I’ve long contended that anarchism loses its appeal to the masses once you hit a tolerable political sweet spot.
If things generally went as they should, barring a few gaffs and scandals; and the powers that be weren’t beyond the law, people would generally be okay with having a government.
I remember reading somewhere: The government should be weak enough to where it doesn’t matter who wins.
It sounded right at the time, but I’m looking around and we’ve oddly achieved a distorted version of that ideal. It doesn’t actually matter who wins office, the agenda of whomever is actually pulling the strings keeps trudging forward. The politicians are weak and inconsequential, but not the government itself.
By all accounts, Joe Biden doesn’t know what day it is. It’s sad to see him out there, and it’s not remotely believable that he called for any of the things his name is attached to.
When the whole brouhaha of “confidential files” came out about Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, one of the larger revelations across the political spectrum was: Government is OVER classifying documents.
It’s true. A lot of words that used to mean a particular thing have long since been diluted. Remember when felony used to mean something heinous like murder or rape? And now it also means someone who mispackaged lobsters from Honduras?
Confidential or classified files in government used to mean something, too. It used to be the codes for the nuclear football and perhaps a handful of other things. Now if Joe Biden doodles on a napkin that goes into some dark file that most members of congress don’t have the clearance to see.
If you said John Doe committed a felony, that meant something. Now it needs to be better qualified before people gasp. If you said Jane Doe has classified files, it meant something. Now that needs to be better qualified.
Broadening the bandwidth of these classifications of crimes and secrecy seems to be creating greater opportunity for chaos, crime, and of course further expansion of the state.
We had Chelsea Manning. We had Edward Snowden. We had Julian Assange. We had Thomas Drake. And now there’s Jack Teixeira who released highly classified documents on the Ukraine war.
While we know what the other’s exposed, not much is yet known about what Teixeira shared other than it has something to do with the Ukraine war and allies.
Right now, if you Google “Ukraine Embezzlement”, you won’t find an American publisher writing about it. You’ll find Asian publications and smaller European publications.
The thing is, Volodymyr Zelenskyy knows there’s corruption in his ranks. He’s vowed to investigate it. But there are also allegations that he is involved in embezzlement schemes with US aid. I don’t know if Teixeira’s revelations included anything to do with that, but then again, no one really knows much of anything to do with Ukraine.
We weren’t even allowed to know the extent to which the Biden family was involved. It’s as much a theory to say nothing was untoward as it is to say everything was at this point.
Every revelation that’s come from these whistle-blowers has had some shock-value to it where Americans learned just how bad things really were.
Manning showed Americans footage of Americans gunning down civilians in Iraq.
Snowden revealed how far the surveillance state went on Americans.
Assange has exposed all manner of atrocities around the world, including the number of civilian and friendly fire casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thomas Drake provided evidence of multi-billion dollar corruption and mismanagement in the NSA and illegal domestic surveillance.
Apparently what constitutes “classified” is the criminal and unconstitutional activity of the government. Which is concerning. It’s as concerning as the Pentagon not undergoing an audit for decades and when it finally got one, it failed.
It’s already out, so it can’t be undone.
Trying to make examples of whistle-blowers or any information leak, is an even worse look.
Whether it’s politicians or contractors or employees, there’s such an exorbitant amount of “classified” documents, leaks are inevitable. There’s no way you can contain that much information and keep it away from the masses. The more people they hire, the more departments and agencies they create, the more bureaucracy around it, the more vulnerable they are.
This is some derivative of chaos theory right? Over enough people and agencies, things become more chaotic?
Regardless, this is what is currently happening. Everything is a felony. Everything is classified. Everything is a crime. Everything is banned. Everything is a mandate.
Funny how the crime rate goes up when the number of laws go up or the bandwidth on laws broadens.
So while lawmakers and district attorneys are turning a blind eye to all the actual crimes happening in big cities like San Francisco and New York, these federal crimes are a top priority.
Guess what the solution is? That’s right! An expansion of the surveillance state! Shocker. I know.
The Biden administration is considering expanding its social media and chatroom monitoring protocols after classified documents were circulated online for weeks without notice, according to a report Wednesday.
This is no more going to stop information leaks than stop shootings. They aren’t going to get ahead of anything. We know this because we’ve seen it… or haven’t seen it as the case may be. After every shooting, a few days later there’s always the article that says “FBI missed glaring signs of this person being a threat”.
Of course they did. And they will continue to do so. Just as the expansion of the IRS isn’t going to capture the rich tax evaders. It’s going to capture some poor schmuck who misfiled his taxes and improperly used the EITC.
Prior to this leak, we had the suspicious “Chinese Balloons”. Which went from “it’s nothing” to “okay maybe it’s a Chinese spy balloon”. Which then got the Biden administration to demand the reinstatement of Section 702:
“…[A]llows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers like Google to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks like Verizon to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.
But the law is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the NSA to specifically target US citizens.
What happens when they roll out the Central Bank Digital Currency, FedCoin? The FedNow platform is set to rollout summer of 2023, which is meant to lay the groundwork for FedCoin. It was sold through as a massive convenience. Its virtue is the elimination of money laundering and other money related crimes.
But its actual activation? I can’t imagine anything other than a Chinese apparatus that is monitoring, throttling, and manipulating the economy. Seems like every time the government gets caught with its pants down, our rights take it in the shorts. Be careful out there. Privacy is as important to protect as your own physical self.
