If you haven’t read it already, be sure to see “Anatomy of the Deep State” at Moyers and Company. See also Juan Cole’s critique, which makes some good points.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
If you haven’t read it already, be sure to see “Anatomy of the Deep State” at Moyers and Company. See also Juan Cole’s critique, which makes some good points.
Scary…
But not surprising.
When technology changes, humans always figure out a way to misuse it.
We are adaptive creatures – seemingly hell-bent on self-destruction.
I think Juan Cole is on the right track. He mentions a federal judge calling the NSA’s operations “Orwellian,” and obviously that judge isn’t the first to invoke Orwell here. Which I find annoying first of all because it really isn’t accurate, and now Juan Cole’s comments have got me thinking it can be downright counterproductive.
I even read an essay where the author acknowledged that, OK, we don’t have the Thought Police, we don’t have the Ministry of Love, no newspeak, no two-minute hate, but the NSA is Orwellian nonetheless because it just is.
But if you want to invoke Orwell you should be aware that he was very much more concerned with thought control than he was with surveillance. Surveillance is part of the package, of course (oh, and by the way in 1984 it’s open surveillance, which is another difference–we don’t have Big Brother Barack is Watching You posters either), but what he’s really looking at is how you get people to internalize their own oppression. What the book is really about is how Winston Smith comes to love Big Brother.