The Orwellian Press and Our Right to Know

Edward Snowden is the source of leaks that allowed the American people to learn that their government had them under surveillance.

Not, mind you, that the government had suspected terrorists under a legitimate, court-ordered surveillance based on some sort of evidence that gave probable cause of wrong doing.

Nope.

The government had and has all of us, or at least those of us who use email and cell phones, under surveillance. It is scooping up our private thoughts and dumping them in a database to be analyzed. Then, if the analyzers want to go forward, they go to a shadowy, non-public, hidden away, behind closed doors “court” to get permission to read your mail and listen to your conversations.

Or, at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to go. We have to assume that our government, which has lied to us about so much, is telling us the truth … this time. If they aren’t, the truth may be much worse even than this sinister scenario.

Just to make a point, I want everyone to raise their hand if they know who is on this “court,” or where it meets, or, what its rules are?

Anybody?

Now, here’s the cherry on top this particular little scoop of ice cream. The prez says — and members of Congress have acceded to this claim — that he informed our “duly elected representatives” about what he was doing and that they signed off on it.

That means that the elected officials who are owned by the left were in on it. And the elected officials who are owned by the right — Republicans and Democrats both — were also in on it.

To make this even more bi-partisan, the Democratic president is only doing what the Republican president before him had done. The law which allows the most massive surveilance fishing expedition in the history of spying since the late, great Soviet Union was authored by Republican members of Congress.

In other words, everybody’s wholly-owned puppet Congressperson was in on it.

Which mean that the press that toadies to the interests that own these Congresspeople, in other words, the press that serves the same master as our “duly elected officials,” had to swing into damage control.

They aren’t going to do anything about the most massive violation of civil liberties in the history of the Republic.

The press won’t even go there.

Their plan is to kill the messenger.

It turns out that the person who told the American people what I think anyone with half a brain would agree we have a right to know is a man named Edward Snowden. He’s the leaker who “violated” the agreement he made as a condition of his employment to not talk about the things he saw on his job.

I ask you: Which has pre-eminence; the “agreement” Mr Snowden signed, or the oath every single one of these elected officials took to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution?”

Every one of the elected officials who signed off on this travesty of putting the American people under surveillance violated their oath of office. Every. Single. One.

Another question is, do the American people have a right to know their government has them under surveillance? Or is the Orwellian press correct, and the whole problem is really about how Mr Snowden “compromised” what they like to call “national security?”

The same government that put us all under the gun of government surveillance has done its best — along with its puppet press — to make Mr Snowden into evil personified. They’ve gone after him with everything they’ve got.

In the meantime, they’ve done all they can to harass and punish the reporter who wrote the story.

Because, you see, a government that puts its people under surveillance is just naturally going to be a bit hostile to the First Amendment. Governments who do things like this need darkness, not the light of a free press, to do their spying.

All this puts certain sections of the press under enormous pressure. On the one hand, their “mission” is to bring down President Obama and replace him with someone who is owned by the same folks who own them. So, they see this scandal as raw, juicy meat. On the other hand, it turns out that “their” boys and girls in Congress are just about as responsible for using gestapo tactics on the American people as the guys on the other team. It’s hard to do this right without goring their own precious ox.

The press on the “other” side of the divide has long accused the politicians they try to bring down (you know, the ones in the opposite political party) of violating “civil rights.” How to defend their guy in the White House and all his minions?

The answer my friends is obvious. Demonize the man who decided that the American people’s right to know these things trumped his employment agreement.

This is not, as the press and government claim, about “national security.”

Mr Snowden did not sell information to our “enemies.” He gave it to the American people.

And we have a right to know.

The reason people in government are so apoplectic about all this has nothing — and I repeat, nothing — to do with “keeping the American people safe.” They are enraged because they got their pants pulled down in public. Mr Snowden let everyone know that they — not him, but they — are the traitors here. They are the ones who have attacked the Constitution. They are the ones who have violated our liberties.

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that the government watchdogs, the “free press” that is supposed to keep us safe from tyranny by letting us know these things, is in the bag for the government.

The corporate press is not a free press. It’s a propaganda machine that protects the interests of its owners. It appears that in this case, the interests of its owners lie in supporting the government against the one thing that the American press has always staked its banner on — the American people’s right to know.