The War on Terror

ter·ror

[ter-er] Show IPA

–noun

1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear: to be frantic with terror.  
2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror: to be a terror to evildoers.
3. any period of frightful violence or bloodshed likened to the Reign of Terror in France.

I would hate to point out that The French beat the U.S. to the punch by more than 200 years, but only because it makes that anti-French renaming movement where 'freedom fries' and 'freedom toast' were born a few years ago look even more childish.

In 1793 a movement began in France some of the highlights of that movement (and their likeness to the war on terror) are:

• force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government (or FEMA to be more accurate)
• On 17 September (1793) the Law of Suspects (or the PATRIOT-Act) was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries (read: terrorists, dissidents, demonstrators, malcontents, conspiracy theorists, independent investigative reporters, citizens still endowed with rational thought or common sense) with vaguely defined crimes against liberty (or freedom, democracy or even 'American interests' as they are now being called ).
• The guillotine (or Guantanamo bay) became the symbol of a string of executions (as well as illegal detention and torture).
• Sometimes people died (or were arrested with no charges and detained indefinitely) for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason (or sex scandals, since even once proven innocent a total loss of reputation has already taken place) beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them.

The French made it much further by banning Christianity, deporting or executing priests and preachers, destroying religious monuments and enforcing the Cult of the Supreme Being as the state religion. 

It is entirely possible that the banning of organized religions won't be next due to current technological developments that enable the government to monitor and censor just about everything. So the next step will really be about turning off the internet to help cripple any uprising that might be a threat to national security, despite what Hillary might have said. Maybe they'll attack religion after they've shutdown the instantly available free-speech tool.

In France the Reign of Terror fell apart after a year and life slowly began to return to normal. The U.S. approach has been much slower to ramp up their own Reign of Terror because the history books demonstrate what happens when you try to do everything at once. They also know that if you turn up the heat slowly enough, a frog doesn't realize that it is boiling to death. America needs a whole bunch of frogs to leap out of the pot that is 'keeping them safe' before it's too late.

-DIrtyKID©