Saturday, March 23, 2013

Much Nothing Regarding Ado

Living in the freest nation on this planet is an exercise in intrigue. Since its political inception, the United States government has been bound by a codex of rights retained by citizens, rights that cannot be infringed upon. The Constitution is a set of rules meant to curb governmental abuses and to ensure that men and women remain in personal life generally free from the paws of power. The really surprising notion is just how far the government will go to abridge these rights, to restrict them, to defile the code that was implemented to restrain them. Once a government is legitimated and instituted, it must struggle and fight for its survival. A government, like an organism is concerned primarily with self-preservation. Individual liberty has clearly taken a back seat to this first directive, and the road toward tyranny continues unabated. In some instances, the sophisticated rulers are even able to concoct public outcry in a direction suiting not liberty, but the thirst for governmental control. People in American society today are plagued by a severe lack of understanding about their own rights, and the rights that their supposed rulers trample upon and usurp. Many are simply disinterested in these concepts, whether the distraction is professional sports or fashionista fancy. In a free society, this type of blame can only be carried so far. The schizophrenic nature of freedom affords humans self-determination. It is not illegal to ignore the bread and circus extravaganza on display, and one cannot blame another for missing the utility of understanding and comprehension. Society is under a constant assault whose objective is to accomplish a level of disinterest and apathy. The two wings on the same bird of prey work wonders, allowing outrage and political difference to be neatly quarantined on one or the other side of "the fence". The importance of this cannot be overstated. There is a real problem with political apathy, but there is another clear and present danger residing in those who vociferously defend the system which continues to restrict and impinge their liberty.
There are many that even claim to respect liberty and the "law of the land", while being simultaneously manipulated into defaming and destroying it. If the attacks of September 11th provided any learning opportunity, it would be found in how societal psychology can be toyed with and manipulated to swallow the most heinous outrages with very little resistance. In some cases, a majority of the population can be made to practically beg for new rules or restrictions. This is a very dangerous moment in human history. It appears as an apex or a bell curve, a visual graph showing the amplitude and frequency of liberty versus tyranny. In the beginning, future United States citizens had to rebel completely against their rulers in a violent revolution. And after that, the rules and regulations foisted upon the concept of government were produced almost as a reaction to what the founders saw as transgressions by a foreign and illegitimate ruler. This was the beginning of the bell curve rocketing skyward. Never before had the world seen that degree of personal liberty and governmental restraint codified in an official document, much less followed by the government built to defend it. Surely there were previous victories, and there will also be future victories, if society today can heal a nasty spat of political amnesia.
Somewhere along that bell curve, perhaps it was the cold war. Perhaps it was the Vietnam quagmire, or the Iraq quagmire. We may even thank the great Emmanual Goldstein himself, Osama Bin Laden for helping convince government to destroy their basis of power and prestige on the world stage. The alleged operation by Osama Bin Laden alone could not have perceivably accomplished a fraction of the damage done to greater society without help from the INSIDE. This is a curious concept to explore, the idea that a significant attack can occur and affect the leadership so greatly that they begin destroying their own freedom. Like the parasite who invades the brain of a cricket and convinces it to drown, so that the parasite may escape and live on. The parasite Bin Laden accomplished far more than he was given credit for. Sure, the September 11th attacks were horrific and severely damaging to the American Psyche. The attacks even managed to kill three buildings with two stones. But political leadership used the attacks as a pretext to instigate a dismantling of some of the most important protections that exist anywhere on Earth. Thanks to parasitical politicians on every side of the aisle, people are willing more and more to assent to government, no matter how dangerous to personal liberty it may be.
This brings us to the main point. Freedom of speech is quickly becoming a lost refuge. All arms of government race toward a total surveillance society. You have the freedom to speak to a friend on the phone, but you do not have the right to that conversation being private. You have the freedom to open an email account, and to utilize it to communicate to persons of your choosing. But you no longer have any assumed right to privacy of communication. The Constitution plainly states our freedoms, while government plainly marches on destroying them. Your freedom of speech now includes government data warehouses being built to store every byte, every word, every whisper. Your freedom of speech now includes an array of info-warriors thrust into social networks to GUIDE the CONVERSATION. To put out ideological fires in the minds of men. To manipulate people at the whim of the government agent and the greater governing structure. As Patreus' recent adventures prove, not even the highest seated authorities are safe from the ruthless intelligence apparatus. The freedom of speech alone has been shown to take down a human regardless of their position in society. It is important to continue asking yourself if you are really free. Do you really have the liberty to say what you feel? Do you have the unfettered ability to communicate with and convince another person to take a deeper look into the issues of today? Do I have the ability to freely write? It appears that way. However, I cannot freely post my ideas to be digested by an untainted pool of opinion. I also do not have the freedom to be ignored. If the post contains enough keywords, someone will come lurking to make sure I didn't fall off my rocker, AND THEY DO! Perhaps they will see my words and label me as someone to be watched, someone to be investigated. All because I sit here arguing about FREEDOM. Releasing each word into the madness of virtual reality as a testament to freedom slowly dying.  As I sit in the eroded plains of a democratic republic, I watch the facebook  and microsoft bots come to scrape their(MY) data, and look at the interesting and nefarious array of IPs who arrive to come taste this brand of free thinking. Or this dangerous and rebellious exercise against authority. I am powerless as one person to stop the terrorist-roar of tyrannical surveillance,  but do not assume for a second that I would fail to display the same level of appreciation for you. You watch us, we most certainly will continue to watch you.