(Source And big H/T to WL.)
—–
I’ve been trying to figure out the worst thing about the NSA revelations and it’s been hard to put my finger on that.
It’s not the loss of privacy. I hate that. I really, really hate that and I assume that everybody with a brain hates that. But it’s Not News.
It’s not the destruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Again: hate, hate, hate — but Not News.
It’s not the lies or the preposterous Hollywood scenarios the securitators are cooking up to obfuscate the fact that they’re spying on everybody. (Hey, look! As long as we make up Bourne-ish, Bondish stuff about terrorists, you won’t notice we’re spending more time peering at YOU!)
It’s not the sad fact that millions of people who “have nothing to hide” are so blind to even the most obvious potential dangers of the supposedly innocuous “metadata.”
It’s not the astonishing fact that some people actually still trust government. (There are sometimes interesting reasons for that.)
It’s not that we know that so far we’ve barely seen the iceberg’s tippy-tippy top.
It’s not even that the country is being run by unelected madmen. (That, too, is despicable and not so new.)
It’s not even that the country is being run by unelected madmen and most people don’t give a damn.
It’s not even that secrecy has run amuck and hardly anybody seems to notice that you can’t have both secret government and “representative” government at the same time — that secret government is by definition dictatorship.
No, all of that is horrible, but none of that is the worst. So what is it? What is it? What is the elusive thing that is even more horrible than all that?
—–
I think the word might be impunity. Or better yet, that term our grandmothers might have used: effrontery.
It’s that all of the above is being done with the bland assumption that they (and I mean all the “theys,” from the No Such Agency to the rubber-stamp FISA court to the unholy union of Feinstein and Graham to the legions of enforcers to, of course, the Lecturer in Chief) will get away with doing whatever they want to do to us. They assume they’ll never be stopped and never be forced to bear any consequences.
And why should they assume otherwise?
Even when they’ve been caught in the past and had to weather mediastorms or even storms of congressional ire, those “theys” have always gotten their way in the long run. Look back at the frenzy of the 1970s, when Watergate and the COINTELPRO scandals crashed simultaneously over the nation — and thinking people, utterly disgusted with the illegality and overreach of “their” government, rose up and demanded change!
What did they get for their indignation and their efforts? They got things like the FISA court. That is, they got the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that, at bottom, just created a way for all the abuses to go on exactly as before (with perhaps a slight pause in the worst domestic surveillance) — but now to go on with a nice cover of “legality” — and complete, permanent secrecy.
And of course, we got all that — and worse. Because the fundamental wrongs never get addressed. They just get legal-ified to make them appear acceptable. (Legalification has the same relation to natural law as truthiness has to actual truth.)
The fundamental wrongs never do get addressed — within the system. And that’s what all the “they’s” are counting on. Public outrage. Followed by cosmetic reform. Followed by business-as-usual. Followed by all kinds of delicious new laws and regulations they can use to game the system even more completely in the future.
And so their game goes on. And on.
To a point.
—–
Of course, behind all the impunity and effrontery, there lies that one ever-present fear: the knowledge that at some point even the most regulated, cowed, well-bribed, and spied-upon population won’t take it any more.
The “theys” of the world know this even as they deny it in the media and their everyday doings. Perhaps that’s why creatures as allegedly diverse as Feinstein and Graham are humping each other so vigorously on this one thing — the real thing not being that surveillance is good and comfy and protective and absolutely harmless as they keep insisting, but that the status quo (that is, elites overseeing the rest of us) must be maintained at all costs.
Because these days even some fairly mainstream people (or some some formerly mainstream people) are starting to use some alarming words.
No, not those words. But words like “illegitimate” and “revolution.”
The uproar over Watergate was used as the tool to maneuver the pieces in place htat have been reaching their totality the last few years. They weren’t to prevent Watergate’s from happening, they were to make it easier to do them. The offense of Watergate wasn’t the spying, but that the President had the temerity to spy on other politicians. How dare he. The fact that FDR, Kennedy, LBJ and others had all done the same thing did not matter.
When it comes to the sheer effrontery of it, what ya gonna do? The politicians and beauracrats know they don’t work for the taxpayers any more. They know they don’t answer to the citizens but do others bidding instead. They also know any big changes or serious investigations will cost them their power, perks, immunity, families careers etc. They will make noise, but like a dog barking in the night nothing will come of it and most will filter it out. After the last few elections is should be obvious that voting the bastards out isn’t even possible. When the media, owned by very few select individuals, controls the reporting of the vot totals they don’t even have to rig the polling machines any more. Not voting doesn’t matter either. If we had an election where nobody really voted there would still be a winner.
As far as the various agencies are considered, they know that as long as the lawyers are on their side they have little to fear. Since someone would actually have to want to prosecute, they have nothing to fear at this point. The only thing the really fear is loss of their budget and prestige. Loss of their budget will only be after all the other money is gone and many of them would still oppress for free.
Not sure ZAP is going to hold up in the long run.
For what it’s worth, you are absolutely right. He is a hero, and we are headed for revolution. I hate the prospect but can see no other outcome at this point. The final straw was getting an e-mail this morning from Henry Mark Holzer calling him a traitor with everything that implies.
Great post, Claire!
You have approached the heart of the matter. Through their hubris, the powers that be have reached a level of effrontery that they do not fully comprehend. However, they do recognize that they have a problem on their hands. That problem is us. Us – defined as those members of society that still have some ability to reason and think for themselves. We can not be cowed. We will not be condescended to. We have tolerated the intolerable, thus far….but how much longer?
These elites (and they truly are not) in their attempt to maintain power, in their lusting after power and more power, endless power, they know they have upset a segment of the populace who must be culled if they are to remain in their positions of control. These are the small minded people who believe that control of others is the key to their idea of harmony. Harmony in their minds is a world wherein they are on top and everyone else is subservient to them.
Thus they push forward their vain attempts to make everyone a criminal. Everyone who will not submit. All of us who will not obey their notion of superiority over us. This is exactly why they continue their quest for evermore gun control. They have an inkling of fear. That fear is not quite enough to make them obey their oath and respect the rights of all, but it is a nagging kind of fear that they might fail…and then what? They are not ignorant of history but they do their best to deny it. However, in their denial that nagging sense of fear returns. It eats at them so, they develop a neurosis that compels them to enact greater models of control. Control is all that they know for they are owned and controlled by that shadow hand for whom they do the bidding.
All that we can do is wait. It is coming. We will not vote our way out of these troubles. In all of human history, nations rise and nations fall. Once the decline phase has started, there is not one example in history where there has been a turn-around. We are witnessing the fall of empire. They know it is coming. They are the ones who have been instrumental in fomenting it as they have chosen to gain material wealth instead of obeying their oath and duty. Their fear is eating at them but not quite enough yet. Watch. It will get worse and they will pay for their crimes.
How much time is left?
“We are witnessing the fall of empire. They know it is coming. They are the ones who have been instrumental in fomenting it as they have chosen to gain material wealth instead of obeying their oath and duty.”
The most effective action we can bring to the table (for now) is to ignore them and plan our lives without them. When it’s time to turn and fight, the funniest (but not funny!) scenario will be those would-be tyrants at lower levels – hanger-ons in every quarter, the corporate world, education, MSM, entertainment, lower echelon politicos, etc – who yell “I didn’t know”, “He made me do it”, “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way”.
No, of course not.
I’ve never heard of “truthiness” before, but if it means this http://wikiality.wikia.com/Truthiness, then I sure know plenty of people who live accordingly. It seems to be the philosophy of the 21st Century.
Seems to me, what’s even worse than the effrontery, is they don’t even think what they’re doing is wrong, or consider that the reason what they’re doing hasn’t been done before, is because it’s wrong.
“Here is a video of Representative Maxine Waters explaining that President Obama has put together a database that “…will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” …”
http://blog.independent.org/2013/06/11/president-obamas-database-information-on-everyone/comment-page-1/#comment-758371
Yes, IndividualAudienceMember!
That is the very essence of their effrontery! They are unabashed and shameless in their naked pursuit of power. They think they have a “right” to do this for your protection, for the children, to make the world a better place or whatever. They believe that they are smarter than everyone else and that is why they are where they are. It is their impertinence and the audacity of their mindset that is so galling.
Kevin and IAM…
I’ve seen that for myself, too. However reading the words here again – just gave me a chill and made me throw up in my mouth, a little. If you’ll permit a little sarcasm…
Let yourself imagine the “royal family” on tour in Africa… with Secret Service snipers surrounding them, to protect them from the lions, cheetahs, and other “wild animals”…
it’s too much the picture of the emperor on a victory lap tour. (They chose not do a full-on safari, because with 50+ vehicles and 100s of personnel being imported to Africa… they were close to their budget limit: $180 Million dollars.) Quite possibly some local gov’t there would’ve seen the presidential motorcade as an invading force, you know? So, they’re taking sheets of bullet proof glass to line the windows of the hotel they’re staying in.
I just want to be sick. Or wake up and it was all a bad dream.
For me it is all about missed opportunities. The CIA and the NSA and the FBI and the FDA and the…… all suck energy out of productive people who could be doing *their own thing*. Governments use violence to control people. They use violence to steal from people… steal lives, money, choices.
It is hard for me to imagine what these government people would do without their government jobs…… hmmmmm they would probably hang out on the corner, form gangs , start stealing stuff , …… wait a minute !!!!!!!
99guspuppet
Good video; I never knew about that one. The one I do remember is Silent Running by MIke and the Mechanics, also from the ’80’s. It’s pretty ominous as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7W89I_V_g
Whenever I simply read the headlines on the Drudge Report, it’s brutal. Now the snooping has gotten to the individual GI’s. A friend just told me that a friend of his on active duty has confirmed that the troops are not supposed to read either the Drudge Report or The Guardian. I found this link, in fact, on the Drudge Report http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/troops-targeted-by-nsa-for-anti-obama-views/
Someone mentioned to me that what it would take now, to awaken the public, would be for someone to get shot. Actually, that kind of happened during the so-called Ruby Ridge siege and at the Branch Davidian compound. I was once told that democracies (I wish we weren’t a de facto one) get the kind of government they deserve. I’ve decided that it’s extremely difficult to overestimate the stupidity of the American public. Since making that decision I have been repeatedly assaulted with the accuracy of that assessment.
Judge Learned Hand said “[L]iberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it” http://thinkexist.com/quotation/liberty_lies_in_the_hearts_of_men_and_women-when/191463.html
On page 156 of his book, From My Cold Dead Fingers, Sheriff Mack writes, matter of factly, that “[A] day of reckoning is inevitable.” He is in no way beating his chest, but just stating the obvious that I am struggling not to believe. The grief process, while it has definable steps, isn’t a linear one and one can expect to bounce like a ping pong ball from one to the other. http://www.ehow.com/list_7216188_five-steps-grieving-process.html
And while Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down may provide some hope, Nazi Germany was not about to crumble from within, so tight were the controls on the population which willingly accepted them. Only an overwhelming military defeat removed the regime from power. As we all know we have no guardian angels to do that for us.
P.S. I read, but can’t find it now, that Florida starting the first of next year has agreed with Amazon.com to collect sales tax.
The worst thing about the NSA is that there’s even an NSA in the first place.
On another note, Liberty’s a Sh*thole.
http://jalopnik.com/man-arrested-over-reply-to-speeding-ticket-fuck-your-513376890
“The worst about the NSA…”
Oh yes, I agree. Why do we even need them with DHS, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc? There is so much redundancy – and historical territory battles – I thought the main goal of DHS was to streamline all that. Guess not.
And for whatever reason – places like SSA and IRS have their own armed LE. Can’t they just call in the Fed Marshalls or FBI?
Fie, on fiefdoms!
I find absolutely no difference between “duly elected” madmen and any other kind. Anyone willing to aggress against another is a madman.
I’m reading ‘Poland’ by James Michener, and though it is a work of ‘fictional history’, one thing has struck me while reading-the people who oppress and rule have changed tactics. In the past it was overt-through obvious slavery and serfdom. Now it’s changed to be covert-you’re ‘free’, as long as you work and have taxes taken from you without having to write a check. You’re ‘free’ as long as you don’t actually threaten any real power bases. You’re ‘free’ as long as you’re speech doesn’t really affect any change. The cage is not physical iron bars as much as legalities governing your behavior-where you can live, work, travel, who you can associate with…..I think this is the hard part about getting people to see that they are controlled. Most don’t comprehend that they ARE controlled. They don’t know what they’ve lost. Those who have realized what has happened are few and their voices are drowned out by those who live to perpetuate their own power and control.
I’ve also been able to distill the history of mankind into one sentence:
‘I want what you have and I’ll kill you to get it.”
Ancient times to now, the same theme is repeated…..from one-on-one violence to nations taking what doesn’t belong to them.
p.s. for the benefit of the snoops: ‘suitcasenuke al queda anarchy terrorist bomb anthrax
I feel better now that I’ve given some gov’t goon something to do…..
Shel , you remember Silent Running by MIke and the Mechanics, but you don’t remember this video?
You must be young, or were very busy? That got me to thinking how there weren’t very many videos back then compared to today and how, many decades ago, a person could know everything there was known to the masses. Odd that.
Anyway, RE: your comment about Germany. It was a small place, The Moon is Down, was far from that small place. That has relevance to today.
“Germany was not about to crumble from within, so tight were the controls on the population which willingly accepted them.”
Hmm, I think of how slavery was ended in the world outside the unitedstate without any civil wars and how that seems similar. Also, “so tight were the controls on the population” seems to me that’s a temporary condition, always and everywhere. The tighter, the more temporary.
Gregabob wrote, “think this is the hard part about getting people to see that they are controlled. Most don’t comprehend that they ARE controlled.”
Hammer, meet hand.
I too have also been able to distill the history of mankind into one sentence, it’s the opposite of: ‘I want what you have and I’ll kill you to get it.” and it applies to the other half the population.
What the heck, I’ll second the motion: p.s. for the benefit of the snoops: ‘suitcasenuke al queda anarchy terrorist bomb anthrax
IAM: I was quite busy, but I’m not particularly young, to be charitable. I remember playing the theme song from Davy Crockett for an entire day. I don’t remember ever knowing abut Rockwell. Perhaps I wasn’t interested in their style or was starting to get worn out by then.
I confess to being in the same boat with Shel. Even though I was watching MTV a lot in the mid-1980s, I never saw or heard of Rockwell & definitely don’t remember that video.
IAM: I mistook your “RE:” entry for being the initials of another contributor, and didn’t read it carefully. Such are the infirmities of age.
In Aldous Huxley’s 1958 Brave New World Revisited (which I admit I haven’t read), he begins:
“In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching — these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren…
“Twenty seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would. The blessed interval between too little order and the nightmare of too much has not begun and shows no signs of beginning. In the West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane. In the rest of the world freedom for individuals has already gone, or is manifestly about to go. The nightmare of total organization… has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.”
I believe our Constitution is an incredible document; I certainly am not about to claim that it wasn’t divinely inspired. I also believe it’s a historical anomaly. The Republic that Benjamin Franklin knew we might not be able to keep seems to be coming down around our ears, even as we speak (or type).
I’m not aware of any significant internal threat to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or perhaps even Chavez. I asked a German lady born in 1930 how our current events compare to the rise of Hitler; she responded, “[O]h my God. It’s exactly the same. I’m scared to death.” A co-worker whose parents emigrated from Cuba told me her mother said she didn’t believe she was going to have to live through this twice. Another co-worker, who left Cuba at about age 10 with his parents, told me the situations are almost identical. He said the Universities were infiltrated first and the propaganda machine worked its way down the age groups from there.
Claire has wondered in a previous article if this country’s children and grandchildren, when looking at a WWII movie showing uniformed officers with scary looking dogs asking for identity papers, will see this as evidence of a repressive society or just a normal government function.
It may no longer be a question of if we will lose our remaining freedoms, but when we will lose them. Perhaps I am holding out hope against reason simply because I need to. I would like to think, I guess, that I don’t know enough to be sure.
I do know for certain, though, that if and when we lose them there will be nobody to help. Perhaps I’m pessimistic by nature, but I also don’t believe our form of government is the natural state of affairs.
P.S.: Thanks, Claire, for being kind to one of your elders. I, too, watched MTV fairly much in the ’80’s; if it were anything similar now I probably would still be looking at it. I particularly enjoyed Dude Looks Like a Lady. Now, when I happen to watch TV, it’s Duck Dynasty or Wildman (Turtle Man) or wilderness kinds of stuff.
“… at some point even the most regulated, cowed, well-bribed, and spied-upon population won’t take it any more.”
you sure ’bout that? ’cause, like, other than vapid talk there’s just zero sign of anyone doing anything at all. ever. and besides, if you do anything how will you get your blood pressure pills and geritol then?
and really, just what would you do? stop using your phone? stand on a street corner and wave a sign? grow tomatoes? type little keywords in your posts? what?
[If we had an election where nobody really voted there would still be a winner.]
One with obviously no legitimacy however. People stop paying attention to the illegitimate.
[It eats at them so, they develop a neurosis that compels them to enact greater models of control.]
Actually it is mostly something more (apparently) innocent: the bureaucratic imperative. Even if you have “nice, decent” bureaucrats and politicians, the tendency is always for “liberty to give ground”. Gatto perfectly described this tendency here:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue8.htm
[The most effective action we can bring to the table (for now) is to ignore them and plan our lives without them.]
And to know where your lines in the sand are.
[I’ve decided that it’s extremely difficult to overestimate the stupidity of the American public.]
http://strike-the-root.com/problem-with-people-are-idiots-meme
[And while Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down may provide some hope, Nazi Germany was not about to crumble from within, so tight were the controls on the population which willingly accepted them. Only an overwhelming military defeat removed the regime from power.]
Er, no. The equally evil Soviet Union was not militarily defeated. It just gradually became (somewhat) less evil over time. You wouldn’t say that the Stalin regime is still in power there…
[It may no longer be a question of if we will lose our remaining freedoms, but when we will lose them.]
We cannot lose them, but only surrender them. It takes submission on our part. So don’t submit! Also it is an individual choice, to submit or not; it’s not some collective thing.
[and really, just what would you do?]
Live your life, put up with what you can, and decide what you can’t put up with, and arm yourself for the day that happens. It’s all personal. The revolution starts when it starts for you.