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They Really, Really Care!
It’s a new dawn. Our government has struck the perfect balance between freedom and security. This may have been twelve or more years in the making, but now we know the government cares enough to let us make our own mistakes, while still watching every move we make. You know it’s the right thing to do; because what could be more American than all three branches of government united against privacy? Well, in the New America, anyway. They worry about us. So, like a concerned parent, they check all our web searches, track our movements, store our emails, monitor our phone records, keep track of what we read, buy, who we know, where we go and what we watch. Forever. But yet they don’t go sticking their noses in where they don’t belong… Like Credit Default Swaps. Now that’s caring.
Sometimes people are just don’t know what’s good for them. That’s why state and local governments are joining the federal government in tracking where we go and when we go there. License plate readers are on the tops of many police cars, taking pictures of all the cars they encounter, where and when they were there - and they are coming to your neighborhood soon. It’s all stored in central data bases to be accessed by dozens of government agencies, for any purpose. Congress and the Bush Administration got one thing right. They knew George Orwell’s 1984 wasn’t a warning, it was a blueprint. With the added, and not inconsequential benefit of being a great big money-maker for the right companies. We can be thankful that some on the left have finally caught on!
Total Information Awareness was very unpopular when it was introduced ten years ago. But, people much more powerful and richer than the average person knew it was the right thing to do. There is a time to treat the average person like an adult and let them learn from their own mistakes. Such as when they are signing mortgage papers. But they can’t be trusted to spy on themselves - even though they may do a decent job on FaceBook. So, Total Information Awareness is here under different names. And it’s important to denigrate those who would challenge these programs, or even make us aware of them. (It’s possible they make not like what’s being done, even when it’s for their own good.)
As most will know, when the power of the state is challenged by trouble-makers – they call themselves whistle-blowers, people of conscience and journalists – those trouble-makers need to be silenced. A tried and true method is the ad hominem. Take the ‘journalist’ causing problems right now for the administration. Even though many of the things being said about Glenn Greenwald aren’t true, the important thing is that someone said them. Just as the main stream media knows, when one person says, ‘these are the facts’ and another person says, ‘no, these are’ it is vital not to fact check the information, the key is to allow people to repeat what they’ve heard. It’s the patriotic way to run a news outfit. And our news outfits have been patriotic for years. (Bush didn’t bring us the Iraq War by himself, you know.)
A very important aspect to all the cameras, facial recognition software, storing of all our data, predictive software for future crimes, and total observation – which gets better every year – is not just so people will censor themselves and watch what they say and do (and to know if someone is protesting the corporations or the government). Or even for possible control in the years to come. It’s freedom. People still need to be free. And our government knows no one is actually free unless money can be made. That’s where real freedom comes in. All three branches of government are united on this front, too.
Nothing essential to freedom will change. If you are paying big bucks to a congressman or senator, you know your phone call will be returned every time. And you know that in America, a legislator or regulator will earn their money. They know they don’t work for some tree-hugging, wacko that whines every time someone’s water is set on fire. No, they work for you! If you offer a seven figure job to someone once they’re out of public service, then it’s understood that money comes after a job well done while they’re in public service. See, it’s all good.
Now we need to come together as good citizens and attack those who embarrassed our leaders.
(Even though we already knew about it… But it was bad to bring it up… And the people who told us about it are traitors… And we need to have this conversation… But those who told us about this are more important than the programs… And it kept us safe… And it’s legal anyway… But hurt national security… Did I say this is nothing new?)
Squirrel!
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