When I was in junior high, back when they called it junior high, our principal, Dr. Anderson, got the idea to stir our young patriotism by playing "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood. As an adult, I understand Dr. Anderson's motives, but as a smartassed 7th grader, I joined in with my other fellow smartass 7th graders to make fun of it. It was the age of Motley Crue and Ozzy Ozbourne, so Lee Greenwood wasn't our pick.
The one takeaway that I did get from Greenwood's morning warble was that I was proud to be an American. I knew I was free from oppression. We were still in the throws of the Cold War back then, and heard all of the stories of how the KGB in the USSR would kidnap people right off the street, listen in to their citizen's phone calls, and jail them indefinitely without a fair trial. The USSR was ruled by a small, elite Upper Party, while the rest of the country were merely cogs in the wheel that were only as valuable as the work they did and the obedience they observed. In the mid-'80s, the USSR was the Evil Empire, and I was so grateful that I didn't live there.
Fast forward, 25 years later, and I'm starting to wonder if I do live in the true Evil Empire. I didn't change citizenship, I still am an American, I still take a lot of pride in coming from a place that has a tradition of welcoming people from all backgrounds into its fold, but as of late, my government is taking a page from the KGB handbook and my country is becoming a scary place.
After 9/11, we let fear take over and did something very stupid, we surrendered our freedom in the folds of a terrible piece of legislation, ironically called, The Patriot Act. It was presented as a way to keep us safe, but what it did was allow the government into our lives in a way it had never had access before. It allowed people to be held indefinitely without trial if they were deemed an "enemy combatant" or super bad person that pissed off the government in a big way. Our media abdicated its responsibility by not asking the hard questions in an attempt to look like "good Americans". To be a good American after 9/11 was to never question anything the government did, because the government was doing what they were doing for the sole purpose of keeping you safe, or that is what they told us through their talking points spewed by corporate-owned media.
The only saving grace for liberty was the growing popularity and expansion of the internet. The internet is a hodgepodge of ideas and opinions and sometimes it seems like there is a heck of a lot wackadoo mucking it up. However, the internet has done a large part in saving what was left of journalism. Citizen reporters and independent news sites have enabled the average citizen to break free of the NewsCorp, Gannet, AP, Time Warner death grip and read honest news and opinions about the topics the big guys don't want to talk about.
While the blessing and the curse of the internet is that anyone can create a website about anything and say whatever they want, it has always been a given that, in this country, saying what you want to say is okay. However, the walls are starting to close in. I felt the walls going up with the persecution of Julian Assange. No matter what you think of him, Assange's WikiLeaks is just doing what we were able to do pre-9/11. Prior to 9/11, if you were a member of the press, you could request documents and information under the Freedom of Information Act. Unless it was classified, you could have the documents within 5-7 working days. For a document to be labeled as "classified" it had to have some info pertinent to the safety and well-being of American citizens. Back then they didn't just label anything classified, it really had to be important. We lost a lot of this post-9/11, and when Assange re-introduced transparency into the mix, our government set off on a witch hunt the likes I haven't seen in ages. They are still determined to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges, but I'm not sure what they can charge him with. Assange is not an American citizen, and I'm worried that our government will label him an "enemy combatant" and hold him for years or the rest of his life without trial. Given that he has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the U.K. for over a year, he must be afraid of this, too.
On the heels of the Assange scandal came the Occupy Movement, which was a general push back from people who hated the fact that Wall Street, along with their government cooperatives, ripped off the country, sent millions into poverty, squandered away the life saving of even more millions, and got away with it. There were stories of police brutality, government monitoring, and military-style crowd disbursement throughout the months that Occupy was publicly active. The mainstream news, of course, refused to report on Occupy until it was absolutely necessary, and when they did, they used the government and corporate talking points to tell us that Occupy was bad, had no direction, and were basically lazy, unemployed people who felt entitled to government benefits. Thankfully, by now, no one really believed the mainstream media, because we all knew people who had lost their homes and/or their life savings and/or were unemployed, and we didn't think they were lazy or worthless at all. In fact, we were pretty sure they got screwed, and the ones who did the screwing were getting off scott free thanks to big campaign donations and lobbyist money.
Since Occupy, there was the young soldier, Bradley Manning, who is going through a sham of a secret trial, because he revealed the abuses of the war. He will likely spend the rest of his life in jail for doing something as vital to our democracy as exposing government abuses of power. Edward Snowden is another victim of government over-reach. It doesn't matter what you think of this guy, or what his motives are, the fact is that he provided evidence that our government is monitoring us. I've heard people say things like, "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I be worried?". Here is the problem with that line of thinking; when a government insists on assuming absolute power, you never know when you will do something that will cross the line into what is right and what is wrong.
Most of us regular folks seem to have nothing to worry about. We use the internet to send email, shop online, read the news, take in funny joke sites, access Facebook, Twitter or other social media, and a few (i.e. millions) even use it for porn. None of us are likely to think that anything we look at, read, or post will arouse the suspicion of the National Security Agency, but the truth is that we don't know, and it's the not knowing that will cause us to start cautioning ourselves in the future. When I have to sit here at my blog and wonder if I should post my distain at the way my government is conducting the business of my country, then I no longer live in the Land of the Free.
My daughter once asked me why the Jews would allow themselves to be carted off to death camps during the Holocaust, and I explained to her that the Nazis didn't just, one day, out of the blue, grab people and round them up. They started with small restrictions that people didn't grumble about, then little by little they chopped away at rights and freedoms until the Jews were no longer treated as human beings. Freedom doesn't go out with a bang, it goes out with a whimper.
This morning's story about Edward Snowden's desperate flight to find a country that will give him asylum ended with a government official saying he will be pursued by the most powerful country in the world. This statement didn't make me feel good, it makes me feel as though I am living in the Capital of Panem right before Katniss and her former tributes show up to destroy it. The full force of our government has mobilized to run down a whistleblower less than a month after he did an interview, yet four years after Wall Street moguls crashed the economy leaving millions in poverty, our government has refused to go after or prosecute anyone. This is not the behavior of a government that represents the Land of the Free or Home of the Brave, this is merely a re-boot of the Evil Empire that I learned about in the '80s, only now, I live here.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
For Privacy's Sake
I'm a writer. I have been a writer all my life. I like that I can make blog posts, and put my views out for people to comment, all the while hoping what I post makes some people laugh or think. At best, I can hope that something I write helps initiate a dialog leading to some kind of change or action. I post regularly, and probably will for the foreseeable future, but I have no desire to be a celebrity or a public person.
Anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows that I grew up in a fairly crazy, fucked up situation. It took me years of self-destructive behavior, personal strife, and a shit load of therapy to get to a point where I could deal with my past and create a happy future for myself and my family. One of the keys to creating that happy future was stability. I want my girls to have the stability I never had, because I believe when you have a stable situation, you can focus on pursuing your dreams and interests. This means I live in Suburbia, not because I like it, but because I want to give my kids that wonderful feeling of looking at a house and knowing it is their home.
To deal with living in a place where I completely feel out of place, I write about it. In those writings I bitch and moan, point out absurdity and hypocrisy, and hopefully, make others living in similar situations feel a little better about their lives.
I have actually done meet ups a few times with people who read my blogs, and they've gone quite well. I will admit that I research the reader prior to meeting up with them just to rule out the homicidal maniac factor, but thankfully, I've not run into any weirdos. Aside from less than a handful of meet ups, I remain a private person. I have absolutely no desire to be a celebrity or attain any level of public notoriety. In my professional life, I am the person behind the curtain, and I'm very cool with that, which is why I find this latest story about the NSA spying on Americans so disturbing.
One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell's 1984. I read it for the first time when I was in the 8th grade, and usually read it every few years. This latest scandal, which the government has responded to by publicly saying they don't give a damn about it, falls so much into Orwell's playbook it's horrifying. We live in a country that now has drones, mindless machines that are programmed to kill indiscriminately, we have no real media anymore, since corporations have bought out all of the traditional media outlets, so we essentially have nothing to monitor the government, and now in a twisted turn of fate, our government, like Orwell's Big Brother now watches us.
The corporate media is falling lock-step with the government on ignoring the NSA spying claiming that Americans have ceded their privacy, because they are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, post YouTube videos, and write blogs. However, no one ever seems to point out that most people who post don't do it for fame or to gain public notoriety, they do it to share personal information and experiences with their social circle. Just because I tell my FB friends that I don't like Monsanto controlling our food supply doesn't mean I want the NSA to start a file on me as a potential eco terrorist.
I support the Occupy Movement, because I hate the fact that Wall Street robbed our country, made us all a lot poorer and got away with it. I'm happy to share my boycott list with anyone who wants it, again, because I don't like Monsanto, the creator of Agent Orange, controlling our food supply. I hate old, white men telling me what I can and can't do with my body, and I'm very vocal about it, because I have two daughters who I'm trying to teach to own their bodies. Since the NSA surveillance program is targeting all Americans, I might be file-worthy several times over, but I'm not sure what that means for my future and the future of my family.
As a kid in the '80s, I would hear the stories about the Pinochet regime and the thousands of "disappeared", every night on the news there would be stories about Soviet citizens living in fear of the KGB, and well into the '90s and new millennium, we were inundated with stories about Saddam Hussein and evil totalitarian dictators who committed egregious human rights violations, oppressed their people by monitoring them, arresting journalists and whistleblowers, and keeping their people in a constant state of fear. With this NSA revelation, we are inching forever closer to becoming one of those oppressive states we grew up glad we didn't live in.
As I write this, there is a young man holed up in a hotel in Hong Kong. He had to reveal himself publicly as the person who blew the whistle on the NSA. Had he remained anonymous, he'd likely be dead right now. He is petitioning China for asylum, because he knows that China is the one nation the U.S. likely won't be drone bombing anytime soon. He knows he can never come back to the States or he will end up like Bradley Manning. In earlier years, we had real news that would have praised this man for letting us know that our government is doing something way too Big Brother, but the media social safety net doesn't exist anymore.
Yes, I post blogs and make Facebook status updates. I have phone calls with my friends and family about how I don't like the fact that wealthy corporations own our government. I don't believe any of that qualifies as ceding my privacy or inviting an NSA investigation. I don't live in Oceania, and like most Americans, I don't want to.
Anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows that I grew up in a fairly crazy, fucked up situation. It took me years of self-destructive behavior, personal strife, and a shit load of therapy to get to a point where I could deal with my past and create a happy future for myself and my family. One of the keys to creating that happy future was stability. I want my girls to have the stability I never had, because I believe when you have a stable situation, you can focus on pursuing your dreams and interests. This means I live in Suburbia, not because I like it, but because I want to give my kids that wonderful feeling of looking at a house and knowing it is their home.
To deal with living in a place where I completely feel out of place, I write about it. In those writings I bitch and moan, point out absurdity and hypocrisy, and hopefully, make others living in similar situations feel a little better about their lives.
I have actually done meet ups a few times with people who read my blogs, and they've gone quite well. I will admit that I research the reader prior to meeting up with them just to rule out the homicidal maniac factor, but thankfully, I've not run into any weirdos. Aside from less than a handful of meet ups, I remain a private person. I have absolutely no desire to be a celebrity or attain any level of public notoriety. In my professional life, I am the person behind the curtain, and I'm very cool with that, which is why I find this latest story about the NSA spying on Americans so disturbing.
One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell's 1984. I read it for the first time when I was in the 8th grade, and usually read it every few years. This latest scandal, which the government has responded to by publicly saying they don't give a damn about it, falls so much into Orwell's playbook it's horrifying. We live in a country that now has drones, mindless machines that are programmed to kill indiscriminately, we have no real media anymore, since corporations have bought out all of the traditional media outlets, so we essentially have nothing to monitor the government, and now in a twisted turn of fate, our government, like Orwell's Big Brother now watches us.
The corporate media is falling lock-step with the government on ignoring the NSA spying claiming that Americans have ceded their privacy, because they are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, post YouTube videos, and write blogs. However, no one ever seems to point out that most people who post don't do it for fame or to gain public notoriety, they do it to share personal information and experiences with their social circle. Just because I tell my FB friends that I don't like Monsanto controlling our food supply doesn't mean I want the NSA to start a file on me as a potential eco terrorist.
I support the Occupy Movement, because I hate the fact that Wall Street robbed our country, made us all a lot poorer and got away with it. I'm happy to share my boycott list with anyone who wants it, again, because I don't like Monsanto, the creator of Agent Orange, controlling our food supply. I hate old, white men telling me what I can and can't do with my body, and I'm very vocal about it, because I have two daughters who I'm trying to teach to own their bodies. Since the NSA surveillance program is targeting all Americans, I might be file-worthy several times over, but I'm not sure what that means for my future and the future of my family.
As a kid in the '80s, I would hear the stories about the Pinochet regime and the thousands of "disappeared", every night on the news there would be stories about Soviet citizens living in fear of the KGB, and well into the '90s and new millennium, we were inundated with stories about Saddam Hussein and evil totalitarian dictators who committed egregious human rights violations, oppressed their people by monitoring them, arresting journalists and whistleblowers, and keeping their people in a constant state of fear. With this NSA revelation, we are inching forever closer to becoming one of those oppressive states we grew up glad we didn't live in.
As I write this, there is a young man holed up in a hotel in Hong Kong. He had to reveal himself publicly as the person who blew the whistle on the NSA. Had he remained anonymous, he'd likely be dead right now. He is petitioning China for asylum, because he knows that China is the one nation the U.S. likely won't be drone bombing anytime soon. He knows he can never come back to the States or he will end up like Bradley Manning. In earlier years, we had real news that would have praised this man for letting us know that our government is doing something way too Big Brother, but the media social safety net doesn't exist anymore.
Yes, I post blogs and make Facebook status updates. I have phone calls with my friends and family about how I don't like the fact that wealthy corporations own our government. I don't believe any of that qualifies as ceding my privacy or inviting an NSA investigation. I don't live in Oceania, and like most Americans, I don't want to.
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