Tag: Rant

Originally posted at Voices on the Square

I’m so pissed i could spit, so consider this rant my virtual spitting.

I don’t care if the president is a registered Democrat – I’m not gonna play cutesy semantic games because of it. And I don’t care who started it – I’ve been pissed for a looong time about this. Now there is undeniable proof that all of our fears – fears that many of us were vocal about for more than a decade now – over what the Patriot Act could be used for are, in fact, well grounded and not some tin foil conspiracy theory. And don’t get me wrong – this is SPYING on the entire populace. Period. They may not have listened to your phone calls – YET – but they have no legitimate reason to have scooped them all up in the first place. None. This kind of overreach is EXACTLY the kind of thing (at least in spirit) the founders had in mind when they put that Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

I don’t care that technology makes it easy to do. We have a need for privacy and there is a pretty clear penumbra of privacy in the Bill of Rights. No need for privacy you say? How far do you think the Founders would have gotten if the British government did this kind of spying? How many slaves would have been able to be moved through the Underground Railroad if government had had this level of legal access to all communications?

Yeah – I don’t care if it was legal. 15 years ago it was not legal and would have been considered an affront to our Constitutionally guaranteed (a guarantee that seems quaint and antiquated now) civil liberties. That the Big Brother government has managed to tailor a law to allow them to legally get away with suspect behavior does not make it a good thing or an ethical thing. Tailoring a law to make behavior legal is what the Bush Admin did with torture. And lest we all forget – slavery was legal once too…

I don’t care if some companies have access to that information. My phone company has an interest in having my phone records – they bill me for them. The government on the other hand has no legitimate vested interest in my phone records. Marketing firms track my web surfing, fine. It bothers me, but they don’t have much power over me at all. Government on the other hand has an exponentially large amount of power over me and history is littered with examples of governments exercising that power in myriad negative ways. So yeah, companies have various facets of this info on me, but now government has the legality and apparently the want to have ALL of these various facets of information on me. Like a dossier, we all have our own private FBI file now – and not for bad or suspect behavior – just for simply existing in this country.

So our Big Brother government HAS to SPY on all of our phone calls in order to make us “safe”. God Orwell would be rolling over in his grave if he saw how much life was imitating art.

I am an unnerd.  Meaning I do not have a cell phone and I do not know how to text or twitter.  But, I do know this.  The internet is the Fifth Estate.

When our forefathers set up our government, there were three branches of government.  This is a test.  You name the three branches of government.  And a free press was called the fourth estate.  A free press was supposed to keep the government in check.  However, at this point in our nation’s history, a free press controlled by the corporations has really not kept up to its vaulted position of keeping a watchful eye on the government, or themselves for that matter.

With the advent of the internet the arrival of websites such as thestarshallowgazette, dailykos, talkingpointsmemo, truthout among just a few, and I might add, just a tiny fraction of what is out there.  It has fallen upon us to create the Fifth Estate.  We are now the voices of the people, because we are the people.

It cannot be relied upon the current Fourth Estate to disseminate all the facts without the spin of political or corporate overtones.  More or less blatant subliminal messaging.  Propaganda, whatever.  I understand that not all websites display the truth and/or are filled with something other than politeness for all.  To each his own.  But, I sincerely believe there are more of us out here in the Fifth Estate that believe in doing the right thing.  The truth will prevail.

We have all this information gathering at our fingertips, cell phones, cameras, etc.  Can you imagine if Kennedy had been assassinated last week, just how many photos, video would have been available?  Then we would really know about the Grassy Knoll.  When we speak through the Fifth Estate, good things can and do happen.  Ask Rush about his advertisers for an example.  Newspapers are being purchased by large corporations and what Murdoch has done to the media in that regards does not bode well for what going to be in the local daily that arrives somewhere out by the corner under the juniper.

Call me cynical, but I have been cheated, lied to and downright robbed at some point in my life by corporations, especially large ones and having them control what I read with my coffee is not what I want to start my day.  I rely on the Fifth Estate for my search of the truth.  I read more than one website on any given issue or subject.  I read the comments on the stories, pro and con.  This is us folks.  We are the Fifth Estate.  Let’s protect it and use it for good for all.  Thank you.  

And I agree with almost everything he said.

Especially the part where he said “Both parties will sell out the middle class faster than Jim Cramer can yell ‘booyah.'”