Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously noted that pornography is “hard to define, but I know it when I see it.” Therein, Stewart uttered and characterized for the rest of us, in perpetuity, the intuitive and pragmatic nature of perceiving and assessing the amorality and distorted values inherent in damaging relationships.
Today, there is much to see all around us as the actions of the emerging security state share the common characteristics which, when examined in depth and taken together as they function in the larger social system, sure look and feel like pornography.
Now that the full extent of NSA activities is emerging, working under the shadow of contorted and secret legal opinions, minimal or non-existent congressional oversight, with no known budgetary constraints, coddled by Republicans, enabled by Democrats and the mainstream media, we have a true situation here. And if ever we knew it when we saw it, this is it: the predatory abuse of law, the presumption of dominance, manipulation, secrecy, opportunism, denial, dissociation and indifference to the nature of authentic relations.
I am reminded of the Steubanville gang-rape, where the coach, the media, the school administration (congress and the president), covered for what they know beneath their twisted logic was wrong because beating the team across town (the terrorists) was way more important than the whining complaints of some girl (the unassuming and semi-conscious body politic) who was asking for it anyway.
In this case, all of Europe is waking up as if from some date-rape drug to the fact that they have been violated. Apparently, Germany is one country you don't want to fuck with when it comes to unauthorized surveillance. They know what it's like to be held under the thumb of the deadly paranoid and unrestrained police state that thrives on fear and turns citizens against each other to maintain control.
Likewise, as a result of Snowden's disclosures, China, not that they are any paragon of virtue, is now empowered to resist the exploitation, dehumanization and manipulations of the pornographer who sought only to maintain control through a thinly veiled showing of force (the foreign policy "pivot") while pursuing the more devious subtext.
And further, Latin America is now increasingly emboldened, much as rape victims or (economic) sex slaves are freed from the shame and humiliation of imprisonment, torture and violation enough to find solidarity, to speak out and resist the coercive predations of, in this case, The State in the form of a Vice President pimping for the private contractors who implement the paranoid and pornographic fantasies of the national security elite.
Booze Allen populates the studio of invasion and is only too happy to participate in the staging of the violation in the same manner as the studs of X-rated fare, alternately impressing themselves in ever more inventive ways into the private affairs of millions of unsuspecting "starlets" of the moment and then backing off to revel as voyeurs savoring their handiwork. To their ends, we are a mere resource turned into a functional part of their corporate identity, a line item in their business plan.
The apologists for this entire scenario tells us if we have nothing to hide, that we have nothing to fear. It's soothing, sneering insidious propaganda to habituate us to progressively invasive scenarios that have not even yet been formed. And not unlike the rapist/pornographer's rationalization that "she enjoyed it," haven't we also been conditioned to be silent, to obey, to rationalize or completely dissociate from the inner horror of violations to which we have become increasingly inured? So what's the problem?
What's the problem? The pornographer's license to exploit, dehumanize and control depends on self-negating ignorance and acquiescence. But what takes place in secrecy begins to fall apart under the bright lights of public scrutiny. Listen to the lame excuses: everyone is doing it, it's entirely legal (see, we got permission), this is a victimless crime and therefore no crime at all--no one is harmed if you have nothing to hide.
Oh, this is not merely about the surveillance of individuals or about security. It is of a piece with the commoditization and transformation of our personal lives and relationships into profit centers (google and facebook), the strip-mining of our communities (the Wall Street hustle), the environment and of nature itself. This is more of the same: the transformation of the natural within each of us, the instinctual, the erotic impulses that should be feared, repressed, controlled, lest they be reported as strange behavior by our co-workers. Instead, we are colonized, invaded, data-mined; exploited, harvested for profit. Because boys will be boys. See? You asked for it, really, when you decided to give up liberty (4th Amendment) for security (Patriot Act).
The fact that the outrage is spreading across the globe, with new disclosures popping up through outlets other than The Guardian is good news for Edward Snowden. If this is in any way a sign of an intentional strategy, it is brilliant. Even if it's accidental, the broad knowledge of the full extent of NSA insinuation into the private affairs of our allies (including trade negotiations, lawyer-client communications), and the longer it takes for the administration to mount anything approaching a credible defense of its actions, the more any license to render him, imprison him and try him under circumstances similar to Manning diminishes.
If everyone realizes they've been regarded (and violated) with equal and relatively indiscriminate cynicism by the secret cabal of corporate-military ideologues, with the blessing of the White House, every justification coming from the increasingly desperate executive branch begins to wobble like a three-legged stool. The culture of tolerance for the contorted reading of the Constitution and the gang-rape of the body politic for the benefit of the Surveillance-Industrial Complex is over.
We are coming to a place where the road ends. From here on out, we will be making the road as we walk it, in ways we've never had to do before.
--Tom Atlee