I must begin this column by correcting a mistake in my previous one. Last week, I suggested that the bombings in Boston on April 15 constitute terrorism. Such a judgment on my part is unjustified. It may well turn out to be terrorism, but until we find out who was behind the bombings and know the motive to be ideological, calling the bombings terrorism would be assigning cause where none is known. 

We should remember this when talking about the Tsarnaev brothers. Despite their trials-by-media, despite President Barack Obama ascribing blame to them, they are actually only suspects right now. And in such circumstances, we must not forget that one is innocent until proven guilty. As Glenn Greenwald details for The Guardian, the government and media are prone to pointing certain fingers before they should — from “accused (but exonerated) anthrax attacker Steven Hatfill to accused (but exonerated) Atlanta Olympic bomber Richard Jewell to dozens if not hundreds of Guantanamo detainees,” plenty of examples show this.

But if we don’t know whether the bombings constitute terrorism, and possibly even if we do, concerns about militarization, our liberties and a disquieting status quo stand out. 

To capture a wounded 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who may have been responsible for the bombings, which may have been terrorism, the state imposed martial law in the Greater Boston area and shut it down. In a gross spectacle of power, military helicopters flew through the sky, while tanks and armored vehicles took to the streets. About 9,000 militarized police were joined by SWAT teams to find Tsarnaev. They took over public areas for “staging” and conducted warrantless house-to-house searches, sometimes removing residents from their houses at gunpoint, under the assumption that anyone could be an enemy. 

For me, the most important matter isn’t whether there were “exigent circumstances” or “probable cause” to justify such measures. If there weren’t, the operation was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and an injustice to those dependent upon the day-to-day functioning of the city to make ends meet.

Rather, first, that such measures could at all be taken is important. The spectacle that surfaced on Friday was the manifestation of the paramilitarization of the United States that has been in the making since 9/11 (if not since the drug war). It was also the most obvious glimpse yet of a total paramilitarized surveillance state, of which more and more signs have been visible over the years — from the surveillance and crackdown on the Occupy movement, to 10,000 drones planned to watch us from the sky by 2020, to the government granting itself legal power to extra-judicially kill, indefinitely detain and keep a record of the private data of American citizens. 

The display of force seen in Boston was the result of a logic, an ideology, that developed (or was developed) after 9/11, according to which anything can be done in the name of counter-terrorism. To repeat what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) unsettlingly said last week, we’ve been trained to believe that “the homeland is the battlefield” and that we are in a state of permanent war.

The second important matter is even more unsettling — that people are fine with this, and in the case of Boston, even celebrated it. So sold are we on the all-justifying absoluteness and magnitude of the war on terror that we seem limitlessly willing to forgo liberty for security — a trade after which, as Benjamin Franklin said, we merit neither. 

Also outrageous is the extent to which we are willing to digest modified pictures of truth. After the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, President Obama said that the nation owes a debt of gratitude to law enforcement officials. But in reality, the lockdown accomplished nothing but sending the nation into a state of awe. It was only after the lockdown was called off that Tsarnaev was caught hiding under a tarp in a boat in a backyard in Watertown … by the owner of the boat stepping out for a smoke. The capture that followed could have been accomplished just as easily without any of the militaristic excess that was deemed natural to implement before it. 

But that’s not how reality was constructed by the media and the government, and so, in line with post-9/11 newspeak, we found it perfectly reasonable for there to be tanks on the streets of Boston and other measures which accomplished nothing but showing how much our country has been militarized. War, it seems, is peace; ignorance begets a feeling of strength, and given the flag-waving reactions in Boston and on the airwaves on Friday, extremism has been thoroughly normalized.