A friend of mine posted this Reddit thread to Facebook. I’ll quote a bit of it here:
You want to know why revolutions happen? Because little by little by little things get worse and worse. But this thing that is happening now is big. This is the key ingredient. This allows them to know everything they need to know to accomplish the above. The fact that they are doing it is proof that they are the sort of people who might use it in the way I described. In the country I live in, they also claimed it was for the safety of the people. Same in Soviet Russia. Same in East Germany. In fact, that is always the excuse that is used to surveil everyone. But it has never ONCE proven to be the reality.
Context: The author writes about the outcome of surveillance laws in the country where he lives, generally looked upon as a dictatorship—one of the Arab Spring countries—as a warning to Americans about what typically follows these sorts of laws.
I’d seen this thread already from a few Redditor friends of mine, who have otherwise shown little to no interest in speaking out against dangerous laws of this sort. So this was my response, to Redditors, to Democrats, to Republicans, to anyone who speaks up today and grows silent tomorrow when #NSA is no longer trending on Twitter:
The only problem I have with this, is that it takes someone who’s lived in a country where this shit happened for people to actually listen.
Everyone else who’s been saying “Hey this is a bad sign. Uh, hey guys when this happened in other countries it was only ever followed by horrible events…Hey guys, it seems you think that a Democrat president can do no wrong but whether or not that’s true, these powers are one day going to be handed over to a Republican and then what the fuck are we going to do?” has been ignored, labelled a conspiracy theorist/fear mongerer/doomsayer/crazy/naive, and tossed into the pile of “people who say things I don’t want to hear and aren’t as charismatic as the guy I voted into presidency [so now I feel I have to stick by whatever he does so that I don’t look bad] and therefore I don’t care what they have to say”.
And even now, when I’d like to feel hopeful at the raised awareness of these dangerous problems, I can’t shake the feeling that in a couple of weeks after a few hypocritical but oh-so-charasmatic speeches, the complacency will set back in. The comfort of toeing the party line will be restored. And this reddit guy will be tossed back into the pile of crazies just like those before him./Rant
So far, I’ve gotten exactly one response:
So I’m sorry, Reddit. As much as I would like to believe that you’re all turning into tenacious, critical political activists that don’t sway with the crowd, all I can think of is how you lapped up Obama’s every word in his IAMA, asked him hard-hitting questions like what the White House beer recipe is and who’s his favorite basketball player, and literally compared him to Jesus.
Now, I’m not even on Reddit, so I realize it may be unfair of me to mistrust your dedication to Sparkle Motion, but for the better part of four years now, I have watched the tide ebb and flow—mostly ebb—on The Patriot Act extension, Guantanamo Bay never ever ever being closed, the NDAA being signed into law, drone strikes, extrajudicial assassinations, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden… I can’t list everything that passed, loudly and then quietly, in and out of public concern.
So please forgive me if I’m being unjust, but I am just so f*cking jaded.
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