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You mean social psychology perhaps? Or maybe "social engineering"? In any case, I think we're taking our eye off the ball when we accuse Obama of participating in the vast expansion of US "police state" apparatus. While he most assuredly is participating in it - which is reprehensible - I have to wonder if that participation can't also be read as a measure of success for a de facto neocon/Pentagon/NSA coup - one that began immediately after the collapse of the USSR suddenly threatened the careers of men like Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others who we know began a desperate search for a new justification to keep defense spending at Cold War levels despite the end of the Cold War. That search began as early as 1990-91, which we know about because of leaks like the 1991 GOP white-paper known as the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" - a document so brazenly militarist in tone and substance the GOP was forced to distance itself from it publically, but which nevertheless formed key elements of the Pentagon's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG).