Is "Homeland" just another code word for the RW? I detest that word. Last

[sinkingfeeling]

night when Dim-son said, "decisions that I had made to protect the homeland" on a clip shown on Countdown, I yelled at my TV, "There's no f**king thing as the homeland!"

This morning, I got to thinking that, maybe, in Bush's mind there really exists 'the homeland'. Is it a place, separate from the United States, for only the wealthiest and most powerful to exist? It would seem that Bush's decisions on protecting the homeland all had to do with keeping power or expanding it. His other decisions have all benefited the wealthiest 1% of the population. I believe, since he doesn't even acknowledge the existence of the rest of the country, that he uses 'homeland' instead of 'the country' or 'the nation', to flag those he considers a part of the homeland that he's speaking solely to them.

Make any sense?

[billyoc]

1. It's like being stuck for eight years in a Hogan's Heroes rerun.

[DJ13]

2. To me, yes it is

That word brings to mind Goose Stepping, and unquestioning devotion to the Fatherland.

[BattyDem]

4. Exactly!

Waaaaaay too "Nazi-esque" for my taste.

[bushmeister0]

35. Die Heimat: The Homeland

And the updated version, circa 2005:



"2005: Initially thought to be a hoax, this poster was seen for a while aboard trains in the Washington DC area during 2005. Despite the very obvious references to Soviet propaganda aesthetics, it did in fact turn out to be an official poster."

http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/the-evolution-of-propaganda-design-us-retro-posters--122.aspx

[BattyDem]

3. I HATE that freakin' word!

I wish Obama would issue an Executive Order which BANS all government officials from ever using it again!

[liberal N proud]

5. Makes me think of the fatherland

Every time I hear it, I cringe.
I think were close to become the next Germany.

I think it was a code word for the neocons

[napi21]

6. Howard Fineman & Tweetysaid the same thing last night. "I hate

that word!" Tweety said "Why can't we just say America?"

How could we go about changing it? I guess it would have to go through Congress since we have a whole damn Fed. Dept. using that name!

[Captain Hilts]

8. 'America' is a continent. nt

[Occam Bandage]

16. Which one?

[Captain Hilts]

18. Hemisphere!

America is incontinent these days.

[napi21]

17. I didn't mean we'd have to accept HIS choice of names, only that

we change it to SOMETHING ELSE! I've thought about a possible new name for a long time, but I believe the ideal name would be one word or at the MOST two, and I just haven't come up with any that I really liked.

[Captain Hilts]

19. I understand. I'm just being a pain in the ass! Keep the faith!

[Kalyke]

22. Or just USA, so we won't confuse others from other Americas.

[Captain Hilts]

7. It's sounds like Nazis. It's gotta be changed. nt

[tazkcmo]

9. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY

hate that term! As others have posted here, it reminds me of Nazi Germany also. Not surprising this fascist fuck uses it. Go to hell Bush!

[Uncle Joe]

10. It does have a nationalistic ring to it, sort of like "Fatherland".

A new corporate media propaganda television series is coming out, I suspect primarily for the purpose of justifying a Big Brother bureaucracy which wasn't needed before and still isn't.

Edit for P.S. It's not just the word you should be concerned about.

[arcadian]

11. Homeland = most normal people call it a yard.

n/t

[leveymg]

12. A few years ago, I looked into the origins of the term "Homeland Security"

It seems to have come out of a VA-based intelligence contracting firm, the Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Very Right-wing outfit

Before that, "Homelands" was a South African term for the Batustans they set up.

Either way, it's derivation really stinks, with its extremist associations, the label needs to go.

[rvablue]

13. Even though this fool has been blathering that word for 8 years, it struck me in the same way

yesterday when he said it.

Whatever happened to "our country", "America", or the "the United States."

Why did they need to come up with a new word -- to market an unjust war, maybe?

[angrycarpenter]

14. to my ears

it sounds like just the material part of America, homes and land. Material things are the only things that count to a RW'er.

[Occam Bandage]

15. "Homeland" is a dumb word, but I don't think it's a code word in that sense. Rather,

I think it's designed to both evoke the physical territory of America and remind people of the emotional interest they have in that physical territory. A "nation" is a grouping of like people, and a "country" is a political entity. Both may be attacked anywhere in the world. The nation and country may be attacked if an embassy is bombed or a soldier is shot in a foreign land. But the "homeland?" That can only be attacked on American soil. By referring to the "homeland," Bush is directing the discussion of terrorism away from the consideration of foreign networks and recruiters in slums, and towards the consideration of bombs going off in American cities.

[Maeve]

24. It also carries an anti-immigration bias

Your 'homeland' is where your ancestors are from, where you came from. That makes sense if your country is where your people/your family have lived for generations and generations. It's not the way most US citizens think of our country. Hell, some of my family has been here since 1750 (and possibly earlier), but I hate the term 'homeland' for it!

[Occam Bandage]

25. I'd expand that to saying that it carries a nationalistic bias,

which includes an anti-immigration bias.

[Maeve]

28. And for a nation of immigrants, it is entirely inappropriate, agreed

To paraphrase Joyce, 'America means here comes everybody'. It's not about where you were born, not about your 'homeland'. It's about freedom and opportunity--at least, it's s'pozed to be...

[Kalyke]

20. It makes me cringe.

I manage federal requests for bids and I just got a request from the Army that said something about protecting "the homeland" as a result on the War on Terror. I physically groaned when I read that.

[kenny blankenship]

21. It's their way of encoding the idea that the U.S. is permanently at war abroad

and that the U.S. is now and forevermore an overt empire with a periphery of colonies and client states on one hand, and on the other a homeland which supports the perpetual campaigning and occupations of its far flung armies. Freedom is on the march around the globe, at the bayonet point of American soldiers! When Johnny someday comes marching home, he will leave behind open markets and freely flowing oil. Meanwhile, the ever vigilant defense of the Homeland from sinister elements foreign and domestic must continue. Watch what you say and watch what you do, Americans. Is that a wino passed out on a park bench - or a sleeper agent of Al-Qaida? No worries: Officer "Buzz" Kiehl is rounding him up either way for a trip to the detention center, and the Federal Dept. of Homeland Security, to whom local peace officer Buzz now ultimately reports, will sort out which kind of threat this new detainee represents. Good work, Officer Buzz. Freedom is on the march at home, too!

The term reflects the idea that a significant amount of "security" work is done outside our borders - kidnapping suspects, assassinating hostile figures, invading countries, torturing detainees, plotting coups - but that the normal kind of policing security done by local cops at home and what would previously be considered extraterritorial security matters are, from the Federal point of view, one and the same thing. There is no outside of the United States anymore - the United States is not limited to its borders but is on permanent campaign beyond them in both a military and police capacity. The military command with purview over the middle east region is called Central Command. That should tell you all you need to know about where the real center of this empire is, which makes the distinction of "Homeland" security, a necessary move. In the Roman Empire the center of the empire shifted eastward out of military necessity to Constantinople, but Rome and Italy remained the "homeland" for a long time.

[sinkingfeeling]

27. Excellent and thoughtful response. Thanks.

[kenny blankenship]

31. Homeland Security - for an Empire that likes to take Risks!

There are currents of self-contradiction running through the origin of the Dept of Homeland Security. Like anything named by Republicans in the last 15 or 20 years it tends to mean its opposite: the Healthy Forests Initiative enabled clear cutting of forests, the Clean Skies Act allowed greater levels of pollution and also cut budgets for enforcement, the Defense of Marriage Act actually prevented people from getting married. Homeland Security is really about foreign Empire. It is a game of Risk, not Security. It's part of an evolution that exposes the Homeland to greater risk by pissing off vast numbers of people around the world, while also being very expensive to the Homeland. The creation of the umbrella of Homeland Security for all domestic and foreign intelligence and police powers--accompanied by the rest of provisions of the USA-Patriot Act-- at once smooths the way for erosion of civil liberties within the borders of the U.S. by "breaking down the barriers between foreign and domestic intelligence work." More and more practices formerly reserved for intelligence work beyond our borders are used "at home", blurring the traditional limits of domestic police work with the anything goes methods of foreign intelligence work. The line between citizen and alien is blurred. The line between military and police is blurred. The line between innocent and guilty is blurred. Thus it costs us our liberty as well as our money. But at the same time, in placing such a "flattering" emphasis on the centrality of the "homeland", it obfuscates the fact that the U.S. has already de-centered itself, like many aggressive empires before it, by pushing so much of its resources to activities beyond its borders. And these are not just military activities, but economic activity as well. In earlier ages "the flag followed the Cross" to unknown continents, but in ours the flag follows the loan to build a sneaker factory. We do not conquer lands, we say, but acquire bases and conduct regional "theater" operations. The role of the military is less to conquer than to police, that is to secure the global market, to make the wild places of the planet where the oil is flowing and where human life is cheap safe for bankers. Why are all our soldiers abroad? Where did all our jobs go? the American people ask. This is the answer. The new imperial order of which "Homeland Security" is part takes our money our liberty and ultimately puts most Americans in direct wage competition with Bangladesh. Calling it the dept. of Homeland Security compensates the American people with cheap words for the expensive fact that the driving motivation is to cover the world with one market system in which most of them will become "coolie labor" just like the most impoverished people of S. Asia or Africa--and besides we couldn't very well call it the Department of Global Capitalist Domination.

[MineralMan]

23. 'S better than Fatherland, I guess...

[Hydra]

26. I think it's a throwback to the Nazis and that kind of mindless nationalism

"Homeland Security"- Where is the "Homeland"?
"It's whatever we say it is"
What about the people?
"The people are not the Homeland."

[Kansas Wyatt]

29. With their use of language, it just proves that the Right Wing...

Is really the Reich Wing and they ARE Fascists.

[YOY]

30. Jingoistic Nationalist BS for the Rubes

That's all it is.

[Cleita]

32. Too close to reichland or vaterland for my taste.

It shows how close to being nazilike that these criminal neo-cons are.

[malaise]

33. I don't know if that was their thinking but

that word should be removed from every institution. Next -that stupid phrase 'war on terror' must go.

[demokatgurrl]

34. I hate it too, always have.

I think the neocons were trying to model after the English Home Secretary, but maybe not, maybe they were thinking more along the lines of The Fatherland.

It makes no effing sense anyway. What other type of security would a U.S. govt department be interested in? WTF is wrong with "NATIONAL security"?????