The Surveillance State 4

4 comments

1. George Smith

   July 9, 2013 at 10:41 am

   I’d add that our do-nothing middle and upper middle class polity do get to mount the farce, now, of complaining about the surveillance state … on Facebook. There are many pathetic things but that’s a national characteristic in the top ten of them, the idea being if you post enough links to NYTimes or Guardian articles on your timeline or someone else’s it brings on social change. The US government and industry are back to pushing the nation-busting China is cyberspying on us thing. It took about a month but Snowden, like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamophosis, has turned into a beetle stuck in a Moscow airport transit station. Until he goes to Bolivia or someplace and tries to live out life as a giant beetle there. There’s a group delusion, aided by the condensation/concentration of it on social media/tribal websites that such people bring on change when you enthusiastically post about them. Then they get stuck living forever in the embassy of Ecuador, made into a movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch, that I won’t see unless someone else springs for it. Who’s young enough to play Edward Snowden next year?

    
2. Frank

   July 9, 2013 at 12:19 pm

   As you may have guessed, I listen to several leftie podcasts.  I get a kick out of the hosts (particularly Bob Cesca, who is genuinely witty and perceptive) talking about tangling with someone on Twitter as if 

   • a) it matters and
   • b) anyone cares.

   I don’t pretend to myself that my little blog makes a difference, other than keeping me off the streets and maybe giving someone a chuckle here or there, but, in my other life, I do actually do some real stuff in real politics for real persons who might make a difference.  

    
3. George Smith

   July 9, 2013 at 2:37 pm

   I’m resigned to it, or cynical. We have the surveillance/corporate fascist state we deserve. We Boomers have been perhaps the worst generation, ever. Having actually been involved in security, by accident, over the last 20 years, I’ve seen the long downward slope. When opportunity existed, there was no leadership, not even a vague interest in the issues except in a small demographic with no political power. Now that everyone is waking up to how strangled their world has been made they have the option of complaining about it socially. I find nothing more feeble than people who try to make their Facebook timelines into blogs/gathering places because dealing with the open web was too complicated. And nobody gives you the pro forma “like”. I enjoy bopping in on them every know and then to post that if they just keep stamping their FB feet enough maybe someday they’ll free Egypt, close Gitmo and defund the NSA. The other side of the coin, equally annoying, is the progressive liberal model of working for change, the part that involves sending half a dozen requests/day for micro-payments to whatever cause or operation is lined up in the dedicated mass mail server queue.  “Dear George, the [something or someone] is […..]” 

    
4. Frank

   July 9, 2013 at 3:18 pm

   Do not underestimate the effectiveness of a 50-year long campaign on the right, waged with thinktanks, reasonable sounding flacks-for-hire like David Brooks, and bought-and-paid-for radio and television liars.  

    

   It may not have been a conspiracy in the sense of being “orchestrated,” but it was definitely concerted and it has effectively kept the public waters muddied.

    

   It may be an admission of defeat, but I’m glad I’m old.