Under the spreading chestnut tree. I sold you and you sold me.

As my piece of rhetoric to engage I have decided to chose a campaign from the Department of Homeland Security so for your viewing pleasure
http://www.dhs.gov/files/reportincidents/see-something-say-something.shtm

As a sort of summary of these efforts and because everyone seems to have a video I offer this

Now to get to my actual analysis the effort by the US government to get its citizens to be more careful could be considered a noble one but at least in my opinion it is simply an overblown attempt to feed the fear of people and to allow the current and the past administration to:
1)  explain power grabs that further deprive citizens of rights
2) serve as a a measure of success since - since we have not been attacked we must be doing something right
3) serve as a general distraction from more pressing issues

But in context we have many more issues that kill and have historically killed more Americans than all terrorist threats combined and we never threw trillions at them.
Okay so I lied my analysis starts here

Now one concept that I feel applies here is strategy of condescension, this might at first seem strange but I would argue that the emphasis on the individual's role as well as the call to action in the phrase of the campaign "if you see something , say something" do exactly that. The individual is asked to defy the current inaction and report some suspicious event, sign, or person. If you have bothered to watch the video (I hope you have better things to do) you can see how when confronted all of the would be terrorist run in fear, their whole plan is foiled and through the plethora of american colors and flags in the ads we are given the idea that YOU defy the terrorist by saying something. You stand against them and oppose the people that make the world have a scary soundtrack as shown in the video. 


The other key component to this rhetoric deals with identity. Not only is the whole campaign focused on the role of the individual but also the success of it depends on people focusing on things and people that defy their own notions of their identity. After all people can only report strange behavior if it is strange to them.  The link to identity is shown through pictures of families, the espousal of "American ideals", the little map with US landmarks, the picture is clear, our identity is American. Yet of course the campaign text and background info say how the goal is not to single out particular races, religions, or cultures. I mean really we dont want any specific group just those that are different than us. This wide yet oddly specific net of identity can be extended to the content of the warning video, at first we are given events which maybe could seem strange but later we move to such extreme examples  that someone would have to be on the an intergalactic level of stupidity to not notice and report. Oh someone broke in to my nuclear lab, well I guess they were just playing a prank no need to tell the authorities. The focus is not if you see something dangerous say something, it is if you see something say something. If you see someone sitting in a subway station writing on a notebook you better call the cops on his terrorism-loving ass. 


Well my own rhetoric is shinning through now far too much so I will try to make the rest of this brief


The rhetoric of this campaign establishes a wide net of things that should be scary and suspicious to you, pretty much anything that does not fit with your identity will serve to fight those who would do us harm simply if you report them/it. From a local market of a small community to the nation(homeland security starts with hometown security) , we should all be concentrating on what is going on with the bags, notepads, and storage units around us. The rhetoric serves to distract us, makes us afraid, allow our money to be spent on security contractors and make us fear our neighbor because he is not exactly like us. While of course all of this is not quite as evil or extreme as I paint it, it does allow for a great distraction, justification and talking point for any governmental authority figure. 


As a final message I want to leave you with a graphic that in a lot of ways show why I think this rhetoric is bad- the graph is fairly biased and not to scale but it gets the point across


http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsraqlzYpp1qzy416o1_500.jpg