Glenn Greenwald is an extremist.
He believes that the individual is sovereign, probably believes, as do most post-Enlightenment Founding Father groupies, in “social contracts,” which was once likened to a “gentleman’s club” from which, some gentlemen being upset at the prospect of hostile rules could justifiably withdraw.
This was the South’s position in the Civil War 150 years ago.
Today, exercising his veto power over the Congress, the representative democracy and the consensus reached perhaps wrongly, but most certainly, after Nine-Lebbin, whence we collectively CHOSE to throw said civil liberties in the dustbin and then, through our representatives chose to RENEW the program … exercising his sovereign conscience, having left the country, at least journalistically, he has published some disgruntled whistleblower’s leaked documents, blah blah blah. To wit:
Boundless Informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data — Revealed: The NSA’s powerful tool for cataloguing data – including figures on US collection
Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 8 June 2013 15.10 EDT
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.
The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents …
And we (some) will reflexively praise all this industrial espionage from foreign shores, but really, finally, that’s what it is. Industrial espionage.
Oh yes, another act of conscience, … er, ahem, Act of Conscience in a long line of consciences. But conscience, betimes, is oft o’er-rated, methinks.
It is Wikileaks ad infinitum. Snitching on your schoolmates. Finding daddy’s secret porn stash.
Either you accept the need for SOME secrets or you don’t. Either you bought in to a massive, unaccountable Sekurity Monolith of Kafkaesque iteration and Brobdingnagian proportions or you didn’t.
You did. (Sorry. But I was there. I watched. I protested.)
And you got, for your troubles, the largest Snoopocratic Snooping Regime ever envisioned by the Mind of Man, with the Orwellian name: Department of Homeland Security. (Having never once heard the term “homeland” in any homely homily about the heartland of our beloved America the beautiful, bountiful, free and brave.)
Happy Homeland
And now, you are shocked, SHOCKED to find out that gambling has been going on at Rick’s?
Now that the snoopocratic bureaucracy is exposed, who is rationally going to believe that we are going to put the cat back into the bag, and no longer track our ex-lovers, family members, political rivals, etc. at a level unthought-0f in even Orwellian fiction?
YOU. BOUGHT. THIS.
And if you don’t like it, you’re going to have to make some rational, difficult choices. And one of those choices is between freedom from terror and the terror of “freedom” … and behaving in a responsible, adult manner with these immense powers that “We, the People” are suddenly gifted or burdened with. Powers that have never occured to humankind in the history of humankind.
But one thing is sure in this. The Founding Fathers’ notions on this unforseen future are, at best, amusing.
The John Stuart Mill grinds no more.
It has been replaced by the Social Media Aggregator.
Nor does it occur, seemingly, to Glenn Greenwald that he has become a capable and skilled practitioner of the very dark arts he despises.
Oh brave new world that has such people in it.
Courage.
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.