This note will have to be brief, as I am having to encrypt it on the run: I'm just barely staying one step ahead of an elite assassin sent by the Obama-NSA-Monsanto complex disguised as a kitten who's been lurking around my door, no doubt probing my security system for weaknesses. A recent attempt on my life was thwarted by the skin of my teeth when I realized that my Lucky Charms had been injected with GMOs - a fact that became obvious once I discovered that one of the executives at the company that owns that cereal uses a dentist who practices in an office park with a name similar to one where a group is located that reportedly sells office supplies to ALEC, according to my spirit guide. Such intimate connections are rampant in the Police State in which we live.
Some would say that the blogger response to the NSA revelations has been an incoherent meme-salad delirium that's equal parts knee-jerk NWO libertarian psychosis and infantile broken-clock-triumphalism by people who have never offered and still don't offer a single original or remotely useful thought. I'm glad you've "told me so" since the Vespasian administration that government is a fascist totalitarian authoritarian oligarchy plutocracy patriarchy police state death machine money-bitch and that all who are competent, responsible, engaged, or daring enough to be involved in it are invariably neoliberal corporatist whore-betrayers sent from the depths of Hell by Satan to lead the faithful astray.
Thank you for warning us all about that, every minute of every day since you were put on this Earth, and never once having a deeper, more intelligent, or more useful thought than that to offer. Thank you for responding to every single event that occurs exposing problems in government by reiterating this position, and faithfully remaining free of the taint of constructive suggestions or intelligent inquiry. We have tried to implement your brilliant insights by renouncing the corrupt vanities of modern civilization and living in a Tibetan yurt where no deceitful corporatist influences can reach us, but I'm sorry, we are weak.
We continue to pollute our precious bodily fluids with the impure influences of democratic elections and partisan politics, and obstinately continue to put human beings in public offices rather than endowing your immaculate imagination with the power to conjure perfect leaders who are as omnipotent as they are moral and competent. And most egregious of all, we fail to recognize that there is already someone standing right in front of us whose morality, ethics, and vision are exactly what we need to solve these problems: You. Over and over you have proven you have a bead on the situation because you've monotonously harped on the same paranoid, stereotypical topics every waking moment, and when the broken clock strikes Midnight right, suddenly your ravings are treated like they have authority. Well, I'm sorry, I'm just not pure enough to recognize your genius and foresight.
I listen to the most brilliant technology pioneers in the world speak of the challenges faced by electronic freedom, and when they talk I hear something that I don't hear when you talk: Knowledge. Reflections. Analysis of complex information and competing priorities in dynamic balance. And what's most important, I hear principled positions coupled with ideas about how to implement them, both technically and politically. They are unafraid because they know what they're talking about. Fear is the domain of ignorance, and self-righteous fear is the domain of willful ignorance.
As for the rest of us, I'm sorry that the laws of physics require that we each only have so much time and mindshare to devote to any given issue. By all means if this is an issue that you consider to be of peremptory importance, and the immediate threat to it to be imminent and specific, decide for yourself which literally world-threatening problem you're going to put on hold in order to seriously pursue the issue. Global warming is a big deal, but it can wait while we pretend to hash out the protocol for the transfer of metadata from Google servers to surveillance agencies, followed by those protocols being completely ignored. So too can the starving kids and collapsing cities and the thieving banks wait - all of it can wait while you go through the motions of outrage at the theoretical possibility that someone other than thousands of website and credit card company employees know what you jerk off to.
I have no patience for fauxgressives who are experts in whatever feeds their outrage, but turn into pathetic, flailing blind men when you ask them what the hell they actually DO to make the world a better place. "I tell it what a shitty place it is, in the hopes that other people will fix it for me." Well thank you and fuck you. I've never been under the illusion that laws are programming languages executed with machine-like precision by governments - politics is a set of levers and fluid flows. If you want it to flow in a shape more like democracy, then be a more politically competent citizen and stop acting like the volume of your bitching is the measure of your moral credibility or insightfulness.
You can't stop people from spying on you in an electronic world. The Pentagon can't stop China from ripping off its most top-secret weapons systems. If you have information that someone else wants and they know where to find it, they will find it. And most of the time that's a good thing, because that's what makes the internet the most explosively powerful tool of education, communication, and information ever invented. But it also opens up new dark alleyways, trap doors, and peepholes. By all means we should participate meaningfully in the discussion about how to form policies that recognize and protect our privacy, but don't ever delude yourself that any such thing ever has been or ever will be absolute in any way. If someone wants to know your information, they will find it. But here's the good part, if you're not a coward: The reverse is also true. If you're really so batshit about the NSA watching you, learn the skills to watch back. Or find some more practical priorities to focus on.