dear norm,
once, you told us to report suspicious activities.
to protect america, homeland of the bravefree, from enmity.
america the mythic body politic of individual liberty engaged,
exemplary -- among nations as jesus is to mortal men --
founded in an openly reasoned and ordered constitution.
(we've talked about that before, norm, 'member?)
some years ago, the secret court for national security issued
a secret opinion declaring certain secret intelligence-gathering
activities of a secret intelligence-gathering agency of the government
to be in violation of the law and of the constitution, and some
top secret eyes only brass discussed it in electric memoranda.
an employee of a private contractor, providing secret secure
information technology support to said secret intelligence-
gathering agency's illegal and unconstitutional secret
intelligence-gathering activities, took an innocent trip abroad
and disclosed the fact of the illegal and unconstitutional
secret intelligence-gathering activities of said secret
intelligence-gathering agency, and of the memoranda about
the secret opinion of the secret court to a reporter.
and thereby the world. (one might say they
"reported suspicious activities," norm)
that man, by these disclosures, is now a spying traitor who
has provided aid and succor to the enemies of the state.
spokesmen for the state assert that enemies of the state
have already changed their behavior in response to these
disclosures damaging secret intelligence-gathering efforts.
(a sealed secret indictment
has somehow been disclosed)
norm, i cannot parse that statement any way but to conclude
it asserts the american people are the enemy of the state,
which i can dig, due to its congruence with ideals of axiomatic
moral significance, attributed to founders of the state, et al.,
but i don't know about the american people as a whole.
i suspect many americans
-- who may have batted an eye
and gotten right back to business when spokesmen for
intelligence-gathering agencies of the government
described "total information awareness" as the ideal
sociocomputational panopticon to reveal suspicious
patterns against the background of every
transaction and better "connect the dots," or when
spokesmen for intelligence-gathering agencies
announced the founding of a strategic disinformation
office whose only act was to publicly be shut down, or
again, in 2006 when secret intelligence-gathering, on
americans, by a secret intelligence-gathering agency was
disclosed to the public in print and widely discussed --
might have assumed such disclosures had quietly led to reform,
or that their party's administration must certainly be different,
or that jesus and secret congress would take care of everything.
they might not have known that power, seized
by the executive office, accrues to that office,
accumulates as each subsequent administration holds
what it inherits and grasps for more while publicly abhorring
the extravagant malfeasance of its predecessors,
until checked by congress and courts.
they might not be ready to parse it that way;
that secret congress and secret courts have no qualm
that their secret rulings, that secret intelligence-gathering
activities of secret intelligence-gathering agencies
violate the law and the constitution, should remain secret
as the secret illegal and unconstitutional gathering of
intelligence on americans by a secret intelligence-gathering
agency continues and expands, while spokesmen for the
secret intelligence-gathering agency lie to public congress,
and spokesmen for the state declare the program compromised
because we the surveyed americans now know about it,
can take a little while to sink in and become explicit.
many americans may not yet realize that
their government has called them enemies, but
man shall not long live by bread and circuses alone.
but i guess you know all that already.
- pogo