Battleangel

Another “terrorist” uncovered. Mission accomplished. On a scale, starting with having MySpace ask said teen to remove said image, this seems like a fairly strange thing to do. But then again, someone has to pay since there is no real “terrorism” to speak of.

One of the latest persons to be questioned by federal agents in possible threats against President Bush is a 14-year-old girl with a heart on her backpack and braces on her teeth, a freckle-nosed adolescent who is passionate about liberal politics and cute movie stars.

Her name is Julia Wilson, and she learned a vivid civics lesson this week when two Secret Service agents pulled her out of biology class at McClatchy High School to ask about comments and images she posted on MySpace.

Beneath the words “Kill Bush,” Julia posted a cartoonish photo-collage of a knife stabbing the hand of the president. It was one of a few images Julia said she used to decorate an anti-Bush Web page she moderated on MySpace, the social networking Web site that is hugely popular among teenagers.

It’s a good thing then that the US government is trolling MySpace, looking for exactly this sort of thing. Dangerous 14-year-old girls that they can harass and make an example out of. I guess a million of teenagers just had their parents look over their web sites. Rather than making this into an unproductive issue Republicans vs. Democrats, or an issue of political climate, I’d rather see this in the light of the stifling of civil liberties in recent decades. Whether overly aggressive enforcing existing laws, as in this case, or retracting liberties, the focal point seems to be to manage an increasingly unruly populace. One that questions its place in the cemented, long since perverted thing we ironically call democracy. This is starting to remind me of something out of Michel Foucault’s account of the assassination attempt on Louis XV and analysis from Discipline and Punish. Regardless of its historical merits, the point being that you’d think we’d moved beyond 18th century conceptions of treason and loyalty.

Meanwhile, America’s armed forced have themselves set up shop on MySpace, indirectly advocating mass murder. Now that is something to think about.