Original:
US military apologises for threat to blow up millennials if they stormed Area 51
It was all a big joke. They said they would 'storm' Area 51. The absurd suggestion that U.S. citizens would inspect their own property because they suspect their own military is, in fact, a domestic enemy. Who is the 'enemy'? Everyone knows it's whoever your State says it is. The State doesn't need to be morally or even legally 'right' ultimately since it controls the man/firepower (which it buys with your (stolen) money).
This is what your money will buy
But threatening your own citizens makes it a little harder to hammer out the old 'we're doing it to protect you' lines. American citizens who have failed to take these threats seriously enough include Anwar al-Awlaki and his son 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi.
Anwar al-Awlaki
Abdulrahman
(I'm being unfair. I'm sure they took the threat very seriously)
The trick with coercion is to make it appear that the victim is willing, whilst actually both sides know they have no choice. The coercer gets angry if it has to overtly enforce it's power because that shows it up as the bully it really is and the true nature of the power relationship. A great deal of time and energy is spent, not least by politicians, attempting to construct a 'reality' in which these threats are implicit only. This is the basis of democracy. A useful (to Statists and their politicians) facade behind which they can attempt to hide their violence. It is what creates so many of those 'none so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe themselves to be free' that inhabit our world under Statism.
One disadvantage these intrepid 'stormers' had was that they were completely exposed in the desert. How keen would anyone be to protest if, for example, the center of the HK protests was Area 51? That would take a brave soul indeed. In such a positon, I would take any threat by the Chinese State very seriously. Area 51 was probably cleared of any real military value some time ago (who knows?). Bombing it and taking out a few 'troublemakers' might only cause slightly more disturbance among the indoctrinated masses than the al-Awlaki episode did. Even if people were 'enraged', so what? What are they going to do about it? Appeal to the Constitution? That recourse blew out in the 19th Century with the likes of Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Very few, like Lysander Spooner, saw it all coming.
Managing all this is a question of degree and PR. That's why the military has it's own PR dept., the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). These guys decided they may have let the mask slip more than necessary. Everyone's going through a learning curve in the 'information age' and the military are, after all, only human. Sitting behind their monitors and eking out an existence that is entirely paid for by extortion they owe everything they have to the State that needs to look good on the outside and is same old on the inside.
Bombing innocent civilians is stock in trade for the Statists. From Dresden through Hiroshima to today's 'sophisticated' drone strikes what's important is moral self-delusion and a deep desire to be 'one of the crowd' and seek approval among your peers. Never questioning what the Master's say, no matter how obviously perverse it is.
It may appear like a 'joke' today, but everything about how the logical developments stemming from the the destruction of the Constitution, and more importantly the principles of individual autonomy that lie behind it, tell us that this really isn't so funny after all. If you object to the extortion and attempt to shake off your slave status, you will quickly understand that the State doesn't really 'joke about' at all.
