Meet the New Boss

So, you thought you could do anything you wanted on the Internet and not be watched by the powers that be. Ha.

Here we are some time after the Snowden affair--does anyone thing of Snowden in Catch-22? Am I right about that? It was Snowden who dies in the plane, driving Yossarian crazy, right? Anyway, I digress. Well, it seems that the world's political leaders, i.e. the big ass countries, including the United States, are monitoring every bit of our use of the Internet from email to surfing, and even our snail mail. They listen in on phone calls. They record every juicy bit. They spy on their wives and girl friends, and they assure us that they are doing this to protect us from the big, bad terrorist lurking under your bed. QUICK, the phone call is coming from inside your house!!!

Ironically, it is coming from inside your house. The terrorists want to take away our freedoms according to this and that rabid teapartier or Goper. But we are so much smarter than they are. We are taking away our own freedoms before they do! Take that evildoer! Okay, it takes the intellectual wattage of a fridge light to figure out that there is some serious hypocrisy going on here. Too bad your average American has somewhere less than a tenth that wattage. So, we must ask the question, why are they doing this? Since we are more likely to be hit by lightning shooting from a shark's ass while it rides a unicycle across your lawn than die in a terrorist attack, why do we need all this "protection," this surveillance?

Here are a couple of theories. First, the more they know about you the consumer, the more they can sell you and service you! That's right, it's just basic capitalism working overtime to make sure that the flow of useless crap never stops coming your way. The best way to ensure everyone is on the same page is to make everyone part of the corporation, including the government. What do you think that all these tea party weasels are about? They just want gubbamint off their backs so they can do their god damned best to make a mint selling whatever no matter how much it hurts individuals or the environment. In Kansas, Wisconsin, and North Carolina--as well as other states, the drive is on to remove the voting lever from the hands of the people and put it where it belongs--the fascist state. That's why we need a surveillance state. We can't have terrorists insisting that they have rights! Holy crap.

Theory number two. The government knows that, with the advent of peak oil and the oncoming shitstorm of global warming, chaos is around the corner. The U.S. government is preparing for civil unrest. They have been since 2001. Homeland Security grants to up-armor civilian police departments have created tens of thousands of mini-gestapo units throughout the US. Each podunk Mayberry out there now has a swat team equipped with sniper rifles, military assault weapons, armored personnel carriers, bullet-proof vests, drones, electronic surveillance equipment, and a comprehensive computer network designed to coordinate and thwart any and all protest. The NSA spy network obviously looks in on Americans to prevent any home-grown attempt to throw the bastards out of office.

But there is one problem. When the temperature rises, and crops fail, when oil production begins to plummet, when fracking poisons most of the aquifers, when people are arrested at their state capitals for singing, we will see a deep anger sweep out from the heartland and they will demonize someone like immigrants or people of color or gays or democrats or you and they will come for you and they will torture you and they will put a rough rope around your neck and jerk you up into a tree where you will slowly strangle. Ha. You thought the people would rise up and knock out the fascist bastards!?! WRONG. People are stupid, easily misled herd animals who will gladly jump on the fascism train.

Here is the truly ironic part. When the chaos starts, the governments, local, state and federal, will become increasingly uncoordinated. They bought themselves a high-tech white elephant system of computers, gas and diesel hungry vehicles, and electronic communications dependent on a fragile energy dependent network. While they may have the advantage for a short while, soon the people will catch up. And more importantly, they will be just as susceptible to starvation, heat exhaustion, flooding, superstorms, new and unexpected diseases, and all the other effects of the four horsemen.

So, the bad news is we are just a whisker's breadth away from a nightmare fascist society. The good news is that when the shit hits the fan, it will fail as surely as the rest of the energy dependent society will fail. But that is also the bad news as well. For a good while, your local team of bubbas and thugs will rule, until we kill them off.

So, the die has been cast. The press, which should have been the watchdog during all this, ready to raise the alarm when democracy is threatened, has been captured by the corporations. Now they are the propaganda arm for the fascists. The few remaining journalists left are being hounded by fascist governments. Whistle blowing is now a crime. When a soldier blows the whistle on war crimes, clear and obvious war crimes, that soldier is prosecuted, and the war criminals are let go, ignored, given medals, and generally left to commit additional war crimes.

Not that Americans would have done anything except change the channel if they had been exposed to reporting that was honest, but now, any chance of a press that holds government and business accountable is over, done, shot dead.

Enjoy the show people.