Alissa Kokkins

February 26, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) With the House set to debate a Department of Homeland Security funding bill to avert the looming DHS shutdown today, mainstream media is doing its usual thing with the DHS narrative. Story after story about the DHS shutdown from mainstream media is angled with doom and drama. Gasp! If DHS shuts down, whatever shall we do? Who is to blame? Democrats or Republicans? As usual, the most important point is being overlooked by MSM:

A DHS shutdown would be fucking awesome! Let’s face it, there has been nothing but ++fascism and civil liberty abuses since DHS was founded on November 25, 2002. Packaged on the heels of the Patriot Act and Bush’s weapons of mass destruction lies about Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security is a central hub for some of America’s most inadequate and tyrannical government agencies.

So let’s indulge and take a look at why the looming DHS shutdown is the best thing that will never happen (at least not voluntarily), shall we?

10. Make fascists pay! Even if DHS shuts down, 85% of DHS employees would still be going to work… without pay. How long do you think DHS’ 240,000 employees are going to show up to work for free, at shitty jobs where they serve as tools for a corrupt, fascist empire? Not to mention that the one thing slaves, er I mean employees, hate the most is not getting paid. Not paying an entire work force will cause a lot of grumbling. This could turn into the loyalty of government employees beginning to slip away en masse, and well either way…

9. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about the looming partial government shutdown?

DHS, which includes 16 government agencies, is supposed to shutdown on Friday. However, DC could care less and most Americans have no clue. Let’s face it: among all the fear mongering in the mainstream media, the corporate bureaucrats in DC are sitting back knowing damn well that the DHS will never be de-funded — at least not by the government.

8. Big Brother would lose its eyes. Amongst the DHS grants to law enforcement agencies that would be cut are funds for those invasive surveillance cameras… many of which track people wherever they go.

7. Less fusion center(s). Well, at least the State of Arizona would be sans a fusion center according to this statement. A step in the right direction considering the disturbing revelations about the spying functions and functional failings of fusion centers. Nick Gillespie from The Daily Beast reports:

A 2012 investigation by the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that fusion centers trafficked in “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely [information, while] sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.” The material collected was “more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” On the upside, as my Reason colleague Jesse Walker noted, the report found “some of the fusion centers touted by the Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact, exist.”

6. When in need, DHS sucks… and so does FEMA. Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Boston Marathon Bombing… I’m sorry is there a disaster that FEMA/DHS has not turned into a shit show? Let us not forget that help and supplies were stalled as people who were dying in New Orleans because FEMA had to screen volunteers and deliveries coz terrorism. As people DIED. DHS also paid contractors for goods and services that were never rendered to disaster victims.

5. You can save $60,000,000,000 by switching to DHS-free. That’s right, the DHS’ requested budget for 2015 is $60 billion dollars. The United Nations says it would take only $30 billion a year to end world hunger. $40 billion a year would pay for free higher education for every American.

4. DHS militarized America’s police departments. DHS helped arm your local small town police department with enough firepower to retake fucking Okinawa. They also forgot to set up an accounting system to track all these weapons. Oops, so did the local police who received them. These expensive toys were seen smashing people’s rights in Ferguson in late 2014. The ACLU conducted research that shows the very existence of these military weapons among police forces breed a “warrior mentality.” Obviously.

3. No more TSA or creepy TSA searches. You can also say later to the long lines at the airport, and radiating body scanners that expose your naked body to strangers.

2. Buh-bye, ICE. No more families being ripped a part. No more children being put in creepy, inhumane detention centers. No more, mostly brown folks, being targeted by checks for “papers” in Nazi Germany err I mean free America! No more enforcement of fictional borders. Oh, the possibilities are endless.

1. Freedom. Let’s be real, y’all. Like every other self manufactured crisis that the U.S. government has averted in recent years, DHS will be saved. Anything less would only show us how useless our government agencies have become and give power back to the people. Even worse, the people may experience existence while being subject to fewer fascist overlords… and like it. From the borders (or lack thereof), to airports, to the security of our communities, a DHS shut down would only show the people that we could serve ourselves better than those who do the bidding of corporate masters. A shutdown = a reset. Why would the government ever give the people what they need the most?

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