Whom Shall We Blame?

When things go badly, it's usually rather easy to find someone who should take the responsibility.  And while all of that may be a lot of fun, it rarely solves anything.  Unless, of course, the answer manages to wake you up and get you to do things differently.

We've had all kinds of revelations in the past few months.  Domestic spying is one of the biggest by far.  Last year it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been spying on Americans within the United States through phone and Internet conversations that went on with people in other countries.  This was done secretly and without congressional approval.  And everyone was outraged.  There was talk of impeachment, lawsuits, a real hard look at just how our freedoms have been abused since 9/11.  And then it all seemed to fade into the drone of inane media chatter.  We just accepted it as yet another excuse to be cynical, something we couldn't possibly ever do anything about, and yet another marker on the roadway to freedom's end.

More recently, it was revealed that the NSA had been coercing the telephone companies of our nation to give them access to all of their records in order to see who was calling whom.  Sure, this was something all phone companies already store for billing purposes.  But never before had all of this information been merged - with the obvious goal to have a record of every call placed. And never before was information of this magnitude simply handed over to the government.  And in complete secrecy!

Yes, it was an unprecedented infringement of our privacy and one that was done without any sort of oversight.  The phone companies that participated deserve to be sued out of existence for violating the privacy of their customers in this fashion.  Those in the government who orchestrated this deserve to be brought up on charges.  Instead, a good many Americans turned a blind and defeatist eye to this, rationalizing that all of this information was out there anyway and that this kind of thing was inevitable in these times.  Besides, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.  When Edwin Meese put forth that idea a generation ago, the sense of outrage was palpable.  Everyone has something they don't want in the hands of the authorities but that fact should never imply guilt of any sort.  The desire for privacy is nothing to apologize for.

Of course, we always come back to the same old refrain about all of this being necessary in the name of security.  And there is a degree of truth in this.  If a government knows every detail, every phone call, every letter, every contact, every thought of its citizens, then, yes, it will be better equipped to step in when something bad is being planned.  But do we really want to live in that kind of society?  Do we always want to be spying on each other, snitching on anything we deem to be even slightly suspicious, judging our neighbors and those we come in contact with during the course of a day?  By cranking up the fear factor, it's possible to get people to stop trusting each other entirely and to live their whole lives as perpetual combatants.  The saddest part is that it never goes away.  There is no victory.  The paranoia doesn't abate.  The entire tone of our civilization changes to something dark and joyless.

So who is to blame?  The government?  Large corporations?  Terrorists?  Naturally, they're all players in this little drama.  But they ultimately are just fulfilling their rightful roles in society.  No government on Earth doesn't want to spy on its citizens and get access to so much more than they are entitled.  The main rule in the corporate world is to do what is best for the shareholders and to not get caught if that involves anything truly evil.  And terrorists are simply terrorists, although the media seems to delight in making them far more sophisticated, organized, and intelligent than they have ever proven themselves to be.

The real culprit, as most of us already know, is us, the very populace that is being abused in this manner.  We keep letting it happen, buying into all the jingoistic crap, and not reacting strongly as they do in so many other parts of the world.  We've accepted the notion that it's somehow bad to get angry and loud when the occasion calls for it.   But how many more reasons will we need before we finally stop politely handing over our rights?

To pin the responsibility on outside forces is to simply allow ourselves to be manipulated.  There have always been dangerous elements on the global stage.  Watch the recently released movie Munich to see how many terrorist acts were taking place during the 1970s.  It's nothing new.  What has changed dramatically is how we are reacting.  Our governments now openly use torture as a tactic and so do our heroes in our favorite television programs.  It's O.K. to be evil if you perceive yourself to be on the side of good (which sounds remarkably similar to what any terrorist would say).  We've accepted that it's now necessary to hold people for long periods of time without charging them with anything.  And if they come from a different country, we can transport them to ours (or to secret prisons in other participating nations) and do whatever we want to them without having to worry about the Constitution because they're not Americans!  Somewhere along the line, this too became acceptable behavior, based on our collective non-reactions.

Some of you may believe that this is entirely too political a discussion for these pages.  You have only to look at all of the negative changes that have been going on over the years to see how it all ties together.  The climate of war, suspicion, and technological oppression merge into something truly awful.  And throughout it all, we never actually gain the security or the freedom we were promised.  We simply forget how it used to be and fool ourselves that times used to be simpler.

A fearful populace will hand over the kingdom to those they believe will deliver them from their nightmares.  It's up to us, as supposedly enlightened and intelligent people, to speak up when something isn't true, when the facts don't add up, when the elimination of one right will lead to the elimination of so many more.

Unlike in the world of fiction, when change occurs, it doesn't happen overnight.  It's a very gradual process that takes place one step at a time.  But if you look back and take in all of the changes that have occurred in a particular number of years, you will be shocked at how much our way of life has changed.  Think of technology as a parallel to this.  How different is the world of today with regard to telephones and computers than, say, the world of 20 years ago?  Apply that to the surveillance, fear, and surrendering of rights that have been ongoing in that same time period and it's downright scary.  You may not see the changes from one day to another.  But with we day that passes, we move further and further away from where we were.  And if we have no control over where we're going, you can count on all of us being in for a rude awakening when we finally arrive.

As we go to press, we're receiving word of the impending downfall of net neutrality, the "First Amendment of the Internet," now being targeted for elimination by our government at the behest of telephone and cable companies.  Net neutrality is what the Internet is based on - the expectation that all data will be treated with equal importance, regardless of where it comes from or where it's going.  If we continue in this direction, soon you could see a scenario where only people who pay a fee to, say, AOL would have their mail delivered there in a timely manner.  The mass media is heralding this as a victory for "competition" when it is no such thing, although we understand why it's in their interest to portray it as such.  The losers will be those of us who have come to appreciate the net as a means for anyone anywhere to gain access to a world of communications.  And if we continue down this road, you can bet the net will be unrecognizable (in a bad way) in the next 20 years.

People power does make a difference.  We've seen it on a large scale when the populace of some foreign land gets pissed off one too many times and their government is toppled.  We've seen it on a tiny scale, such as the recent case in New York where motorists got outraged at a new $1 a month fee on their E-ZPass toll devices and, against all the odds, legislation was reversed and the fee abolished.  We see the religious right dictate terms to broadcasters throughout our entire country and create a climate of censorship and paranoia - just because they know how to organize and create the perception that this is what most people want.  People power works for whomever is willing to get organized.  (Editor's Note:  It's NOT the "religious right" censoring people, it's the batshit-insane jewish left.)

So this goes one of two ways.  Either we are a powerless minority who are living in a fantasy world of idealism and naivete.  Or we are in synch with most people who see it all falling apart around them but haven't a clue as to what to do about it.  No matter which it is, we need to do more if we expect to reverse these trends.  We need to speak louder, be more aggressive in getting the word out, and not buy into any of the crap we're being fed.  Most importantly, we need to ally ourselves with those who share our concerns, regardless of whether or not they share all of our concerns.  The tide is not going to turn on its own.  Those entities causing the harm are just doing what they inevitably do.  It's the thinking people who need to do more and not believe for a moment that it's not possible.