny legal status to any applicant who has benefited from a government-funded program. According to Reuters, infractions can even include anything from food purchased with food stamps to subsidies for utility bills or health insurance premiums. If implemented, the plan could affect hundreds of thousands of people, many of them either the family members of U.S. citizens or already waiting deportation in camps. It could also add to the nation’s angst and virility towards immigrants. Mirror Mirror On the FEMA Wall The question whether FEMA Camps are in our midst or not needs to be asked. It should also be explored with. To be sure, we may discover that our society and culture has mutated into a anti-social and psychopathic profit machine dominated by the political and economic priorities of the Establishment. What’s more, we may find that we’ve been inculcated to suppress much of our humanity and compassion in favor of the massive use of state and corporate power which incarcerates millions of our fellow citizens. Fellow citizens, that is, which may someday be us staring back in a mirror, a mirror behind bars in a FEMA Camp. Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com//dallasdarling. |