General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We Are Not Advocates Of the NSA Or Police States. We Are Reality Based & Advocate Facts [View all]TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)the intertubes and are usually put out fairly quickly when they do. It seems people who are actually involved want little to do with all this time-killing by people with little else to do.
There are exceptions, of course, but more and more I'm thinking the real point of everything from Facebook to DU is to occupy a certain segment of people so they don't go out in the real world and fuck things up more than they already are.
NSA spying and bureaucratic nonsense? I felt it during Johnson's time when I dropped out of college, got drafted and my membership in an ROTC honor fraternity while in college put black marks on my record because they never asked what the Carolan Guard was and just assumed it was some bunch of rightwing nutters. One commander was apologetic when it got straightened out, but I heard nothing from the asshole who started the nonsense without checking.
Then came Nixon and while we all in the anti-war movement assumed we were being spied on, now we knew we were. I was out of the army then, and we imagined FBI agents and NYC cops gagging when they looked in the mirror every morning and realized they didn't have to shave. Ever see an FBI agent try to look comfortable in tie-die?
Now we have a flood of new initials and COINTELPRO is no more-- but reborn under one of the new ones. Our government, like all governments, is going to spy on us no matter what we do. As is Google, Verizon, and Pathmark when I use the member card to get the sale price or KMart to get some points. I constantly see Amazon ads popping up in the strangest places as if they know what I'm thinking, but I never bought anything from them so how do they know? My bowser tells them, of course-- my browser history shows Facebook, Amazon, and other sites it claims I visited when I know I didn't-- at least not by choice.
I don't like it, but I understand it. It's incredibly difficult for us humans to stop doing something we learned to do when we think it might be the right thing to do, or at least beneficial. Fuhgeddabout it if it's fun or secretive and allowed.
Those spying on us are convinced that they are doing the right thing and whether it's selling us more stuff or catching criminals they are the good guys. Unlike doctors, who may be tempted to try some ethically challenged procedures to save lives, there is no mechanism to reign these spies and voyeurs in. Any rules or laws out there are as much a secret as the spies themselves are, as are any inquiries or investigations.
What to do? I really have no answer. Maybe the best we can do is occasionally break through the secrecy, go nuts over the findings, and soon enough go back to the same nonsense with some new rules that will be broken shortly. An endless cycle of secret spying and exposure.
Pogo once said "We have met the enemy and it is us." And Pogo had a heyday during the McCarthy era. Assuming we are the height of evolution, evolution has a ways to go. If we are actually the highest creation of some god, maybe there's a reason no god has made a personal appearance in over 2,000 years.
On edit-- lookee what I found: