The World’s Longest and Quietest Coup d’Etat

I woke up with a start this morning.  “What is it, Ace?” asked Patty.

“I don’t know,” I muttered sleepily.  “There’s something different.”  I looked around.  “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“Different how?” she asked.  “Different good or different bad.”

“Good, it feels good.”

Her eyes swept the room, and then she gave a little laugh.  “It’s sunshine, Ace.  With daylight savings time, and after that long stretch of gray days and white snows, it’s really spring!  We’re waking up to sunshine!”

So I was feeling pretty chipper after I’d had my bacon and eggs and cereal and banana and orange juice and was on my way to work.  And there, just leaving the house down the block was my neighbor’s foreign exchange student.

Why not?  Feeling expansive, I gave a beep of the horn.  When he looked back at me, I rolled down the window and yelled, “I’m going your way.  Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

He trudged over, as loaded down as a prospector’s mule.  “Good morning, sir,” he said.  “Thank you for stopping.  I would welcome a lift.”

“You’re always carrying a heap of books, Abdul,” I said, “but you might have broken the record this time.”

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “my name is Aadil, not Abdul.”

“Oh.  Sorry about that,” I apologized.  “It’s hard to remember strange combinations of letters that don’t mean anything.  It’s like those tests where they ask you to memorize a list of nonsense words.  They go in one ear and out the other.”  

“Yes, I am familiar with such experiments,” he said carefully.  “In Arabic, my name means ‘honorable’ or ‘just,‘ but of course it is alien to your culture.”

“Why all the books?  Got a big test coming up?”

His face lit up.  “No, no test,” he said.  “I have changed the direction of my research, and there is so much background I must master in a very brief time.  But this is truly an exciting opportunity for me.”

“How so?” I said.  “What’re you working on?”

“My dissertation is an attempt to statistically verify the proposition that democracy in government is directly proportional to the degree of income equality.”

“Could you break that down to ordinary English?” I said.

He paused.  “The idea is that the more evenly the wealth of a country is shared, the more it operates democratically.  And the more unevenly the wealth is divided, with more and more of the wealth going to fewer and fewer people, the less it operates democratically.”

“Ah, I get it,” I said.  “The more equal the incomes, the more democracy.  The less equal the incomes, the less democracy.  So what’s the new direction in your research that has you all fired up?”

He hesitated.  “The coup d’état of April 2,” he said finally.  

“Coup d’état?” I said. “Where?”

“Where?” he said, looking puzzled.  “In the United States.  Surely as a newsman, sir, you have been following a story of such magnitude closely.”

“A coup d’état in the United States?” I said, as we got caught by a red light.  “What are you talking about?”

  “The conversion of your form of government from a democracy to an oligarchy.” he explained.  “The coup that culminated just two weeks ago when your Supreme Court took the final step in overthrowing your democracy.”

A cloud must have drifted overhead.  The bright sunlight of a few minutes ago was dimming.  “Overthrowing our democracy?” I said.  “I haven’t heard anything about it.  Are you sure?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.  Of course this has been a long time unfolding:  the world’s longest and quietest coup d’état!  It had none of the usual trappings.  No troops rolling into the heart of the capital in tanks, no gunfire, no generals making announcements that they would be ruling until a new civilian leader was installed, no new figurehead promoted to head of state.  With its lack of dramatic video footage, the coup simply wasn’t made for TV.”

I was starting to feel dizzy.  “The Supreme Court did that?” How?”

“With the McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission ruling they delivered on April 2,” he said, as if he expected me to know what he was talking about.  “It follows their earlier Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission of January, 2010.  You may remember our conversation about that decision last fall.”

“Now that you mention it, yes,” I said, and my head was still swimming.  Or was it the world around me that was swirling, at the same time it seemed to be growing darker and darker?

“All it required was the votes of five of your Supreme Court justices, as they are called.  Are their titles not ironic, sir?  They formally withdrew control of your government from the people in common and ceded it to a wealthy few.  The Court’s latest decision was simply the crowning act, if you will, bestowing constitutional blessing on the coup.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said, shaking my head to clear it.  “Why is it so dark?  Is an eclipse taking place today?”

“You didn’t notice the coup, sir?” he asked.  “According to my preliminary polling, that is one of its most remarkable aspects.  Few of your citizens are even aware of what has happened.  Yet with the Court’s decisions, the democratic legitimacy of your government was destroyed.  Your elections have been replaced by selections.”

The dizziness was back.  “Selections?  Instead of elections?”

“The wealthy few will now have carte blanche to select candidates, spend as they wish on campaigns, and usher their choices into office.”  

This guy was a raving lunatic, I thought, wondering if it was safe to be in the car with him.  “Don’t be absurd,” I told him.  “It will never come to that.” 

He just looked at me, a little sadly, then reached into a folder and pulled out several sheets of paper.  “It is already happening, and from now on it will become the norm.  Please take a look at this material I printed from the Internet a few days ago,” he said, and handed it to me.  

I pulled over to the curb, and he sat quietly, looking out the window, while I turned on the dome light and read it.  It was a report on a four-day retreat for Republican donors, hosted by Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas multi-billionaire who made his fortune with gambling casinos.  He spent $100 million backing Republican candidates in 2012, and plans to spend more the next time around.  He had summoned several GOP presidential prospects to audition in front of his guests and himself--including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Scott Walker.

“The guy summons potential presidents to his conference as if they were auditioning for the lead in a play he’s producing?” I said, incredulous.

“As you can see,” he said.   “Here is some more information you may have missed.”  He handed me more papers.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this dome light,” I said.  “That’s not bright enough to read by.  Reach under your seat and get me the flashlight, will you?”  He looked at me oddly, and then pulled out the flashlight and handed it to me.

I skimmed the articles.  The Koch brothers and their ally Art Pope, a millionaire discount department store owner whose chains include Roses, Maxway, Super Dollar, Treasure Mart, and Value Mart stores, had financed a takeover of the North Carolina state government by the most far-right elements of the Republican Party.  The Koch-Pope-financed governor, Pat McCrory, had then put Pope in charge of the North Carolina state budget.

“They flipped the government of an entire state by only spending a few million dollars?”  I asked.  I was starting to sweat, although it was growing colder and even darker outside.

“Your state governments seem to be relatively easy to purchase,” Aadil replied.  “But now that money is no object, the federal government will likely be just as simple to take over.  The money it will take to do it may seem like a fortune to people like ourselves, but it is a pittance to people at the top of the income ladder.”

“What in the world was the Court thinking?” I wondered.

“They believe that spending your money to support a candidate is a form of free speech,” he reminded me.

“And people who don’t have any money?  Who are broke?”

“Obviously they can’t speak--at least through TV ads, mailings, phone banks, and all of the other expensive mainstays of modern political campaigns.  If one’s home is being foreclosed on, or if one has huge medical bills, or works for minimum wage, or is out of work, or any of a number of other possibilities, one simply doesn’t have the money to ‘speak’ in the political arena.”

“And people who have a lot of money?”  

“They are able to talk nonstop.  And pass it on to their children, who will be able to speak even louder and longer.”

“B-b-but that’s unfair,” I sputtered.

“Oh, no doubt,” said Aadil.  “And also undemocratic.  As I said, it’s oligarchic.  Your court’s rulings have swept away any pretense of equality in the electoral process.”  

“You sound happy about it,” I said, with some bitterness.

“Oh no, sir,” he said.  “Please forgive me if my scholarly zeal has left that impression.  The death of your democracy saddens me greatly.  But for a poor student like myself, to be given this opportunity, to be here on the scene at the moment this has occurred--it is an unexpected blessing.  Praise Allah that I have been put here to witness and chronicle these events.  I pray I may be worthy of the task.”

“Listen,” I said, “I’m feeling a little strange, and it’s getting so dark.  I hope you don’t mind walking the rest of the way; you can keep the flashlight.  And would you mind calling me a taxi with your cellphone?”

“Oh sir!” he exclaimed, as I swayed in my seat.  “Please forgive me!  I had no idea that shining the light on your nation’s affairs would lead you into such darkness.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

It’s Just the Dream’s File

It was one of those sunny days we’ve been getting between the snows, temperatures in the low 60s, while the buds on the trees and the early spring flowers stayed bundled up, wondering whether it was safe yet to take a peek.  

I decided to take advantage of the break in the weather and walk Scrappy over to the park.  He was almost frantic, trying to mark every tree we passed, and my arms were wearing out trying to tug him along.  “Let’s give it a break, Scrappy,” I told him, and dropped down on a bench beside Fred, one of our longtime neighbors.

When he didn’t immediately say hello, I looked at him more closely.  “Hey, Fred,” I said, “are you okay?  You look a little shaky.”  

“Hi, Ace,” he said.  “Sorry, guess I was preoccupied there.”

“No problem,” I reassured him.  “Something wrong?  You don’t look so good.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he said.  “I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad dream, that’s all.  I had a hard time getting back to sleep, and I haven’t been able to put it behind me yet.”

“Is it something you can talk about?” I asked.  “Maybe that would help.”

“There’s no reason not to talk about it,” he said.  “In the dream I left a copy of my psychoanalyst’s file about our sessions lying on the dining room table while I went upstairs to find a dictionary.  When I got back downstairs, I found Viola reading the file, and I just went nuts.”

“I didn’t realize you were seeing a ...” I began.

“I’m not,” he said.  “I’ve never seen a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist or anyone like that.  That’s all the dream’s idea.”

“Oh.  Hmm.  Okay, what then?”

“I screamed at her, I told her anyone could see that it was marked ‘confidential’ and she had invaded my privacy and done something unforgivable.  She kept trying to calm me down, but I wouldn’t have it.  I told her this was a breach of trust between us and that we were through.  She grabbed my arm and pleaded with me, but I shook her off and raged around the house, yelling and smashing things.  It just kept going on and on.  When I woke up, my stomach was churning, and I’ve been upset ever since.  And I don’t even know why.  It was just a dream.”

“Wow!” I said, “wonder what was in that file?”

He glanced at me sharply.  “There is no file,” he said.  “It’s just the dream’s file.”

“But the dream must have had some idea of what would be in a file like that,” I speculated.  “Maybe you have some secret you’re ashamed to have Viola find.”

“Sure there are things I’ve said or done that I’d rather Viola didn’t know about,” he said.  “But after thirty years of marriage, she’s seen and managed to forgive the worst of me.  I don’t think this is about what might or might not be in a file.”

“So what’s the issue then?” I asked.

“I keep trying to figure that out,” he said.  “It has something to do with respecting each other’s privacy.  With honoring the other person’s right to decide whether or not to share something with you.  With the boundaries of intimacy.  And she didn’t ask.  She just saw it and picked it up and read it.  I felt violated in some horrible way that I can’t quite explain or describe.”

“That must be pretty important to you, if you were going to call it quits after thirty years of marriage and three kids.”

He hung his head wearily.  “I guess so.  I just don’t know why the whole thing came up in my dream.”

We sat there silently for a while, both caught up in the aftermath of something real in the unreal.

Finally I broke the silence.  “This may be a long shot,” I said, “but have you been paying any attention to the news reports on ways the NSA is spying on all of us?”

“Not much,” he said.  “Why?”

© Tony Russell, 2014

Who’s Interested in Ancient History?

I was setting out our trash when Ann Willard came up the street, walking their St. Bernard, Boris.  “How’ya doing, Ann?” I said.  “Have a good holiday?”

She looked a little red-faced, but that was probably the stiff, cold wind gusting up from the river.  Or being a hundred pound woman being dragged by a two hundred pound dog.  “I don’t want to sound like a complainer,” she said, “but we’ve had better.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.  “It’s not Dean, is it?  He hasn’t had a relapse with that ‘acceptance’ thing?”

“No, no,” she said.  “It’s our daughter Jeannie.”

Jeannie is a few years older than Kevin.  Nice girl, friendly, kind of the perky type.  She’s off to college somewhere--should be a sophomore or maybe a junior now.  “Is she okay?” I asked.  “She hasn’t caught that flu that’s going around, has she?”

“Nothing like that,” said Ann, “although I thought she might be coming down sick at first.  She was too quiet.  Serious.  Would go for walks by herself, and look up at the sky.  And she had this... what’s the word I’m looking for?... this quizzical expression on her face.  It looked unnatural on her.  I said to Dean, ‘There’s something different about her, but I can’t put my finger on it.’  And he said, ‘It’s her cellphone.  She’s not using her cellphone.  And she hasn’t been driving; she walks everywhere’.”

“Not using her cellphone?” I said, baffled.

“Oh, you know how it is with these kids, Ace.  Their cellphones are like another bodily organ for them.  They can’t live without it.  You’re sitting in church, praying, and glance up, and half the kids in the congregation are hunched over their cellphones, texting away.  I’ve got to give Dean credit.  He spotted it, and I’d missed it.” 

“A drastic change in behavior like that....  You’re not thinking it’s drugs?” I asked hesitantly.

“Honestly, I didn’t know what to think,” she said.  “So when we were cleaning up the kitchen after supper last night, just the two of us, I just came out and asked her about it.”

“What did she have to say, if it’s okay to talk about it?”

“She hemmed and hawed, but I finally got it out of her.  She said that right before she left campus, they’d had a speaker in her political science class.  Some newspaper man talking about government surveillance.”

“Huh,” I said, “what would be disturbing about that?”

“Apparently this guy was really far out.”

“Yeah?  What kinds of things did he have to say?”

  “That’s the funny part.  Mostly he just asked questions.”

She paused, and I wasn’t sure she was going to go on.  Boris was clearly getting restless, and his four feet determined to move on were gaining traction against her two feet trying to stay.

“Questions?  Like what?”

“Well, the first one was ‘How many of you think our government is ideal--fair, honest, open, efficient, trustworthy, with liberty and justice for all--and always will be?  That there isn’t, and never will be, a reason to complain or protest about anything it does or says?’”

I snorted.  “That’s ridiculous!  I love this country, but come on!  No country is perfect.  This isn’t utopia!  There are plenty of things to complain about with our government, and always will be.  We go through spells where we do some downright stupid and scary things.  But that’s true of every other country too.”

“Sure,” she said.  “I think that was his point.  Then he asked them to raise their hands if they’d ever heard about the Palmer Raids, where the U.S. Attorney General organized raids on foreign-born workers, who were beaten, arrested, brutally interrogated, and then deported.  All of that without trials, for nothing more than exercising their right to free speech.  Nobody raised a hand, of course.  I mean, who’s heard of the Palmer Raids?”

“Not me,” I said.  “But then I’ve been kind of tied up the last month or so with the playoffs and the Super Bowl.”

“I googled it.  They took place back in 1919-1920,” she said.  “I believe that predates the NFL by two or three years.”

“Huh,” I said.  “Predated the NFL?  What did they manage to do with themselves?”

“I can’t imagine.  Maybe they had families,” she said--somewhat tartly, I thought.  “But back to this speaker.  The next thing he asked was if they had heard about the FBI’s tapping Martin Luther King’s phones, spying on him, and--when they found out about some sexual escapades--trying to blackmail him into stopping his protests.  Quite a few students raised their hands.”

“I seem to remember hearing about that somewhere,” I said.

  “Then he asked them if they knew about the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the US--with the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Nation of Islam among the targets.  Did they know of the FBI’s role in the murder of Black Panther Party members and the ultimate destruction of the Party?  They’d never heard any of that.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“It’s hard for me to remember everything Jeannie said he asked, but I think the next thing was if they knew about President Nixon’s using the IRS to target political enemies, and CIA people to burgle Democratic headquarters.  But apparently Nixon is as remote as James Madison as far as these kids are concerned.  Only two students raised their hands.”

“You can’t blame the kids,” I said.  “Who’s interested in ancient history?”

“Then he asked them if they knew that the government orchestrated the destruction of the Occupy protests that were spreading across the country back in the winter of 2011-2012.  That it conducted surveillance of protestors, shared information with banks and universities and local police, and provided strategies for dismantling local encampments.  Nobody raised a hand.  They’d all heard of the Occupy Movement, but none of them knew about the coordinated effort to destroy it.”

“What was his point?”

“He didn’t say, but it seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“Uhh...,” I began, but Boris evidently thought I was growling, and turned toward me, his body stiffening.

Ann ignored him.  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ace!  He was just showing that governments, definitely including ours, are as fallible as anything else people lay their hands to.  Sooner or later, some leader with access to information about people’s private lives will use that information to go after organizations critical of government policies or supporters of causes the leader doesn’t like.   The government will try to stamp out legitimate protests and to crush opposition.  His questions were meant to show that that kind of thing has already happened here not once but many times.”

I was getting interested.  “This guy must have been a real trip,” I mused.  “What did he say next?”

“The next part was kind of scary for Jeannie.  He asked, ‘How many of you have led blameless, guilt-free lives?  Have never said or done anything you would be ashamed or embarrassed for the world to know?  Have nothing you would mind your parents, your friends, and everybody in this room hearing about you?’”

“Wow!  What kind of question is that to ask?” I said.

“Apparently it made kids in the class kind of nervous too,” said Ann.  “They were all looking sideways at each other.  Jeannie said you could almost see them thinking.  About that fake ID, about cheating on their girlfriend or boyfriend, about plagiarizing on a paper, getting treated for an STD, some shoplifting, bouncing a few checks, spending time on porn sites, lying to a friend or a professor, being sexually assaulted, having an abortion, getting mad and threatening to kill somebody, smoking pot and trying some of the harder stuff, visiting a counselor because you’re depressed or having panic attacks....”

“I get it,” I said.  “Life.”

Ann sighed.  “Exactly.  We like to put a pretty face on it, but underneath the makeup, we all have complexion problems.”

I was really curious now.  “And then?”  

“The next question was similar.  ‘How about your family and friends?  Are they all exemplary in every way?  Nothing in their lives they wouldn’t want in a headline in the morning paper?’”

“And you were thinking Jeannie might have started thinking about Dean and some of his mental health issues?”

“Well, that, but... you know, I’m not perfect either.  And some of Jeannie’s friends have gone through some pretty rough times.”

“I guess we all have,” I admitted.  

“Then he asked people to raise their hands if they already knew that the government has secret backdoor entrances to all databases, which it then searches for information, and that the NSA sifts through records of internet activity to show nearly everything a person does online.  A few raised their hands.”

“Is that some of the material Snowden leaked?” I asked.

“Just a tiny fraction,” said Ann.  “Then he talked about the way our cellphone calls are not only monitored, but the cellphones themselves are used to track our movements, every minute, where we go and who we meet with.  And about new technology being adopted that reads our license plates whenever we’re on the road, showing where we’re going and where we stop.”

“What!?” I said, startled.  “That’s bad stuff!  I mean, if you start to put those things together, and think of all the power information like that gives the government to intimidate and blackmail, and then factor in the temptation to use all that information once you have it....  it makes it a near-certainty that sooner or later the government will use that power to monitor and destroy opposition, it ....”  I was fumbling around, having trouble finishing my sentences.

“It doesn’t look like the freedom we brag about?” said Ann.  “It sounds like 1984, The Sequel?  Like the machinery is being put in place for government control to become almost absolute?”  

“That’s it,” I said.  “But that’s a terrible thing to tell college kids who just want to flirt and go to football games and keggers and get an education on the side.”

“Not to mention the effect on their parents when they go home,” Ann sighed.  At that moment, when she was momentarily off guard, Boris gave a lunge, nearly bowling her over, and I watched as he tore off down the street, Ann hanging on for dear life, screeching futilely for him to stop as he lumbered after our cat.  I wasn’t worried; the cat can take care of itself.

© Tony Russell, 2014

It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 2

“You said that the F.B.I. cleared Edward Snowden of acting with anyone else or as part of a spy ring.  Why are we even talking about this then?  How can Mike Rogers pretend the F.B.I. report doesn’t exist, go on TV, and accuse Snowden of being a spy for the Russian secret police?”

“When you’re trying to sell a lie,” said Tom, “you don’t acknowledge the truth and apologize.  You don’t shut your mouth and slink away.  You ignore the truth and boldly repeat the lie.  You repeat it over and over, and in this case Snowden’s attackers got TV talk shows to offer them a forum to spew their falsehoods on three major networks on one Sunday.  Tell me, doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange--this massive, one-sided, simultaneous attack on Snowden?” 

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “it does seem weird.  It’s just too great a coincidence to think that three networks all decided independently to feature attacks on Snowden on the same day.  Somebody had to have coordinated it.  Orchestrated it.  To pretend it just happened accidentally is as likely as numerous Japanese planes all just happening to descend on Pearl Harbor at the same time on the same day in 1941.”

Tom nodded agreement.  “I think of it as ‘the sound of one tongue flapping’,” he said.  “The congressional leadership on intelligence, the NSA,  the administration, and the main stream media have formed a chorus, all singing the same melody with the same lyrics, trying to drown out Mr. Snowden’s message.”

“I don’t know if many people have followed all the details, though, Tom.  It’s a lot to keep up with.”  

“I’m not sure people have to, Ace.  Besides looking at the evidence, which we’ve already done, there’s a different method people often use to decide who’s likely to be telling the truth.  It’s not based on a legal model, with evidence and witnesses, but it’s a rough-and-ready method that people have been using for centuries.” 

“You mean torture?” I gasped.

“No, no,” he said, startled.  “I mean just asking yourself what people stand to gain in a situation.  That often makes pretty clear who’s likely to be lying.”

“Ah, I’ve got it now.  Sure.  Shoot,” I said.

  “Not a good choice of words, Ace,” said Tom.  “Several anonymous members of our spy agencies have said they’d like to kill Mr. Snowden.”

“Oh, right.  Sorry,” I said.

“Anyway,” Tom went on, “What did Mr. Snowden gain when he decided to take his knowledge of the NSA’s secret surveillance to the public?”  Again he started ticking off points on his fingers.  “It cost him his well-paying job and his career.  It threw him into exile, separated him from his family and girlfriend, held a strong likelihood of capture and long-term imprisonment, exposed him to personal attacks and slander, and--as I mentioned--drew predictable threats of assassination.”

“That’s a lot to sacrifice,” I said.

“Those are losses--enormous losses,” agreed Tom.  “So what did he gain?  He’s poorer, lonelier, isolated, and under attack.  He knew full well what the consequences would be when he made his decision.  His only gains are intangibles: a clear conscience and the knowledge that he has offered the public a chance to make an informed decision on living under a surveillance state.  He says that if he ends up in a ditch somewhere, it still will have been worth it.”

“When you lay it out that way, he’s somebody you just have to admire,” I said.  “I don’t think I could do what he did.”

“Don’t think badly of yourself,” Tom said kindly.  “Cesar Chavez once said that ‘To be a man is to suffer for others.‘  I don’t think Chavez meant that in a sexist way; I think he meant that shouldering your responsibilities to your family, your community, or your country, even at great personal cost, is the price you must be willing to pay if you want to hold on to your self-respect and your integrity.  I’m sure that, faced with a similar choice, you’d make the right decision.”

I didn’t know what to say for a minute.  I hadn’t expected his last comment.  It may have been the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me--and I wasn’t sure he was right.  “Thanks, Tom,” I managed.  

“You’re welcome, Ace,” he said.  “You know, integrity isn’t easy or cheap.  If it were, there would be a Hallelujah Chorus of whistleblowers in the NSA, and congress would be an honored gallery of respected public servants.  Edward Snowden was in a position where he had a choice to make, but in some respects, everyone he worked with was faced with the same choice.  He could continue to be a faceless part of an enormous secret bureaucracy that is striking at the very heart of our democracy.  Or he could be a man, expose the secrets and lies, and suffer the consequences.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So you've laid out what Snowden lost and gained.  But what about his attackers?”

Tom paused and thought for a moment.  “We can only make guesses as to what Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul stand to gain,” he said, “but they stand to lose nothing--with the possible exception of self-respect.  They have cast their lot with the powers that be, and there’s safety and security in that.  They’ve received publicity and an additional measure of fame.  Their political fortunes will continue to prosper, since they’ve proven to be reliably on the side of  secrecy, control, and authoritarianism.  At the worst, they will remain well paid, powerful, and ‘respectable’.”  

“So they made out pretty well in the deal,” I said.

He held me with his eyes.  “That’s the world’s way of looking at it, Ace.  There’s another way.  ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” 

That’s what makes conversations with Tom so unsettling.  You’re having a conversation at a normal level about some topic, and then suddenly he takes you to a different place entirely.  I didn’t feel corrected exactly.  More like uncomfortably enlarged.

“We can’t read their minds or hearts,” Tom went on.  “We don’t know what their motives were or what pressure was brought to bear on them.  Still, from the outside, it’s hard not to be skeptical.  Perhaps they were attempting to divert the public’s attention from their own collusion in hiding the extent to which the NSA is spying on all of us.  The Constitution expects congress to put a check on attempts by the executive branch to grab dangerous power.  Instead, these leaders have acted as bipartisan enablers for the dismantling of democracy.  It goes against the grain to speak of people that way, but what else is there to do when they’re apologists for the construction of a police state that makes 1984 look like Summerhill?”

“You seem to be describing them not as real leaders or powerful decision makers, but as servants of someone or something else,” I said.

“I guess I am,” said Tom.  “Despite the high offices Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul hold, I believe it would be a mistake to see them as anything other than pawns in the hands of the national security state.  Mr. Snowden has challenged the nature and the intentions of the security apparatus, so he must be condemned, slandered, discredited, or silenced by any means necessary.  Now, in both a geographic and a spiritual sense,  he's beyond their control, and that must infuriate them.  In a way few of us can claim to be, he is a free man.  He has been willing to risk everything to share that freedom.  I just don’t know if the rest of us are willing to take the risk of joining him.”

“Why’s he doing it, Tom?  What motivates him?”

“That’s a good question, Ace.  Who knows?  It’s hard to discredit him in the usual ways, because his critics can’t pin a label on him and pigeonhole him. I’ve come to think of him as an ‘odd prophet.’  He’s leading a solitary, almost cloistered life, devoid of luxuries and even ordinary things most of us think of as necessities.  He’s living the lifestyle of a monk, but doesn’t seem to be religious.  He’s not preaching fire and brimstone, nor is he a political firebrand, out to destroy capitalism on the one hand or to promote socialism or communism on the other.  He’s not a Democrat or a Republican.” 

“So we’re stuck with thinking of him with negatives?  What he’s not?”

“I don’t think so, Ace.  He’s an honest man and a courageous man.  He seems patriotic; he has been careful not to damage our country.   The best way I can come up with to describe his motivation and faith is that they’re those of a good systems analyst: ‘garbage in, garbage out.’   He approaches democracy as if it’s a kind of computer for making decisions.  Citizens need clean data coming in.  Instead, we were getting bad numbers and lies, and that was something he ultimately couldn’t tolerate.  So he provided us with clean data--the truth about the NSA’s spying--and said now the decision is up to us.” 

He stopped.  “Thanks for listening to all that, Ace,” he said.  “That was almost as good as shoveling snow.”

“You’re welcome,” I told him.  “If you’ll hand me that shovel and hold my dog for a minute, I think I could use a dose of that manual meditation myself.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 1

I was out walking my dog the other morning, and my neighbor Tom--known locally as “the gentle radical”--was out shoveling the snow from his walk.  He was puffing, and I asked him if he’d like to take a break and give me a turn at the shovel.

“Thanks for the offer, Ace,” he said with a smile, “but I need to do things like this to work off my frustration.  If I couldn’t shovel snow, rake leaves, and tend to my garden, I think the top of my head might periodically blow off.”

The dog had lain down at my feet and wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere, and Tom seemed ready for some friendly conversation.  “What’s challenged your blood pressure this time?” I asked.

“The media,” he said.  “Especially TV at the moment.  The way they handle this Snowden affair is so unprofessional and unjust that they ought to be ashamed to call themselves part of the ‘free press.‘  Present company excepted, of course.  Your sports reporting seems unhindered by any constraints.”

“Ah, thanks, Tom.  I guess.  What about Snowden coverage has you so upset?”

“Most recently, the Sunday talk shows.  Last week they allowed themselves to be used in an attempt to smear Mr. Snowden by alleging that he’s a Russian spy.   That happened on  all three of the old mainstream networks.  NBC’s Meet the Press,  CBS’s Face the Nation, and ABC’s This Week.”

“I don’t get it,” I admitted.  “Why would they do that?”

“It was one colossal diversion,” said Tom, “a desperate attempt to make Snowden the issue and turn attention away from the massive secret spying on all of us that he has exposed.”

“I never watch those Sunday talk shows,” I said.  “What exactly went on?”   

“Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Intelligence; Michael McCaul, Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee; and Diane Feinstein, the  Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, all took a swing at Mr. Snowden.  Mr. Rogers was the one who weighed in most heavily, if you could use that phrase to describe such an empty case.”

“What do you mean, ‘an empty case’?”

  “Well, for starters, there was no evidence offered, mind you.  Nor were there any demands for evidence by the hosts.  Nor was any person with an opposite viewpoint there to respond.  How unfair can you get?  It’s one-sided, and it’s an abdication of the networks’ responsibility to the public.  It’s not news, it’s propaganda.”

The more Tom talked, the redder his face grew.  “Excuse me for a minute,” he said, then turned and began shoveling.  After a couple of minutes he stopped, heaved a sigh, and said, “Where were we?”

“You were just criticizing  the Sunday talk shows.”

“Ah, right.  You know, I don’t blame you for not watching them.  That kind of dishonest political theater can tear your heart out, if you really care about your country.”

“But suppose they’re right and Snowden actually is a Russian spy?” I worried.

“That’s a good question, Ace.  We have a problem here, don’t we.  Clearly, somebody is lying to us ... either Edward Snowden, or all of the powerful figures lined up against him.  Who should we believe?  The honorable thing to do is to give a fair hearing to both sides.  Let’s look at the evidence, shall we?”  And he began to sum up the evidence, ticking off the points on his fingers.

“One, despite revelation after revelation from Mr. Snowden of the scope and nature of NSA spying, no one has ever denied that his revelations are accurate.  In fact, they appear to have been chosen with extreme care to do just what he claims they were intended to do: give the people of the U.S. the information they need to make an informed choice about whether the NSA’s total surveillance is really the kind of society they want to live in.

Two, despite a lot of loose talk about Mr. Snowden’s endangering people’s lives, not a single instance has been produced where that has actually occurred.

Three, Mr. Snowden’s itinerary clearly shows he had no intention of staying in Russia.  He was trapped there when the U.S. invalidated his passport.

Four, he ended up stuck for forty days in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.  As Mr. Snowden joked--accurately, I think--, ‘Spies get treated better than that.’

Five, with the NSA having the surveillance capacity Mr. Snowden has described, they should already have been able to locate any phone calls, e-mails, or other contacts he had with Russian spymasters.  No such evidence has been produced, which is a strong indication that such contacts never took place.

Six, nobody talks about Edward Snowden’s politics.  Do you know why?  Because he’s a libertarian, a free-market advocate, even an opponent of Social Security.  He’s to the right of Ted Cruz!  To think he’d spy for the Russians strains credulity.  Beyond that, he appears to have been a hard-working, honest, model citizen.  Believe me, if he had major skeletons in his closet, the administrations wouldn’t have waited five minutes before they posted them on billboards in Times Square. 

Seven, the F.B.I. has already concluded that Mr. Snowden acted alone, and its conclusion was reported last week in the New York Times.”

“That’s a long list,” I said.  “It’s always hard to prove a negative, but the case against his being a secret operative for a foreign power sounds awfully convincing.  What’s the case on the other side of the argument? “ 

“Well, first, we looked at Mr. Snowden’s track record.  His information has been accurate.  He has been open about what he found and why he felt obliged to expose it.  Now let’s look at the record of those attacking him.  Snowden’s revelations made it clear that the NSA has lied in sworn testimony about the nature and extent of its spying.”

“They lied to Congress?  To the people who are supposed to be representing us?”

“They sure did.  James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, lied under oath to Congress back in March of 2013, when he was asked whether the NSA collected ‘any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans‘ — and Clapper said, ‘No, sir ... not wittingly’.  Then Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, admitted last October that his testimony that NSA surveillance had foiled 54 terrorist plots was bogus. One Republican congressman told Alan Grayson that he doesn’t even attend intelligence briefings anymore because ‘they always lie’.  Grayson says that many congress members believe that the congressional intelligence committees go right along with the NSA, and are more loyal to the ‘intelligence community’ than to the Constitution.  These committee chairs who attacked Snowden are working hand in glove with the NSA they’re supposed to be overseeing.”

“What evidence did these intelligence committee chairs offer on Sunday then?  They must have had some good stuff if they’re so close to the spies.”

“No evidence, but a good amount of innuendo--which makes you think that there isn’t any evidence.  Mr. Rogers implied that, because the U.S. government stopped Mr. Snowden’s flight in transit, resulting in his being stranded in Russia, he must have been spying for the Russians.  Is that logical?”

“I’ll admit that sometimes I’m logically-challenged,  but no, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Mr. Rogers also implied that Mr. Snowden’s having a go-bag ready was proof that he was a spy.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you lost me there.  What’s a go-bag?” 

“Some people call them ‘bug-out bags,’ or ‘GOOD bags,’ for Get Out Of Dodge’,” explained Tom. “ They’re kits that people keep packed full of the things they would need to get through the next 72 hours if there’s an emergency or disaster.  It would have been pretty standard for anyone in a position like Mr. Snowden’s to have one while working with the CIA and the NSA.  If you arrested everyone who had a go-bag, the CIA and NSA would be half-empty.”

“That’s pretty thin, then,” I said.  “What else?”  

“I’m afraid that’s it.”   

“That’s it?  That’s nuts!” I said.  “If you could convict people on flimsy stuff like that, you could sentence anyone for anything.  I’ve got a scope-mounted Remington 700 for deer hunting.  Does that mean somebody could accuse me of planning to assassinate the President?”

“Very good, Ace,” he said, with a slight look of surprise.  “That’s precisely the kind of thinking I was talking about.”  

© Tony Russell, 2014