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At first glance, the growth of the super
snooper state revealed this weekend — like one of those giant, hidden
funguses that spreads for miles under the forests of upper Michigan — is
a striking discovery. But I maintain that there is an inverse correlation
between the technical abilities of the government to harvest data and their
competence to use it for anything. The salient trend in our government is to
become more inept, ineffectual, impotent, and feckless, no matter how big the
compost heaps of sheer information it manages to pile up.
For spying on your own
citizens, the Nazis and the Soviets were way ahead of us using technology no
more elegant than phone bugs and filing cabinets. Our immersive
techno-narcissism vests too much awe in computer magic itself. What would
hurt much more — and work much better — is if Americans become a
nation of snitches. That’s a possibility, of course, but I attach a low
percentage to it because it requires a respect for authority that is just
absent here now, and has been eroding steadily for decades, really ever since
Jack Kennedy was gunned down.
Ironically, Barack Obama
got where he did because he pretended to be the reincarnation of JFK —
a young, dynamic change agent — and it took years to discover that he
was a mere bundle of platitudes wrapped in a banana leaf of good intentions,
stamped with a sell-by date that, alas, has now passed. His piled-up troubles
seem more a matter of inattention than intent — especially his failure
to apply the rule of law in banking — and his recent televised attempts
to explain himself give off the demoralized vibe of somebody just sadly going
through the motions.
Anyway, events are in the
driver’s seat, not government officials. We’re in the Koyaanisqatsi zone now — everything is
out-of-balance from our financial operations to our geopolitical relations to
the state of nature around the planet. Too many stresses have built at too
many stress-points and a palpable fear judders through the wireless waves
that something has to break. Oddly, political cracks appeared this month in
two of the least-expected places: Sweden and Turkey. WTF? I wonder a little
now if the revelations of Edward J. Snowdon about
the American Security apparatus will bring on a wave of street protests in
Washington DC on the Fourth of July. Maybe I’m just channeling my own
dim memories of 1969, but this historical moment has a similar tingle. We
know that the amalgamated gun nuts are already planning what they’ve
advertised as an “armed march” across the nation’s capital.
Frankly, I’m kind of glad that they’re doing this. The government
needs to be reminded that there are already enough small arms loose in
America to temper its cloddish excesses. The time is ripe for others to join
in a larger Fourth of July demonstration.
Most satisfying would be a
Washington march by college loan debt slaves terminating in a bonfire of the
loan contracts on the Ellipse. I keep waiting for the “magic
moment” when millions of these poor swindled young grads will send the
message thundering through Facebook and Twitter that they are done paying the
inflated price for their useless degrees in “marketing” and
“gender studies.” Aren’t you amazed that it hasn’t
happened yet? (Although the default rate is rising so fast that a general
renunciation may be accomplished without public fanfare.)
Meanwhile, it will be
interesting to see if the US government goes after Mr. Snowdon,
who is currently on the lam in Hong Kong which, some of you may remember,
belongs to China. Does that ever have the potential for a world-class
embarrassment? There’s less than a month before America’s big
annual birthday party, just enough time for this story to build to an explosive
climax. The government will surely have to make some kind of move before than. Given its recent tendencies to over-reach on
everything, the government could easily screw the pooch on this. The
29-year-old Snowdon has the look and demeanor of an
all-American hero and it will be interesting to see the reaction if and when
federal agents haul him off a plane in handcuffs. What’s more, Snowdon made a clear, concise, and eloquent statement
explaining his actions: “The public needs to decide whether these
programs and policies are right or wrong,” he said.
You couldn’t put it
plainer than that.
Edward J. Snowdon, NSA whistleblower
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