I'm a huge Marvel/DC fan. I have been ever since I was around six years old watching the re-runs of the Spider-Man cartoon from 1994. Later on in my life I got into comic books buying Spider-Man, Batman and Superman editions.
In 2006, Marvel released a new series of comics called "Marvel Civil War." I was fixated with the cover art. It looked like something I had never seen before in my life. Superheroes creating alliances and fighting with each other, with the tagline being, “Whose Side Are You On?” Being around 10 or 11 years old, this was totally different from the norm. “I have to pick sides now? Why are Captain America and Iron Man fighting each over?” I picked up a couple of copies and was absolutely amazed to see the storyline of this comic. The basic overview of it takes place after the supervillain Nitro, while fighting a bunch of younger superheroes, blew up a town in Connecticut killing many innocent civilians. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four and Tony Stark aka Iron Man then go to Washington D.C to support the Superhuman Registration Act. This law required superheroes to register with the U.S, government and ensured that they could only be deployed when the government said so. Superheroes against the Registration Act join Captain America in fighting this bill, therefore going to war with Iron Man and his allies. Thus begins Civil War.
The story, in my opinion, is one of the best comic series ever. The symbolism throughout the series is amazing, getting very emotional in some segments. It is dark and gritty with superheroes dying in it. It hit me to the core with an amazing lesson that got me into history and politics. This is the idea of losing liberties in the face of fear and revenge. The creators of the comic even said that they based it off the Patriot Act of 2001. The Patriot Act was created by the U.S. government after 9/11, to strengthen surveillance of suspected areas or people that might carry out terrorist acts. This act allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect massive amounts of phone and email data from millions of people — without a warrant. Americans are still pissed about this because the government is basically now spying on them. This violates the fourth amendment that states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." Government agencies like the NSA, FBI and others used this act to spy on mosques and highly Muslim populated areas. The NSA didn't help the United States in being a safer nation; it made its citizens more scared of each other.
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If you read George Orwell’s "1984" written in 1949, Orwell talks about surveillance being one of the keys of an authoritarian state along with the killing of innocent civilians, and torture. During his presidency George W. Bush would use a lot of 1984 like words, using sayings like “Axis of Evil”, “collateral damage”, and “you’re either with us, or against us.” This kind of language helped get the citizens of America to approve a lot of post 9/11 legislation.
Later on, in 2013, an NSA contractor named Edward Snowden broke away from the government to report on the illegal spying on American citizens to The Guardian. Snowden, a wanted man at this point, attempted an escape to South America to avoid jail time for espionage in the U.S. The U.S canceled his visa, and he was then granted refuge to Russia, where he is hiding in exile now. There is an upcoming movie about Edward Snowden titled "Snowden" being directed by Oliver Stone. There is also a documentary called "Citizen Four" that I highly recommend also for you to check out about Snowden. After this leak of information to the public was released, the Obama administration watered down certain surveillance laws and other post 9/11 legislation. They are still effective, just not has strong.
The Patriot Act was not just fought by certain people within the government, but by artists in the fields of art, music, film and literature. Click here to check out some Post 9/11 movies that touch on the issues of terrorism, drones, surveillance, torture and modern Islamophobia. I think that it is amazing that today, comic books can tell us a story about civil liberties in the United States. Now, I am not against gathering intelligence or using programs like the TSA to protect us against terrorist attacks on planes, but there is a line that is crossed that turns countries from democracies to authoritarian dictatorships. Some people may even call me a hypocrite because I believe in gun control in the wake of massive gun violence and mass shootings. People will say that I want to take away people's liberties in the face of fear. This is a different matter that, to be short, I will say that I don’t believe that the Founding Fathers would ever have calculated how powerful or advanced the technology would become with guns. With surveillance, the Founders put in the fourth amendment, stating that you needed a warrant and probable cause, no matter how advanced technology can get we can always follow that premise. For the second amendment, people forget that it says to keep and bear arms for a well-regulated militia — not for individual protection. I also have to say that the second amendment is vaguer than the fourth amendment. Surveillance is also not going to directly kill you, a gun will. The gun problem can be solved in three easy steps, criminal/mental background checks, every gun to have fingerprint locks and a ban on assault weapons. It's a lot of tricky Constitutional stuff.
Now we have Donald Trump, who wants to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States along with bringing back torture, all based on fear after the ISIS attacks in San Bernardino, Paris and Brussels. Playing into ISIS’s hands by eliminating the gray zone for moderate Muslims, dividing us as a nation, making the world a less safe place.
We must be smart in the face of fear and not broad stroke everything in the name of security. When Japan attacked the U.S at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S immediately put Japanese Americans in internment camps. These people were loyal Americans, helping the fight against the Axis powers during World War Two. It took a long time for the country to heal from those wounds and they were deep wounds. The rush to judgment of cutting off people’s civil liberties in the name of security will hurt the United States in a big way someday that could lead to our demise as a country. Abraham Lincoln in his 1838 Lyceum Address stated this fact, “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
