The Good Germans in Government

[DirkGently]

31. There's long been a deliberate conflation

of "American interests" with "interests of the few and the powerful."

It's not a uniquely American evil -- we regularly call it out and cluck when we see Russia, China, et al transparently supporting some dictator they're selling weapons to or buying things from. It's a human evil as old as time. People ascribe false, beneficial motivations to selfish interests.

But I'm not sure anyone's doing it to the extent we are right now. It's a PNAC-flavored extension of trickle-down theory, really. We use the military and intelligence strengths we have not for defense, but for offense, and specifically, to obtain power and wealth for the influential and well-connected.

It's only a matter of time before we discover which American private interests are being fed intel on their competition and their critics. We saw one tip of the iceberg with the BOA / HBGary proposal to "destroy Glenn Greenwald" (him again) through dirty social networking tricks.

Nobody needs ten zillion phone records or e-mails to watch out a handful of poorly-armed foreign zealots who, we should remember, premise their attacks on us on the idea that we are already interfering with their countries and their politics.

This stuff is the current version of the CIA setting up banana republics in South America, or the Bush family invading countries in the Middle East. It's quiet and (theoretically) bloodless, but the motivations are the same. And the winners and losers will be the same.

The American public is not in the "win" column.