Here is a little something I wrote up about this whole NSA fiasco.
This all reminds me of that scene with Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox in The Dark Knight when Batman is doing everything possible to locate and capture the joker. Batman lets lucius know he took his sonar idea and applied it to every cellphone in the city for the sole purpose of catching one man (A terrorist). Foxx refers to it as “Beautiful, unethical, dangerous.” When Batman says he must do everything he can to stop the joker, Foxx looks at him and says “At what cost?”
Even Christopher Nolan saw this coming as many of us did. How many more liberties are you willing to sacrifice in the name of safety? How many more laws are going to pass, taking away more of our freedoms until we realize that we have completely given up on the idea of freedom and have become slaves to fear? Even with all these new laws that are supposed to keep us safe from terrorists, I don’t feel even a tiny bit safer. In fact, I feel more like a prisoner. Knowing I can’t do anything unless big brother is looking over my shoulder goes against everything I was taught about the USA growing up.
For years, people have been talking about the novel 1984, saying that we are heading in that direction. Most of the people who said that stuff were called conspiracy theorists. Well, it’s not longer a theory. It’s a fact. For so long allowing the government to do this kind of thing has been seen as a slippery slope. Well, I can see us sliding already. Many people 50 years from now will mark this as the beginning of the end of our freedom. It start with the Patriot Act and it continued with what we are seeing now. I openly admit to being a staunch Obama supporter all these years, but this…I cannot accept.
I know this program started under Bush, but Obama kept it going. I refuse to live in a police state. These violations of privacy are unacceptable. When I am an old man and look back on my life, tracing back to when I lost faith in the “American Way,” I can mark this as the starting point. I can see now why some millionaires are leaving the country. Not only for tax purposes, but this country is no longer free. There are a ton of other countries out there that are safer than ours but their people are truly free. I am sure any number of them would be happy to take a few more millionaires in.
Referring back to The Dark Knight, Foxx finally said to Batman “I’ll help you this one time, but consider this my resignation. As long as this machine exists at Wayne Enterprises, I won’t.” I wish politicians had as much backbone as a fictional character. One can only wish they would have the guts to stand up for what is right. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is wrong on so many levels. I am not one to make idle threats, but believe me when I say if and when I’m financially able to leave this country, I will. As long as this sort of program exists in the United States, I won’t.
This is no longer the land of the free. It is the home of the scared. For years we have been told that if we don’t do this or that, that the terrorists will win. Well, guess what. They have. Sure, the government will say they have thwarted an attack here and there, but if they are hiding this program from us, who is to say any of what they tell us about preventing terror attacks is true? You know how the terrorists have won? We cannot go anywhere in our country anymore without being on camera. We cannot watch television without the NSA knowing about it. We cannot surf the internet, make a phone call, send a text message, or have what we thought were private conversations on Facebook without big brother watching every single thing we are saying. Even Michael Caine‘s character Alfred Pennyworth told Batman what he felt they would eventually have to do to catch the jewel thief when he was in Burma: they burned the forest down.
I’ve lost all confidence in the US Government when it comes to protecting the rights of its citizens. When a government can take any citizen it wants and jail them indefinitely without filing charges, you cannot consider this a free country. Yes, they really can do that. Go read the Patriot Act and it will show you how it can. The same thing for people who still think the government needs a search warrant to tap your phones. They don’t. Again, it’s in the Patriot Act. All they government has to do is say that they think you are a threat and they can completely tear your life apart and there is nothing you can do about it. You can view all the data on the Patriot Act here.
People will still argue that these laws are in place to protect us. I do not feel any safer than I did before 911. It is a sad fact that everyone dies. No amount of laws will ever keep us 100% safe. It is a cold hard fact. There will always be terrorism and there will always be mass killers walking into schools and movie theaters looking to kill as many people as possible. Short of taking away virtually every freedom we have left, no law will ever stop these things. Ever.
Cover via Amazon
