The authority of the Führer has now been wholly established. Votes are no longer taken. The Führer decides. All this is going much faster than we had dared to hope.You know, despite Shrub's
assurances to the contrary, a database of
every domestic phone call ever made does seem unreasonably intrusive - especially after the token attempt at an enquiry was
killed off by the very agency that was to be investigated. Worse, it smacks of Government by
PHB's - where everyone is presumed guilty of
something, and fear keeps all the peon's heads down.
Given a few degrees of seperation, everyone's connected to something hinky. In the absence of any real suspects, criminal investigators like to go fishing. This tool only makes it easier for them.
"Mr. Unpatriotic, government records indicate that last week you phoned your mother, who is in regular contact with her landscaper, who sends money home to his parents in San Salvador. Were you aware that his father's a member of a Communist party, and has a cousin with links to a known terrorist organization?"This is how fascist societies are run, from governments to Wal-Mart. And the path from democracy to dictatorship is quite clearly laid out. The
first step is removing the would-be dictator from any obligation to the law. It's a step Shrub has taken no fewer than
108 times in his first term alone. And dictatorship is, in fact, the point - domestic surveillance is
useless for anything but exercising the Will to Control. The sad fact is that the
Decider and his controllers possess it in abundance, and we - all of the rest of us - lack it.
A quick update - I see that General Michael Hayden, who's been tapped to lead the CIA after the unreported-upon sex-for-influence scandal,
was a key instigator of the administration's wiretapping efforts. The tug-of-war between administration policy wonks and the legitimate intelligence community has been brought to an end.
