Sex, Lies and the NSA

For a private person, I am not terribly possessive of my privacy.  I use google maps, so my location can be found by any government agency within a few seconds.  I wouldn't really be happy to let my neighbors know what kind of porn I watch, but I am pretty sure that it is not unusual.  I have accepted that just about everything I do on, or near, a computer can be tracked if anyone cares to notice.  But that is not the point of this rant.

In a world where everone is watched, the real power is in who is allowed to keep secrets.  I am willing to give up my porn viewing habits, but then I want to know who is watching what and when.  I want to be able to walk in to any NSA site and demand a tour.  I want to know that there are no secret ingredients to any food I buy, no undisclosed business practices, no secret meetings by any government official or corporate head anywhere at all.

I see far more problem in the current government crackdown on whistleblowers than in the fact that they were spying on us in the first place.  Anyone who was paying attention has assumed this was going on for the last several decades anyway.  We are all shocked and such, but really we are shocked that anyone managed to say it out loud and live.

So I say bring it on.  You can see what kind of wierdness I watch, but I want the source code to the voting machines.  I want every memo written by the police chief of Baltimore.  I want to know how many mistresses every Senator or Congresscritter has.  I want to know exactly what we are negotiating on in the TPP.

No secrets.  Anywhere.  By anyone.

Or you can stay out of my files.

Possible phoenix.

Some of the smartest people I know are saying we are looking at the death of America, and I have every reason to believe them.  We are sending our jobs and wealth overseas.  The government has increasingly been turned over to a revolving door with industrial lobbyists.   Our elections are bought and paid for by what more and more looks like an oligarchy.  We are being hollowed out, like a skull meant for a trophy on a rich man's desk.

I have looked at the situation up and down, and I believe them.  America, as it is, is a lost cause.  However, I know too much history to despair just yet.  Many societies have gone down in flames, only to rise from the ashes.  But note that the society that results is never quite the same.

As I see it, it is the white American culture that has run its course.  There is much evil that our white patriarchal culture has caused, but at one time it was vigorous and confident.  We were the nation of Paul Bunyan, Jim Bowie and Mike Fink.  We built railroads (yes, I know how much of that was chinese labor). We conquered a continent.  We went to space.  We built an empire that is still the mightiest in the world.  But now, we huddle in our gated neighborhoods.  We are terrified of terrorists.  We cannot create, or even dream.  The zombie apocalypse has become our nightmare.

But this is not true of the "minorities" within our walls and therein lies our possible salvation.  I walk around my formerly all-white neighborhood, and I see the vital culture I remember from my childhood, but they mostly speak spanish.  I look at the music, the ideas, the enthusiasm in our culture, and it is mostly borrowed from those we despise.  Cultures mix and blend, and if there is any hope here, it is that this blending can bring us back out of our decay.