The Kinks got it right

Over the past decade, the US government has redefined the entire world–including the homeland–as a battlefield, thereby allowing them to dispense with due process and engage in all sorts of extrajudicial behavior, including eavesdropping on and assassinating its own citizens. It’s no longer necessary for the government to prove someone has engaged in a terrorist attack to justify a drone strike, for example. All they need to establish is the probability of such behavior. It is eerily reminiscent of Philip Dick’s concept of precrime, as depicted in Minority Report.

Now even Microsoft has come to regard the NSA as an “‘advanced persistent threat,’ a term generally used to describe teams of hackers that coordinate cyber attacks for foreign governments,” and is taking appropriate action. Google, Yahoo and other cyber giants are not far behind.

This is what happens when self-preservation becomes the highest good. Paranoia runs rampant, and everyone is transformed into a potential enemy. (To be honest, I’m a little nervous sharing these thoughts publicly knowing my words will most likely be logged and archived.) The thing that gets me is that the rhetoric always circles back to the need to defend freedom. And yet, the more I look at America, the more it resembles a prison. And the people living inside are so institutionalized they don’t even notice, never mind protest. They just keep asking for more, more! (Security.)

I think this quote from Robert Owen is probably tacked up on a wall somewhere inside the NSA, CIA, FBI, White House and JSOC headquarters: “The whole world is a bit strange except thee and me, and I’m not so sure about thee.”

Where does this end? I think by extending the quote to say: “And I’m not even sure about me.”